(580) A Guide to High Stakes Decisions with Ashley Grech, CRO of Xero - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ2i_hXjAYw

Transcript: (00:00) today's guest is Ashley Greek cro at zero uh Ashley spent over a decade at GP Morgan before moving to square where she was the head of sales strategy and growth and then Global head of sales for close to four years and uh she grew sales contributed Revenue by 10x in her run there uh and a fun fact from me uh Ashley gave a SAS talk three years ago that has become an important input to how I personally think about about uh messaging and positioning and I I shamelessly stole uh this jobs to be done framework in terms of how I now (00:38) talk about positioning and it's actually a talk that I send quite frequently to Founders and revenue leaders uh like three years later so I've been following you since then and I'm really excited for this conversation Ashley oh thank you I remember that talk um and I was embarrassed that like it's not more complicated than just like what are the jobs to be done that your customers care about so I'm touched that I that made [Music] my hello and welcome to the revenue leadership podcast by Topline I'm your host Kyle Norton C owner.com (01:16) and every Wednesday we dive deep into the strategies and tactics being used to drive success by the best Revenue leaders in the world so join me as I sit down with Revenue operators to discuss actionable Frameworks that you can Implement in your business today with no fluff no sales pitches and no [Music] platitudes this episode of the revenue leadership podcast is brought to you by Shore people Shore people helps teams communicate Smarter with science-backed personality insights that make every interaction more effective by (01:58) understanding how people work best teams can collaborate better make faster decisions and drive Real Results get free access to shore people's prism self assessment at Shore people.com that's s people.com now back to the show yeah yeah it was good I remember it so it's funny because I remember where I was walking as I was listening to it um and I have like an elaborate bookmarking scheme and like I put them into this playlist the Spotify playlist of all the of all the podcast episodes I like um and positioning something that I I (02:34) really find fascinating so that that was a good one and especially people thinking about going up market I'll I'll link it in the show notes but it's a it's a solid one love that so um from my other research and listening Rel listening to some of your podcasts uh you can very quickly tell that you're a problemsolving machine and uh what I really liked is it you can clearly tell that you're a first principles thinker you're not reasoning by analogy you're really solving problems from uh root cause and you've gone through some (03:05) interesting growth phases both at square and certainly at zero and so I want to unpack how you think about problem solving and solutioning and really help give people a framework to do this really well because I think you're an awesome person to to uh share some insight there and so we'll get into decision-making Frameworks and really unpack how you think about problem solving and then talk through some specific challenges some like big gnarly uh complex problems like going multi-channel multimarket multiproduct um to make things a little (03:41) bit more concrete uh which should be a lot of fun so first question why the heck do you like solving problems so much oh I love solving problems um look I I know this describes all exact roles to be honest but I often think of it as like I solve problems for money like solve problems for a living um I know we all solve problems for a living um but I I happen to also enjoy it so I I often also joke although it's totally true that I don't get paid to say no I get paid to say how to do something um and one time that came up with my (04:23) kids my my oldest son asked me he was trying to SS out like why me like are there other people in the world that can do what I do I was like there are lots of people that can do what I do and he's like well then why you well because I I actually really enjoy solving problems and I don't mind a bit of a mess so that's a different that's a story for a different day but um I really enjoy the the like process of of coming to conclusions as much as I enjoy the successes of them so um I Sol problems for a living and I get paid to say how (04:58) there you go I like that uh I also going to shamelessly borrow I get paid to say how I I love that as a as a heris so I I figured we could split the conversation on um decision-making and problem solving into sort of three pieces problem or opportunity identification number one prioritization number two and then solutioning like once you understand the problem and the prioritization how do you how do you really Define what the best course of action is but uh first off is that the right framework are there things I'm (05:29) missing there would you change the order of operations or how do you think about this um sort of mental model more broadly no I think that makes sense let's let's Jam okay cool um so let's talk about opportunity identification um so just we'll start generally like how do you come up with what you want to solve Now versus later how do you think about sourcing uh that information on on what to go solve uh well I want to take a step back for a second just talk about like why problem solving at all like why do why do I (06:06) focus on it so much and probably is you like you and I are nering out about it um when we talked about problem solving is a superow and I do think it's a bit of a unappreciated discipline in particularly in Revenue in that um I Revenue leaders have good instincts um but that is not quite enough so I think there's three three things that um that keep me going when uh even on days where I'm like this is this problem sucks like I really I don't this is not this not a fun one um on days that I feel that way I remind myself uh first (06:43) and foremost that you know it is impossible to have seen it all and you simply can't rely on your firsthand experience forever like that that would have mean that we have seen everything and that we've seen every problem before right and so I I see it as like how to build confidence in scenarios where you just haven't seen it before and I think we have to recognize that like you can't always hire a leader that's seen everything you can't expect yourself to have seen everything either U the second is you I talked about this before I (07:16) think it's it's unwise to run the same Playbook even if the symptoms look similar from company to company it's really easy actually it may look like you have the same problem but until you get to the root of the issue you can't be sure and then if you run that Playbook without the certainty of the root cause um you might not get the reaction or response you need um so that's that's a dangerous sort of assumption to go down and the third is if you can model it like if you can demonstrate it then you can teach it and (07:50) that is the key to not capping your own career or even what's possible for your team based on like what you know right you're basically allowing yourself to scale because you teaching to others um and so giving giving others the framework that they need like that's really that uncapping is is super power so that that's important to me um I love that we're gonna come back to how to teach others like that that's an awesome one that sounds good we talked about Diagnostics um I I've had the pleasure of you know joining a a few different (08:22) shops and when once you get there you have you have the luxury of like a fresh set of ice and it's easy deser to get thrown in and be like okay to to be told like these are the things you should be focusing on this time um but if you have the ability and time to do so even if it's several months later we're like I really do recommend diving deep into the driver tree and that's the diagnostic tool like the driver tree is the artifact um the sales methodology that we talk about that gets the driver Tre is like the five y's right everyone knows like (09:04) when you teach your to ask like why and then why and why again um it's the same thing with a driver tree but a driver tree can often be like it's it's the financial model so it's like why is this happening then why is this happening again and so if if you structure problem solving in both like a Bottoms Up and a tops down manner not only does it make it easier to diagnose what's wrong but you can also size where to fix it um so what do I mean by that right um think of it us building like a revenue waterfall and you go I'll give you an (09:38) example example is the midle the mid-market team is underperforming and you're like maybe the sales team says that there isn't product Market but customers aren't responding or the CEO includ concludes that this is the great team you're like okay it could be either one of those things like both of them could be true but if you structure it such that you're working backwards and eventually you document it so that you can then you know Bottoms Up tops down um that's a great diagnostic tool it's also then the structure through which (10:16) the same lens through which you could look at other problems so let's work backwards right revenue is driven by quantity quality and velocity right that's that's a that's your most basic driver tree so you start documenting what's the time to Value what are the win rates by deal stages um what's the deal volume itself both in totality and Deals per rep like what's the revenue size per deal um and then the deal Source inbound versus outbound AE outbound versus bdr so now you have a tree of inbound kpis and outbound kpis and you can start (10:57) to identify what's weak and then you're moving down the branches of so you've got your velocity branch and you're asking why why why yes oh interesting so then you start to see you you may see for example from this from the driver tree that inbound deals are too small to hit Targets on a correct basis I've seen that before like look there's it looks like on a number of deals basis your team should be hitting their goals but like the deals are too small and those are inbound so that leads you to marketing like that (11:35) leads you to your solution it's it's pretty simplistic in that way uh or outbound leads aren't getting past Discovery and so that leads you to listening to calls I is it a value prop issue is it a skill or a targeting issue uh or you see that deal progression is high but we still lose 20% of deals ination right so that's like a like is there something about the product or the rep skill or the process through which we on board customers like all of these have a different solution um I recognize fully in talking (12:19) about like a detailed driver tree which in in like Finance terms it's just like a regular waterfall right um but I recognize that that is you don't always have the time to build that but that's a great way of like it's a gift to the Future in that once you have it set up that way you can you can start to diagnose lots of problems in the same way it's it's really similar uh to the framework I teach my team that I pulled from Teresa Torres in the product World which is the opportunity solution tree and I I looked (12:55) up driver tree as you were talking and it's it's just like a different opportunity solution tree is is vertical and Driver tree looks horizontal but it's mapping to a similar thing like what's that desired outcome what are the key inputs and then underneath like how many um what what are the root causes and then of the root causes what of the potential solutions to each root cause and then you end up with a map of of things you can go tackle which if you're doing it if you're doing it it on paper it's helpful or even if it's just a (13:29) mental her istic I've always found it clarifying for me to to really think like okay and what else and what else and what else yes I like the driver R Tree because it often model it like maps to the customer Journey like there's an element visually and logically as you follow it that starts at the beginning of a customer interaction with your company and then goes all the way down to their to the life cycle and so you're basically getting to like Di noo life cycle and and parts of it along the way so it's the same principles U and I actually (14:05) really appreciate that there's like very clear uh sister problem sets like in coming from product yeah interesting is there one place where you direct people to learn about the driver tree like when you're teaching your team about it is there an external resource that we could link you know there isn't um that that partnership starts with your Finance Partners honestly it's like and and if you think about it like how could you do great annual planning unless you have a Bottoms Up model that's essentially what (14:37) we're talking about where you look at like deal volume deal size um uh progression by deal stage like win rates by deal stage and then by rep inbound versus outbound like that is how you have a really detailed and thoughtful annual plan um and so it starts with your Finance part and I've been lucky enough to have a few really great rounds there where we've either had to build it or even perfect it over time cool and and so how often do you visit this um stage byst stage analysis and and sort of reexamine things from first (15:16) principles like is that ACC quarterly is that annually like what's the Cadence by which you're manufacturing opportunities um that's a great question um I think in the early stages you're like you're trying to do full diagnostic and so probably at at um at the very least you're looking at an Ang because then you're looking at opportunities every year of like what do you need to improve each year um I'm chuckling because like right now I'm in it like I'm looking at everything and so like is there a Cadence I just look at it all the time (15:52) every day um but I I think in a steadier State and you know in the later outer years a square looking at it quarterly and annually just so we can continue to diagnose and you look at it quarterly because you're always standing up in experiment along away and so you're like well how is that performing and like how do you look at the like check engine dashboard so to speak and and making sure you're diagnosing what's going well and what isn't along the way um but the short answer to your question of like how often do you look at drivers is is (16:26) anything wrong if if anything is wrong like if anything feels off like revenue is is slow like any part of truck engine light lights out like that's where you look at it again um and I think uh obviously the likes of Clary and other like Revenue intelligence um companies have really caught on to the fact that it is a bit of like an engine it's a it's a like an airline cockpit so to speak and you're always checking all parts of it and when you have visibility into it then you can just make more Intelligent Decisions so that gives me (17:00) immense Comfort now I mean you and I talked a little bit about the fact that like you can't always have all the information all the time yeah um so you just have to be comfortable with that but yeah the I mean more and more these businesses are manufacturing lines inputs go in the top it's it's opportunity or just like raw marketing spend and then there's a series of stages conversion rates along the way and then you're consistently optimizing that that manufactur in line and having the the data to do it is I think much of (17:35) the time like a challenge for many organizations and and so how do you make that programmatic is it is it part of your QB process and you've got your uh bizops and finance teams doing like a set analysis or how do you keep this Cadence on on uh on calendar on diagnostic diagnosing yeah and just like visiting is it is it an alert system is this like a weekly summary that you're seeing and then that's going to tell you when you need to dive deeper like what's the what's what's the Cadence of it um that's a good question um look the the (18:14) like level one metrics the metrics that matter the most the company those are often like the absolute outputs the end of the line so to speak and those we look get monthly right um or quarterly depending on your company size and the stability and velocity and then the level two and three like those are the drivers and you can package them like I think you can probably imagine like what's the level two level two is production by Channel and then level three is um activity levels by rep yeah and like deal size by rep and so you (18:52) look at those in packages and they have different audiences so for me as a cro like I will see all three of those I'll see what we share with the full company and with with my CEO on a monthly basis but then I'll also drill all the way down and like the sales leaders and sales manager um accountability meetings they're they're going at level three and then the regional leaders Regional sales leaders they're operating like level two or if there's something wrong then level three got it right and so everyone has a (19:21) regular Cadence but every we have different altitudes makes sense and and is there anything that you're doing to get to True root cause I I find something I see is people either Reason by analogy or they look at something and they like make their first assumption on what's causing it oh it's just we got to do more calls but um is there anything that you've been able to do to get to like a first principal's understanding of a problem um I think it's never going to be perfect um my so two things one sort of quick antidote is you said it's like (19:59) a manufacturing line it very much is my CEO CEO at Square um had encouraged me to study other Industries when thinking about Revenue um and I am forever appreciative of the fact that they encourage me to to study manufacturing and like how to find the areas of most value uh where the blockers are and then U prioritize in the blockers based on value or the size of the blockage for example and so that's just one tidbit you said manufacturing I was like huh um that's been very much in C with my Square Journey um the the CEO this is (20:42) not a New Concept but I really appreciated that the CEO for today at zero she has said um she has shared with us this thought of like gut data right like you you'll start with an Inkling and a lot of leaders might stop at the inkling because they have really good instincts but like those and inkling for example is like they'll start seeing things come up in there'll be signs and they're mostly qualitative right topics come up in conversations customers uh a phenomenon is popping up in the market or you're see a competitor be more (21:20) successful or show up more frequently in your deals um but all of this tells you that you should look into it and even in in my case currently there were things that I was hearing from teams and then interestingly it popped up in an analyst call and so like the same phenomenon came up and an analyst going you're like oh now I should really look at this like this is not this is more than just a coincidence um and so that's the gut element then you go deep on the data then you get to go into the drawing bers and Trends and then you you can use your (21:53) best judgment to make a decision what to do about it or to sizing for example like then you can prioritize it um but the the the second the second or which is the data portion that'll tell you whether or not it's around hering right or if this is something you should be really worried about um yeah and then the third is you probably can get to about 70 or 80% of the answer and there's probably not a perfect answer so it's like what's the best one and that maybe goes to the third topic that you were talking about (22:27) where you like how do structure of a solution um but yeah that's like the the third part is use your best judgment again and just determine much Direction you want to take that makes a ton of sense I I love all of the Jeff Bezos stuff on on the topic because he's you know thought so deeply about um decision-making something I sent to my team today was uh was specifically on this topic he said people think of Amazon as a very data as very data oriented and I always tell them look if you can make the decision with data make the decision (23:06) with data but a lot of the most important decisions simply cannot be made with data and I think that's very much this like gut data gut you know you're you're going to have uh a certain Fidelity of information to make a call but at the end of the day you know you're getting paid the big bucks to uh be able to synthesize and see patterns and and use your intuition uh a lot of the time I forgot what I read it and it's a bit of an imperfect quote but it was something like you know be data informed not not dat driven like if you (23:41) wait for all the information you said this like the so Jeff pH was quote like if you wait for 90% it's probably too late you're probably too slow and I will admit like any regrets I've had have been waiting for too much information or not wanting to disrupt something for like or test from an experimentation purose yeah yeah 100% um and so are you doing anything this is something I think aot a lot about like how do you think about tapping the wisdom of the crowd and and sourcing information from Sellers and Frontline and managers sometimes I feel (24:20) like that is very ad hoc um and I wish it could be more programmatic have you been able to do anything there to to try to surface that stuff up to your H that's a really hard one because it's easy to chase a trend and like if you chase anecdotes for example it can become a bit of a becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy or a red herring um one qualitative way that I like to do this and I I know it's possible with a bunch of different platforms now like gong and Clary and and many of them will do this um or they (24:56) can you can perform an analytics on the body of calls you could talk about how you know you can pull out frequently certain words are mentioned certain products are mentioned you can start seeing uh you know when your rep talks about a specific product this particularly helps Charing of multiproduct like when we bring up this secondary product does it improve or decline your wing rates decrease your wing rates and like that's really interesting because you're like all right these feel like natural like these (25:28) two products feel like really natural bed Billows and then all of a sudden you're like it's not like something's not working um that is the greatest gift I think you could give your product team to like both product and product marketing to say we talked about this in 50% of our Cs and it is you know it's only increasing ear rates by high yeah it's only attaching at y um you can if you're lucky enough you can do the same with your customer support calls yeah right um so when I was at recharge it with the in the co (26:06) overall I ran um Revenue legal uh sales customer success marketing and uh when I was looking at support we're looking at support tickets um you could really dive deeper into like what are the most voluminous ticket types um and then and then determining like stack ranking from there like is this a product problem um or is this a um like is it a a UI issue is it a like is there a bug for example expectation setting support capability absolutely and being able to pull that at scale from voice recording or from the ticket logs and like (26:55) scraping it out of macros of all of that is possible to today um and then at recharge we prioritized it by saying um what are the problems that are like hurting our customers meaning hurting revenue or annoying our customers and then what are the problems that are um simply annoying our teams and if it hit both of them we did those first we went to solve those first because it was like your employee satisfaction and your customer satisfaction were impacting so that's first makes sense yeah we're trying to do a bunch of that with momentum right (27:31) now I I found the promise of call intelligence to be greater than the reality yeah uh certainly that was like my experience with gong and um but we're trying to now consolidate a bunch of stuff and um aggregate data in a different way so that we can start to surface some of these Trends because some of these data silos don't touch each other you know yeah churn data and ticket data support ticket data doesn't really overlap with call intelligence data so are you either cramming that all into Salesforce is it going all into (28:07) Snowflake and then how do you make you doing it yourself like is your team doing it themselves um some of it we're doing ourselves some of it we're work working with momentum to try to figure out how we can pull that data at scale in terms of Trends and and impact I think ultimately because it needs to marry with product data like if you really in SMB because we we are uh we contract month-to month closing a deal is like important but uh equally as important as like the quality of the setup the uh the custo the the product experience for (28:46) that customer in the first 90 days and so we trying to bring together all of these different signals from okay like was this um the incorrect expectations which led to support or is it a piece of product friction that's known is that road mapped and trying to untangle it as is uh as a Herculean task but end it is the like that's the whole gril right because that information like when you marry up through the customer interaction information with the product usage information like all of that then like that is useful for product it's (29:23) useful for go to market it's useful for support um and honestly that's a um it's a a deciding factor when I'm speaking to vendors on whether or not you can fully export the data [Music] so the official marketing playbook for 2025 starts at CMO Summit on April 17th join 150 of the world's top Marketing Executives in Atlanta for a one-day event designed to redefine marketing's role in business growth in a world of shrinking budgets the CMOS who lead with strategy and Innovation are the ones driving Real Results this Summit is (30:02) where you'll gain the tools insights and connections to do just that here from industry Pioneers engage in Hands-On workshops and Surround yourselves with marketing Trailblazers who aren't just your peers they're the minds who will inspire your next breakthrough visit joint [Music] pavilion. (30:30) jpg gong doesn't really write back to custom Salesforce Fields like I wanted I want specific things pulled out of calls because there's so much great unstructured data that's that's why we are using momentum because it can it can run across every single call I can write custom prompts have that map to a specific custom field in Salesforce and I can just yank out now structured data from uh unstructured call transcripts and and give it some sort of shape in Salesforce now I have to get it into snowflake because product data um is going to be there and we have to figure (31:05) out what to do with it but like we're we're slowly moving to this single source of Truth where I will be able to just slap a language model on top of it because it has everything to pull from and get the answers that I want I love that you talked about two things that are like very much on my mind right now one of them is this annoying like RR Salesforce and custom the FS um and you can't Sal gong I don't think anyone does itly well right now um and then the other element is being able to analyze the totality of customers interaction (31:40) that is that is GNA be a game changer all right we're I'm gonna follow up with you several like bothering me okay we are mid-flight on a bunch of this because and so we moved the support team out of their old tool I think it was intercom into ser Cloud so that all of the tickets are now in Salesforce so that it's it's you know you could do the integration it's just better to have them working natively at a Salesforce and now we're piping product data into a bunch of objects uh that we know are like really high fidelity on their on (32:13) their product experience to try to get a little bit more from and then we're building it all in metabase so we're we're a couple months away but we we can talk more about that like um Okay so we've talked uh we've gotten into how to find good problems um now let's talk about prioritization in in you know a friend of mine Dan Ross always says this uh he's like great companies always have more good ideas than they have bandwidth and we were at Shopify together and for sure more great ideas than bandwidth um and so how do you think about what do (32:49) you what do you raise to the top of that prioritization stack and and uh how do you get people rallied around the right things um I I mentioned before the like very simplistic way that I was looking at s product problems and and like customer support um so in its most simplistic form that was like does it hurt the customer Hur our revenue and then just her emplo and if it does both that would pops the top that is a very simplistic view um I would say I I think about four primary uh four primary like conditions what I think about (33:31) priorization um none of these will be a surprise but I try to to make sure that we're adhering to the easier ones are like resource constraints right pring issues uh that can be tackled effectively with the car team and budget like that is that's a thing like let's just be honest like it's not a bottomless pit of money um and also frankly sometimes you don't have the right team to tackle that problem time right that that's real um the second is like is it a blocker I know that sounds sort of like obvious but like (34:15) does one thing unlock many other things and so there it might be a small thing for example like by size but it it does unlock or un other teams in order to faster more effective um so I do think of that as like there's a bit of a l pin question there are any of these problems a l pin so relatively small fix but high impact the third is is a continuation of that is like Impact versus effort like focusing on problems with the biggest potential Revenue impact or size within a reasonable effort level um and we do (34:56) that a lot it's Z or like what's the size of it like should this rise to our like top three for fiscal year 25 or 26 and it has to be bigger then like everything else is g to be have to be a sign hle and so what's the biggest impact that makes the biggest difference for as many teams as possible company is that a written is it like a written process you go through are you scoping are you scoping business impact to a dollar value or is it more of like a conversation model we actually tried to scope it to a dollar value (35:33) interesting now I mean these are lucky for us like they are Revenue problems yeah right like a leader yeah inly quantify a product leader might have much more challenging time and like the chief product officer I we talk about a lot like how do we think about this other problem here where it's like um and we that you know we talk about a feature and whether or not certain features should be built then we go back to the the like customer support and the sales calls to see if we could build quantitative support for like for her to (36:10) make a business case on like which featur should be prioritized and all the that on it but lucky for me most of them arei yeah um and then where do you think people go wrong in terms of prioritization what are the biggest sort of failure modes there um that's a great question it sounds kind of obvious but uh I think uh noise matters and sometimes you can get thrown off by noise so like something that customers are Noy about can sound like the biggest problem but you're like okay I know sounds really terrible I don't mean it in this way but (37:00) it's like there's a bit of you know noise about a specific feature type on our stickiest product and like we don't see an impact on chir and yet there is a Blocker on you know in our on boarding flow and it's preventing us from you know bringing on new clients and so as I think about like you know it's easy to get caught up in like the customers are telling us this this one feature is too slow or whatever but it's our absolute stickiest product and they're it's not changing behavior um that is customer noise or (37:33) even employee noise is easy to so let that lead that's not always wrong I I it sounds really bad when I say it like that it's not the wrong Instinct but it might not be the first quarter of business if you will it can easily bring you down the right the wrong path the uh Kevin dorsy likes to say he's like is it volume or volume is it just or is there a legitimate high volume of this thing happening that needs to be addressed and uh yeah the the loud customer can definitely drown out the road map especially in Enterprise I found this (38:13) more selling and servicing in Enterprise than I do in SMB it but like one really loud squeaky wheel that's always threatening to churn can can take you off course pretty pretty readily yes absolutely absolutely and so how do you think about balancing like urgent versus important I think one of the challenges that many folks have is just getting sucked into the stuff that is uh loow hanging fruit easy to tackle like we'll we'll give you the quick win versus like big strategic things and how do you think about (38:45) balancing those two um honestly I go back to the four things next talk about before um the fourth one that I failed to failed to like finish sh on was does it align priorities so he talked about resource constraints a lot um you know block covers like is there a Lynch pin and one that is that unlocks all others a third is sort of financial Impact versus AF and the fourth is like does it align with the company's goals because there's plenty of things that are to me as a revenue leader that like are not the chief product officers if like wouldn't (39:24) rise to her top five or 10 I don't mine to be her three that would be great but like is it close um and so I think that's where you get into like this you know realass of either too many things or not the right things Al it's a tough one though it's like vir versus import we're always trying to out with that but trying to figure out like what is the greatest value does it align with you know it does it align with our company's objectives for this year uh and there will always be things that fall cut yeah this is something that I I personally (40:01) struggle with and I think my team struggles with is because I love ideas and good ideas and so it's really easy to see it's like oh we should do this thing that's great this person can work on it and then I step back and I look at all of the things that people are doing and it's like oh we got too much like I tell myself this all the time just like focus focus focus and yet we are we are like unfocused we're taking on too many things we're I'm in this mode right now I think it's it's it's a beginning of year thing where you want to take on the (40:35) world uh after planning season but um nothing think I'm trying to think yeah I wonder if I'll ever outgrown that like I always want to do all the things I always want to do all the things and so you know sure I'm trying to teach others to prioritize but frankly I've also tried to teach myself to prioritize it's hard yeah I'm always get and and I just then I just remind myself that like it's okay I'll just never be done like just paint the Golden Gate Bridge from end to end forever and ever and like well just (41:07) that will just be something I tackled next year like this thing that I want to work on now that I know is not the number one thing um a great example of it is we left a customer Summit and we have one one big customer Summit per region per year um and so we left as North America customer Summit and I said to was like it literally came up in every single customer meeting and I was like I really want thing I was like we have to build a Playbook to create predictability repeatability and scalability for this one process for (41:40) adass customers and she's like I know you heard it like six times a day for the past three days but like is that your number one right now no it's not it just isn't like I know it but so I appreciate getting to work with people that will call me out out on it call out my enthusiasm as a superpower but sometimes needs to be kept in check yeah it's it's funny like all things your greatest strengths your greatest weaknesses 100% it's always this two sides of the same coin always yeah and and I think to get into roles like ours you need just like (42:18) a hyperactive sense of problem identification like my my ability to see a thing is probably just greater greater than many and I can't stop thinking about them and and it's the it's what gets in my way and it's what uh I think causes so many folks in these roles like angst and in this feeling of like it's never done there's NE you're never caught up you're never you're never there but that I guess that comes with the territory yeah um okay so let's jump into solutioning so you've identified a basket of of things to tackle you've got (42:58) a rough ideas of prioritization so how do you think about getting to the right solution and I'll give you a quote just to like cue this up so I was listening to a podcast with an old colleague of mine faran thar who's um the head of engineering at Shopify now and it was on Lenny's podcast and he said there are probably 10,000 right options for any problem but and uh everybody stops at the first right one he's like but you have to figure out out of all of the right options which is truly the best one and and that just like resonated so (43:30) much so uh maybe I'll start with like what's your reaction to that first and and how do you think about avoiding stopping at the first right answer I sometimes there is a right answer MH um I don't want to be like all gray about it but I'm just not a black and white girl like I just don't believe that for most problems I just don't believe there's one right answer yeah sometimes there is that that's true like but most of the time there's lots of ways to do things lots of ways to do it and I think it's really lazy it really irks me when (44:16) people are like this is the only way I'm like but you're not solving for this other thing and so what I challenged myself to do actually like before I because I cannot help myself I desperately want to solve like I get solar satisfaction out of it there's like anxiety that dis dissipates when I like think I think I've found a solution it's it's annoying to my family to no end um so like I recognize this about myself so even for me privately like before I enter a call for example I'll write down like what do I want the (44:49) solution to actually solve for and most of the time it has to solve for a few things and so that's my principle thinking around it like this solution must solve for like let's just say a um a custom an ask that an Enterprise customer is making on the business and you're like this is one of our biggest customers we have to do it we just have to because they asked us to and you're like okay you push you push back on the team you're like okay what are the principles upon which we should judge this feature so that we never have (45:23) to make the same decision really again so the principles of solution is whatever the solution is it must adhere to let's just let's try this on for science like it has to be work that is applicable to other customers in some form or other right so never just one thing for One customer and not replicable for others so it has to be replicable and relevant for other customers somewhere along the line um it has to rise above the level of a certain Revenue impact let's just say just trying this one on for size um it cannot you know disrupt what (46:03) uh your existing team like resourcing model or at least not like you could set a thresholder for that as well um and therein lies like there are going to be lots of options but then you can score the you can score the solutions like do does this solution solve for these three things uh we did this recently at zero we're looking at com plans I I like I know I can see in your face right now like every leader has the views on Compass and that every person in every ring team has a view on a cop play and it's like it's both deeply (46:41) emotional and it's also like rooted in only our our experiences personally and so we're going through this challenge now of like what's the problem that we're trying to solve for what's the behavior we want to solve or what the objective of the comp plan um we did our own diagnostic on where there was weakness and now we're in the solutioning phase and if we if we go through the solution solutioning phase without principles on what we want it to solve for um we will wind up in the same rure back and for if I'm like well I've (47:14) seen this at Square I've seen that at Shopify or whatever um some of the principles that I can Surface now are like this comp plan has to be um globally applicable regardless of the maturity of the market and so people were getting all tied up I'm like well it should be different I'm like why don't you just make the quota different yeah oh oh don't get me started on this the structure should be the same the quota can be different well set quotas how we set quotas right oh the acceleration have to be different like do they like (47:53) let's talk about it right the the second principle was there there are a few but another principle was it has to be scalable for multiproduct I will not change it when we introduce new products and it has to and each country has different products so like it has to be applicable for multiple countries and their own multiple products so that's like an infrastructure question as well as a comp plan structure question um yeah so that those are just some examples and so we we take a principles approach to Solutions as well (48:32) that makes a lot of sense I I'm obsessive about principles and for for everything we do I try to distill things back to some set of organizing principles I'm recreating our operating methodology right now basically like how our meeting structured what do you cover in meetings how do we run one-on ones what are what's our our uh weekly monthly Cadence of updates and so rather than jump to okay here's what I want weekly here's what I want monthly I I've spent hours and hours and hours documenting this uh operating (49:07) methodology which has organizing principles it has to start with our company values then it has to serve the customer then the business then the team then the Reps then us as the managers okay so now if I'm if I'm creating a new uh reporting Cadence like is this about us or is this about the rep or and like how does this serve the business and like and you know and I really want us to be async as a default and so I I I feel like by organizing these principles then I can give them to other people and they can go create they they now my VP (49:45) marketing said this to me and I loved it um he's like you're giving people the primary colors of of this of this thing and now they can go paint with it but bring back something that that's still Works um so I'm I'm very aligned on this principles I love how you how um how they said that as well in that um like we've all been through times in our career where you're just not seeing yourself scale anymore you're like oh man I am I am the bottleneck the answer um and that's that's tough like that's tough when you become a front (50:26) Lane manager a man manads you know an Enterprise leader a functional leader um and so I've experienced that same sort of like push to um principles over time just because I I feel like it does a few things one is it is the blueprint or primary colors as you said um it's a gift to them uh and the other piece is I found that if you either co-create or you author the principles yourself the answer that comes back is much closer to the percentage percentage them like if you give pure white white space you'll get an answer but he Fass you you% some (51:07) point want it yeah yeah but if you give people the framework on how to think about an answer and and the principles upon which like you want the answer to to be you're much likely to get 89% um and so that's brought me a lot of time savings peace of mind um and also career growth frankly yeah I'm pushing myself to do as much of this as I can I I view this as sort of my primary function in 2025 is just distilling all of the things that we do back to core principles that then people can take as sort of their building blocks and Lego (51:45) pieces to to to recreate the the thing that they're trying to build like the The Rules of Engagement you know we're bu rebuilding the rules of engagement on rotators and a bunch of stuff that it's a you know very like gritty work and but if they understand okay like optimize for the customer first in this thing like what what's the experience of them getting bounced around from three reps okay then then then your rotator is wrong and and I just find that it we just went through this Roe process and I think documenting more clearly the (52:19) principles uh made that come back um in a much much better place it also start it helps with the roll out uhuh yeah you know this notion of like when you disagree with someone always start with the thing you agreed with like when you're going to roll out a new conf or when you're changing the Rotator um you know when you're changing the rules of engagement there will inevitably be teams individuals that disagree always but if you agree on the core principles on like we are here for our clients you're here for them right and and (52:59) mostly for them and we're here to make your jobs easier as individuals um we are stewards of our company and we control costs and efficiency like No One's Gonna no one is going to disagree with those things and so it's like they might they might not like the answer but they won't disagree with the principles yeah and so that's been I mean like yes it is an important problem solving tool yes it's an important solutioning tool but like I found for myself as a revenue leader and having to blow out a number of different (53:30) new initiatives and whatnot along the way like this is sell tool yeah that's one of my comm's principles is always start with why because if you can explain the why for the customer the business the team Etc then things Downstream make sense we when I announced that we were setting up an office I was super clear and very transparent with the rationale and why and and what the business drivers were and and uh it seemed to resonate with people and I got a bunch of messages saying like hey I just really appreciate (53:59) you explaining it and like telling us what's going on and being like clear like I I didn't um hide the fact that part of it was about driving down costs you know we've we've hired for SMB an experienced SMB rep and paid at the top of Market but we're scaling from sort of 50 people in sales to 90 or plus this year and if we can hire a earlier career rep groom them up from scratch then we can we can change the cost profile and I said that openly to the team and I think there was a level of appreciation and you know I I um one of the principles in (54:35) uh this operating methodology is just just like treat people like adults because I find people leaders want to spin you know they want to oh we're doing this thing and it's for these reasons but that the reasons are not quite they're they're disingenuous and you think you're selling your team but every single time you do that you're chiseling away on trust as opposed to saying like hey like I can be open with people that like this is capitalism this is a business we're here to return Capital to shareholders over time and (55:07) therefore the cost profile of of what we're doing um needs to needs to bend and and like if you treat people that way I I find the response so much better but totally agree also I'm I'm you I can't speak for you but I'm a terrible poker player so it's like if I am if there's any like anling and be hiding something like it's R all over my face like you can feel it people feel it even if they can't see that they feel yeah for sure um okay I wanted to come back to to what you said uh right at the beginning of this topic on teaching it (55:43) so like how do we teach this how do you scale it to others because I think this is you know going back going back to your point about being a bottleneck something that folks really really struggle with um I first trying to model it so like we're going to do it together a bunch of times and then we'll write the principles together um that solves a couple of problems um it solves for agreement early on it's like no we we crafted these principles together um that that sort of you know that solves for that kills that bird um the the (56:20) Second Step along the way then is just asking them to give it a shot like what do you think these principles should be um and then cre trying to create a little bit more Independence for it um I'm lucky enough to work with a a really smart and capable team um and you know there are lots of Journeys that we as a team have not gone on yet and so this this principled way of thinking um has helped immensely in just allowing more volume of work to get done because we can have more teams sort of operating independently at time so I know that's (56:59) it's not a very exciting answer but it's really like I'm on first and then I ask people to do it on their own um and it's same thing with my children I'm like we'll do it together and then you can do it by yourself and then you can do it independently always yeah and then tons of feedback yeah yeah makes sense um okay so let's make this more tangible for folks and hop into uh in sort of Dealers Choice so we could talk about going multi- CH Channel multiproduct mult multimarket what's a fun complex topic to sort of unpack and talk through (57:34) sort of the decision-making and and roll out process um I love I mean all of them are fun problems are fun all of our fun I I really like this notion of like um I I see multi- Channel and multi- region is actually kind of a similar challenge because you do have to you do have to assess like how much investment am I going to put into this thing like what does it look like um you know I've seen it at um I mean frankly I saw it at Jake Morgan when I was there I'm thinking should I do office in this in you know istan or Milan or um so again at Square (58:21) at recharge and now we're talking about at zero where do we go next um and it's it's a lot of fun serac like there are a couple different very academic areas and then there's like active solutioning and problem solving the Academia is fun it's like what's the market opportunity and like that's just pure IV Tower stuff market research right what's the opportunity what's you know based on your ICP like how you cut the data so you know what type of opportunity lies ahead and what your relevant addressable Market is um (58:57) but the most fun thing I think is creating like what are the packets of investment call it a bunch of different things packets of investment packets of change um one mistake I see is like people go straight to we should put people on the ground there and you're like I'm not sure that's the right option it depends on the market right but like is that really what you want to do um or like we want to explore a new channel like let's go straight to hire a couple reps dedicated to this new channel um some fun uh examples or like thought exercises that (59:41) I encountered along the way um let's take Europe for example was like the biggest opportunities in Europe are France Germany Spain Italy right like those are the biggest economies um or you know the the UK at the time we were already in the UK but those would require a tremendous investment in order to to really move the needle like to create the awareness you want to start driving inbound interests or even like successful outbound interest within a Time Horizon um and so then you start looking at smaller economies and you're like (1:00:24) what are these jobs to be done relatively simar and can I get more traction in a smaller economy and self-fund for a large while so in one instance it was like okay it's a no-brainer actually it wasn't a no-brainer time um it is a it's a good idea to expand from the UK where you already have a presence into Ireland because you don't have to change your assets y you have some form some Halo of awareness and once you start actually generating Revenue in Ireland which is a much faster R because you don't have any new (1:01:03) assets create you can use the same you can even use the same reps in the UK for the time being right um you improve your payback there and you have under one year payback you can self-fund entrance into your next country so you essentially like you're you're not entering irland for example because it's a huge Market you're entering because it's easy to make one money and then you can fund another region that makes sense right to lessen the total you know Financial impact of trying to enter Spain for yeah and your point about you know (1:01:42) going straight to full boots on the ground in a market at at Shopify I can't remember the exact terms but we identified so there were three tiers of Market expansion there could be like exploration there was something else and then full development and exploration was part partner Le and done out of another market and then all the way on the full sort of Market development was okay there's a regional Hub there's people in in seat selling direct um so the channel and Market thing are are very much interrelated I think yeah (1:02:17) that's exactly what I was thinking as well um in fact I'm living it right now we're looking at at zero on like how deep of an investment do we want to make in other countries M and there are three tiers of depth um and none of this is company specific right like the three tiers of depth that you talked about was one is probably like do we just test out like marketing what demand generation plg no mops on the ground no language customization nothing right yeah then tier two is do you have you know tier one plus um a channel partner (1:02:56) MH right and you probably stand up let's say in tier two you stand up a a very light product Le sales motion if you just take the EU for example there are tons of call centers in Poland where they can they have 15 langues right yeah and they offer everything from sales Dev all the way to support so it's like you contract with with a company like that and they handle very light onboarding support and then third is you put humans there and then you probably have some form of like tier one tier two investment but (1:03:34) you then have like active outbound Salesforce in Market um and so we're you know that is something I'm living right now on just thinking about like where should we where should we um apply TI your one one two or three um and then the solution back to the back to an earli part of our conversation like what's our financial constraint um is this strategic to the business today does it unlock other countries like does credibility in Portugal unlock Spain for example that's a purely academic question but it's like (1:04:16) is there a LG pin answer there um and so any one of those countries on paper could be the one but it's it's lazy thinking to be like Yep this is the biggest economy we should go back to that one yeah that makes a ton of sense when what was the framework to figure out when to go into these new markets I think you see so much failure here um so how did you know at square and zero when it was time to go International at all and when it was time to take on a new region there there's a little bit of push and pull right um there's there's (1:04:54) always push and pull from different directions right sometimes your investors are like you got to go like um there are plenty of investors of us companies that are like if you can't prove yourself abroad like you should just think your Val we should start change ever yeah so that's a that's a push um a poll is you're seeing sort of regulatory changes in a market that's super fun because like when the magic happens yeah like a regulatory change really changes like people's awareness of solutions um so you know we look at that (1:05:32) that would be a PLL another PLL would just be uh you know proximity to other markets that do that that that are seeing um regulations shift uh the UK is a great example right now um the government is requiring digitization of tax information it's like that was the time now is the time when we should shift dolls away from even another one of our actual markets to put into the UK right um so no question the the market dynamics factoring there uh market dynamics consumer sentiment um competitor behavior and then of course our our gold (1:06:13) like resource and constraints right um I I feel like a lot of companies try to do this too early like they don't have the maturity or even necessity to do it how do you know when is the right time like think about just we're we're America only today and we want to do our first International Market like generally what is that point for you the way I thought about it Square was do I have now it there's added blessing or complexity that you know squares probably trade it so you have to meet a number there's no hiding right there's (1:06:56) not like you have it off quarter because you tried something new there's just no such thing um and so there if you think about like on a maturity curve like you have to have something that is mature mature enough to be predictable and repeatable and that one like gets to be the anchor that country or that region or product or whatever it is that team gets to be the anchor want you try something else I would not recommend um and look I I recognize this is coming from like a larger company view I wouldn't recommend having a bunch of experiments (1:07:33) running at the same time so I always feel better if there's like something stable that is the anchor team or you know product that you're selling and then you start branching into others right um I saw that it recharged to like you have a COR business that's doing really well and then you get to abort of test and learn in another region or in another Channel makes sense has zero been International for a long time or like when was that when did that happen uh it has been zero is a company that's founded out of a (1:08:09) garage in New Zealand and so right I thought yeah and it is like it is the number one player in theia couching and bookkeeping space in the southern hemisphere um it has a monster presence in the UK and has been in the US for the past decade as well I and so it's a it's a very Global footprint business we have presence in Canada the US uh South Africa the UK southern hemisphere uh and Asia and Gro and so it's a question that we ask ourselves all the time like you know what what our customers care about where where would our product be the (1:08:46) most useful that speaks to the like ratory Tailwinds where we go where we're needed and we go where we think we can make a big impact that makes sense um and in terms of Channel diversification what's the right timing to think about adding additional go to market channels what are the triggers what's the model to Think Through like one what what's the right timing and two what's the next right channel to think to to add oh that's a hard one um the obvious one is when you're trying to diversify your revenue streams and so (1:09:28) it's like all right you have a stable one and now you're trying to sort of create a new one so it's like whenn the present win the future so to speak um the other is a more customer cented which really thinking about like meeting customers where they are uh so meeting them in their decision making process a lot of companies will likely go independent first like they're going straight to the customer first but um a good example is knowing that a micro business owner starts with just being able to take a payment MH right like I (1:10:04) want to sell I want to sell knit Goods at my local farmers market like I'm just the first thing I'm going to focus on actually is just taking the payment um then comes a bank account that is not my personal account probably right um and then only later will I have employees and so you start thinking like all right the ecosystem play there is if you're a payments business or if you're like banking you you start thinking about like what are the most what are the adjacent or ancillary uh jobs to be done around me (1:10:41) and that will tell that will tell you what channel to go after yeah that makes sense because I got to zero through stripe I I have stripe set up for my substack and for consulting stuff and there's a there's a product integration there it's like you can use click here and set up zero and I was like okay cool and that's how that's how I set up my zero that's interesting that's exactly it it's like the most important thing to you as a business owner for example it's like you just had to take payments like that's that's the douam mean hit of like (1:11:13) I made money today that is like my livelihood that's my number one priority and then later the priority is like how do I truck it how do I like start billing or or you know billing my customers different ways um how do I package it up to send it to my accountant like those are not things you think about on day one but those are things you think about on like day three you know it's weeks three months three right um and so the customer Centric approach will tell you sort of what what does your channel need to change or can (1:11:44) it diversify rather um and then market dynamics matter a lot as well um I think one um interesting thought experiment that um I've seen over time is do you have competitors that are very rigid in their like whether or not they want to accept other players on their ecosystem and if they are like does that mean that you could be the anti of them and so sometimes well you know while I don't recommend over orienting to what your competitors do or don't do like you run your own game um but that does matter that does facture insur to (1:12:26) something from time to time it's like in this market um is your competitor very open or not and that will tell you sort of which which channels to pursue makes a ton of sense any other last advice for people setting up a new channel you know they've been 100% direct and they're setting up referral or reseller or anything other any other key principles that you think are worth uh sharing you talked about failures before um there's definitely a trip up on going a little bit too fast um and then unsurprisingly I would say um trying to (1:13:02) see it as an all new business like give it the give it the oxygen it needs to be a new business and to shed the like uh shed how you Orient your thinking around everything you've done before past say more about that that's that's really interesting um there are a lot of limiting beliefs based on like oh we tried that before and like that's not how we're customers by like okay but is that really like is that true or is it or is that just how you've always thought about our current Channel um I'm trying to think of a good example (1:13:44) here I think the maturity of a business like you you this this Rings very true to me because I've we've gone through this ourselves we tried to set up a partner Channel like two full years ago uh we didn't have the market presence or brand Equity to get a ton of traction and then you know we basically like stopped doing that and then maybe seven or eight months later hired a new very senior person to like give it another attempt but do it at a very different scale and make like a more significant investment now it's a very (1:14:22) material part of our business um it it but our presence in the market and people and the just the brand Equity is completely different today than it was two years ago when we tried when we tried to do it and it helps you know we hired a leader from the space who's very credible and and knows everybody in uh in the space but um I think like the timing can matter just because something didn't work one time doesn't mean it can never work later yeah I that's a that's a really big one um one thing popped to mind where um at one point we were (1:14:59) considering um at a prior extin we were considering whether or not to use resellers there was this notion internally of like well our product is too complex like and also like the margins don't make sense at resellers like to give away what will be as much as half of your margins to a reseller like that'll just never work and you know lo and behold you see a ton of a couple of competitors run that play it's like something is working over there and that there's clearly a principal difference there's like a belief (1:15:35) difference that they must have that we don't see right like it's impossible for them to think that they're just like they're not doing it underwater there must be something economically that's making it work right so what has to be true in order for us to consider resell what what would have to be true is either we give a much smaller percentage share of the of the cut or that we sell multiproduct and so the the average ticket is a lot higher for the and so I I do think that like limiting beliefs can be um are you know most (1:16:10) often the blocker or even just ways that we think about the business today are often blockers trying in Channel and the the like reseller one is a good example because the margins are th and you do have to simplify your offering if you're going through reseller that is real like yeah it's you have to create either Simplicity of the product itself or like the offering the package that you were you're putting in someone else's hands um and so you know I try to challenge myself and others to think about like what has to be true in (1:16:43) order for us to do that so if my boss said tomorrow there'll be a reseller program in a year I don't get to say no I have to say how yeah so off I go yeah that makes a ton of sense well this that's great okay let's move to Quick fire because I want to get us uh wrapped up on time um what separates a good cro from a truly great one in your mind [Music] um I don't know kle I'm learning from other CRS all the time um and I I I wish we all knew the answer to like what's a truly great CR so I'm only going to be able to orient (1:17:28) from my own perspectives today um I would think that a great C is a truly Enterprise leader one that can think about problems Beyond Revenue um and knows how to solve their peers problems in legal in product in finance as well as their all I have to assume that that is it right it's like that's the that's the difference on someone who's going to drive remember and that is that's that's immense value right that's what we're hired we're all hired to do but also then can they be a part of changing the viness as well Enterprise Value yeah um (1:18:08) what's the most common advice you find yourself giving to your leaders or mentees um a few tidbits come up consistently one of them is the old Abraham Lincoln quote of like whatever you are be a good one think so offend we focus on like what's next like am I am I get to the next thing I'm like the fastest way to be great and to be given the next job or project or what or opportunity is to be great at what I'm you're doing today and so like Own It own the shitty phone calls that you have to make like whatever it is like (1:18:54) just own it to day um and I have been so grateful because like there are lots of really uncomfortable things that I've learned how to do over time because I've been in the job at the time um the other is just a reminder of like you know your comfort zone was once an unknown from here like that constant discomfort is the greatest gift you can give yourself and so I have learned to love it U and I try to encourage other people to like really live in that like Frontier of their comfort um that means putting themselves in projects that they that (1:19:40) make them uncomfortable in situations that make them uncomfortable because they they will and I think the greatest gift back to me is I had one of my uh direct say this past year has been so uncomfortable in the best way that we kind of touch like oh I'm so happy yeah I'm really made my ear that's awesome uh what's the hardest lesson you've had to learn there are lots of Hard lessons I do not got hardest um I try not to over Orient on any one or another like you know dwell or stick with me um a couple of lessons that I've learned the hard (1:20:30) way um is uh because I'm naturally very curious person um I can hold degree for people and I've been sort of slow to judgment um and that has been like I there are times where I wish I had sort of made a call earlier that's a good one like I for example if I get a negative reaction of someone I'm quick to say like I can understand where they're coming from they're not like even though I don't like their reaction like their perspective is but if you if you're more permissive of that like you sort of allow people you hold the gray for them (1:21:09) with them for a long time um it could have negative impacts on team so those are that is a grying it's like um I do see it as superpower that I can hold the gray or know mind that things are messy I I can like be in a mess and not pass judgment on it uh but the flip side of that is sometimes you know you have to or you should yeah um last question what's the best thing you've read in the last 12 months the best ever please hold there's so much good stuff what's the best thing you've read in the last 12 months um probably the power of Moments by the (1:21:59) heath Brothers um it's so clarifying from both a customer experience and an employee experience perspective um and especially in a remote environment like how do you think how do you make things feel special how do you elevate moments to um a place where they have like real sign significance cuz you know the crazy thing about remote is like the best day of your career you're just like sitting in front of your little screen the worst day of your career just like sitting in the same chair in front of your screen (1:22:36) so how do you how do you manufacture moments that have like a lasting impact on people and the heath Brothers have like some really great Frameworks for it and so we've been trying to build like more recognition into our environment and and more of these like special milestones and that I'm going to pick that up for sure it's it's so good um I I read a lot actually I read quite a bit and so I'll just give you two that I found were really fun um I love basketball so I reread 11 rings by Phil Jackson I've never read it um I (1:23:14) just love him and I think um what I love one of the things I admire most about him is that you know you could say well he's he was given the gift of really talented players both and the bowls and then later on the Lakers but um he really did have to get them to play together um and he was in the business of bringing out the best in them and then also bringing out the best in their partnership um and then also finding ways to create talented that that will bring out the best in others and so you know the Scotty pippens of the world and (1:23:48) getting sha and Kobe to play together so I just I love that and the other I'm now working for a New Zealand based company um there's a book called Legacy by James Kerr and he writes about the principles of the old blacks which is the winningest team in sports history of all time um the All Blacks are I think they have won like 50 out of 53 International titles um they're just one of the most amazing teams and just this Warrior spirit Spirit coming out of beautiful New Zealand um so both from a cultural standpoint and from like a a business (1:24:25) education standpoint Happ that so both are very good what was the name of the All Blacks book Legacy by James Legacy very cool um well that's awesome I I I have a raft of notes here and I feel like I learned a whole ton of stuff myself so this is this has been awesome um where should people find you and how can they be useful to you you can find on LinkedIn I to me new people um like I said I'm always learning leaders are Learners and I just I listen to your podcast I listen to plenty of others and so if anyone has a (1:25:06) great podcast from uh or has a great story to tell or problem solve please connect I'll link in awesome well Ashley this was amazing really appreciate you coming on and uh we'll have to do it again thank you Kyle great to see you [Music] thank you for listening to the revenue leadership podcast if you enjoyed it don't forget to subscribe and you can find a link in the show notes and be sure to leave a five-star review share it with your network and please join me next Wednesday for another great conversation