Podcasts about CRO

Most sales problems start when the seller won't stop talking. Mark Roberge (HubSpot's founding CRO, Harvard Business School lecturer, and co-founder of Stage 2 Capital) joins Matt and Luigi to challenge the loudest myths in sales and startup growth. His take is simple: great selling is not about pressure, slick pitches, or talking someone into a bad deal.    It's about asking better questions, finding the real problem, and knowing when to walk away. The conversation also tackles a mistake that kills promising companies: scaling before customers are getting real value. Mark breaks down why rising revenue can fool founders, how to test product-market fit, and what must be true before a business earns the right to grow faster.  

The Best Dental Marketing Podcast, powered by Dentainment, delivers cutting-edge strategies to help dental practices attract new patients, grow revenue, and thrive in today's competitive digital landscape.

Welcome to RIMScast. Your host is Justin Smulison, Business Content Manager at RIMS, the Risk and Insurance Management Society.   In this episode, Justin interviews Colette Cummins, Chief Risk Officer of Inland Fisheries Ireland and a RIMS-CRMP Commissioner, on what it's like to be a CRO in an organization whose mission is protecting a national natural resource. Justin invites Colette to share her career journey, and she tells how she developed in credit risk management, audit, and enterprise risk management, and how she landed in the public sector, protecting the environment while guiding Inland Fisheries Ireland toward building a solid risk framework. Colette speaks of the surprises she found in the public sector, and the impressive risk mindset and commitment she finds at IFI.   Listen for principles of building out risk registers and a risk framework, whether in the private sector or a public sector agency.   Key Takeaways: [:01] About RIMS and RIMScast. [:16] About this episode of RIMScast. Our guest today is Collete Cummins. She is the Chief Risk Officer for Inland Fisheries Ireland and a RIMS-CRMP Commissioner. We're going to have a great dialog. But first… [:42] RIMS-CRMP Workshop. We are delighted to announce that on August 27th and 28th, RIMS President Manny Padilla will be leading the two-day in-person workshop at St. John's University at 101 Astor Place in New York City. A link to the registration is in this episode's show notes. [1:02] RIMS-CRMP Virtual Workshops. RIMS will partner with PARIMA for the RIMS-CRMP Exam Prep on September 1st and 2nd. Registration links are in this episode's show notes. [1:12] On the webinars page, you will see a two-part series hosted by the RIMS Membership Department. The "Classroom to Career" webinar series highlights how RIMS equips students with the knowledge, skills, and connections needed to thrive in risk management careers. [1:28] Participants will gain insights into industry trends, career pathways, and practical tools that help them confidently step into the evolving world of risk management after graduation. These sessions will be hosted on September 1st and 9th. [1:41] These sessions are member exclusives and are complimentary for RIMS members, of course. So, if you are interested in becoming a member, this would be the time. Visit RIMS.org/membership. [1:51] RIMS is back on YouTube. Our handle is @RIMSOfficialChannel. We've got plenty of videos there, including RIMScast, RIMScast Canada video podcasts, and other informative and entertaining content from RIMS. Subscribe to the channel today! [2:08] On with the Show! Our guest today is Colette Cummins. She is the Chief Risk Officer for Inland Fisheries Ireland. The IFI is the dedicated state agency for protecting, managing, and conserving Ireland's inland fisheries and sea angling resources. [2:26] Colette is the agency's first CRO, but she's not new to risk management. We're going to hear about her career journey and why she feels that this position was custom-made for her, combining her love for environmental awareness with her risk management knowledge. [2:42] Colette is also a RIMS-CRMP Commissioner, and on September 24th, you can hear from her directly, along with Elliott Long, another RIMS-CRMP Commissioner, in the informational session, "A Conversation with RIMS-CRMP Commissioners Who Hold the Credential." [2:58] That's a free informational session. Visit RIMS.org/CertificationWeek for more information. A link is in this episode's show notes. But we're here to talk with Colette about her fascinating career and risk philosophies. Let's get to it! [3:13] Interview! Colette Cummins, Welcome to RIMScast! [3:28] Colette was told once that she is excessively optimistic. She's very positive. She took it as a compliment. [4:18] Colette started fresh out of university in credit analysis and credit risk management. She worked in a few financial services organizations. It gave her a taste for risk management at a high level. It was around portfolio analysis and the credit history of customers. [4:51] The role Colette was in wound down, and she was looking to move into a different area in the company, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, in the financial services subsidiary. An opportunity came up to work in internal audit. She decided to try it for a year. She stayed in it for 15 years. [5:32] In the middle of those 15 years, Colette had an interim stint in Operational Risk Management for a year and a half, and she loved it. [5:47] Colette says, in Operational Risk, you're seeing down at a tactical level how to manage and monitor risk. It was very much around risk monitoring. [6:01] Colette explains why she stayed in internal audit for 15 years. Ten years were spent in various internal audit management roles in the financial services subsidiary. It was a tough time for HPE in terms of meeting the new regulatory challenges in Ireland and Europe for financial services. [6:41] Colette was asked to take on the Head of Internal Audit role. She did that for five years. She went into Internal Audit for one year in 2008. In 2015, she worked in Operational Risk. In 2017, she was asked to come back to take over as Head of Internal Audit. [7:11] It was a challenging situation because new EU regulations were coming in for banks and financial services businesses. It was a lot of pressure to meet these. There was a lot of scrutiny from Irish regulators. It was a challenging environment for Internal Audit. [7:53] When Colette moved in as Head of Internal Audit, it was a pivotal role in terms of steering the organization through that regulatory time. It was a great learning experience and very helpful now that she's in a public sector role. [8:09] Colette says, the whole time she was Head of Internal Audit, she was thinking, "How do I get back to Risk? How do I get out of here?" She loved Operational Risk. [8:27] Colette networked heavily within the organization. She got the opportunity to move out of Financial Services up into the global HPE organization as an Enterprise Risk Manager. She got that role through networking. She enjoyed that ERM role and did it for about five years. [9:26] Colette says it was a strategic role. She was working with the heads of each business unit, reviewing their risks. It had a very heavy emphasis on reporting to the audit committee and the board on what was happening in risk management in the business units. [9:58] Colette didn't feel as if she was effecting change or driving new strategies within the organization, but she learned a huge amount about negotiating with senior management and a lot about the fundamentals of risk management. [10:18] For the last year or two of her role, Colette wondered what she was doing there. She had a sense of wanting to stay in risk management but wanting to do something different, maybe something more value-add and less commercially driven. [10:39] Colette says towards the end of 2025, HPE announced it was cutting resources and implementing cost-cutting initiatives. As part of that, her role was made redundant. At first, it was a big upheaval and quite a shock after 22 years with the organization. [11:03] Colette says that upheaval turned into a great opportunity. It was the push she needed to ask herself where she wanted to go and what she wanted to do. It was an opportunity to try something completely different. [11:28] Colette says she didn't know anybody in the public sector. She had no contacts. But in Ireland, you cannot in any way canvass for jobs in the public sector. Everything is heavily regulated with very strict anti-corruption regulations. [11:54] Colette says she had no knowledge of the organization. She had no intention of applying for a role for at least six months. But she started looking at what was out there. She was going to put some time into development and building out her CV and getting some qualifications. [12:33] Colette says she had been thinking she would like to do something in the public sector; something more meaningful and less commercially-driven. She wanted to do something with more autonomy, more impact, and more control over risk at the organisation. [12:54] Colette says, one Wednesday afternoon, she was looking, and she saw this job that had just come up. It's in exactly the right location, it's public sector, and it's IFI, an environmental body. Colette said, "Wow! This is it!" Forgetting her six months off, she had to go for it. [13:19] Colette interviewed for the job when she hadn't yet finished her old role at HPE. She was hugely busy, trying to wrap up her role and interviewing. The interview process for the public sector in Ireland is extremely rigorous and tough. She was successful in the role. [13:43] Colette says she just had a couple of weeks off and then went straight into it in March of 2026. She has been CRO at Inland Fisheries Ireland for four months now. [14:06] Colette says IFI is the state organization that is responsible for protecting the fish stock in Ireland. Ireland is a country with a lot of waterways. IFI is responsible for protecting the fish in 45,000 miles of rivers, 128,000 hectares of lakes, and 3,500 miles of shoreline. [14:43] It's doing everything to protect and restore the fish stock in those areas. Historically, the organization was very much about protection, preventing fishermen from overfishing and from fishing illegally, especially protected species. IFI has a substantial staff who patrol the rivers. [15:17] Now IFI is working on pollution, reacting to any pollution episodes and ensuring that they're investigated and stopped. Colette says that prevention measures sit with a different state body. The Environmental Protection Agency works on the prevention of pollution.  [15:41] Colette says because the IFI has staff on the ground, it will see pollution coming in, react to it, and get in touch with the EPA to say, We've seen something coming into this river at this location. We need your team out here to source and stop it. [16:08] The IFI staff on the ground takes samples of the water and has them ready for when the EPA team comes to look at it. Another huge element of what the IFI does is restoring the habitat and creating the perfect environment for the fish. They research how the stock is developing. [16:35] The IFI research teams go out and do things like electrofishing, where they stun the fish for a few seconds to take a scale from the fish, test it, and work out the genetic trail of the fish and where they've come from. There's a huge amount of information they take from that. [16:58] The IFI works on the rivers, as well. Salmon, in particular, always go back to where they spawned. You need to keep that route open for them. If a barrier, like a dam, has been built, the IFI team works with construction companies to remove those. [17:19] The IFI has a wide series of activities: patrolling, protection, pollution, habitat restoration, and research. Colette is sure risk professionals hearing this are saying, That's a lot of risks! [17:37] Justin points out that the IFI covers thousands of miles. It's not just the particulars of the job but also the volume and area it has to cover. [18:03] Colette says the other element is that fishing or angling is part of Ireland's tourist industry. The IFI promotes fishing, without overfishing, obviously, and supports and partners with the local fishing organizations. [18:28] A Quick Break! Many fantastic RIMS events are coming up in 2026. You can register now for the Second Annual RIMS Texas Regional Conference, which will be held from August 10th through the 12th at the Grand Hyatt on the San Antonio River Walk. [18:44] Visit RIMS.org/Events for registration information. The hotel cutoff date was July 10th. Reservations may still be made after the hotel cutoff date, subject to availability; however, the negotiated group rate is no longer guaranteed, so reserve now. [19:00] The 11th Annual Chicagoland Risk Forum will return to the Old Post Office on Thursday, September 24th, 2026. Visit ChicagolandRiskForum.org for more information. [19:11] The RIMS Western Regional Conference will be held from October 4th through the 7th in Seattle, Washington. The agenda is live, and registration is open. Visit RIMSWesternRegional.com and the link in this episode's show notes for more information. [19:28] Save the dates: October 18th through the 21st. We will be in Quebec City to celebrate the 50th Live RIMS Canada Conference. Booth sales are open, and sponsorship opportunities are still available. Advance registration is open now. [19:44] Visit RIMSCanadaConference.ca for more information. Also, remember to check out RIMS.org/Canada for our spinoff show, RIMScast Canada, hosted by National Conference Committee Chair, Aaron Lukoni. [19:59] The RIMS ERM Conference 2026 will be held on November 19th and 20th in Columbus, Ohio. Registration is now open. [20:08] An announcement seeking nominations for the RIMS Global ERM Award of Distinction will be made public in July. Visit RIMS.org/ERM2026. [20:19] We're already looking to RISKWORLD 2027, which will be held over four days in New Orleans, Louisiana, from April 18th through the 21st! The call for session proposals is now live and will stay active through August 21st. [20:34] RIMS members can exclusively register by September 4th for the best rate. And get first access to the hotel block. Hotel reservations open on October 28th, ahead of public registration. Sitting this out is the real risk! The link to registration is in this episode's show notes. [20:54] Let's Return to Our Interview with Inland Fisheries CRO and RIMS-CRMP Commissioner Colette Cummins! [21:05] Justin comments that fish is a critical food source, so IFI has to make sure that they're clean, healthy, and they keep repopulating. Colette agrees but says that it's less about food and more about environmental protection. [21:23] Colette says some species have been reduced a huge amount in the last number of years because of things like pollution, habitat destruction, etc. It's really about environmental protection, restoring that stock, and bringing it back to where it should be for a natural balance. [21:42] Colette says her CRO role is new at IFI. That's what made it even more exciting for her. She says, when she came in, it was basically a blank sheet. IFI had dealt with risk by using a third party to give them a risk management model and some training. [22:10] Colette says the IFI was trying to work with that in-house, without any risk management expertise. It brought in a bit of a risk mindset, but essentially, Colette had a clean sheet to start with. She came in in March, and now she's building out the risk register. [22:36] Colette's first task was to design the risk framework. Colette loves risk management and has done lots of various elements of it, but she's never had complete autonomy, where she was driving change in the organization. [22:55] By full autonomy, Colette means she owns everything. Anything that happens to do with risk comes to her. [23:01] Up until now, Colette's role has been designing the framework: establishing how the organization is going to manage risk, building that out, getting people on board with that framework. It's split into six departments within the organization. [23:29] Each head of that department, or ELT member, will own their risk register, or their list of risks. Colette is working closely with them to ensure they have all their risks listed within that register and that they fully understand them. [23:48] Colette is looking at their controls and helping them devise new controls, looking at how the risk matches the risk appetite of the organization, and working with the next level of management beneath them to help them develop their risk registers to report up to the ELT. [24:40] Colette says IFI had been trying to recruit a CRO for some time. She wishes she had known! She would have applied last year. She just happened to see it. The existing model wasn't working. There was a real need. [25:00] The audit committee and board were saying they weren't happy. They said they needed to see risk management alive in the organization. Colette had to dive straight in, hit the ground running, and start building it out straightaway. It was exactly the challenge she was looking for. [25:18] Colette says it's so good to have that autonomy and responsibility, but also accountability. She is completely accountable for everything that happens with risk. Colette gets each member of the ELT to develop their risk register and report that up to the audit committee. [25:45] If anybody is doing anything where they want to think about risk, they talk to Colette. It's not complicated. They don't go to somebody else. Everybody knows, if it's got the word "risk," they come to Colette. Colette says the full visibility of everything is great. [26:19] Colette says she's starting with a very simplistic model to build the registers. She says it's drawn more from ISO, but it's a very simplistic model to get the organization started. Colette moved from a private-sector global IT company to the public sector. [26:56] The one thing that is challenging is that things move much slower in government. It moves much slower, and that's probably even more so in Ireland than in Europe and maybe than in the U.S. [27:16] You could come in and see this is the change that is needed, and think you could go ahead and effect that change within a couple of weeks? Oh, no you don't! You need to take everything slowly and get the right approvals and authorizations, etc.  [27:29] Colette says she is starting with a really simplistic model: set out your risks, set out your controls, set out your mitigating actions, and then, we're going to get the organization working on that with that framework. [27:43] Colette hopes to do it within six months, but knowing the public sector, it could be a year. Then start building in other elements to it to make it a more mature and sophisticated framework. [28:19] Every change has to be approved by the Audit and Risk Committee (ARC). If Colette wants to make a small tweak in the existing framework, it goes back to the Audit and Risk Committee, which meets every three months. [28:51] Colette presented to the ARC in June. She presented how she wanted to move forward. There was no question. She knew they were going to approve it. She couldn't just go ahead and put the framework in place. [29:08] It needs to go through the protocols and have the conversation with the ARC and just take it nice and slow to effect any change. That is one challenge that's different for Colette. But otherwise, she can bring all of her experience from different areas and use every bit of it. [29:37] One More Quick Break! RIMS has launched RIMS, The Foundation for Risk ManagementTM. The Foundation is dedicated to shaping the future of the profession. Contribute to strengthen the global risk management community and invest in the future of the industry. [29:57] The Foundation also supports the Spencer Educational Foundation but has a different mission. The Foundation focuses on providing opportunities for those professionals who have already decided to enter risk management and are just getting started. [30:11] You can learn more about the Foundation by visiting RIMS.org/FRM.  While you're there, be sure to check out information about the Susan Meltzer Scholarship Fund, which was established to honor Ms. Meltzer, who was RIMS President in 1999 and 2000. [30:30] Susan Meltzer was a cherished RIMS President and contributed so much to RIMS and the greater risk community. Learn more at RIMS.org/FRM.  [30:39] Let's Return to Our Interview with Colette Cummins!  [30:53] Colette Cummins is speaking with us today from County Kildare, about 30 miles outside Dublin, Ireland. The IFI offices are on the edge of Dublin, the capital of Ireland. Colette says the land is actually greener and more beautiful than the travel brochures could describe. [31:30] Colette says Ireland is full of rich waterways, which keeps her in a job. She lives near Dublin but is originally from the Southwest of Ireland, which is by far the most beautiful. The coastline is stunning. It's where most Irish go on holidays. It's gorgeous. [32:00] Colette says the accent in the Southwest of Ireland is different. Colette's husband from the middle of Ireland requests subtitles when he visits her family in the Southwest. Colette describes the difference between the accents in the South and North of Ireland. [33:05] Colette says the IFI Corporate Risk Register has generic risks around AI, cyber, training, and resources. [33:33] One of their biggest risks is health and safety. Staff are going out and patrolling rivers. They will sometimes come across fishermen who are happily overfishing and not keen to meet a patrolling officer who tells them they shouldn't be taking all this fish and depleting the stocks. [34:08] There is a health and safety risk with the patrolling officer being out on a river on boats. There is a health and safety risk in meeting an acrimonious and adversarial fisherman. [34:28] Because IFI does research, they have staff in labs, using high-tech equipment, with a health and safety risk. They have engineers looking at the rivers and habitats and maybe some constructions in the rivers that need to be removed. They have a health and safety risk. [34:37] These are new risks and things for Colette to get her head around. How do we do this? How do we manage that? And the other side is regulation. There are a lot of different regulations that impact IFI. [35:22] Colette says, In the public sector, your reputation is critically important, because you're the face of the state. Reputation is an impact factor you need to build into every risk. If IFI does something wrong, it could end up in the national media the day after. IFI uses taxpayers' money. [36:15] Colette says another huge category of risk for IFI is procurement, ensuring they are using taxpayers' money in the right way and not misusing it. [36:50] Colette says that prioritizing risks comes back to the goals. In procurement, there is the risk of spending money in a way that's not compliant. There is also the risk that there are too many procurement controls and the business can't move fast enough or do what it needs to do. [37:24] Colette says it comes to the organizational goals. What is the impact on the organizational goals? Which risk is going to have a greater detrimental impact on the organization's mission? One caveat: the health and well-being of the staff override everything. [37:55] Health and safety risk trumps everything. IFI would be completely averse to any risk that will impact the health and safety of the staff. Health and safety trumps every other risk. [38:16] Justin says he and Colette met recently for the RIMS-CRMP series where everyone can see her on September 24th. Justin says Colette is very positive and upbeat and speaks about her role with a lot of enthusiasm and joviality. [38:39] Colette says there are 330 people in IFI. It's not commercially driven, so a lot of people are at IFI because they love the work. For some people Colette works with, it's a vocation. They would nearly do the same job without being paid because they have such passion for it. [39:11] Colette met with the research team on site at the rivers to get a better understanding and just to see the passion they have for the job. Using her risk knowledge to help them do their jobs better and to help them protect themselves from risks was rewarding and enjoyable to Colette. [39:45] Colette says being able to use her experience across the organization is just fantastic. Colette has a lot of different experience, and to bring it all together and use it every day when she is challenged with a new task is fantastic and very rewarding. [40:27] Colette says this is the field staff's very busy time because this is when all the fishing is happening, this is when pollution is more likely to happen, and when the temperatures go up, the fish are under pressure, so you have to try and protect the waters. [40:42] Colette says the research staff was delighted to hear that someone was coming down from the head office to go out and make the time to really understand the organization. They were very anxious to show her everything. There is such pride in the organization. [41:!5] Justin says a lot of the risk professionals listening are in the private sector, and he asks Colette what would most surprise them about risk management in a public environmental organization. [41:40] Colette says a lot of the differences in the public sector are what you would expect: things move slower, and the protocols. [41:49] What surprised Colette the most is what a strong risk mindset they have. There's a good understanding of risk already, even through the layers of management. They can look at what's going on, the processes, and the activities and ask, "What are the risks here?" [42:16] There is also a commitment to risk that Colette was not expecting. She was expecting to meet a research manager who wanted to research and leave risks to Colette. She hasn't had that anywhere. They all ask her to talk with them about their risks. "Am I managing them right?" [42:39] Colette says there is knowledge and commitment, and that has been the biggest surprise for her. It obviously makes her job a lot easier. [42:48] Justin says this is excellent. It has been such a pleasure to meet you these last couple of days. We're going to see you during RIMS Certification week on September 24th. [42:57] Justin says, You will be co-hosting the informational session, "A Conversation with RIMS-CRMP Commissioners Who Hold the Credential." You're such a breath of fresh air. We really appreciate your contributions, and I learned a lot speaking with you today and yesterday. [41:12] Justin says, You have a fascinating job, and I hope that you have a chance to attend a RIMS event, maybe lead a session, and connect with our live audiences, as well. Colette says she would love to at some stage in the future. [43:32] Special thanks again to Colette Cummins of Inland Fisheries Ireland for joining us here on RIMScast. [43:38] You can hear Colette again on September 24th during RIMS Certification Week for the special informational session, "A Conversation with RIMS-CRMP Commissioners Who Hold the Credential." [43:49] That session will be held at 10:00 a.m. Eastern. Visit RIMS.org/CertificationWeek. The link is also in this episode's show notes. We've got sessions on the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th of September. We look forward to seeing you there. [44:05] Plug Time! Become a RIMS member and get access to the tools, thought leadership, and network you need to succeed. Visit RIMS.org/membership or email membershipdept@RIMS.org for more information. [44:22] Risk Knowledge is the RIMS searchable content library that provides relevant information for today's risk professionals. Materials include RIMS executive reports, survey findings, contributed articles, industry research, benchmarking data, and more. [44:39] For the best reporting on the profession of risk management, read Risk Management Magazine at RMMagazine.com. It is written and published by the best minds in risk management. [44:52] Justin Smulison is the Business Content Manager at RIMS. Please remember to subscribe to RIMScast on your favorite podcasting app. You can email us at Content@RIMS.org. [43:05] Practice good risk management, stay safe, and thank you again for your continued support!   Links: RIMS Certification Week: Sept. 21‒24 | Complimentary For All RIMS Texas Regional Conference 2026 | Aug. 10‒12 in San Antonio | Register Now! Spencer Educational Foundation's 2026 Funding Their Future Gala | Sept. 17, 2026 RISKWORLD 2027 Registration | RIMS members can lock in 2026 rates now through Sept. 4 | Education Content Submission ChicagoLand Risk Forum | Sept. 24, 2026 RIMS Western Regional Conference — Oct. 4‒7, 2026 | Seattle, WA | Register Today. RIMS Canada Conference — Oct. 18‒21, 2026 | Quebec City | www.rimscanadaconference.ca | Advance Registration Open | Sponsorship Opportunities Available RIMS ERM Conference 2026 | November 19‒20 in Columbus, Ohio | Registration Now Open! | www.rims.org/ERM2026 RIMS, the Foundation for Risk Management Spencer Educational Foundation — Scholarships and Grants | Open Calls and Timelines. RIMS Now RIMS-Certified Risk Management Professional (RIMS-CRMP) | Insights Video Series Featuring Joe Milan! The Strategic and Enterprise Risk Center RIMS Diversity Equity Inclusion Council RIMS-CRMP Stories RIMScast Canada — Episodes Now Live RISK PAC | RIMS Advocacy RIMScast on YouTube! RIMS Risk Management Magazine | Contribute | Q2 2026 Issue Now Available Sponsor RIMScast — Sales@RIMS.org Fisheriesireland.ie/ Upcoming RIMS-CRMP Virtual Workshops: RIMS-CRMP Exam Prep Workshop — Live In NY — Aug 27‒28! RIMS-CRMP Exam Prep with PARIMA | Sept 1‒2 Full RIMS-CRMP Prep Course Schedule See the full calendar of RIMS Virtual Workshops   Upcoming RIMS Webinars: RIMS.org/Webinars "RIMS Student Series: Classroom to Career Part 1" | Sept 1 "RIMS Student Series: Classroom to Career Part 2" | Sept 9   Related RIMScast Episodes: "Reputation and Defense with Jeff McKissack" "Choosing the Challenge with Johnell Holly" "Supply Chain Integrity and Sustainability with Nicole Sherwin of EcoVadis"   Sponsored RIMScast Episodes: "48 Hours From a Storm: What to Do Before A Hurricane Strikes" | Sponsored by Global Risk Consultants, a TÜV SÜD Company (New!) "AI-Scale, Risk Ready: Engineering Controls for the New Data Center Boom" | Sponsored by Global Risk Consultants, a TÜV SÜD Company "Facing Into Risk: Navigating the New Risk Landscape" (New!) | Sponsored by AXA XL "Secondary Perils, Major Risks: The New Face of Weather-Related Challenge" | Sponsored by AXA XL "The ART of Risk: Rethinking Risk Through Insight, Design, and Innovation" | Sponsored by Alliant "Mastering ERM: Leveraging Internal and External Risk Factors" | Sponsored by Diligent "Cyberrisk: Preparing Beyond 2025" | Sponsored by Alliant "The New Reality of Risk Engineering: From Code Compliance to Resilience" | Sponsored by AXA XL "Change Management: AI's Role in Loss Control and Property Insurance" | Sponsored by Global Risk Consultants, a TÜV SÜD Company "Demystifying Multinational Fronting Insurance Programs" | Sponsored by Zurich "Understanding Third-Party Litigation Funding" | Sponsored by Zurich "What Risk Managers Can Learn From School Shootings" | Sponsored by Merrill Herzog "Simplifying the Challenges of OSHA Recordkeeping" | Sponsored by Medcor "How Insurance Builds Resilience Against an Active Assailant Attack" | Sponsored by Merrill Herzog "Third-Party and Cyber Risk Management Tips" | Sponsored by Alliant   RIMS Publications, Content, and Links: RIMS Membership — Whether you are a new member or need to transition, be a part of the global risk management community! RIMS Virtual Workshops On-Demand Webinars RIMS-Certified Risk Management Professional (RIMS-CRMP) RISK PAC | RIMS Advocacy RIMS Strategic & Enterprise Risk Center RIMS-CRMP Stories — Featuring RIMS President Manny Padilla!   RIMS Publications, Content, and Links: RIMS Membership — Whether you are a new member or need to transition, be a part of the global risk management community! RIMS Virtual Workshops On-Demand Webinars RIMS-Certified Risk Management Professional (RIMS-CRMP) RISK PAC | RIMS Advocacy RIMS Strategic & Enterprise Risk Center RIMS-CRMP Stories — Featuring RIMS President Manny Padilla!   RIMS Events, Education, and Services: RIMS Risk Maturity Model®   Sponsor RIMScast: Contact sales@rims.org or pd@rims.org for more information.   Want to Learn More? Keep up with the podcast on RIMS.org, and listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.   Have a question or suggestion? Email: Content@rims.org.   Join the Conversation! Follow @RIMSorg on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.   About our guest: Colette Cummins, Chief Risk Officer, Inland Fisheries Ireland RIMS-CRMP Commissioner   Production and engineering provided by Podfly.

Partner with Jay: https://www.jayschwedelson.com/contactㅤPre-order Jay Schwedelson's new book, Stupider People Have Done It (out June 9, 2026).All net proceeds are donated to The V Foundation for Cancer Research, let's kick cancer's butt: https://www.amazon.com/Stupider-People-Have-Done-Marketing/dp/1637635206ㅤSubscribe to Jay's newsletter for weekly marketing tips and tactics: https://www.jayschwedelson.com/newsletterㅤRegister for GuruConference (FREE + VIRTUAL!) https://www.guruconference.comㅤCheck out Eventastic (FREE + VIRTUAL!) https://www.eventastic.comㅤConnect with Jay on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/schwedelson/Check out Jay's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@schwedelsonCheck out Jay's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jayschwedelson/Ask Jay anything: https://www.jayschwedelson.com/askㅤLeave a comment and follow the show, it really helps us out!ㅤFollow Daniel on LinkedIn and check out The Marketing Millennials podcast for sharp, no-fluff marketing insights. Subscribe to Ari Murray's newsletter at gotomillions.co for sharp, actionable marketing insights.ㅤYou have a file sitting inside LinkedIn right now with every connection, every DM and every comment you have ever made, and it takes about four clicks to get it. Jay Schwedelson walks through what happens when you drop that export into Claude alongside your CRM data and tell it to think like a chief revenue officer, while Daniel Murray shares the prompt he uses to pull clips, hooks and subject lines out of podcast transcripts he already recorded months ago. The whole thing wraps with the two of them pulling up their Uber passenger ratings on air, which does not go the way either of them planned.ㅤBest Moments:(00:11) The Uber small talk question nobody wants to answer honestly(02:06) Why AirPods are the polite way to opt out of any conversation(02:49) Daniel's prompt for turning old podcast transcripts into clips, hooks and subject lines(05:00) Feeding your full LinkedIn history into Claude and asking it to think like a CRO(06:14) The exact desktop click path to export your LinkedIn connection data(07:51) If your tool has no API connection, it might be time to find a different tool(08:41) A live Uber score showdown, including where to find your one-star count

"The answer to every problem is a model."Parag Agrawal shares the ideas behind Parallel: products that continuously learn, and teams designed around versatile problem solvers.He also shares why he built an AI agent for himself, anyd why AI's biggest opportunity is expanding what people can achieve.Guest: Parag Agrawal, founder and CEO of Parallel, and former CEO of TwitterConnect with ParagXLinkedInConnect with MamoonXLinkedInConnect with JoubinXLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.comFollow Grit on: LinkedInX​Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

Keiko Fujimori em comício de campanha, Peru, 2026. Foto: Renato Pajuelo/EFE. O que a vitória de Keiko Fujimori no Peru e a de Abelardo de la Espriella na Colômbia têm em comum com mais de duzentos anos de política externa americana para a região? Para Carolina Silva Pedroso, professora adjunta na Unifesp e pesquisadora vinculada ao Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia para Estudos sobre os Estados Unidos (INCT-INEU), a resposta está na ideia da América Latina como “quintal dos Estados Unidos”. Neste episódio, produzido em parceria com o Observatório da Extrema-Direita, David Magalhães e Guilherme Casarões recebem Carolina para discutir a nova onda da direita radical na região, os mitos que cercam a Venezuela chavista, entre eles a suposta fraude sistemática nas urnas eletrônicas, e a forma como o apoio explícito de Washington tem funcionado como variável interveniente no fortalecimento dessas lideranças. No bloco de notícias, David percorre seis frentes do avanço da ultradireita global, da disputa entre Jordan Bardella e Marine Le Pen pela candidatura do Rassemblement National na França à defesa do gás russo feita por Alice Weidel, da AfD alemã, passando pela viagem transnacional da senadora australiana Pauline Hanson ao Reino Unido, pelo mainstreaming dos Democratas Suecos, pelo fracasso de um projeto de perda de nacionalidade em Portugal e pela relação entre futebol e o passado ustacha na Croácia. E ainda tem, no último bloco, dica cultural com a minissérie O Complô Contra a América, de David Simon. Aperte o play! Quer apoiar o Chutando a Escada? Acesse chutandoaescada.com.br/apoio Mande um café usando nossa chave PIX: perguntas@chutandoaescada.com.br Comentários, críticas, sugestões? Escreva pra gente em perguntas@chutandoaescada.com.br Participaram deste episódio: David Magalhães (UFU/OED), Guilherme Casarões (FIU/OED) e Carolina Silva Pedroso (Unifesp/INCT-INEU). Inserção musical no final: “The Day They Died”, de Sarah Hester Ross. Capa do episódio: Keiko Fujimori em comício de campanha, Peru, 2026. Foto: Renato Pajuelo/EFE. Escute também no Spotify, no YouTube ou Apple Podcasts. Citados no episódio ROTH, Philip. The Plot Against America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. SIMON, David (criador). The Plot Against America [O Complô Contra a América]. HBO, 2020. Minissérie. LEWIS, Sinclair. It Can’t Happen Here [Isso Não Pode Acontecer Aqui]. Nova York: Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1935. Capítulos: 00:00 — Introdução 04:00 — A direita radical na Venezuela e a diáspora de Miami 14:00 — O “espantalho perfeito”: mitos, narcoestado e urnas eletrônicas 26:00 — O quintal dos Estados Unidos e a política de Trump para a América Latina 36:00 — Peru: a quarta tentativa de Keiko Fujimori 45:00 — Colômbia: o Uribismo 2.0 de Abelardo de la Espriella 54:00 — Boletim OED: França, Alemanha, Reino Unido, Suécia, Portugal e Croácia 1:11:00 — Dica cultural: O Complot Contra a América The post A nova onda da direita radical na América Latina appeared first on Chutando a Escada.

Sam Levy's first sales job involved a phone book, a rotary phone, and 200 cold calls for one yes. He was still in college when he started a telemarketing gig with no playbook, no CRM, no email. Eighteen months in, the company went public, and the telemarketing kid was sipping champagne in the boardroom. This episode reveals everything that happened between that room and the one he sits in now: head of go-to-market strategy and execution at Oracle NetSuite, running a business that's grown from $250 million to $4 billion. Sam walks Devin through how to build a career in software sales, rung by rung: how to pick your first sales job and your first boss; why hustle gets you started but cadence gets you promoted; why the top rep usually makes a rough first-time manager. He tells us when to leave a job, when to let a rep go, and what to do with the lone wolf who crushes quota but poisons the room. Plus, a prediction: 90% of the next generation of software CEOs will come out of sales and marketing, not engineering. Whether you're an operating partner, an SDR in your first seat or a CRO wondering what's next, this is the insider's guide to success. Discover more at NetSuite.ai

Stop losing revenue after the click! Get your free conversion audit at https://www.tiereleven.com/cro/service Are you optimizing your ads but ignoring what happens after the click? Most brands obsess over traffic acquisition while leaving massive revenue opportunities hidden inside their websites, forms, and customer journeys.In this third episode of our CRO series with Ned MacPherson, head of CRO at Tier 11, we get into why CRO is really revenue optimization and why copying a competitor's "pretty" site is a dangerous shortcut. Ned introduces the AI feature we built that scours the web every couple of hours to show high-end shoppers exactly how the price compares to the market, without them having to leave the page.We also get into something wilder: an AI agent that runs live pricing experiments across thousands of SKUs on its own. We talk about generative engine optimization (GEO) and how to structure your site so LLMs like Claude and ChatGPT actually recommend your website. In this episode:- Why conversion rate optimization is really revenue optimization- How data-driven CRO beats design-based assumptions- Optimizing landing pages, PDPs, forms, and post-click experiences- How lead generation forms create massive conversion leaks- The role of AI agents in the future of CRO strategy- Why generative engine optimization (GEO) matters for future visibility- Improving e-commerce performance with AI-powered pricing experimentsMentioned in the Episode: Previous Episodes With Ned MacPherson: https://perpetualtraffic.com/podcast/episode-796-stop-redesigning-start-diagnosing-the-cro-method-that-actually-works/https://perpetualtraffic.com/podcast/episode-797-what-a-live-cro-audit-reveals-that-your-design-agency-never-shows-you/ Listen to This Episode on Your Favorite Podcast Channel:Follow and listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/perpetual-traffic/id1022441491 Follow and listen on Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/59lhtIWHw1XXsRmT5HBAuK Subscribe and watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@perpetual_traffic?sub_confirmation=1We Appreciate Your Support!Visit our website: https://perpetualtraffic.com/ Connect with Ralph Burns: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralphburns Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ralphhburns/ Hire Tier11 - https://www.tiereleven.com/apply-now Mentioned in this episode:https://perpetualtraffic.com/advertise-with-us/

A rep says "follow up on that" on a call, then buries it under five more calls and a late-night inbox. Three days later the deal's gone cold, but the CRM still says it's live. The manager forecasts off that.  The CRO forecasts off the manager. The board asks the CEO if anyone actually has a grip on the number. The whole thing was built on a promise nobody kept.  Adam Liska worked on the early Gemini models at Google DeepMind before leaving to close that gap. His company, airspeed, just raised a $20M Series A on a bet that "revenue execution" is the next real category, not another tool that logs calls and calls it intelligence.  Sam Jacobs traces the full arc with him: DeepMind to founder-led sales to the unglamorous work of turning a founder's instincts into a system a team can actually run.  What we get into:  Why "follow up on that" breaks the forecast chain from rep to CRO to board What "revenue execution" means, and why it isn't revenue intelligence with a new label  Whether you own the interface or hand it to a chat model and live as middleware  The Nashville lunch that became airspeed's first six-figure deal  The real sequence from founder-led to scalable: capture the data first, then build the playbooks  Owning your data instead of renting Salesforce's architecture  The modern Turing test, AI-native orgs, and where the back office is headed Chapters:   00:00 Intro 00:44 From DeepMind to airspeed, and the $20M Series A  01:30 "Follow up on that" — the execution gap that breaks forecasts  04:00 What category is this? Revenue execution, defined  05:40 Headless vs. owning the interface  08:00 The origin story: leaving DeepMind in 2022  11:39 Founder-led sales and the Nashville lunch that closed a six-figure deal  13:18 The hard part: turning founder-led into a repeatable system  14:14 Why they recorded everything from day one  16:35 Owning your data, and where the source of truth lives  19:03 The playbook: data first, then hierarchical playbooks  20:52 Influences: the modern Turing test and AI-native orgs  23:37 Where to find airspeed  Try airspeed: goairspeed.com

Domo and AWS reveal how AI agents freed sales reps from 20 hours of weekly busywork, turning scattered data into real-time coaching and forecasting.Topics Include:Domo and AWS teams introduce today's session on AI agents in sales.Topic: using AI agents to transform sales operations, from insight to action.IT teams increasingly asked to turn data into actionable outcomes, not just access.Domo's CRO wanted AI agents to boost sales rep efficiency significantly.Reps act like "archaeologists," digging through scattered systems for basic context.This digging eats roughly 20 hours weekly, half of reps' time.Goal: personal AI agent per rep, understanding their book of business.Live demo begins: agent app surfaces urgent items needing attention.Agent tracks deal milestones, timelines, and forecasts from call and email data."Deal coach" feature grades rep performance and suggests next actions.Agent tone can be tuned from gentle to direct, aiding tough feedback.Architecture overview begins: building an AI-ready data foundation first.Data from CRM, calls, and emails flows into a cloud warehouse.Two agents built: automated deal analysis and personalized deal coach.Agents write insights back to CRM, preserving human edit control.Recipe: build foundation, activate with agents, distribute to people.Governance must be embedded throughout, not bolted on afterward.Second example: Fogo do Chão uses AI to analyze restaurant reviews.AWS architecture explained: Domo runs on Bedrock, defaulting to Anthropic models.Q&A: sales team adoption was immediate and enthusiastic post-rollout.Participants:Jason Longhurst – Head of Product Marketing, DomoAman Tiwari - Sr Solutions Architect, ISV, Amazon Web Services See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

In this episode, Jason and Ashley Kelly from Rippling, talk about how Rippling scaled from 40 to 400 BDRs in under four years, the "go and see" value that runs from Parker on down, and the SDR-to-CRO program that keeps reps around. Check out more free content and get help with outbound at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://outboundsquad.com.⁠

The Best Dental Marketing Podcast, powered by Dentainment, delivers cutting-edge strategies to help dental practices attract new patients, grow revenue, and thrive in today's competitive digital landscape.

Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAri Murray runs DTC, Amazon and customer experience at Salt & Stone. She came from Sharma Brands, and before that worked on influencer and celebrity brands including a Kardashian line and Halsey's beauty brand. She started as a customer service agent.In this episode she breaks down why the old brand-versus-performance argument is collapsing. Customers now shop with a chatbot in the loop. Those bots read your reviews, your Reddit threads, and your actual customer experience. You cannot hack that, which means product quality and brand protection have become growth levers.She also gets specific on creative: what "socially native" really means, why she is chasing ads that don't look like ads, and the protein powder ad where the product is the seventh ingredient in someone's recipe.For: DTC founders, growth leads, creative strategists, retention and CRO teams, brand marketers.In this episode:Why she left the agency side for Salt & StoneWhy Salt & Stone has never acted like a deodorant brandAI visibility, Reddit indexing, and why you can't hide from real customer feedbackThe collapse of the middle of the funnel in agentic shoppingWhy she doesn't feel a desperate need to move spend out of MetaHow they actually measure incrementality (holdouts, Status, Northbeam, Triple Whale, hunting for an MMM)Socially native creative, and why splitting a hook five ways is played outWhy a brand with boundaries makes better adsWhat makes a brand feel cheapWhat makes a brand deserve to be iconicSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouseFollow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter

Will North has led marketing and commercial functions at brands including Meshki, PE Nation, AJE and Superdry UK. For the last two and a half years he's been at Kulani Kinis, the Australian swimwear brand doing 75-80% of its revenue in the US. He joined Ryan Martin from Remarkable Digital to talk conversion rate optimisation, attribution, TikTok Shop and the marketing shifts defining 2026.The Kulani Kinis story. Founded 11.5 years ago by Sydney couple Danny and Alex as a side hustle, the brand found its footing in the US when Alex transferred to EY in LA. Today the US makes up 75-80% of revenue; Australia is just 7%.CRO is a business metric, not a digital one. Will's Retail Fest keynote ("I Lost the Company $15 Million and Got a Promotion") explored why every untested change to your site is a potential loss. His starting point: survey customers who've purchased and subscribers who haven't, distil 3-4 themes, then run ideas through an effort-versus-upside matrix before testing.Context kills best practice. Adding "some items in your cart may sell out" drove nearly $2M in annualised revenue at a streetwear brand. The same test lost revenue at a women's fashion brand, because scarcity signalling made shoppers worry about wearing the same thing as everyone else. Customer psychology differs by brand.The thank you page question nobody asks. Immediately post-purchase, ask: "Was there anything that almost stopped you from buying?" Customers who've just converted will tell you exactly what's broken.Attribution in 2026. No one does it perfectly. Will's approach is to define the role of each channel across the seasonal cycle and measure a marketing efficiency ratio (spend divided by sales) as a flow, not a fixed weekly target.TikTok Shop. 72% of fashion revenue on the platform flows through affiliate and creator. The new customer rate is 95%. Will visited the US team last month and TikTok Shop is a major focus for Kulani Kinis in FY27.What you say now matters as much as how you look. LLMs are changing discovery. If a brand has no content narrative, it won't show up when someone asks an AI for a recommendation. Will's take: GEO, AIO and SEO are all just SEO.Not all impressions are equal. Kulani Kinis ran direct mail via Post Pilot at a $600 CPM and it outperformed. A postcard on a fridge is a very different impression to a feed scroll-past.In-person events. A $40,000 Maldives brand trip generated the equivalent of $140,000 in media value from creator and customer content.Collaborations. A LinkedIn conversation between brand experience leads led to a Lounge Underwear collab that spiked Kulani Kinis' German sales in July 2024. Go in with clear objectives or don't bother."Conversion is a business metric. It's not an e-com metric.""There is no such thing as best practice with CRO. Every brand's customer psychology is different.""You've got to sell it twice: on site and when they get it, otherwise it's coming back."Kulani Kinis: kulanikinis.comPost Pilot: postpilot.comLounge Underwear: loungeunderwear.comPura Vida Bracelets: puravidabracelets.comRetail FestAbout Will North:Head of Commercial & Performance at Kulani Kinis. Previously held senior roles at Meshki, PE Nation, AJE and Superdry UK. Retail Fest speaker and Oria Award nominee (International Conqueror).

Boston. San Francisco. Beijing? The global biotech industry has long been concentrated in a handful of cities. But which emerging hubs could become dominant forces in biotech in the decades ahead? In this week’s episode of “The Top Line,” Fierce Biotech’s Darren Incorvaia and Will Maddox discuss a new Fierce special report identifying five cities with the potential to become major forces in the global biotech industry. Did your favorite city make the cut? Listen to find out. To learn more about the topics in this episode: Top emerging biotech hubs in 2026 As US lawmakers increase scrutiny of Chinese trials, industry fears ‘huge distraction and expense’ British biotech VC funding shows ‘signs of recovery,’ but IPO rebound yet to materialize Could Basel be the next Boston? How the Swiss biotech hub is quietly raising its game This week's episode is sponsored by IQVIA Biotech. Built for biotech innovators, IQVIA Biotech is a full-service CRO, designed for agility, fast decisions, and the urgency needed for emerging biopharma. With dedicated teams and deep therapeutic expertise, we help move programs forward with focus and confidence. Visit IQVIABiotech.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupJordan Gordon runs CRO and retention at Pilothouse and hosts TWBERP, The World's Best Email and Retention Podcast. He has audited somewhere in the range of 400 to 500 brands and been inside more Klaviyo accounts than almost anyone in DTC.In this All Killer No Filler episode he breaks down why most email programs are structurally backwards. 85% of campaign revenue comes from people who have visited your site recently, and yet most campaigns are sent to anyone who opened an email in the last 180 days. You are risking your entire sending reputation to chase the 15%.Then he gets to the good part: a flow he says he has basically never seen a brand run, and why it is the most valuable one you can build.For: ecommerce founders, retention leads, email marketers, CRO teams, agency operators.In this episode:Why free traffic is the "forever job" and paid is the spikeWhy small counts hide truths (nobody hits fold 10, but the people who do are your buyers)The 85/15 rule of campaign revenueHow brands blow up a Klaviyo account: too many campaigns, too-broad segments, and the sunset flow that sends to ten years of dead addresses in one goWhy recent repeat buyers are whales you should not over-messageCampaigns are zero-intent messages, so they can only ever be about newness or offersThe essentials core flow: triggered by site visit, not lifecycle, selling your hero SKU to people who came for something elseSending less in a margin-compressed Q4Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://www.pilothouse.co/?utm_source=AKNF629Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter

Sales organizations stall when knowledge stays trapped in the heads of a few experienced people. In this Revenue Builders replay, Frederik Maris explains how leaders turn field experience into repeatable execution through sharper qualification, stronger frontline management, and deliberate coaching. He shares how conscious competence helps managers teach what top performers do instinctively, why early wins matter for new reps, and where leaders must take accountability when talent fails to develop. The conversation gives CROs a practical view of the systems, behaviors, and management discipline required to build a team that can scale. Frederik Maris is the Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer of EliteGTM, where he helps founders and revenue leaders build more predictable go-to-market organizations through advisory, recruiting, and enablement. His career includes senior leadership roles at Splunk, Zoom, DataRobot, BMC, Veritas, and PTC, giving him firsthand experience building and transforming complex enterprise sales teams. Connect with Frederik: LinkedIn Resources mentioned: The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor Key takeaways from this episode:  08:44 – What it really takes to uncover the customer pain and internal support that move complex deals forward. 04:51 – Why sales leaders need a clear understanding of the methods behind their own success. 26:16 – What CROs often overlook about the frontline manager's role in seller ramp and retention. 28:13 – Why a new rep's first deal can shape confidence, momentum, and long-term performance. 40:36 – Frederik Maris's perspective on the traits that matter most when hiring for growth. 45:06 – A look inside the interview signals that reveal self-awareness and emotional intelligence. 01:01:07 – The leadership question that creates accountability when performance falls short. Hosted by five-time CRO John McMahon and Force Management Co-Founder John Kaplan, the Revenue Builders podcast goes behind the scenes with the sales leaders who have been there, done that, and seen the results. This show is brought to you by Force Management. We help companies improve sales performance, executing their growth strategy at the point of sale. Connect with Us: LinkedInYouTubeForce Management

In this episode, Adam Torres interviews Jeffrey Gaal, Co-Founder & CRO of Genetic Lifespan, on Mission Matters during SEICon in Las Vegas. Jeffrey shares how personalized genetic and epigenetic testing helps individuals better understand their health, optimize lifestyle choices, and build a science-backed roadmap for longevity. Watch Full Episode on ⁠Youtube⁠. --- Follow Adam on Instagram at ⁠https://www.instagram.com/askadamtorres/⁠ for up to date information on book releases and tour schedule. Apply to be a guest on our podcast: ⁠https://missionmatters.lpages.co/podcastguest/⁠ Visit our website: ⁠https://missionmatters.com/⁠ More FREE content from Mission Matters here: ⁠https://linktr.ee/missionmattersmedia Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Selma, Chief Revenue Officer chez Agorapulse explique sa vision sur la place du Product Marketing dans la performance commerciale.Au fil de son parcours, Selma a construit une vision très business du Product Marketing. Pour elle, cette fonction n'est pas un simple support marketing. C'est un levier qui permet d'aligner les équipes, d'améliorer la conversion, d'attirer les bons clients et de construire une croissance durable.Dans cet échange, elle partage sa vision du rôle du PMM et les signaux qui montrent qu'une entreprise a besoin de structurer cette fonction.Découvrez :

For the CEOs out there, how are you planning out your weeks to keep your business humming for the short and long terms? Kiera talks about what it means to plan and delegate as the leader of your company, as well as three tips that CEOs of multi-million-dollar practices live by when it comes to success. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent- Dental A Team (00:01) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera, and I hope you are having an awesome day today. I hope that you're loving your life. I hope that you remember that we just are so lucky to live this life, that we are so lucky to work in dentistry, that we get to have our life calling. I am just so excited to podcast with you. I am coming in off the road. You guys know that when I've been on the road, it's a great time. I love seeing offices in person. I love working with teams. I love seeing how very simple.   pieces can actually help out a practice. And it was really, really fun. So I'm just excited. I'm I'm lit up and I hope you are too. So today I wanted to go through just a fun ⁓ I realize a lot of people listening and a lot of our clients and even myself included, a lot of what we're trying to accomplish as business owners is how do we become the CEO of our business and how do we block that CEO time and how do we actually work on the business? Like everybody says like you got to work on the business and not in the business. And I just get annoyed with that. I'm like, okay, but great. Like   Tell me what that actually means. Tell me what I'm supposed to do. And so today I wanted to break it into very much a what exactly does that mean? How do I actually do it myself as a CEO? Giving you guys some tips of what do you do on Sundays or when you block your time? How do you set up your week for success? So I think a lot of time it's ⁓ there was I think it's like if you fail to plan, you set yourself up for failure, something like that. Like there's a quote, I'm sure I could have done a better job on that.   But it's so many times people come in and they feel like they're just very reactive instead of proactive. And early in my career, there was a great client of mine who was like, Kiera, do you know how I prep for coaching calls? And I was like, How? He's like, I go to a coffee shop, I spend 30 minutes preparing for a call, I sit there, I ponder, I make sure that I'm very intentional. He's Do you know how sometimes you feel like you come into calls? Mind you guys, this is like Kiera, like two weeks into owning her own business. And I was like, He's like, You feel like you just rush to the call and ⁓   At that time he wasn't wrong. And it was a really great thing for me to recognize and I think about that often of what are we doing with our weeks as CEOs? Are we running into them haphazardly, not even prepared? Or are we like the client was where we take the time to plan, to prepare, to see what we can actually delegate to our team, to other team members on it, or are we just in reactive mode? I think it's more the how proactive are we versus how roactive are we. So I want to just walk you guys through specifically what I personally do, things that have worked well for my success, things that have worked well for clients that we work with.   To hopefully give you just some good tips of how you can set yourself up as a CEO and maybe start doing things a little bit differently. Like they say, success leaves clues. So let's give everybody clues and tools and different things that we all can do together. So that's what I wanted to do. ⁓ and also just realizing like you genuinely don't find time to work on your business. You don't find time to be a great leader. You don't find time for this. You have to create and make that time. So ⁓ one thing that I noticed is like,   we're going to work on how to stop reacting and be a bit more proactive. So I think when I look at it, you're trying to be a doctor, a manager, HR, scheduler, problem solver, like just answering all the problems and you're trying to do it in real time rather than sitting there focusing. And I will say when I look down the line, I can tell when I've been proactive and I can also tell when I've been very reactive. So I just wanted to kind of give you like three tips how specifically I do it, what I do, and what I've seen other offices do and other doctors do that are very successful. And like I said,   The my elite practices who are the multi-millions, who have multi-offices, who have their lives where it feels like they just have it together, these are things that they all do too. Now, how you do it, when you do it, that's gonna be up to you. But all of us do a lot of the same things. So ⁓ number one for me, I block my time on Sundays. So you can do it whenever. I do not like having the Sunday scaries. I don't like walking into my week. I also don't like to plan on Fridays. So whatever it is, I'm usually downright tired on Friday. And so   that's not usually my best day. So for me, it's on Sunday. So it takes me about I usually plan 30 minutes to an hour, is how long it takes. ⁓ and I still have a physical planner. So, however, it's gonna work well for you. But I like to see physical space. I'm a very visual person, and so I like to see my physical space. So I actually walk through and I go through my entire week. I map out exactly what is there, what's on the calendar, and I I go out four weeks. So I'm looking ahead to see.   What things are on the books, what meetings do I have? You could be looking at your production. So you could be looking to see what do you have coming up? What projects are coming up? What pieces are coming up. ⁓ like right now, mid-year, I'm looking at my taxes. So I'm looking in the different buckets of from as a CEO in the business, like what's my profitability, what's my culture, where are we headed? It's about to be mid-year. So I'm looking to see what what pieces do I need to get done there. I'm also looking for me, I've got podcasting, I've got meetings, I've got   Bookkeepers. I've got different people that I'm meeting with. And so where is that at? And I always am looking four weeks out. Now, office managers should also be doing this as well. So this is for doctors and OMs. What do I have coming? Like what's coming up on the schedule? What are the team challenges? I'm looking to see what team things need to get done. What projects are we doing? What initiatives are we rolling for this week, for the next week, and the following? What I found is when I'm on a four week run, I'm able to catch things, I'm able to ha better utilize my time.   I'm able to see like, gosh, we've got vacations coming up. Do we need to do more production right now? So I really, I personally, Kiera Dent loves looking four weeks out. So looking to see where it is. ⁓ and then I look at this week. So by looking four weeks out, I'm able to say like, where am I maybe put in meetings that I don't need to be a part of? ⁓ where am I missing? What team members are going to be out? What things do I need to proactively plan for? So I'm really looking and like overseeing a lot of those scheduling pieces. Now managers should be doing this as well, looking to see.   Do we have our schedules covered? Do we have different pieces? For me, I'm looking to see who can I delegate, who on my leadership teams in and out, consultants being on the road for you when our associates out. And I think when we proactively can look at this, we can look at our production. We can look at where am I working on the business? What big projects and initiatives do I want to get done? So for me, I just noticed that where it's at. I really do think doctors who are looking at their production a week out, two weeks out, three weeks out, four weeks out, you're going to be a lot more proactive and   I know a lot of dentists get into the rut of just kind of being robotic. Like we go and we do our exams. When you're constantly looking at your week, what is my production? What's my dollar per hour? How am I looking? What were my cases? Reviewing my cases last week, which closed, which didn't close, looking at my PL, looking at my numbers, looking at my meeting with my office manager, what things are on my plate that I could delegate to my office manager. I'm always looking. I also have a list of things that I write down. you can have it as a a digital version or you can have it as a paper version. I technically do both.   ⁓ but really looking to see what is my game plan. So that way when I walk in on Monday, it's very much prepared. I also am planning my leadership meetings. What things does my leadership team need to have in place? What do my consultants need to have in place? ⁓ what do I need to be relaying to our COO and our CFO and what things do I need to have them working on as the CEO? Like at the end of the day, the CEO, we are orchestrating. Yes, we do have a lot of people that work for us and with us. ⁓ but I'm orchestrating of   Who do I need? What meetings do I need to have? Where do I need to make sure that I'm running these pieces? So maybe you're looking at what do I need to get my lead hygienist to be working on? What things if my dental assistants could take over would help me out? How are our supplies? What are our budgets? This isn't saying you're managing the practice. And I hope that you're hearing of you're looking at to me, I feel like I'm kind of doing an inventory. It's almost like I'm going to go grocery shopping. Like what's the inventory of my business? Where are things and what do I need to have the different departments do? Because if I can proactively just   get people working on one or two projects throughout the week that don't rely on me, we're able to make a lot of movement and momentum. And I've actually found my friend and I, really, really successful CEO. We were talking about that. And he said, Kiera, could your business sustain without you being there for a month? And I thought about it and I was like, actually yes. Like I'm very proud of our team. I'm very proud of what we built. They could last a month without me being here. I've tried it, I've tested it, I know for a fact they can, I know they could go for longer than a month. But he said, but will they grow without you there?   And I've thought about that a lot. And so for me, when I'm taking my CEO time and I'm blocking my week, it's I believe we're almost like the wind in the sails. Our team is the boat. Our team is the sails. You as a CEO need to be the wind. So how are we going to grow? How can we work through our team and not have everything sitting on our shoulders? I'm very, very cognitive of what meetings am I in, what what projects are being assigned to me, what projects are assigned out there, what things have I not followed up on.   Who do I need to follow up on to make sure things are moving? And I will say it just it takes that load ⁓ off of my brain and allows me to really be present and to step into Monday in that week very confident, but also not just the week. We're looking at the month. And so we're always in this proactive piece. So really looking at the financials, looking at the business acumen, looking at what my OM should be doing, and then who can I delegate to? So the next piece to this is once I have it all mapped, once I've looked at it, once I've removed it.   Then I'm gonna be delegating. So I literally have a list of here's all the items Kiera has on her. Are these things really for me? Or who's better at that, who's more equipped, and who actually has the time to do it? So I will delegate out projects or tasks. Or if I know I have a big project coming up, so maybe we're working on operations manual, or maybe you're working on an Invisalign promo, or maybe you're working on ⁓ getting your hygiene period protocol written.   Are there people that can help you with this project that are just as good, if not better than you, that you could delegate out tasks to them? So I'm I'm really thinking in it's not even project management. It's more like, okay, I need to get these projects done. Who has time? Who's available to do this? And also whose responsibility is this? If Kiera's not the only one who can do it as a CEO, it doesn't sit on my plate. I'm going to pass it to somebody else. If it truly is only something me as a CEO can do, and that's not out of pride, ego, or things that I like.   I need to delegate it and make sure it's followed up with. So I look at my personal assistant, I look at my EA, what things can they take on? I look at our marketing team, our sales team, our rev team, our CRO, our CFO, our COO. Which ones of those can take these projects on? Who do I need to follow up with? So like truly, you delegate out to the team around you and you make sure that you're utilizing each of them. And so ⁓ I really think it's just a valuable thing. I think it sets you up for success. I know it sets you up for success.   And it's also working through your team. ⁓ we've been talking about this a lot in our leadership meetings and on our leadership team of how do you work, like how do you get everything done? And I think there's different types of leaders. There's those who want to just do it all themselves, and then there's those who work through their team. And working through your team is delegation, it's elevation, it's not abdication. It is really working through your team, meaning all of us are working together, all of us are getting the projects done. One person's not carrying the weight, and the rest of us are just sitting there.   on the boat alongside them, but we are working through the team. And this is how you prevent burnout. This is how we prevent having things stack up. This is how you're able to again be that like wind that pushes through the sales. So how do I work through my team? Because there's always a lot more that needs to be done that can't get done. How do I look at my systems? How do I review different pieces? I got to scratch those itches like maybe our finances aren't as tight. Maybe our billing's not as tight. Like let me look through this. It doesn't mean I need to do a deep dive. I can delegate and say, hey Sarah, I'm curious about our EOBs.   Can you take a look through the last three months and give me an assessment of where we're at? Like should take you about an hour. Do you have time to do that this week? I'd love that. And I'd love a report back by Friday. Absolutely got you. I make a note of the things I should follow up on as well because I don't like to delegate. I don't like to ask and then not follow up. And that's something that I will say I'm not naturally gifted at and something I have work really hard at. But really, it's a how do I plan my week? How do I work through my team? And then the next piece is when I do delegate, delegate outcomes not.   tasks. I think that this is such a a beautiful, different frame of mind to think of. ⁓ so with a team instead of calling overdue patients, it would be like you own the schedule, ⁓ I need you to call as many unscheduled or recare patients to get it full and to report your progress weekly. That's a different thing. So now it's a it's an outcome of owning the schedule rather than calling undue pay like overdue patients. Instead of working on our AR, it's we need to have our collections at 98%. We need, ⁓   are over 90 to be less than 15%, ⁓ or like go down the line of one month's worth of of production or and collections. So this way they're able to work on these items, report back to you, and to really have ownership over an outcome rather than a task. ⁓ this year's theme in our company is outcomes over activity. I'm really big on people owning an outcome, driving metrics, ⁓ and being owners over that and to really shine in their own direction. And so for you to   To give that ownership, ownership creates accountability. Delegation really will work when responsibly has a name attached to it. So what are we delegating? ⁓ and look to see what is that task? Does it align, making sure you have a really clear accountability chart too or organizational chart? Who does what in your organization? For me, I pull that out every single week and I'm like, okay, I've got these tasks. Who's the right person in the right seat to do this task and requirement? And who can I give ownership to this? So as we're looking at it, I think it's a   Can I block my week, my month, the next couple of weeks and look at it? Am I looking at my production? Am I looking at my overhead? Am I looking at my profitability? Am I game planning for that? Then am I taking that game plan to leadership? What are the issues that are outstanding? What things still are sitting on my mind that are taking up a mental load? Can I add that to my leadership team's agenda so that way it's off my mental load and it's there and then it's delegated, it's followed up on, it has accountability for it. Truly, like where are the parking lots for your brain? So it doesn't sit there and churn. Like,   I love our leadership meeting where we're able to put these items on there. What about in our hygiene department and our dental assistant department with my OM? Do I have agendas for those? So as I'm going through my week, these items that need to get done and resolved, is there a parking lot so I can relay this information? Do you have the meetings in place for me? I really love like every week. And people are like, you have so many meetings. And ⁓ I'm a proponent of less meetings, but meetings that are very effective. And I do run off the model of traction. So it's an every single week, it's a 90 minute.   leadership meeting and then we do have department meetings and I used to feel like it was so much. ⁓ but when meetings are run and they're run very effectively, which I believe the L10 model is one of the most effective meetings that are always productive as long as you're actually running them, calling out metrics and focusing on the most important things. We parking lot these issues that come up. That way there feels like it's a space for it. For me as a CEO, a lot more could move forward because I'm not having it sit on my brain, sit on my plate. There's a space where things can get delegated and discussed through.   and then having those direct reports, report back and having the follow-through follow-up. I found so many dentists get stuck because I feel like we have this churn in our brain, but there's nowhere to put it. There's no follow back loop from our office manager or management team back to us to say where are things at. So having those set cadence of meetings where I can delegate out, we can report up, we can work through our team, really allows the entire organization to move quicker and faster. There are some departments that might not need a weekly meeting. I found that hygiene.   Once your hygiene department's running and they're hitting their metrics and they're doing a great job, they're usually like once a month. And what they really prefer in hygiene is they're going to want to have trainings in CE and looking at our metrics and seeing how do we work as a department. But really, hygiene oftentimes is a self-sufficient department. Doctors, once month calibration is usually sufficient unless I've got an issue where I'm onboarding a new doctor. ⁓ dental assistant department, depending upon how they are, a lot of times they do need weekly training. ⁓ full team training oftentimes can be once once a month, and that's very effective and efficient.   Doctor and OM meetings every single week, non-negotiable. Leadership meetings every single week, non-negotiable. Those are things that I'm absolutely meeting with. ⁓ those things then can move forward. Billing meeting every single month. So that way you've got places, you've got agendas, you've got set times are set. And then we need to have some type of project management software where you as a CEO know all the projects moving forward have deadlines. They've got people assigned to them so it can loop back to you.   So hopefully that's just helpful for you ⁓ to stop like putting out constant fires, to stop having it churn in the back of your brain to have some structure, to be able to get that leadership structure in place. Because I found that ⁓ if you're trying to be the superhero and do it all, that's where burnout happens. that's where a lot of teams feel less empowered. That's also where you're actually enabling your team to not be there. Like you solving all their problems feels like you're helping them out, but it's actually creating dependency and it's creating burnout on you.   So what should happen is when teams ask questions and they immediately get answers, we gotta have it to where they can solve their own problems. If you as the owner are jumping in to solve patient issues or problems within the practice all the time, you have an empowered and lifted a leadership team. If the office manager is coming to you solving every single problem, like they've got to really be empowered to do this. And so really also teaching our teams to come up with their recommendations. What are three solutions to this problem? what options have you considered? What do you think we should do?   But really start helping your team and expecting them and rolling that culture out so that way as problems evolve and resolve, it's not just sitting on you. So hopefully that was helpful of prepping it on Sunday, how far out I look, what things I'm looking for, what we teach our doctors to do, what we help our leadership teams with our offices do, to really be able to scale, to have stability, to have like consistency. I think that that's one of the greatest things we're looking for is we want this structure, we want scalability, and we want it to be able to have great stewardship over our practices. So   If this is something you're struggling with, if you're like, my gosh, like this is my life, I feel like it's on that constant hamster will loop in the background where I never can let go. I feel like I don't know how to prep. Try it. Try prepping Sunday. Try prepping your week out. Reach out. ⁓ I think a lot of you are great clinicians and you do an amazing job. You have a very creative mind, maybe not a management mind. And so ⁓ I think sometimes that management skill needs to be taught, it needs to be trained, and it needs to be given to you in organization and structure. So reach out. I'd love to help you.   We help create those leadership systems and help build in accountability and help you delegate with confidence and how to help your team elevate to that level because they might not know either. So if you're looking for answers, great news, today's the day. Reach out Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. But I really just encourage and implore each of you to try and whatever it is, if it's a fr Friday for you, if it's a Sunday for you, look down the line, look at your emails, look at your tasks, look to see how you can work through that team.   Look one week out, two weeks out, four weeks out. Look at your production, look at where we're at, look at our billing, look at our collections. Really start to get into the mode of being a CEO. And right now you might be like, I don't even know what to do. Fantastic. Block the time. And I promise you, the more you do it and the consistent you are at it, the more it will start to become a habit, the more you're starting to see things because it's a consistent piece. Get those meetings, get those agendas lined up so you've got a parking lot for those ideas. Really start to build that structure. And I promise you, things will be so much easier for you. As always.   We are here. This is what we do. We're experts at it. So reach out. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team  

Megan Porteous is the Chief Revenue Officer at Carve Designs, a beach lifestyle brand creating surf-inspired apparel for women. Megan traces her career back to D1 volleyball, which led her to work at Oakley as Global Sports Marketing Manager and continues to inform her leadership approach today. After 6 years at Oakley, Megan followed her curiosity and passion to new opportunities at Amer Sports and Reef, where she cultivated deep experience in brand and digital leadership, leading growth and implementing strategy across e-commerce, wholesale, and marketplace channels. Megan and Roy get into her leadership and hiring playbook, the current opportunities and challenges facing CROs today, and more. Highlights from our conversation include: - How Megan's background as a college athlete informed her early career experiences (2:05) - Why Megan left her dream job at Oakley (4:00) - The evolution of her leadership playbook (6:10) - How she approaches stretch projects with her team (8:42) - What Megan looks for in a leader (10:24) - Cultivating healthy team culture (12:45) - Making the most of her team's in-person time together (13:50) - How the CRO role differs from past roles (16:00) - What her team structure looks like at Carve (18:12) - How Megan stays up on opportunities and tools in the digital marketing, brand, and e-commerce space (22:16) - Balancing brand and performance marketing (24:06) - Megan's advice for emerging leaders (28:46)

Patrick Dillon, three months into the CRO seat at Nudge Security, joins Andrew to talk about what "AI-first" actually means when everyone at RSA has slapped AI on the booth. The conversation runs from product (AI-native vs. bolted-on, and the shadow AI hiding inside companies) to the go-to-market side: how he's rebuilding the team around technology, process, and people, in that order, and who he'll hire to run it.In this episode:Why companies without a deep AI strategy could be "zombie companies" that don't know it yetThe difference between AI-native, AI-first, and just connecting an LLM to your old stackHow one prospect thought they ran 2,000 apps and actually ran 5,300Why the buyers now include CFOs, compliance, and corporate counsel, not just securityFlipping "people, process, technology" to "technology, process, people" for an AI-first GTMWhy AI replaces reps who won't use AI, not salespeople as a wholeHow Patrick screens candidates for want-to, including whether they used AI to prep for the interviewWhy buyers now demand in one to three months what used to be a twelve-month roadmap promiseAbout the guest:Patrick Dillon is CRO at Nudge Security. He and Andrew first spoke on the podcast at RSA 2025, when Patrick was launching a channel program at Airlock. Nudge closed its Series A last November.Notable quotes:"You can't secure, you can't govern what you can't see.""The call is literally coming from inside your house.""It's not a skill thing or an age thing. It's really a want-to thing." Support the showThe Cyber Go-To-Market Talk is the show for cybersecurity sales leaders, founders, CROs, and go-to-market operators looking to improve cyber sales performance and build more predictable revenue growth. Hosted by Andrew Monaghan, founder of Unstoppable.do, covering cyber sales leadership, revenue leadership, sales onboarding, forecasting, pipeline generation, and cybersecurity go-to-market execution.Follow me on LinkedIn for regular posts about growing your cybersecurity startupWant to grow your revenue faster? Check out my cybersecurity sales consulting and trainingNeed ideas about how to grow your pipeline? Sign up for my newsletter.

The Best Dental Marketing Podcast, powered by Dentainment, delivers cutting-edge strategies to help dental practices attract new patients, grow revenue, and thrive in today's competitive digital landscape.

"There's 20 fires going on at every moment in the office and you have enough water to put out four."Mark Roberge shares what it takes to build and scale a company, from finding product-market fit to knowing when it's time to grow.He also shares the framework behind his new book, The Science of Selling, and why founders should scale based on their own data, not another company's success.Guest: Mark Roberge, Founding CRO of HubSpot, HBS Professor, and Co-Founder at Stage 2 CapitalConnect with Mark: XLinkedInConnect with Joubin:XLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.comFollow Grit on: LinkedInX​Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

Katie Bullard helped take DiscoverOrg from $30 million to $300 million in revenue, then served as president of A Cloud Guru and Red Canary through exits to Pluralsight and Zscaler. She joins AJ Bruno and Asad Zaman to break down what actually changes for operators in an AI-first world. From why "AI native" is not a growth strategy, to how to align the CRO, CFO, and product team around a single growth plan. Topics include building for customer value before chasing AI ARR, the move from seat-based to consumption pricing, and why 70% of the old playbook for hiring a great executive is suddenly out of date. Also: a reality check on AI accuracy across multi-step work. Plus, a Bulls and Bears debate on whether $200 a week is the real ceiling on AI's value. Key Takeaways: - AI has to earn its keep in customer value, not exist for its own sake. As Katie put it: "Too many companies, I would say, are focusing on the technology … and not on the customer value." Her fix is to ground every AI investment in the ROI it drives for a customer before worrying about the AI ARR label investors keep asking about. - The profile of a great executive is being rewritten in real time. Katie's warning for anyone with a strong track record: "the classic operator of a $100 million business actually will not be particularly successful in a $100 million business today that is redefining itself." She estimates 70% of the pattern-matching investors and recruiters used to hire CROs, CFOs, and CEOs is now out the window, replaced by a hunt for learning velocity over past wins. - AI's success with code does not automatically transfer to the rest of the org. Asad Zaman, CEO at STA, ran the math: "if you take the best model … against any one step … it has 95% accuracy … if you do a 20-step process … that same model achieves 37% accuracy." His point is that stacking agents to cover that compounding error only works when you spend enough compute to make the task uneconomical. - The AI-native shift is already changing how companies hire and build. AJ Bruno, CEO at QuotaPath, said flatly that "Our engineers aren't writing code at all," noting roughly 90% of the company's code now comes from either Cursor or Claude, and framed AI-enabled services at above 70% margin as QuotaPath's real growth engine for 2027. Connect with the Hosts & Guests: Host: AJ Bruno, CEO at QuotaPath - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajbruno3/ Host: Asad Zaman, CEO at STA - https://www.linkedin.com/in/azaman1/ Guest: Katie Bullard, Board Member & Strategic Advisor - https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiebullard/ Topline is more than a YouTube Channel: Subscribe to Topline Newsletter: https://toplinemedia.substack.com/ Tune into Topline Podcast, the #1 podcast for founders, operators, and investors in B2B tech: https://www.joinpavilion.com/topline-podcast Join the free Topline Slack channel to connect with 600+ revenue leaders to keep the conversation going beyond the podcast: https://www.joinpavilion.com/topline-slack Chapters:  00:00 Introducing Katie Bullard 05:24 The $30M to $300M Playbook 09:58 Operating In The Age Of AI 15:54 Aligning The CRO And CFO 23:26 AI Native Is Not A Strategy 25:35 Value First, Then Pricing 26:51 The AI ARR Valuation Puzzle 41:11 Inside The Red Canary Exit 45:35 Betting On AI-Enabled Services 49:15 Rewriting The Hiring Profile 52:51 The Executive Hiring Reset 58:24 The AI Accuracy Reality Check 1:01:16 Why Humans Still Hold The Pen 1:04:53 Bulls and Bears

In this episode of The Ross Simmonds Show, Ross sits down with Talia Wolf, founder of GetUplift and author of Emotional Targeting, to unpack why customer emotion is now central to CRO, SEO, content marketing, and brand trust. They explore how marketers can move beyond surface-level analytics, use AI responsibly, uncover real customer motivations, and build messaging that converts by resonating with the right audience everywhere they show up online. Key Takeaways and Insights: 1. Why CRO Starts with the “Why,” Not Just the “Where” - Talia explains why tools like GA4 and Mixpanel can show where conversion problems happen, but not why people fail to convert. - The key to better leads and sales is understanding what information is missing, what feels risky, and what stops customers from taking action. - Strong conversion strategy starts with customer research, not random funnel tweaks or generic best practices. 2. Using AI Without Losing the Customer - AI can support gap analysis, data synthesis, and ideation, but it should not replace direct customer research. - Talia recommends gathering real inputs from surveys, interviews, Reddit threads, Facebook groups, sales calls, and chat transcripts before using AI. - Once you have authentic customer language, AI can become a strategic thinking partner rather than a shortcut to generic copy. 3. Emotional Targeting in B2B Marketing - Talia argues that B2B buying is often more emotional than B2C because professional decisions carry career, reputation, and budget risks. - Two major emotional clusters drive B2B decisions: social image and self-image. - Marketers should connect features to emotional value, such as helping buyers feel confident, trusted, respected, or prepared to impress leadership. 4. Trust, SEO, and CRO Are Converging - Ross and Talia discuss why SEO and CRO can no longer operate in silos. - Modern buyers research brands across Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube, communities, AI tools, and search results before converting. - The new opportunity is to optimize everywhere by creating consistent, emotionally resonant messaging across owned and non-owned channels. 5. Better Messaging Comes from Better Listening - Talia shares how her team identifies misunderstandings, objections, and friction points through customer conversations and community research. - Real-world examples show how addressing skepticism directly can outperform polished but vague marketing claims. -  The best marketers resist the pressure to produce more and instead invest in customer insight, sharper positioning, and continuous testing. Resources & Tools:

This week on "The Top Line," we’re covering some of the biggest stories across biopharma before turning to one of the industry’s major scientific meetings of the summer. First, we discuss Vertex’s $10 billion acquisition of Crinetics Pharmaceuticals, the company’s largest deal to date, and what it says about Vertex’s push beyond its historic strength in cystic fibrosis. We also cover growing scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers over the industry’s use of clinical trials in China. Then, Fierce Pharma Senior Editor Fraiser Kansteiner recounts his recent trip to New Orleans for the American Diabetes Association’s 2026 Scientific Sessions with Fierce Pharma Marketing’s Zoey Becker. For years, ADA has focused heavily on its eponymous indication, but this year’s meeting made clear how much the conversation is evolving, with obesity data from drugmakers of all stripes taking up more of the spotlight. Topics include the biggest data sets from the meeting, what it was like to sit down with Novo Nordisk’s new CEO for the first time and the latest from Insulet’s Marvel collaboration on a line of comics about an Omnipod-wearing superheroine. To learn more about the topics in this episode: Vertex, in its largest-ever deal, acquires endocrine disease specialist Crinetics for $10B As US lawmakers increase scrutiny of Chinese trials, industry fears ‘huge distraction and expense’ ‘I’m a lot more optimistic today’: Mike Doustdar tells Fierce about pivotal first year as Novo Nordisk CEO ADA: Lilly pulls back curtain on impressive triple-G efficacy in patients with obesity, diabetes ADA: Amgen highlights Repatha perks, GLP-1 pitfalls in push to boost cardiometabolic pedigree With ADA in the books, analyst says Lilly is ‘widening its lead’ in the obesity race ADA: Novo's Wegovy pill reaches new GLP-1 patients with impressive 3M prescription milestone ADA: Tolerability ‘not to be underappreciated’ in Roche, Zealand’s amylin obesity prospect ADA: Boehringer execs claim survodutide tolerability 'consistent' with class despite phase 3 update ADA: Lilly posts oral semaglutide-topping data as Foundayo speeds toward 2nd potential nod in diabetes This week's episode is sponsored by IQVIA Biotech. Built for biotech innovators, IQVIA Biotech is a full-service CRO, designed for agility, fast decisions, and the urgency needed for emerging biopharma. With dedicated teams and deep therapeutic expertise, we help move programs forward with focus and confidence. Visit IQVIABiotech.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Best Dental Marketing Podcast, powered by Dentainment, delivers cutting-edge strategies to help dental practices attract new patients, grow revenue, and thrive in today's competitive digital landscape.

Building a great sales organization has always been difficult, and the pace of AI has only raised the stakes. Chad Peets and Chris Degnan join John McMahon and John Kaplan to share what they're seeing as founders race to build go-to-market teams in one of the fastest-moving markets in software. They discuss why companies overhire, how leaders should evaluate revenue quality, what separates "patriots" from "mercenaries" in the hiring process, and the operating principles that produce durable sales organizations. Chad Peets is the Managing Partner of RPT Partners and has spent more than 25 years helping software companies build world-class go-to-market organizations. Previously Managing Director at Sutter Hill Ventures, he helped hire more than 7,500 software sales executives, including more than 500 who joined Snowflake during its growth. Connect with Chad: LinkedIn Chris Degnan is a Partner at RPT Partners and the former Chief Revenue Officer of Snowflake, where he helped build the company's go-to-market organization from its earliest stages to more than $4 billion in revenue. He is the co-author of Make It Snow: From Zero to Billions: How Snowflake Scaled its Go-to-Market Organization. Connect with Chris: LinkedIn "Make It Snow" by Denise Persson and Chris Degnan Connect with RPT Partners: Website info@rptpartners.com More from Revenue Builders: Hiring to Ensure Success featuring Chad Peets What It Really Takes to Build a Billion-Dollar Revenue Engine featuring Chris Degnan Key takeaways from this episode: 00:00 – Why the best sales careers are built through mastery, not compensation. 10:48 – Why hiring for tomorrow's org chart often creates today's leadership problem. 12:12 – Why many AI companies are overstating revenue quality, and what leaders should look for instead. 25:58 – What leaders often overlook when separating long-term builders from short-term opportunists in the hiring process. 35:17 – A practical framework for evaluating whether a company is worth joining before you sign the offer. 41:37 – Why great technology and great sales organizations create a competitive advantage together. 45:14 – What the next generation of elite sellers will need to master to stay relevant as buying evolves. Hosted by five-time CRO John McMahon and Force Management Co-Founder John Kaplan, the Revenue Builders podcast goes behind the scenes with the sales leaders who have been there, done that, and seen the results. This show is brought to you by Force Management. We help companies improve sales performance, executing their growth strategy at the point of sale. Connect with Us: LinkedInYouTubeForce Management

Good morning from Pharma Daily: the podcast that brings you the most important developments in the pharmaceutical and biotech world. Today, we delve into a series of transformative events shaping our industry, starting with a significant regulatory milestone. Vera Therapeutics recently achieved FDA accelerated approval for Trutakna, a groundbreaking treatment for IgA nephropathy. This approval not only provides new hope for patients suffering from this chronic kidney disease but also highlights the innovative approach targeting APRIL and BAFF pathways, crucial in immune system regulation. The drug's accelerated approval is particularly noteworthy as it offers earlier access to promising therapies while further trials solidify its benefits. This positions Vera Therapeutics against industry giants like Novartis and Otsuka in nephrology therapeutics, highlighting the competitive landscape within this sector. The FDA's expedited pathways are increasingly facilitating quicker access to life-saving drugs, aligning regulatory processes with scientific advancements to address unmet medical needs. The spotlight on fusion proteins in tackling autoimmune and renal disorders could signal a broader trend in therapeutic development. In parallel, AstraZeneca has made waves by entering into a major licensing agreement with Sino Biopharmaceutical for their COPD candidate TQC3721. This $1.9 billion deal, with a $200 million upfront payment, exemplifies how global collaborations are becoming pivotal in expanding market reach. By focusing on respiratory diseases, AstraZeneca is strategically positioning itself to enhance treatment options for COPD patients worldwide, reflecting an industry-wide movement towards leveraging regional expertise in drug commercialization. Meanwhile, Evonik's $100 million investment in an Indiana API manufacturing plant marks a strategic effort to bolster domestic production capacities post-pandemic. This investment underscores the rising demand for Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) services, emphasizing supply chain resilience—an increasingly critical factor as biotech firms seek reliable production partners. On the clinical trial front, Satellos Bioscience has reported promising Phase 1 data for SAT-3247, its Duchenne muscular dystrophy candidate. This AAK1 inhibitor demonstrates potential in promoting muscle regeneration, a development that could significantly alter treatment paradigms for this progressive neuromuscular disorder. If further trials confirm these findings, it could revolutionize therapeutic approaches for rare diseases. Financially, Leo Cancer Care's recent $65 million Series D funding is set to advance its upright radiotherapy treatment system. Such innovations aim to improve precision and outcomes in cancer therapy, at the intersection of technology and patient care. Similarly, MeiraGTx's securing of up to $400 million from Oberland Capital underlines ongoing confidence in gene therapies targeting rare ophthalmological conditions. Strategic maneuvers continue to reshape industry landscapes with mergers like that of Caidya and Simbec-Orion forming a global CRO platform aimed at enhancing research capabilities across oncology and rare diseases. Such consolidations reflect broader trends towards operational efficiencies and scaling research capabilities globally. Amidst these developments, quality control remains paramount as evidenced by Amgen's recall of its heart failure drug due to quality concerns. Such challenges reiterate the importance of stringent quality assurance throughout production processes in safeguarding patient safety. Vertex's acquisition of Crinetics for $10 billion marks another strategic expansion into "white space blockbuster opportunities," illustrating how M&A activity is driving companies to bolster pipelines and capitalize on emerging scientific advancements. These developments collectively underscore the dynamic nature of the pharmaceutical and biotech industries as they navigate complex regulatory landscapes, financial recalibrations, and scientific breakthroughs. As companies strive towards more effective and accessible treatments across various therapeutic areas, their ability to adapt to these challenges remains crucial in shaping the future of healthcare delivery. Thank you for tuning into Pharma Daily. Stay informed with us as we continue to bring you the latest insights from the world of pharmaceuticals and biotechnology.Support the show

Send us Fan MailIn case you missed it....For the Electrical Engineers in Test out there, this is your episode.  Todd VanGilder, CTO and CRO, and Ryan Smith, Tech Fellow, for Genuen join the podcast to talk about achieving reliable performance through Systems Engineering and Custom Test Equipment.  And their secret sauce: Replica.02:26 Meet Genuen Leaders08:33 Boeing09:21 Genuen15:11 2-min Pitch16:11 Client Profile18:25 Use Cases23:00 Replica33:10 Reflective Memory Secret Sauce37:16 Monetizing Replica40:06 Coolest Use Case41:42 True but No One AgreesLinkedin: linkedin.com/in/todd-vangilder, linkedin.com/in/hryansmith Website: https://www.genuen.com/Want to be featured as a guest on Making Data Simple?  Reach out to us at almartintalksdata@gmail.com and tell us why you should be next.  The Making Data Simple Podcast is hosted by Al Martin, WW VP Technical Sales, IBM, where we explore trending technologies, business innovation, and leadership ... while keeping it simple & fun. 

Send us Fan MailIn case you missed it....For the Electrical Engineers in Test out there, this is your episode.  Todd VanGilder, CTO and CRO, and Ryan Smith, Tech Fellow, for Genuen join the podcast to talk about achieving reliable performance through Systems Engineering and Custom Test Equipment.  And their secret sauce: Replica.02:26 Meet Genuen Leaders08:33 Boeing09:21 Genuen15:11 2-min Pitch16:11 Client Profile18:25 Use Cases23:00 Replica33:10 Reflective Memory Secret Sauce37:16 Monetizing Replica40:06 Coolest Use Case41:42 True but No One AgreesLinkedin: linkedin.com/in/todd-vangilder, linkedin.com/in/hryansmith Website: https://www.genuen.com/Want to be featured as a guest on Making Data Simple?  Reach out to us at almartintalksdata@gmail.com and tell us why you should be next.  The Making Data Simple Podcast is hosted by Al Martin, WW VP Technical Sales, IBM, where we explore trending technologies, business innovation, and leadership ... while keeping it simple & fun. 

Ben Edmond is the Founder and CEO of Connectbase, a company that helps telecom, cable, and managed service providers buy and sell network services more efficiently through a digital platform. Under his leadership, Connectbase powers over 4 million quotes each month and serves nearly every major operator across North America and Europe. Prior to Connectbase, Ben served as CRO at Global Capacity, where he led the company's customer go-to-market strategy and execution. With over 25 years in telecom, fiber, and networking, he is known for modernizing connectivity commerce and reducing transaction friction. In this episode… The connectivity industry depends on thousands of providers, yet transactions are still slowed by manual processes, disconnected systems, and limited visibility. As demand for faster connectivity grows, how can businesses better match supply and demand in real time? Ben Edmond, a telecom industry veteran and entrepreneur, shares that the key to reducing friction is digitizing how connectivity services are bought and sold. He explains that bringing real-time data, automation, and visibility into the process enables providers to make faster, more accurate decisions. By aggregating information across thousands of network operators, his platform removes long-standing inefficiencies in how connectivity is sourced and delivered. The result is a more connected ecosystem where buyers and sellers can transact with greater speed, confidence, and efficiency. Drawing from decades in the telecom industry, he also emphasizes the importance of solving deep operational pain points to drive meaningful innovation. In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, host Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Ben Edmond, Founder and CEO of Connectbase, to discuss how digital innovation is transforming the connectivity industry. They explore building a platform that streamlines network transactions, lessons from bootstrapping and scaling a tech company, and how AI is improving operational efficiency. Ben also shares insights on industry relationships, conferences, and ecosystem collaboration.

Most founders treat product-market fit like a feeling. Mark Roberge thinks that's as absurd as calling profit a feeling.The founding CRO of HubSpot, Harvard Business School lecturer, and Stage 2 Capital co-founder joins Josh to break down his new book, The Science of Scaling. The argument at the center of it - the decision of when and how fast to scale shouldn't be a gut call. It should be gated on retention.Mark shares the leading indicator of retention (the one metric that predicts churn in a customer's first month), the 5-50-500 playbook a Microsoft leader used to launch new products, why Drift's founder flew across the country to onboard $50/month customers, and what "AI-native sales team" should actually mean in 2026 (with numbers attached).If you work in Customer Success, this episode makes the case that you own the most strategic metric in the company. All proceeds from Mark's book go to McLean Hospital for mental health care.---Want the playbook, not just the conversation? Subscribe for deep-dive, actionable breakdowns from every episode at unchurned.substack.com.---What You'll Learn- Why we scale haphazardly, not scientifically- A quantitative definition of product-market fit - How to design a leading indicator of retention- Real LIR examples from Slack, Harvey, Facebook, and Gainsight - The three maturity levels of an LIR- How a Microsoft leader used the 5-50-500 rep model to de-risk new product launches- How to pick your threshold based on the blitzscale risk in your category- Why product-market fit and go-to-market fit must be sequenced, not pursued at once- How to know when to move past founder-led sales - How to bring unit economics into board meetings - Why blitzscaling fails more companies than it saves (and why VCs push it anyway)- The two metrics that define an AI-native sales team in 2026- Mark's four phases of the AI revolution in go-to-market ---Timestamps0:00 - Preview & Intro1:30 - Meet Mark Roberge3:07 - The Science of Scaling (All book proceeds go to McLean Hospital)7:30 - We scale haphazardly, not scientifically9:06 - Microsoft's 5-50-500 playbook13:19 - Is product-market fit a feeling?15:48 - The leading indicator of retention, explained17:30 - Time to value vs. recurring value19:42 - Designing your own LIR24:04 - Why go-to-market fit comes after PMF26:06 - Pitching this framework to VCs28:15 - How to know when you have go-to-market fit31:15 - Bringing the science to larger companies33:00 - When to move beyond founder-led sales35:51 - AI and the four phases of the GTM revolution37:20 - What "AI-native sales team" means in 2026---Josh is writing a book on building customer relationships. Follow his journey and insights at www.joshschachter.com---Where to Find the GuestMark Roberge: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markroberge/The Science of Scaling: https://a.co/d/0boDpDUcStage 2 Capital: https://www.stage2.capital/---Where to Find the Host: Josh's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jschachter/Unchurned Substack: https://unchurned.substack.com/

AI is everywhere in sales right now, but very little of it is actually moving the number.In this episode, John sits down with Gabe Larsen, CRO of Atonom, to dig into what is real, what is hype, and where AI is actually creating measurable ROI. Gabe walks through the SaaS golden age, the false positives it created, the rise of digital employees, and why most teams are still confusing efficiency with results.If you are trying to figure out where AI agents belong in your sales process, this conversation gives you a practical way to think about it: stop chasing every research bot, map the process first, and only automate the work that actually creates revenue or reduces cost.Want to reset your sales team before the market moves on without you? Visit www.jbarrows.com and learn how you can Make It Happen.What You'll LearnWhy saving time with AI is not the same as creating measurable business impactWhere Gabe is seeing AI produce real ROI across coding, customer service, SDR work, and recruitingWhy perfect prep docs and research bots still fail when reps lack the fundamentalsHow digital employees could change the way sales and customer-facing teams operateWhy GTM leaders need to map the process before buying another AI toolGabe Larsen is the CRO of Atonom, an AI company building always-on AI agents, with a career spanning leadership roles at Kustomer, Meta, and InsideSales.com, where he previously served as VP of Growth and hosted the company's Sales Secrets podcast. He's known for an unconventional, science-driven approach to sales — one that's helped him close major deals and train thousands of reps to replicate his results. Check out Atonom at atonom.ai to see how AI agents can run your work end-to-end. Follow Atonom on social media to stay up to date:Li: https://www.linkedin.com/company/atonomai/X: https://x.com/atonom_aiYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/@atonomai Connect with Gabe Larsen:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gabelarsen/Li: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabelarsen/John Barrows is a sales trainer, speaker, and founder of JB Sales with over 25 years of experience in the industry. He has made hundreds of cold calls a week, led startups to acquisition, and trained high-performing teams at companies like Salesforce, LinkedIn, Amazon, and Okta. Through JB Sales, John focuses on practical sales execution—helping reps fill pipeline, close deals, and build trust with buyers in today's AI-driven sales environment.Connect with John Barrows:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbarrows/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnmbarrows/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@johnmbarrows Check out John's Membership: https://learn.jbarrows.com/pages/individual-packages?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=podcast Join John's Newsletter: https://www.jbarrows.com/newsletter

Payments are getting smarter, faster, and more automated, but the stakes are still deeply human. I sit down with Gunita Bindra, CRO of Paymode New Business Development at Bottomline, to talk about what it takes to lead in fintech when AI is reshaping how decisions get made and how money moves. Along the way, Ganita shares her path from computer science in India to roles in software engineering, solution consulting, product management, and now leading sales and partnerships in the B2B payments world. We explore what “the future is human” means when technology can feel like it's in the driver's seat. Gunita lays out why leaders in payments need to embrace change while building for enduring excellence, not just short-term success. We also get practical about the customer experience behind every transaction: how product-minded empathy shows up in sales conversations, why understanding small business payment pain matters, and how transparency turns into trust when your platform can clearly explain where a payment is, why it's there, and what happens next. Then we look forward at agentic commerce and the idea of payments that can route themselves with humans still in the loop. Gunita offers a grounded take on job evolution, the skills that stay valuable, and the mindset shift leaders need right now. We close with direct advice for women entering payments and fintech: network early, ask for what you want, build a business case, and learn negotiation without apology. 

Ghazi Masood, Chief Revenue Officer at Replit, joins Sam Jacobs and Asad Zaman to break down the company scaled from $2 million towards a North Star of $1 billion in revenue in about two years, with roughly 350 employees and a 75-person go-to-market team. Ghazi gets specific on the operational cadence that replaced the quarterly SaaS playbook, why more than 90% of reps overachieved in H1 and why he believes $2 million per rep still isn't the ceiling, and how Replit built its own CPQ, Clari, and Gainsight equivalents on top of Salesforce. Plus, the shift from inbound to outbound pipeline generation, why AI-native orgs run leaner on entry-level headcount and a Quiz Pro Quo on how AI-native companies are structured. In short: a fantastic episode if you want to see how hyper-growth companies are operating, warts and all. Key Takeaways: - The AI-era operating cadence compresses from quarterly to weekly. As Ghazi Masood, CRO at Replit, put it: "forget monthly. We're literally driving a weekly rhythm to the business," with weekly forecast calls, weekly Gong reviews, and a company-wide Friday all-hands they call weekly wins. - Ghazi argues the SaaS-era rep productivity ceiling is gone. Asked whether $2 million per rep is a lot, he said "I would say no… you can do a lot more," after more than 90% of the team overachieved in H1 and enterprise reps blew past $1.5 million in the first half of the year. - Replit keeps a minimal purchased stack and builds the rest on itself. Ghazi described the tools they buy as "HubSpot, Gong, and Salesforce. And that's kind of it," then added "everything else on top of that is Replit. We built our own CPQ on Replit. We're building our own version of Clari on Replit," plus a homegrown Gainsight-style customer health dashboard. - Scaling the team fast, Ghazi made enablement one of his first hires. As he put it, "the very first hire I made was somebody to run and help me build enablement," and that leader built a two-week bootcamp where reps earn a certification before they get a territory.   Connect with the Hosts & Guests:   Host: Sam Jacobs, CEO at Pavilion - https://www.linkedin.com/in/samfjacobs/ Host: Asad Zaman, CEO at STA - https://www.linkedin.com/in/azaman1/ Guest: Ghazi Masood, CRO at Replit - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ghazi-masood-09195a2/   Topline is more than a YouTube Channel:   Subscribe to Topline Newsletter: https://toplinemedia.substack.com/ Tune into Topline Podcast, the #1 podcast for founders, operators, and investors in B2B tech: https://www.joinpavilion.com/topline-podcast Join the free Topline Slack channel to connect with 600+ revenue leaders to keep the conversation going beyond the podcast: https://www.joinpavilion.com/topline-slack Chapters: 00:00 Introducing Ghazi Masood 02:20 Scaling $2M To $1B In Two Years 03:16 The Weekly Operating Rhythm 08:55 What Replit Actually Is 10:21 Building An Outbound Motion 11:29 The SaaS Replacement Wave 19:04 Competing With Claude And Cursor 22:57 Brand And ICP Discipline 25:57 Betting On Model Breakthroughs 28:10 Quiz Pro Quo 44:54 Hiring And Enablement At Speed 52:34 The $2M Per Rep Question 57:41 CRO Versus VP Of Sales 1:00:52 Bulls VS Bears 1:06:50 The GTM Tech Stack  

Today's conversation features Brian McCarthy, President of Global Revenue and Field Operations at Cursor and former CRO at Rubrik, where he helped scale the business from $118 million to $1.5 billion in ARR. In this segment, Brian breaks down the rapid evolution of AI in software development, from simple code autocomplete to fully autonomous agent-driven environments, and what that shift means for competition, product strategy, and go-to-market execution. He also explains how Cursor's multi-model approach creates a unique advantage in a fast-moving market, and why aligning that innovation with focused sales execution is critical to winning. Brian McCarthy is President of Global Revenue and Field Operations at Cursor and former CRO at Rubrik, where he helped scale the company from $118M to $1.5B in ARR. He is known for building high-performance revenue organizations and execution-focused cultures in complex enterprise environments. Connect with Brian: LinkedIn Resources mentioned: Ep. 71 - What the Best Sales Leaders Do with Brian McCarthy All In Podcast with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg Listen to the full episode: Why Sales Execution Wins in an AI-First World with Brian McCarthy, President of Global Revenue and Field Operations at Cursor Hosted by five-time CRO John McMahon and Force Management Co-Founder John Kaplan, the Revenue Builders podcast goes behind the scenes with the sales leaders who have been there, done that, and seen the results. This show is brought to you by Force Management. We help companies improve sales performance, executing their growth strategy at the point of sale. Connect with Us: LinkedInYouTubeForce Management

In this episode of Molecule to Market, you'll go inside the outsourcing space of the global drug development sector with Lisa Studnicki Hunt, Ph.D, Co-Founder and Board Member, GL CHEMTEC.   Your host, Raman Sehgal, discusses the pharmaceutical and biotechnology supply chain with Lisa, covering:   How her passion for problem solving led her to cofound a CDMO straight out of grad school How, without an established industry network, she focused on developing her core skill set and immersing herself in a different culture Figuring things out day by day, while pursuing opportunities aligned with the company's long term vision Positioning the business as “innovation experts” to differentiate in a competitive and fragmented CRO and CDMO market How the pandemic accelerated demand and growth, ultimately leading to a well timed private equity deal The “misbehaving of the market” over the last few years, and how a Canadian CDMO is positioned amid geopolitical shifts involving the US and China   Lisa co-founded GL CHEMTEC INTERNATIONAL in 2002 and has played a key role in growing the organization across both operations and commercial functions for more than two decades.  She also now serves on several boards and is passionate about philanthropy and supporting non-profit organizations.   Lisa began her academic journey with a degree in Natural Sciences from John Abbott College. She went on to earn a Bachelor of Science with Honours, with a minor in French, and a Master of Science in Chemistry from the University of Toronto. She later completed her Doctor of Philosophy in Organic Polymer Chemistry at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany.   Lisa has authored several scientific publications and holds multiple patents. Alongside her scientific credentials, Lisa has continued to build her commercial and business expertise. She earned her Professional Sales Designation from the Canadian Professional Sales Association in 2008, completed the E2: Entrepreneur's Edge course at Wilfrid Laurier University in 2009, attended Harvard Business School in 2015 under the guidance of renowned professor Clayton Christensen, and completed the Marketing Innovation course at MIT Sloan School of Management in 2017.   Molecule to Market is also sponsored by Bora Pharmaceuticals and supported by Lead Candidate. Please subscribe, tell your industry colleagues and join us in celebrating and promoting the value and importance of the global life science outsourcing space. We'd also appreciate a positive rating!

É hora de Copa do Mundo! Qual o limite da tecnologia? Houve realmente toque na bola no gol anulado da Croácia? Novas discussões que os novos tempos nos proporcionam. Para além disso, que jogo tivemos o prazer de acompanhar… isso é Copa do Mundo amigos! Análise do jogo, atuações, chaveamento do mata mata e muito […]

Eduardo Tironi, Arnaldo Ribeiro, Mauro Cezar, Casagrande, PVC e Danilo Lavieri analisam a polêmica na classificação de Portugal contra a Croácia, o nível da Espanha em comparação com a França, Cristiano Ronaldo e as dúvidas na escalação da seleção brasileira para o jogo com a Noruega

Kiera has talked to a ton of doctors to come up with tips for how to fill that CEO time that so often feels fathomless. The ideas include blocking out your schedule to understand your frequency, committing to "deep work" time, optimizing whatever you can, and more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent- Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera. And today is a fun rift of a CEO, giving some CEO tips. And I was just on a birthday trip. You guys, had a birthday and it was so fun. And my husband and went off to Austria and Amsterdam. ⁓ We have traveled a lot. If you guys have been a podcast listener, you know I'm obsessed with traveling. so because we've traveled so much, we're kind of on to off the beaten path locations and.   This year I was like, Hey, I've never seen the Tulip festival in Amsterdam. Like let's head on over there for that. And so when we were there, some of these ideas came to me and I realized this would be, again, I love some white, white noise space guys. If you are an owner of a business and you have not booked yourself one trip that you are off the grid completely. when I talk my, so it was my birthday when I was gone and ⁓ luckily I have some like great friends in my life that texted me. My phone is off off.   Like I kid you not, is on airplane mode. I don't even put it on wifi. Like I don't text people. Jason has his phone and I will say it's the greatest gift I give myself. And one of my friends did not know this quite as well with me. And she was like, Hey, said my other friend, like I texted care like two days ago and I haven't heard from her. She's like, ⁓ when care travels, she is like dead off the grid. Like you will not get in touch with her. If something happens, even if her house is on fire, like she'll deal with it when she gets home, like genuinely she's off the grid. She needs to have that, like just shut off downtime.   And I will say for any of you, and I told an office to do this a while ago and they came back from their trip and they were like, Kiera, that was the best gift and we're going to do that now forever. And so for you, that would be my like birthday gift to all of you to do for yourselves is take a week, completely shut off. No Slack, no emails, no text messages, ⁓ completely turn your phone off if you can. Tell your family where you're at, like have it to where someone can be reachable if necessary. But I will tell you, I sleep better.   than I ever do. ⁓ I come back refreshed. My team all tells me like I am such a happier boss when I come back. I feel like my relationship with my husband is so much stronger because I feel like he gets his wife back. I feel like I come back. I was in the Tulip Festival. There's videos that I have not posted. They're just for Kiera. I feel like literally skipping like a little girl through these Tulip Festivals. I feel I go back to the true core of who Kiera is. I don't need to be a boss. I don't need to be a CEO. I don't need to be a consultant.   I am able to be like free bird Kiera out there. Jason even calls me bird when we travel and it's just a space. So there's a little tip for you that I hope you listen to and I hope you take and hey, if you do it, send me a message and let me know how it went for you. I will also fair warn that sometimes what I call it is it's the adrenaline. What would it be? It's like coming off of the adrenaline. So that drop.   Sometimes I get angry. So fair warning that that does is the dopamine drop if you will and I felt like I have had like three days where I'm just sheer angry and I'm like what is going on? I'm on vacation. I'm in this beautiful place and I'm just mad but it's because you go from being so high tilt throttle to nothing that your nervous system does kind of have this like whiplash. So I have found that some ways to ease into that is one knowing that two I tried to hit the gym like three or four times when I'm over there because that allows like   a lot of that energy to just get expelled rather than going from like high level to nothing. And then I've also found that like reading books, so something for my mind, I usually try to do fiction books. So it's not like obsessive learning, ⁓ but just taking my mind into a different space. Some of those can be a tip for you. again, hopefully some of those help. But ⁓ today I wanted to go through like, how do I actually block and use my CEO time? Because I think that this is a zone that a lot of people want to do as owner doctors and, but they're like, I just don't know what to do during CEO time. So I wanted to   just share with you what I personally do in the company, how I block it, what I have, and then also letting you guys know that we actually have a forum and I'm happy to share it with any of you. can reach out, email us, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com, but like what do I actually do during my admin time checklist? This has been built with lots of different doctors input and also what I personally do.   So for me, I do have a personal assistant and I have an executive assistant. So first step is if you don't have either of those, and I know I talked to a lot of dentists and they get weird about it they don't want to have an executive assistant or a personal assistant, but I will say hands down, this is something absolutely that's tactical that you should do. I have my personal assistant actually watch my schedule and then her job is to go through and to refine my schedule. And she does an amazing job. She's like, hey, Kiera, you're running back to back to back all these meetings. You need to move into some different places. Like these are some things that I think you need to do.   We actually have an Excel spreadsheet. just so you know, I do have an Excel spreadsheet. I'm looking at it right now as I'm podcasting for you. And I look in there and I put in and I have on my like on the right hand side, I have my scheduling needs, what my frequency is. Like we've got podcasting in there. I've got certain coaches that I need to get into. I've got my workout time in there. I've got like my C-suite meeting with the COO and the CRO and our lead consultant and ⁓ Britt and my EAPA meetings and the bookkeepers and our fractional CFO.   I have all those meetings that I need to be hitting. And so we look to see where are those at, where are the meetings that I need to have, but non-negotiable for me is my deep work time. So that's my CEO time. That's my deep work time. I have to have on busy weeks, non-negotiable, I need a two hour block. Like that is a non-negotiable for me, must, must. And it's during the day. I don't do it on my Fridays or my day off. I don't enjoy that for me. I get really actually annoyed to do it on those days. So mine gets blocked during my time.   For dentists, I recommend you do it during your time. ⁓ Working hours, I recommend that you block it in there because if you're producing, let's say $1,000 an hour, you've got to be doing at least $2,000 worth of value during that time. again, when you're giving that up, you tend to be a lot more productive. for me, my first week is very busy. I, first week in the company is something that is none of our favorites. Like we love it.   But it's hard, it's heavy. We have our doctor mastermind that we do. I usually do podcasting on the first week. I'm meeting with a lot of my direct reports. It's a heavy week for me, but we still have my non-negotiables. And so I just look at my timing and I know Monday's a full meeting day, Tuesday's a coaching call podcasting day, Wednesday I'm meeting with the COO, CRO, CFO. I have all those meetings to make sure that they can move on their items from Monday. That for me, it's a pretty heavy day.   And then I've just got a lighter afternoon on Wednesdays to just catch up on projects. Thursdays where I'm, and for me, I also have to know where is my ideal time. So when you're blocking your CEO time, you need to know where are you the most optimal? For me, I'm always the best in the morning. Like seven, 738, like right there is where I'm gonna start like cranking and I'm gonna just go solid for about two hours till 10. My worst time in the entire day is three o'clock. Like I am dead and usually around 11, I start to like.   zone out and I'm not as productive. So I've just had to try that. That's a trial and error. Test yourself. See, do you like the mornings? Do like the afternoons? Do like the end of day? Like where are you? Brittany's zone, she's a night owl. That girl, she starts to get her prime optimization on it like three, four, five o'clock at night. Like that is when that girl, she starts to churn and she puts out her best work and we both know that. I'm like, amazing. We work on very polar opposite different ones. So like she needs to put her deep works over your OMS, finding out as well for them. But for me,   Mine is Thursday mornings is where I put that deep work. Then what I prefer to do is on my weeks where I'm not as busy. So I do coaching calls every other week. On my non coaching call weeks, I have two hours on Tuesday, two hours on Thursday. So I'm blocking four hours for myself. So your personal assistant, your executive assistant, they should be blocking this. And to me, this is a like, you do not like, you know, like a stove is hot. Like we don't touch that. You never touch my deep work blocks like ever. Don't ask me to schedule there. Don't ask me to put a meeting there.   Do not ask me to disrupt that time. And I am so strict on my deep work time that people know like, we don't touch that with a 10 foot pole. And your team needs to know that. Doctors, also recommend a lot of times, especially if you do it in the morning or the afternoon, go to the library somewhere where people aren't going to find you. Go to a coffee shop where you can like headphones in zone out. But I found when a lot of times my doctors are trying to do CEO time and they're at an office, their door is being knocked on.   If you want to be in the office, you need a sign on your door, and I've done this for several doctors, where it says CEO time, do not message or do not enter. And it needs to be like, if someone knocks, because they always do that knock like, hey, sorry, doc, it's just real quick. Do not for one second respond, because your team needs to learn that you're dead set on this. Like, this is your only time, you guys, that you get to work on the business. The only time.   Otherwise, what happens is you become the CEO that never sleeps because your CEO time is in the middle of the night. It's early, early in the morning. It's late at night because you never have time for your brain to actually fix these problems. And so your brain just churns on all this. Like I need to check the books. I need to check this. I need to have that. So what you do is when you're exhausted, you try to like get all these things done rather than having set times. You can also build in your schedule. Like there's a set time for paying the bills. If you're doing that. I know I've got some doctor doing that.   I would hope that your OEM does that and you just have meetings where they report to you. But again, depending upon where you are on this journey, you really need to block it. Now, great, we figured out how you block it. Now what do you actually do during that time? So for me, big things I'm gonna be working on are usually for me big projects. So I have a lot of presenting, a lot of events, lot of like, right now I'm reworking our entire customer journey and that's a big project that needs to get done. I'm working with our CRO and like,   building out budgets and working models. And I need to review all of the projections she sent over to me. like, it's the, the projects that for me, like, there's a lot of things like approving payroll or stamping off on this budget that don't require a lot of time. But if my marketer, our CRO is sending over to me, like an entire proposal of their growth marketing plan, that's not something that I'm going to be doing in like a quick, like 15 minute block. Like I need set quiet, like   uninterrupted focus time is what that really is. So imagine like studying for a big test, like you guys like blocked everything out. That's what you work on here. So it'd be your overhead, your P &L, like going through your CPA reports for you. Looking to see credit card charges, like looking through the P &L, like what's a detailed report, what things are on there, are fees categorized correctly. You do this once a quarter, have your CPA send it over to you. You can do it once a month, but you look at that.   What about my cost per procedure? How much does it actually cost me to do every single procedure? And like, how could I reduce my overhead? Looking at my expenses, looking to see my tax estimated bill and have we saved enough for that? And do I have enough money set aside for that? You can go through that. We have an entire systems checklist. You can actually go through all the systems of the practice. I have it set up per month and this is a great time for you to actually review. All right, let's look to see how are our doctors being optimized? What trainings could I put into place? What things could we bring in the practice?   How could I maximize and optimize this? Could we do training with our team for this? What about areas for my like schedule? Like let's review the schedule. Am I the most optimized when I'm producing or is there a way that I could type my block schedule up and be stronger on it and produce more with minimal effort? Like to me, CEO time is where I'm squeezing the juice out of the lemon. Like where can I optimize this a little bit more? How could I optimize my hygiene department? Let me look, is there a way I could add curadont? Can I find a better way to teach my hygienist?   When was the last time we reviewed our periope protocol? Is that still what I want them doing? What could I do on like what would doctor do? And could I train at my hygienist to actually tee up treatment better for me? What if I want to bring on an associate, like let's go through an entire associate onboarding document, set it up. What's my training schedule with them? What are my case studies I'm going to put together with them? Do I have a doctor study club that I'm going to do? What about looking at our new patients? Let me review all of our marketing dollars. Where am I spending the marketing dollars? Are we answering the phone? What's our phone conversion rate?   Let me actually assess my entire front office. Like where are the areas that are keeping us so bottlenecked? And is there AI or different processes or different systems that we can put in place to make it better for them? Let me go through all of our treatment plans. What did I diagnose? What was scheduled and why? What things am I missing? And how could I tighten up my treatment planning process? How can I work with my treatment coordinator and what things do she or he and I need to work through so that way I can close more cases and help more patients? ⁓ Just looking through all these different things.   going and listening to treatment plan presentations of the team, listening to how my hygiene team's training up Floyd and Perio, looking, going and talking to my biller and saying, walk me through our AR. Like I want to see, let's call people together. Where are we at with the AR? How many patients are not called? Show me an EOB. I want to see how you're entering this. Teach me those ways. Are my percentages right where they need to be for collections? Let me make sure my bank statements match my collection statements. What about onboarding? I'm going to be hiring new people. Let me check that entire onboarding process. And is it set and is it ready to go?   Does each procedure have its own checklist, pictures, accountability? If not, can I build out a process and have my whole team take this on or can I delegate this to a team member? Let me look at my marketing. Let me look at like, what is the next, like what's my one, three, 10 year plan? Let me read traction and figure out how to run better meetings. Let me read the book, Designing Your Life. Like, that was a laundry list. That's what you work on during Deep Work CEO time. You read books.   You listen to podcasts, you think about the business, you have quiet white noise time, you build associate onboarding documents, you build better onboarding. And there's a fine line because I want you to know like some of those things should be done by your OM and other people that are not you. ⁓ Reviewing marketing plans, reviewing budgets, looking to see what people are doing. That is my time that I do need to dedicate talking to vendors, researching consultants, having meetings with consultants. Like that's during deep work time. Those are things that I can do during that time. But really it's my time to work.   on the business, work on the highest level things. And I hate when people are like work on the business. I'm like, what the heck does that mean? It means that you're physically like, okay, pretend the business. We're going to go buy it from someone else. What would we go in and do if we were doing our due diligence? We'd look at their treatment plan. We'd look at their new patients. We'd look at their marketing. We'd look at their PNL and their overhead. We'd look at their EBITDA. We'd look to see where we could squeeze juice before we bought the business. If that's like an easy way for you to think of like building and working on the business, it's one, if I were going and buying a business, I'm going to go work in like   optimize those things. The second side is like, where are we broken? Like what things are not working? I realized like, you guys, our consulting team has grown, our clients have grown. I'm so proud of the business that we've built. I also realized what we used to do versus what we need to do today, there's a gap. And so now this is a big project for me of like, okay, we got to figure out our marketing to our sales, to our client success, to our consultants, to our renewals, to our masterminds.   This whole little sprinkling journey has like eight different pieces to the customer journey. And I need to go refine and optimize every single one of those, have meetings with the core team members. I need to work through this. So I built a whole thing with ChatGPT. What do I want it to be? Then I scheduled the meetings with my team. Super freaking pumped. That's a huge, huge, huge business initiative. No one on my team is going to think of that. Like maybe they do.   But that's Kiera's job. That's a CEO's job. That's where I need to be putting my time, my effort, my energy. That's what drives your business. What's going to make your business? Like you can also do a SWOT analysis. Like what's my strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. A lot of times I go back to my idea boards. I have a book that if you guys know, I've talked about on the freaking podcast and I'm just chicken guys. need, what is it called? Like when you write under a different name, that's what I need. I'm just scared of reviews of my writing.   So I'm like, I need a pen name. Like I just need to make up a name and publish the book. It's ready to go. It's been built. I need to get that done. But I spent a lot of my CEO time writing a book. You spend a lot of your CEO time looking to see if you want to expand your business. If you want to simplify your business, you want to optimize, this is what you do. So I wanted to just get on the podcast and help you see how do you do it? Which team members do I use for it? Where are mine blocked? And how do you set yours up? And I would say,   Today, listening to the podcast, my action items to you would be number one, I need you to find out where your prime optimize time to work is. Is it morning, afternoon or end of day? Then the next thing is I need you to block two hours minimum every single week. Then three, email me, talk to me, whatever you need to do, but I need you to build a CEO checklist and I need you to start working on those optimization pieces every single week consistently. And I need this to be like your bootcamp workout training where you commit to doing this for the next eight weeks and then we reassess.   Non-negotiable, not interrupted, not like, I don't feel like it today. It's a, have locked in for eight weeks. If you need an accountability partner, well, high five, I'm Kiera. This is what we do. This is why people hire us. It's because you usually know what you need to do. You just aren't willing to stay committed to doing it. Why am I paying my personal trainer so much for a photo shoot that we're doing? Because like yesterday I benched freaking Reese's. I was exhausted. I was tired. I haven't slept for days coming in off that trip. Jet lag's a beast. So that was a fun flip.   ⁓ exhausted, tired, not wanting to hit my workouts, not wanting to hit my macros. And she said, Hey, Kiera, you got three weeks left before your photo shoot. Here are the things you need to do when that happens. Like you're good. This is what happens in tomorrow. This is what I want you to do when you get that craving. Here's exactly what you're going to eat. I don't know. Even have to think today going into it. We're not going to binge on the Reese's eggs. Yes. Did I go buy like five packages post Easter because they're my favorite treat. And if you want to like schmooze me, send those to me. Absolutely.   But I needed somebody to hold me accountable to it. When the days are hard, when things you don't know what to do, when I'm, I told her, I was like, I don't know what to work on now. Like I'm having a hard time hitting my workout. She's like, all right, let's rework it. Let's figure it out. Sometimes having a coach that holds you accountable, that pushes you into this is one of the fastest, easiest ways to get more results with less effort. She holds me accountable to it. It's not hard. She's there in my corner when things fall apart. She's there in my corner when things are surviving. I talked to her, maybe.   30 minutes a week, if that. And it's usually like every other week, if that. It's usually a quick text of like, hey, I'm struggling here, I just need your help. Or, hey, I need you to hold me accountable this week to making sure I get my CEO time done. We as consultants are that way for dentists, because you don't usually need a whole new operating system, you just need someone to help you stay accountable to the things you know you need to do. So if we can help you with that, reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. But today commit to having CEO time dedicated for you, for your business.   It's one of the greatest gifts I can give you. So yes, go on vacation, happy birthday to you when that happens or whenever you want it to be. And the second thing is have your dedicated deep work CEO time. Hopefully that gave you a nice laundry list of things to work on. What I do, the only other thing that I didn't share with you is throughout the week as things come up on me that I know I'm gonna need more brain power to do. I have my personal assistant. say, hey, pop this in on my deep work. My deep work block is set as a private thing so people can't see it.   So she goes in and puts all the things that I need to work on. So when I show up to deep work, I'm not spending thinking time of what do I need to work on? It is literally already there with all the links, all the pieces. And that's her job is to make sure when I walk into deep work time, it is exactly what I asked her to put in there. The things I want to work on, things she might see that I need to get answers to that are not like a simple answer. That's not taking my time. These are like heavy items. And her job is to make sure my deep work is always there. So if that helps you, who I use, who on my team,   Sometimes I feel like these are the little like peel back the curtains of what do other CEOs do? This is what our doctors do. This is how we share in the masterminds. Come in person, be with us, get around like-minded people. Your net worth isn't equal to your network. And I would say it might be time for you to upgrade and elevate. And I'd love you to be a part of ours. So reach out. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.

Secure, optimize, and elevate the customer experience in an AI-driven world. At the Beyond 26 Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, we had the opportunity to sit down with two technology leaders who are helping redefine how Managed Service Providers (MSPs) create value for their clients. Gene Reich, CEO and Cofounder of Traceless, and Ryan Sigouin, CRO of ScalePad share their perspectives on the future of cybersecurity, operational intelligence, AI governance, and SaaS visibility.    Gene Rich, CEO and Cofounder of Traceless. Traceless is a communication security platform that helps organizations and MSPs securely verify identities and protect sensitive information, reducing the risk of social engineering, data exposure, and AI-driven cyber threats.   Ryan Sigouin, CRO of ScalePad. ScalePad is ScalePad is a customer success and operations platform that helps MSPs gain visibility into client environments, improve operational efficiency, strengthen AI governance and compliance, and demonstrate measurable business value to customers.   We explore how MSPs can move beyond reactive IT support to become trusted strategic advisors—leveraging intelligent technologies to protect businesses, improve operational efficiency, and strengthen client relationships. Whether you're looking to secure conversations, gain greater visibility into customer environments, or capitalize on emerging AI opportunities, Gene and Ryan deliver practical insights for technology leaders who want to stay ahead of what's next.   Highlights include:  Gene shares how Traceless is transforming secure communication by helping organizations protect their people, clients, and sensitive conversations.   Discover why proactive cybersecurity and communication security are becoming essential differentiators for modern MSPs.   Ryan explains how SaaS visibility, AI governance, and operational intelligence are reshaping the managed services landscape.   Learn how greater visibility into client environments enables MSPs to have more strategic conversations while creating new revenue opportunities.   How AI and operational data can help providers become trusted advisors instead of simply technology vendors.   Hear why both leaders believe the future belongs to organizations that embrace innovation today rather than waiting for tomorrow.   Traceless is offering 'The Ultimate Cybersecurity Compliance Checklist' for MSPs & IT Teams: https://traceless.com/learn/ultimate-cybersecurity-compliance-checklist/    Access Scalepad's 2026 MSP Trends Report: https://www.scalepad.com/2026-msp-trends-report/

How can publishers earn more from every visitor in the AI era? Lori Tavoularis, President & CRO of MULA, joins the AdTechGod Podcast to discuss AI-powered monetization, agentic advertising, commerce, CTV innovation, and the future of publisher revenue. She also shares lessons from building a startup, leading revenue teams, and balancing leadership with family. Takeaways How AI agents optimize publisher revenue beyond traditional ads. Why engagement matters more than impressions. MULA's vision for commerce, newsletters, and CTV monetization. Separating AI hype from real business value. Leadership lessons from startups, publishing, and revenue growth. Chapters00:00 Introduction to Lori Tavoularis & MULA01:29 From Publishing Executive to Startup Leader06:06 How MULA Uses AI to Increase Publisher Revenue11:39 Commerce, Content Recommendations & User Intent13:02 Agentic AI and Smarter Monetization14:20 Expanding into Newsletters and CTV17:31 AI Hype vs. Real Business Impact20:59 AI Tools for Sales and Revenue Teams21:02 Women in AdTech Leadership26:49 Final Thoughts & What's Next for MULA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2020, Airwallex lost nearly half its revenue overnight. Today it's worth $11 billion.Jack Zhang reflects on the decisions that kept the company alive, raising capital during uncertainty, and leading through its toughest chapter.This episode is a candid look at why Jack chose to keep building, even when a $1.2 billion acquisition was on the table.Guest: Jack Zhang, founder and CEO, AirwallexConnect with Jack ZhangXLinkedInConnect with JoubinXLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.comFollow Grit on: LinkedInX​Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

Master the new Microsoft Marketplace ecosystem. Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Discover the tectonic shifts happening within the Microsoft ecosystem as Cyril Belikoff and Jon Yoo dive deep into the unification of the Microsoft Marketplace and the explosive rise of AI-driven commerce. This comprehensive discussion explores how the marketplace is transitioning from an incubation island to the mainland of Microsoft’s go-to-market strategy, allowing partners to tap into massive Azure consumption commitments. Learn how product-led growth, AI agents, and optimized digital flows are replacing traditional sales motions, making cloud marketplaces the default engine for scaling revenue in 2026 and beyond. https://youtu.be/cAeSIEXbnNo Key Takeaways Microsoft unified its various marketplaces into a single digital flywheel for customers to discover, try, and buy applications. Applications, such as Copilot certified agents, are contextually surfaced directly within Microsoft products to meet users in their flow of work. Customers are making massive Azure commitments, and purchasing full software stacks through the marketplace retires those commitments entirely. Cloud marketplaces have evolved from a secondary channel into the default go-to-market engine with triple-digit revenue growth. Partners must shift from deal-led transactions to product-led growth by optimizing their digital marketplace listings for AI and search engines. The future of software procurement will increasingly involve AI agents acting on behalf of organizations to seamlessly integrate multiple smaller applications. If you're ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags: Microsoft Marketplace, Azure commitments, AI agents, Frontier transformation, M365 Copilot, Foundry, digital flywheel, co-selling, product-led growth, ecosystem shift, SaaS distribution, REO, resale enabled offer, listing optimization, search engine optimization, agentic commerce, cloud go-to-market, revenue recognition, multi-party private offers, Hyperscalers Transcript: Cyril Belikoff and Jon Yoo Audio Podcast [00:00:00] Cyril Belikoff: Why do you have to outsource this or create this vi? Just edit the video right there yourself. Like why do you have to just go do the, as a marketer you want to create a beautiful piece of content, just go and create it. ’cause it can create it for you. Now [00:00:13] Jon Yoo: you can feel it happening. The ecosystem is shifting beneath us, the way Hyperscalers are partnering. [00:00:19] Jon Yoo: How AI is remaking the channel and what it means to win in 2026. [00:00:25] Vince Menzione: Welcome to The Ultimate Partner Podcast. I’m Vince Manzione, your host. [00:00:30] Jon Yoo: We just wrapped up two days in Bellevue with some of the sharpest partner leaders in the business, and what we heard wasn’t incremental, it was tectonic. In this series, we’re going deeper into these conversations, the insights, the frameworks, the real movement we’re seeing in this market right now, because being in the room changes everything and we’re bringing that room to you. [00:00:55] Vince Menzione: And I am thrilled actually for this next one. Uh, I’ve had this opportunity to spend a little bit of time with this gentleman before, and welcoming him back is a pleasure and an honor. Cyril Beov, the vice president. I’m gonna botch up your title ’cause I always say marketplaces, but it’s much more than that. [00:01:14] Vince Menzione: So come on up, zero. And we’re gonna have a conversation and Cyril is amongst other things at Microsoft. Good to see you, sir. Yeah, [00:01:24] Cyril Belikoff: you too, [00:01:25] Vince Menzione: uh, is responsible for the, the Microsoft marketplace. [00:01:29] Cyril Belikoff: Are these your notes here? [00:01:30] Vince Menzione: These are, um, what is that? Yeah, these is gonna be our, our questions, so we, yeah, I, I need help sometimes so prompting, but, uh, so great to have you. [00:01:38] Vince Menzione: So just for purposes of title and context, ’cause your role is much bigger than just marketplace. Yeah. And we’re, we’re gonna sit down and John, is this me? Yes. And then John’s gonna join us. [00:01:47] Cyril Belikoff: Okay. Great. [00:01:48] Joe, [00:01:48] Vince Menzione: well, we’re gonna get started and start having a conversation. And we’ve, we’ve done some of these things before. [00:01:53] Vince Menzione: I’ve, I’ve had, you had me on your stage Yes. In your event at Alyssa Taylor’s event. [00:01:57] Cyril Belikoff: Yes. [00:01:58] Vince Menzione: And then, uh, we’ve, we’ve done some nice things together on stage, both at, at our event in Redmond last year. Yes. Then at our big, uh, ignite breakfast back [00:02:07] Cyril Belikoff: and forth, we had Vince come to our wider org and sort of, uh, I got to do the reverse. [00:02:13] Cyril Belikoff: And so interview him in front of a bunch of, uh, 500 marketers on what do we have to think about for partners. And so he gave us sort of the what’s going on in the partner ecosystem, how to think about it as we think about it, our marketing. [00:02:26] Vince Menzione: And I tried to be candid and represent this group. [00:02:28] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah, that’s great. [00:02:29] Yeah. [00:02:30] Vince Menzione: Was wonderful. Thank you for doing that. [00:02:31] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. [00:02:32] Vince Menzione: You, you work, you work in an amazing organization. Um, I’ve known Alyssa for many years as well, and you’re an incredible leader. And I just, I wanna frame this maybe with a conversation about, ’cause we’re gonna talk about what’s changed, but, but I think it’s still important for everybody in the room to understand what you did and what your team orchestrated around market. [00:02:52] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah, [00:02:52] Vince Menzione: because it was fragmented, it was in different organizations, it felt very dis disorganized, I guess. Yeah. For lack of a better word. [00:02:59] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. Thank you. Um, essentially we took it from incubation Island to the mainland Microsoft. I love it. Uh, GTM [00:03:07] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:03:07] Cyril Belikoff: Is the simplest way to think about it. Um, and, uh, come September last year now, uh, we unified the, the, the, the many marketplaces. [00:03:19] Cyril Belikoff: Uh, whether it was an Azure marketplace or AppSource and others, and we created the new Microsoft marketplace. Yeah. So one single place for customers to come, discover, try, buy, and for partners, software companies and other NSIs to put their wares up. And, uh, it was the first step in a vision for us to create this digital flywheel for us to bring our customers and our partners together in a more, you know, automated way. [00:03:47] Vince Menzione: Which it, it sounds crazy when you think about it, right? Microsoft has always been like the partnership leader, the leader in the technology, and to have fragmented marketplaces before, right? Yeah. And so what clarity to bring that all together. [00:04:00] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. It was a big, it was a big step for us and I think what we realized is that customers and partners were saying, Hey, uh, it’s all one place. [00:04:07] Cyril Belikoff: If I’m looking for a SaaS application or an agent or, and plug into teams or whatever it is. I just want to get it all in one spot. Uh, and, uh, and then we need you to connect us to your channel. [00:04:21] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:04:21] Cyril Belikoff: Uh, and your partners and, uh, can you build out, you know, partner capabilities for that Connects channel to software companies, to, to customers in a digital flywheel way. [00:04:30] Cyril Belikoff: Um, one of the things we actually also announced at that time was this concept of what we call. The marketplace framework. So it’s not just the fact that we have this digital experience or web experience, but that, um, applications that go into the marketplace, depending on the type of applications they get contextually surfaced within Microsoft products. [00:04:53] Vince Menzione: Okay. [00:04:53] Cyril Belikoff: And so if you’re, [00:04:54] Vince Menzione: explain that for this Yeah. For me and for this crap. [00:04:57] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. So if you are a, um, if you’re a co-pilot certified agent. M 365 copilot agent, you’ll be in the marketplace, but you’ll also be automatically surfaced inside the M 365 copilot, um, product. [00:05:11] Vince Menzione: Nice. [00:05:12] Cyril Belikoff: Same for, uh, large language models in foundry, add-ins in teams, those sort of things. [00:05:18] Cyril Belikoff: ’cause it’s one thing to be where people go to discover Tribu, but users also go into these stores, whether it’s a developer user or an end user. They go in the flow of their work and they want to move quickly. Yes. And so, uh, so they have access. We think that’s very attractive. And the feedback was, Hey, that’s quite differentiated. [00:05:35] Cyril Belikoff: ’cause we have, uh, hundreds of millions of customers in these products every day. [00:05:39] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:05:39] Cyril Belikoff: And so giving our customers access, our partners access to it and improving their customer experience, um, has worked out well. [00:05:47] Vince Menzione: And something else you did too, because at one point, you know, we were talking about co-selling and single-threaded. [00:05:53] Vince Menzione: And Microsoft has this incredible ecosystem and channel. [00:05:57] Cyril Belikoff: Yes. [00:05:58] Vince Menzione: And it, it was totally disconnected from the whole marketplace strategy, right? Yes. Yeah. [00:06:03] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. So we, uh, um, we launched, I think in, uh, sorry. At that time in September, we launched five of our largest distributors who were also federating the Microsoft marketplace into their marketplaces. [00:06:16] Cyril Belikoff: And then in the November timeframe at Microsoft Ignite, we launched resale enabled offer [00:06:23] Vince Menzione: RO, [00:06:23] Cyril Belikoff: which is REO, which is a new capability that is proven extremely popular, that connects the software company and the reseller, you know, um, to go and do more deals at scale faster. So [00:06:36] Vince Menzione: we have, we have four of the Es in the room, [00:06:38] Cyril Belikoff: right? [00:06:38] Vince Menzione: Some of the four at the top. Five or six. And then also one of your largest resellers software, one is here as well. [00:06:45] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. Great. [00:06:46] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:06:47] Cyril Belikoff: Great. So it’s, uh, we’ve been busy. [00:06:48] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:06:49] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. Like I said, um, uh, much more work to do. But we are moving from like this incubation project to mainland get it integrated into our core customer, go to market, uh, so that our, uh, software companies and partners have access to those customers. [00:07:03] Cyril Belikoff: And then integration, uh, with the channel. So [00:07:06] Vince Menzione: it’s been a lot happening these last 12 months. Uh. Then Frontier, let’s talk about Frontier. That’s another piece of this. [00:07:14] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. I’m sure Steven touched on, uh, frontier Transformational or becoming Frontier or Frontier Firm. So probably not helpful to me rehash that. [00:07:23] Cyril Belikoff: I think in general. If you go to a Microsoft discussion or session and you don’t hear about frontier or Frontier transformation, please like, raise your hand and give feedback because that is, um, [00:07:34] Vince Menzione: I kept away from the word frontier with Steve. We were talking about it, but we weren’t using the term frontier. [00:07:38] Vince Menzione: Yeah. ’cause I feel like it gets overused. It’s, [00:07:40] Cyril Belikoff: yeah, it does. It’s, it’s sort of, um, what we try to do with it is articulate it in a way that it’s not just about AI for AI’s sake. [00:07:48] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:07:48] Cyril Belikoff: But it’s AI based on what the customer outcome is trying to, what the customer is trying to achieve on their outcome. Um, and so as part of that, of course, you know, agents, AI applications is a big part of what’s driving customers’ capability of, uh, to become frontier. [00:08:05] Cyril Belikoff: And, uh, the marketplace is part of that. ’cause they can either custom build that. Uh, or they can, you know, buy off the shelf, right? Uh, or, and actually in Combin they do mostly they do both, right? And so, um, in order to accelerate their ability to become more frontier, we have these, uh, partners that build, uh, third party solutions through a marketplace. [00:08:27] Cyril Belikoff: And then, uh, uh, those same partners or others that build bespoke solutions around that. So, um, a lot of momentum around, uh, AI apps and agencies, as you can imagine. Um, we have, I think, 5,000 plus AI apps and agents. [00:08:43] Vince Menzione: I was gonna ask you what you’re focused on now, but you, I think you’re tying into this now already. [00:08:47] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. Um, so of course that’s important. [00:08:50] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:08:50] Cyril Belikoff: But really for us it’s about doubling down on driving customer, customer demand. How do we merchandise the right things that customers are looking for? How do we, uh, accelerate any of our flows? Like we will spend hours just looking at like the flow of one scenario. [00:09:07] Cyril Belikoff: Where is it getting stuck? How do we improve it? Um, and then how do we connect it to the channel? And, and what, what more things can we do like EO or multi-party private offers and the like, and we have. Probably an announcement a month in the next three or four months. [00:09:24] Vince Menzione: Oh, come on. Let’s, [00:09:24] Cyril Belikoff: that will, [00:09:25] Vince Menzione: I know, I know it’s early. [00:09:26] Vince Menzione: I know it’s early, but you, you’ve got some, I know you’ve got some things. Think [00:09:29] Cyril Belikoff: about the customer experience. Think about the channel integration and dream about [00:09:33] Vince Menzione: what maybe more of a global scale with some of the offerings, maybe, maybe. Um, so, you know, I, so I, the earnings, we talked about the earnings with Steven, but I thought that there was a very compelling number around the commitment number. [00:09:46] Vince Menzione: Yes. You and you run your Azure as part of your remit. We didn’t go through your entire remit. [00:09:50] Cyril Belikoff: Yep. [00:09:51] Vince Menzione: It’s not just marketplace. You also, you also own the Azure number. [00:09:53] Cyril Belikoff: Yep. [00:09:54] Vince Menzione: Let’s talk about that. [00:09:55] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. Um. You know, it’s, it’s exciting times for customers. They want to do things not only with us, but with everyone in the room. [00:10:04] Cyril Belikoff: Um, and they are making very large commitments, huge commitments over the next two to three years to spend on Azure. Um, and so it’s now our joint jobs to go and help them identify the right business outcome and go and, you know, consume that commitment. It is just a commitment. It’s not actual. Consumption. [00:10:27] Cyril Belikoff: Yes. And so it’s all of our jobs to take advantage of that. The, the customers are saying, Hey, we have line of sight to the types of things we want to go do over the next two to three years. Uh, probably not everything is, you know, i’s dotted and t’s across, but they have line of sight to most of it. Um, and how do we go help them drive that? [00:10:46] Cyril Belikoff: Um, and so from an Azure perspective, obviously that’s very encouraging for us. It, it allows us to. Invest in more data centers and more capacity that we are doing as fast as we can. Um, and then, um, and then of course on marketplace, the marketplace can retire. [00:11:04] Vince Menzione: That’s [00:11:04] Cyril Belikoff: that Azure commitment. That’s, [00:11:05] Vince Menzione: I wanted to make sure [00:11:06] Cyril Belikoff: people understand that the, in fact, not only the Azure component from the marketplace, but the full software stack from the partner, uh, the software company retires the Azure commitment. [00:11:17] Cyril Belikoff: So if it’s. Uh, I’ll make it up if it’s, uh, a hundred bucks and it’s 50 50, it’s not 50 50, but, um, I won’t disclose any percentages, but let’s say it’s 50 50, it’s much more for the software company, by the way. Um, if it’s 50 50, it’s not just like the $50 for Azure that gets retired. It’s the entire a hundred dollars that gets retired on the customer commitment, commitment, which is great for the software company. [00:11:39] Cyril Belikoff: It’s also great for the customer that they can, you know. Bring that through, uh, to, uh, to their Azure commitment. And we do the same thing with our sellers. So the marketplace sales retire our sellers compensation. So we’re like checking every box so that there’s no friction in the system. So that, so the partner, the customer, our sellers, they’re all juiced to go and. [00:12:03] Cyril Belikoff: Deals with marketplace. [00:12:04] Vince Menzione: I, I hope everybody un understand. I mean, I understand this. I hope everybody else understand this too. ’cause I, I was, watch, you know, I, I, I watched LinkedIn and I see people post things and somebody made a comment about how difficult it was to use Microsoft Portal. And I was thinking to myself, do you realize that there’s, I’ll say 150 billion, but it’s probably a bigger number than that. [00:12:22] Vince Menzione: That’s a total addressable market available to you if you’re a Microsoft partner. You can access these customer commitments. [00:12:30] Cyril Belikoff: Oh yes. [00:12:30] Vince Menzione: If you bring your product on Mark over 400 now [00:12:32] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. [00:12:33] Vince Menzione: You bring your product into the marketplace, you have access and the customer can retire that commitment. [00:12:38] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. [00:12:39] Vince Menzione: Without having to justify a new cost justification. [00:12:41] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. They don’t have to go to procurement. They don’t have to. Yeah. [00:12:44] Vince Menzione: Yeah. I mean, it’s a huge opportunity. [00:12:46] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. [00:12:46] Vince Menzione: So, um, so you’ve been focused on quite a bit. We wanted to invite John on stage. [00:12:53] Cyril Belikoff: Great. [00:12:53] Vince Menzione: John, you from Sugar is here. Where’s John? Is John in the house? Where’s John? [00:12:57] Cyril Belikoff: There he is. [00:12:58] Vince Menzione: Who’s also an expert in Marketplace. [00:13:00] Vince Menzione: A great friend of Ultimate Partner. Great. Hey, how’s it going? He’s a great partner of Ultimate Partner. Great to see you, sir. All the way from San Fran. Oh, actually we’re on your side of the coast, so, uh, it’s long. He looks [00:13:12] Jon Yoo: cooler than us [00:13:12] Vince Menzione: though. He, he always looks cool. I said that about time. [00:13:15] Jon Yoo: You know, I gotta be comfortable. [00:13:16] Jon Yoo: I gotta be comfortable. [00:13:18] Vince Menzione: So John, good to, good to have you. You’re thanks for having us. You guys are like, every time I see a post from you, you’re moving into a new office space ’cause you’ve outgrown your office space. [00:13:26] Jon Yoo: Yeah, we’re, we’re really excited about the new office. We have hvac, which is a, a big, big, uh, it’s a big thing. [00:13:31] Jon Yoo: Improvements, high ceilings, you know, the whole works h help [00:13:36] Cyril Belikoff: sometimes. Yeah, [00:13:37] Jon Yoo: yeah, yeah, yeah. We, we have our, uh, office opening party if anyone’s an SF on Ally first. [00:13:41] Vince Menzione: Nice. Nice. Yeah. May, may, May 21st. May 21st. That’s right. Well, so, so you’ve been, you’ve had like a front row seat to all of this. I would love to get your perspective on what you’re seeing across partners and what’s changed over the last 12 months. [00:13:55] Jon Yoo: Yeah, so, uh, for those that don’t know, um, sugar is a, uh, a revenue platform for cloud marketplaces and co-selling. Um, so we partner very closely with Microsoft as well as either hyperscalers and other marketplaces like Snowflake, Alibaba, et cetera. And what we, what, what I’m seeing is a couple things. One marketplace is becoming a default to go to market engine. [00:14:17] Jon Yoo: So, you know, I think a lot of people see the stats about how the, the GMV, so, you know, the, the throughput through these marketplaces have been doubling. We’re seeing that in our data as well. So we’re seeing triple digit revenue growth from marketplaces. We’re seeing companies who, you know, maybe the earlier end of marketplaces were infra platform layer of software that used to really adopt it. [00:14:37] Jon Yoo: Now you’re seeing. You know, explosion in a business application layer of companies as well. And so that’s super exciting. I’d say the second piece is channel players are getting more and more involved. Um, I think, you know, I’m the Silicon Valley SaaS bubble, uh, or the AI bubble, so to speak. And I didn’t know as much about the channel world and even these big AI companies. [00:14:59] Jon Yoo: I mean, you’re seeing unprecedented, unprecedented demand, uh, for these, you know, LMS or these AI biz apps. And despite that, they are really working with a partner ecosystem because you’re realizing that most of the world do not really know how to adopt ai. Yeah. And they’re really leaning on expertise. [00:15:18] Jon Yoo: And these AI companies, AI native companies, are looking to channel partners who have these. You know, relationships with their end buyers on how to deliver change managements, how to deliver enablement, not just a system integration site. [00:15:32] Vince Menzione: And they’re also looking to the platform or platforms in the case, Microsoft here also. [00:15:36] Vince Menzione: Right. Which, because like what, where am I gonna do just go out and buy philanthropic or Claude or whatever? I need that to be integrated into my enterprise as well. Right, exactly. [00:15:46] Jon Yoo: So we’re definitely seeing like more adoption of Microsoft Foundry, for example, as people think about security and governance and whatnot. [00:15:52] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Very cool. Any comments on, on? [00:15:55] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah, that makes absolute sense. It’s, uh, um, you know, lots of layers to AI from data. The a, the AI layer itself, the application layer, uh, and innovations happening at all of those pieces of the stack. Um, and so when a software company is trying to, you know, uh, modernize their thought process or build new. [00:16:19] Cyril Belikoff: They ha they have to think about all of those components. Foundry obviously is the AI layer and it provides them with capability to be agile and move quickly and do compliance and, and snap into an organization’s, um, architecture. But it’s the same applies to data, like how it’s fine to have AI but doesn’t, doesn’t do anything without data. [00:16:40] Vince Menzione: Right. [00:16:40] Cyril Belikoff: And so then how do they get data in the cloud? Um, uh, [00:16:44] Vince Menzione: and then how do you security [00:16:45] Cyril Belikoff: govern and govern, right? And how you secure govern, you know, all those sort of things. So obviously we have first party experiences, but they have partners with, um, their own solutions. They’re built on top of, [00:16:53] Vince Menzione: yeah. [00:16:53] Cyril Belikoff: Those Microsoft layers. And, uh, you know, like John says, lots of momentum. [00:16:58] Vince Menzione: So let’s talk about the maturity curve. Like walk us through it. Where do you see partners in this room sitting today? And what does it take to move for them to move to the next stage? Like, what would be your guidance for, for this group? [00:17:11] Jon Yoo: So, you know, we, we work across the entire spectrum of companies. You know, we work with the, the largest enterprises who’ve done billions through these marketplaces like Snowflake, workday, to leading AI companies like Glean or OpenAI, uh, to earlier stage startups who are completely new to marketplaces and really look for, for guidance around what do I do in my first 90 days? [00:17:33] Jon Yoo: How do I get the attention of Microsoft sellers, or how do I. Optimize my marketplace operations so that we can be discovered, uh, really easily on Microsoft Marketplace and others. And the, the way that I think about it is companies first come on, because it is buyer driven oftentimes. So, I mean, that’s just the truth of the nature of you have these big enterprises that want to, you know, burn down their Mac agreements, for example, and that’s how they get started. [00:17:59] Jon Yoo: And or a, a as like this whole space maturing, you’re seeing. A new CRO come in and they’ve done this at X, Y, Z companies and they want to bring that playbook over. But then as they start to do a couple deals through these marketplaces, they think, and this is start of the the flywheel, right? Hey, what do I need for co-selling? [00:18:19] Jon Yoo: And there are systems, you know, integrations and playbooks that need to be done well. Once you do have co-selling figured out, how do I now know which opportunities to co-sell? So we have things like intense signals to be able to. Help them, you know, help overlay a cloud, go to market lens over your existing pipeline. [00:18:36] Jon Yoo: And then now it becomes less of a partnership initiative and actually elevates up to the CRO initiative. And across each of those, um, layers, uh, you have different automation needs because once you actually start to get the flywheel going, it becomes. Holy crap. Now I’m doing 10, 20, 30, 50% of my revenue through these market, you know, through, through marketplace. [00:18:58] Jon Yoo: And it’s creating different data pipelines of work to be done. And now I have to figure out my finance angle of how do I do revenue recognition through these indirect channels. And so that, that, that is kind of the maturity covers. I think about it when you try to retrofit like, uh, all the automation up front, it doesn’t go as well. [00:19:16] Jon Yoo: You have to do a crawl, walk, run approach so that you can also build and bring the rest of the organization with you. So if I look at ’em to the, you know, there’s some familiar faces, some folks that probably are wondering some new faces [00:19:28] Vince Menzione: as well. [00:19:29] Jon Yoo: Yeah. What, what Microsoft marketplace or what marketplace even is. [00:19:33] Jon Yoo: I’d probably say people are in that transformation bucket of, Hey, I’ve done a couple of deals, we’re in this early stages of co-selling. Now I, now I gotta figure out how to supercharge it because this is kind of the future, you know, we can talk more about agenta commerce and whatnot, but, um, I think a lot of people are figuring it out than looking for. [00:19:51] Jon Yoo: For guidance here, [00:19:53] Vince Menzione: zero. [00:19:55] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. You know, I would say, um, I’ll get what I call tactical yet strategic. [00:20:01] Vince Menzione: Okay. [00:20:01] Cyril Belikoff: Which just think about product-led growth. Yeah. Just think about, uh, similar to the consumer world, if you wanna sell something, you need search engine optimization. If you are thinking about these marketplaces and Microsoft marketplace being one, how are you optimizing your listing so that when a user goes into like the search bar, it’s optimized to bring back the results that make sense to you? [00:20:29] Cyril Belikoff: I think historically we’ve had scenarios where some partners have used the marketplace primarily as like a transaction thing. They’ve done the deal, but then they’re transacted on the marketplace ’cause they wanna retire the the Azure commitment. And that is changing to be sort of product led and marketplace led, uh, versus deal led. [00:20:49] Cyril Belikoff: Uh, but you cannot have a generic one line sentence in your listing. You will not be surfaced unless the customer literally knows your name and will search for you. You’ll not be surfaced if they search for a particular category healthcare app that does something right. And if that’s your thing, you should have the right keywords, you have the right images, have the right videos, and we believed in it so much. [00:21:14] Cyril Belikoff: We actually built a listing optimization AI tool that will auto look at your listing. And based on our best practices, and we know what our search engine is doing, we will make recommendations to you on how to improve. Listing. And so it’s not like a read a document as a best practice. It actually will be an ai, uh, customized tool for your particular listing. [00:21:37] Cyril Belikoff: So lean into those types of things, you know, to, as John says, says, think about the digital flow. This over time will become much more of your, of your business. So make sure you’re thinking about, you know, if someone’s on the marketplace and they decide to trial something for you, how, how are you following up? [00:21:56] Cyril Belikoff: Like, how do you take the next steps? Um, maybe you, maybe you working with a reseller and you don’t have your own sellers, but how do you wiring that into your resellers so your resellers are following up? Or if you have your own sellers, you know, your own sellers are doing it. So you have to sort of digitize your thinking on sales and marketing in this new market, commercial marketplace world, versus in the same way we would’ve done in like the consumer marketplace on Amazon or, you know, um, as you search something on Google. [00:22:26] Cyril Belikoff: Maybe bing. Um, so, um, yeah, yeah. This [00:22:29] Vince Menzione: size. B Come on, come on. [00:22:31] Cyril Belikoff: I [00:22:31] Vince Menzione: had bing. [00:22:32] Cyril Belikoff: Um, [00:22:33] Jon Yoo: I do wanna double click on that, which is when, when we, you know, I talk about like, hey, a lot of it’s buyer driven. A lot of people think about private offers, but then the marketplace offers. But the reality actually, when we look at the data is that there’s a lot more self-service [00:22:46] Vince Menzione: correct [00:22:47] Jon Yoo: offers than there are what they call private offers. [00:22:50] Jon Yoo: So where there’s deal led and that, that, that, that shift. It’s super exciting to see where now these marketplaces are becoming where buyers or users go to discover new products. Let alone, you know, in the future where let’s say there’s an AI agent that has some reward seeking function, and in order to do its job, it needs to go purchase a tool marketplace might be the channel where this happens, which is all the reason why that your listing does need to be optimized. [00:23:16] Jon Yoo: So that one, the agent knows exactly what your tool does and it can match against. Reward. And then second, you have to win the a EO race, right? Yeah. Of, of how you show up in these AI engines. So just wanted to double click on how important that is. Yeah. [00:23:31] Cyril Belikoff: Makes, makes total sense. And we’re, we’re seeing that shift from private office to having a public listed price and a, a public offer as well. [00:23:39] Cyril Belikoff: And so we’re, we’re ourselves investing in our own marketing demand generation. Just in the last three to four months because we’ve seen that taking off and as soon as we saw the signal, we’re like, oh, we should pour fuel on that fire. Because if, if we see organically customers don’t do it, we should, you know, we should go after that and help them understand that we’re here. [00:23:58] Cyril Belikoff: And, uh, if it’s working for some that are doing it by themselves, it’ll work for others and we’re seeing really, really good results. Um, so yeah, get your listing optimized. Think about your digital flows. As John says, the flows of the future are probably agentic wise, maybe not even a human coming to the Microsoft marketplace. [00:24:17] Cyril Belikoff: So you gotta be thinking, not now, it’s okay. You have time. Um, but in the future, you know, six months from now, that quite easily is a scenario. So you really have to start thinking about those, uh, those, uh, digital flows. [00:24:29] Vince Menzione: Yeah. It’s so insightful. Well, it’s what you call product led growth, basically. Yes. And agent led growth. [00:24:35] Vince Menzione: Yes. Right. In some respects. So this is where like we need to think about that. The future model where the agent comes in and actually does the purchasing. We’re not there yet, are we? [00:24:45] Jon Yoo: No. With some products, you know, um, especially, especially if it’s like developer tools. We’re starting to see some of that, but, uh, no one’s gonna buy a cybersecurity solution. [00:24:55] Jon Yoo: Um, that’s seven figures or an agent’s not gonna do that. Right. But the eng the, the search functions are a little bit changing. [00:25:03] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So a lot of ai, you know, we had Steven Boyle on earlier, we were talking about ai, AI natives, you know, that’s Jason Grey’s organization does a lot of work in that area. How do these organizations need to think and act and how do they leverage the cloud marketplaces? [00:25:17] Vince Menzione: Or how do le how do marketplaces fit into the equation? ’cause most of them are coming from a different like paradigm or mindset. [00:25:24] Jon Yoo: I mean, uh, it’s like the number one question, you know, I’ll give a little personal story of like, I get a lot of parking tickets, uh, and I don’t know how to pay off my late fees. [00:25:34] Jon Yoo: So we set up a little open claw that will actually go and ask me questions, and it actually pays off my parking tickets on my behalf. Um, so, so, so, you know, on the other hand, like there, there’s layers to it, right? It could be like layer one, I ask ai, Hey, how do I pay off my parking tickets? Layer two could be. [00:25:52] Jon Yoo: Hey, you know, what’s the best way for me to structure my cadence to pay off the parking tickets? And then layer three is like, Hey, AI, proactively check if I have parking tickets and go pay it on my behalf. Here’s my credit card information, you know, stored in a secure vault. So, uh, what, what I mean by a native as a company bring that analogy is, uh, bringing it at its core. [00:26:12] Jon Yoo: So like a little for, for sugar. We’ve spent the past six months optimizing around our entire, like company brain where we are storing all the context. To a singular, singular place that is queryable, that there’s no coordination tax between teams. Our entire product development process actually is automated where we have multiple agents debating one another, PRDs to code generation, code review, uh, you know, security, qa, et cetera, et cetera. [00:26:40] Jon Yoo: And then there’s humans in the loop across the process. So I would actually think about when we, when we fit that into, into marketplaces, it’s not just thinking about who’s going to send the offers or who’s gonna do the co-sell, or who’s gonna X, Y, Z, but how do you bring all that together so that your sales reps and your partnership person and Microsoft all has to share context in a given deal and it’s done automatically without, you know, back office folks having to update what partner led or partner influence means and reporting things in a, in an old way. [00:27:11] Jon Yoo: So it’s almost re-imagining. Entire workflow, given everyone should have open context of what’s going on in a given deal. So let’s say maybe a hand wavy way of answering that question. Yeah. But it does mean that we should be re-imagining, uh, what the job to be done is, uh, very fundamentally [00:27:28] Vince Menzione: cy, how are you thinking about it since you’re building the, the, the toolkit at Microsoft? [00:27:32] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. Um, yeah. Well, John says absolutely is right, particularly around marketplace and how that sort of flow and ecosystem will work. Um, in addition to that, it’s. Not only about how marketplace or about developers ’cause the developer, uh, scenario or persona was the first globally to see the value of AI and agents in the flow of their work. [00:27:55] Cyril Belikoff: It was the first to like, oh, one developer can now do much more. I can be empowered, I can build agents to work on my behalf. I can, uh, I can be an architect instead of a hands-on coder. Right. It’s changed the profile of what developers do exactly what. Uh, John mentioned what he’s doing himself. That’s just one profile of a user. [00:28:17] Cyril Belikoff: Th there are many other profiles. A sales person, a marketer, a uh, CFO team, hr. Each of these are literally going through the same transformation. They’re one beat behind developers because developers, you know, was really tech enabled and tech stack driven, and the, and the opportunity was, was obvious quite quickly. [00:28:39] Cyril Belikoff: These are coming really quickly. This is not like the internet adoption cycle that took many multiple years. This is like, we’re talking months. So, and even inside Microsoft, we have our own, what we call, uh, frontier Marketing Internal Initiative to re, um, rewire marketers and how they go about their daily job and stop doing it this way and do it this way. [00:29:04] Cyril Belikoff: Just pick up M 365 copilot with. Coworking Claude, uh, embedded and just go do the work. Why do you have to outsource this or create this? Just edit the video right there yourself. Like, why do you have to just go do the, as a marketer you want to create a beautiful piece of content, just go and create it. [00:29:21] Cyril Belikoff: ’cause it can create it for you now. [00:29:22] Vince Menzione: Yeah, [00:29:23] Cyril Belikoff: three months ago, literally three months ago, it couldn’t do that. And so what is it gonna be in two months for a marketer or a salesperson or finance person? I mean, just co-pilot in Excel. What that is doing to the financial business is in, like if you, any financial person will tell you they live and breathe through in Excel, like it’s just, it’s their equivalent of, it runs [00:29:44] Vince Menzione: most businesses [00:29:44] Cyril Belikoff: their dev tool, right? [00:29:45] Cyril Belikoff: It’s their thing. It’s really [00:29:46] Vince Menzione: is. [00:29:47] Cyril Belikoff: So this is happening over and over again. Again, if you can package those things up and package a package, that piece of IP on a marketplace is, is not only gonna be a big system, it could be a very, very small piece of. Functionality in a flow for a marketer or a salesperson that is so valuable that can be solved many times on a marketplace. [00:30:08] Cyril Belikoff: And in many cases, everyone’s a software company at this point. Everybody can go and package something up. And so I would be stunned if we don’t see cross pollination from system integrators to channel partners, all just publishing on marketplaces based on, oh, I’ve done this thing four times. I cannot do it 400 times. [00:30:26] Cyril Belikoff: Let me just package it up and put it on a marketplace. So. Yeah, I’m sure you know, John alluded to that. It’s, there’s a lot of exciting times. [00:30:33] Vince Menzione: No, the future [00:30:33] Jon Yoo: is [00:30:33] Vince Menzione: great. What do you [00:30:34] Jon Yoo: totally, I mean, it’s, it’s a case of like, how do, what does being marketplace native also mean? [00:30:38] Cyril Belikoff: Yes. [00:30:38] Jon Yoo: You know, and not, I feel like I’ve seen so many people just use it as a, Hey, we’re opportunistically there and if we get some leads out of it, great. [00:30:45] Jon Yoo: Or if there’s some deals, great, but they’re not really leaning in and being marketplace native the way, you know, and right now there’s, this might be uncomfortable, but there’s no excuses. You know, like creating a partner marketing content with your brand guidelines. It should not take so many time. Or it’s a 10 minute exercise. [00:31:02] Jon Yoo: Exactly. Exactly. Three [00:31:03] Cyril Belikoff: prompts. [00:31:05] Vince Menzione: It used to be that ops used to get involved because, oh, we, we know that they have a commitment. Let’s go run it through the marketplace. Right now, what you both have been suggesting here is it becomes a discoverable process. It becomes part of your normal go to market strategy, and you’re, you’re driving pr, product led growth and SEO and all the things you need to do running a a corporation and modern corporation today. [00:31:26] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah, [00:31:26] Vince Menzione: exactly. So, what’s the future like? Where, where do we go in 12 months with this? What do you think? What do you predict? We, we get out a Ouija board or a crystal ball here. What, what, what do we think? [00:31:38] Cyril Belikoff: I think more broadly in the industry, you’re gonna, some of the scenarios that John alluded to, agent to agent interactions, uh, many agents acting on behalf of humans and on behalf of organizations, uh, and doing. [00:31:55] Cyril Belikoff: Simple things and quite complex things. Uh, and those need to be, uh, managed carefully, uh, with, uh, the right, uh, engagements and built carefully. And in, in many cases, customers will look to partners that are quote unquote certified on, uh, uh, HyperCloud platform. Uh, as a way to get going quickly, but also get the, the quality that they need. [00:32:21] Cyril Belikoff: Um, and I think instead of buying this monolithic, massive application, I think we will see lots more of smaller applications being built that have cleaner open, uh, you know, MC, you know, MCP type agent interfaces that can just work together, uh, without, you know. More complicated integration work, [00:32:42] Vince Menzione: cobbled together your own solutions as opposed to big [00:32:45] Cyril Belikoff: monolithic [00:32:45] Vince Menzione: applications. [00:32:46] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah, there’ll be a much more agile, [00:32:48] Vince Menzione: yeah. [00:32:48] Cyril Belikoff: Uh, personalization. I mean, a lot of people saying SaaS is dead. It’s not quite dead. But I think that SaaS will get significantly more agile, more custom and more personal, uh, for, uh, for customers. [00:33:03] Jon Yoo: I, I would agree with that. Um, I mean, I’m biased, but I think marketplace are gonna be even more relevant than ever. [00:33:08] Jon Yoo: I mean, it’s already highly relevant, but, uh, as you, you know, I think in the past the, the narrative was, well, there’s a new generation of buyers and they’re millennials. They, they wanted, you know, uh, I always talk about consumer experience to B2B sales, you know, and, and now it’s like agents that’s that on steroids. [00:33:24] Jon Yoo: Um, but what I, you know, beyond that, I think, uh, there, there’s a lot of talk of like SAS apocalypse or software companies getting. Destroyed by, you know, the, the, the AI labs or SaaS is dead or whatever. I think SaaS is gonna, I mean, there’s gonna be way more software companies because the cost to build is a lot easier. [00:33:46] Jon Yoo: That means that competition will be. Even more fierce than ever. And you have all these AI native companies that are coming out with a quicker time to market, quicker time to value, and they have some recursive loops that makes the product even that much better. Um, so what that means for everyone is like, one, you gotta go back to the, the core differentiations. [00:34:06] Jon Yoo: Or like in the past, maybe the, the time to build was the differentiation, but today it’s, or you know, there’s some other, obviously the core elements, but then there’s. Distribution. Yeah. So how do you partner with Microsoft, for example? How do you have your own self-improving like distribution model? That makes sense. [00:34:22] Jon Yoo: Marketplace being a huge component of that. Two is obviously there, there’s a piece of like network and data. That’s what we think about of hey, what makes our product better as more, more people use it. Um, because yeah, competition is crazy fierce and it finally goes into times deployment. That’s why you see these companies like. [00:34:41] Jon Yoo: Open AI anthropic that are competing for their enterprise, uh, pie. And instead of doing it themselves, they’re, I mean, I think OpenAI just did a joint venture of like $4.1 billion into the deployment company. Anthropics doing the same, they’re surrounding themselves with the ecosystem and channel is going to be more relevant than than ever, as long as you know how to enable AI services and know how to deliver on this technology to the, to the broader world. [00:35:07] Jon Yoo: And so. Channel awesome. Marketplace, awesome. You know, competition’s gonna be fierce. Success is not going anywhere. [00:35:16] Vince Menzione: Good conversation, gentlemen. [00:35:18] Jon Yoo: Awesome. [00:35:18] Vince Menzione: I’ve been told we’re over time. I wanted to open it up to questions. Um, but I do feel like we, yeah, I’ll get, I’ll get yelled at. But this was incredible. Um, some great, I mean, the, the pa it, it’s terrific to see. [00:35:36] Vince Menzione: How far we’ve come in, so shorter period of time, and it’s only gonna continue to get better. I think the one question I’ll have is like, what, what would hold any of these companies back at this point? It feels like it’s such a compelling reason we need to move forward. Is there, is there anything, like why would, why would we hold back? [00:35:54] Cyril Belikoff: Um, you know, some of the discussions we have, um, is about how to balance today’s world with tomorrow’s world a little bit. [00:36:01] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:36:02] Cyril Belikoff: Today’s business model with tomorrow’s business model, today’s financial results with tomorrow’s financial results. Um, and there are very different approaches to all of this. [00:36:13] Cyril Belikoff: Those AI natives, they’re like, there is no yesterday. There’s only tomorrow. Um, there those companies that realize they’re being threatened by AI natives and so they have to move quickly. Um, and, uh. Figure out a, a, a business model and then someone else who wants to do a bit of both and bridge into it. [00:36:32] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:36:32] Cyril Belikoff: Um, and just within that frame there are different ways to tackle it, whether it’s create two teams, one’s the future team, one’s the current team, and, you know, may the best team win, um, makes sense with the customer and that, uh, or, uh, give the, give the customer the choice and have the teams going together. [00:36:49] Cyril Belikoff: So there are lots of different approaches. [00:36:51] Vince Menzione: Right. So great to have you. Did you have some, did you have a comment to make on that? [00:36:55] Jon Yoo: Uh, no. Just, uh, unwillingness to lean in and learn something new. Yeah. [00:36:59] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:37:00] Jon Yoo: I’m, I’m, I’m much more in the burn all boats buckets. Yeah, [00:37:03] Vince Menzione: I know. Me too. [00:37:03] Jon Yoo: Of, uh, no, no old team and new team. [00:37:05] Jon Yoo: Just new team and you know, that’s just push forward. [00:37:07] Vince Menzione: Well, great to have two amazing leaders on stage with [00:37:10] Cyril Belikoff: us. Thanks [00:37:10] Vince Menzione: so [00:37:10] Cyril Belikoff: much. [00:37:10] Vince Menzione: So thank you [00:37:11] Jon Yoo: so much. Yeah, thank [00:37:11] Vince Menzione: you [00:37:15] Jon Yoo: so much. [00:37:16] Vince Menzione: Don’t forget. Ultimate Partner Live is coming soon, October 26th through October 28th in Reston, Virginia. I hope to see you there. [00:37:28] I.

When growth pressure hits an organization, it triggers a hidden survival instinct: teams become political, siloed, and reactive.Most executives try to solve this by pushing harder—but driving pace without dignity is exactly how you destroy organizational trust.In this episode of Lead The Team, Ben Fanning sits down with Mark Banfield, Chief Revenue Officer at TeamViewer (and former CEO of 1e), to break down what it actually takes to scale a high-growth SaaS business across private equity and public markets without causing massive team burnout.Mark shares the exact framework required to create "constructive interference"—a powerful force multiplier that aligns every single employee, from the front lines to the C-suite, toward a singular North Star.This conversation covers:• The early warning signs that your company is becoming political instead of mission-driven• Pace vs. Dignity: How to demand high execution without breaking your team's culture• The transition from CRO to CEO: What leading revenue can never prepare you for• Trust vs. Surveillance: The reality of implementing autonomous tech and AI in the workspaceWhether you're a CEO, executive, founder, or ambitious professional navigating modern leadership under extreme market pressure, this episode will fundamentally change how you balance performance with human relationships.Chapters00:00 – The growth pressure mistake most executives make02:18 – The CASE framework for authentic leadership trust05:15 – Early warning signs of toxic organizational silos07:45 – Pace vs. Dignity: Balancing pressure and human relationships09:35 – CRO to CEO: The brutal reality of total accountability14:10 – Lessons from competitive swimming: Mindset, monotony, and discipline22:14 – Trust vs. Surveillance: The future of autonomous AI workforce tech37:04 – Constructive Interference: How to build a true force multiplier Ben Fanning interviews top executives, CEOs, founders, and business leaders to uncover the real-world leadership lessons shaping modern organizations.Topics include executive psychology, high-performance teams, SaaS scaling strategy, crisis leadership, private equity growth, organizational transformation, and building trust in the AI era. Subscribe for weekly conversations on leadership under pressure, executive performance, team alignment, and building resilient organizations.Boost your productivity and decision-making—get vital insights from each episode delivered directly to your inbox at:http://benfanning.com/insight#leadership #ExecutiveLeadership #TeamAlignment #HighPerformanceTeams #SaaSLeadership #BusinessPodcast #LeadTheTeam-----Connect with the Host, #1 bestselling author Ben FanningSpeaking and Training inquiresSubscribe to my Youtube channelLinkedInInstagramTwitter

Mark Roberge, founding CRO at HubSpot and co-founder of Stage 2 Capital, joins Sam Jacobs and AJ Bruno to tackle the question every board is asking in 2026: how do you actually measure AI's impact on a go-to-market team? They get into the revenue velocity formula, why selling time is the one variable AI can realistically double, and the ICONIQ data showing AI lifts top-of-funnel conversion 11% while barely moving active deal cycles. Plus, a Quiz Pro Quo on Palantir's 137% rule of 40 and Twilio's $5.6 million ARR per employee, a debate on whether the AI-era winner is the first mover or the fast follower, and a bull-versus-bear on whether HubSpot is the most mispriced stock in software at $3.5 billion in ARR. Key Takeaways: - Of the four variables in the revenue velocity formula, selling time is the one AI can realistically double right now. As Mark Roberge put it: "best in class has historically been about 30%. And I see a lot of evidence that today's AI can push that to 60% plus… all you do is go from 30% to 60% selling time, just algebraically you double productivity." - Before measuring AI's impact, stop accepting vague claims that a team is "AI-enabled." Roberge said he got fed up hearing it in board meetings if they can't show measurable impact.  - Set realistic expectations on what AI has actually delivered so far. Asked whether any company has jumped from tier B to tier A on AI adoption, Roberge was blunt: "Not on like a 2x, but on a 10% to 20%… I've been disappointed… it's not our portfolio, it's just the entire ecosystem." The step-change, he believes, is still ahead. - In the AI era, the copycat often beats the pioneer. "they all say fast follower wins most of the time," Roberge said of the research he could find, "it's about a third first mover, two-thirds fast follower." Faster product cycles and first movers stuck in what he calls "ACV jail" tilt the odds toward the fast follower. Connect with the Hosts & Guests: Host: Sam Jacobs, CEO at Pavilion - https://www.linkedin.com/in/samfjacobs/ Host: AJ Bruno, CEO at QuotaPath - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajbruno3/ Guest: Mark Roberge, Co-Founder at Stage 2 Capital - https://www.linkedin.com/in/markroberge/ Topline is more than a YouTube Channel: Subscribe to Topline Newsletter: https://toplinemedia.substack.com/ Subscribe to the Topline Podcast, the #1 podcast for founders, operators, and investors in B2B tech: https://www.joinpavilion.com/topline-podcast Join the free Topline Slack channel to connect with 600+ revenue leaders to keep the conversation going beyond the podcast: https://www.joinpavilion.com/topline-slack  Chapters:  00:00 Introducing Mark Roberge 01:33 The Science Of Scaling Book 03:57 Vibe Coding Mark's Frameworks 05:42 NPS, Referrals, And Value 09:33 What Is Product Market Fit? 14:34 Measuring AI In Go-To-Market 19:25 The Revenue Velocity Formula 22:43 Selling Time Can Double Output 24:07 AI Use Cases That Move Metrics 32:56 Has AI Created Tier-A Yet? 42:35 How To Measure Selling Time 47:48 Quiz Pro Quo 54:05 First Mover Vs Fast Follower 1:08:42 Bulls And Bears

Seller productivity is being redefined in real time, and the divide is no longer about effort or experience. In this segment, Alex Varel shares a grounded look at how AI is already reshaping the role, from a RevOps leader training multiple agents in a single weekend to the expectation that sellers will augment their own output. The conversation highlights a growing reality for revenue teams: those who get hands-on with AI will operate at a different level, while those who don't risk falling behind faster than they expect. Alex Varel is EVP of Worldwide Sales at Cerebras Systems, where he leads global go-to-market efforts at the forefront of AI infrastructure. He has built and scaled high-performing teams across MongoDB, Zscaler, and Multiverse, driving growth through IPO, hyper-scale expansion, and emerging technology shifts. Connect with Alex: LinkedIn Resources mentioned: "The Power of Myth" by Joseph Campbell "AI Superpowers" by Kai-Fu Lee “Leonardo da Vinci” by Walter Isaacson "No Country for Old Men" by Cormac McCarthy "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy “The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley” by Jimmy Soni Listen to the full episode: How AI Is Rewriting the Sales Playbook and Raising the Bar on Human Performance with Alex Varel Hosted by five-time CRO John McMahon and Force Management Co-Founder John Kaplan, the Revenue Builders podcast goes behind the scenes with the sales leaders who have been there, done that, and seen the results. This show is brought to you by Force Management. We help companies improve sales performance, executing their growth strategy at the point of sale. Connect with Us: LinkedInYouTubeForce Management

The marketing funnel you've built your whole strategy around? It never described how people actually buy. It was a tidy oversimplification, and in a world of zero-click search and AI-saturated channels, it's never held up worse.In this episode, Amber sits down with Udi Ledergor — Gong's first marketer, now Chief Evangelist, author of Courageous Marketing, and the guy who ran a Super Bowl ad and coined a category on the way to $500M in ARR.Udi's argument cuts against the "hack-everything" reflex of modern GTM: brand isn't a vibe, it's trust, and trust is the only thing that makes a buyer go straight to you instead of crawling through a funnel. What this episode covers:Why brand comes down to one thing, trust, and how raving fans replace the funnel entirelyThe unconventional bets behind Gong's brand: the Super Bowl spot, the bulldog, the 2021 enterprise rebrandWhy Courageous Marketing never mentions AI on purpose, and what makes a marketing principle timelessThe two-headed dragon: what actually fixes sales and marketing alignment (hint: do you know how your CRO takes their coffee?)Why a marketing team not working from the same data as sales is committing a crime against its own companyHow AI agents now prove marketing's hard impactThis episode unpacks exactly why the companies winning right now are the ones people demand their employer buy.-----------------------------------------------------