Hello and welcome to another
episode of the Operation through a
podcast for Close.
I am Brandon Metzger.
Alongside my co-host, Bethany airs.
How are you, Bethany?
I'm just tired.
It's Christmas time almost.
And I find this time
of year really hard because there's
so much we have to do work wise.
And all of the planning and all of
the next year stuff and closing all
of the deals and go, go,
go and parties and silly season.
But at the same time, the sun's
going down at, what, 330?
Sunrise this morning was eight.
The world is cocooning
and sleeping.
It's dark all the time.
And yet we're trying to force our
bodies to be the
most active.
Last week was so busy because
we had our board
meeting for provisional budget
approval, so we've had to be doing
the budgets.
We have end of year reviews
and pay rises to talk about.
And you're still
working on closing deals.
And then also on top of that,
because I'm on other boards.
I had one board meeting
and one meeting at 645
in the morning, the day after the
Christmas party.
I'm sure you were on point in terms
of your feedback to that company.
And that was talking about a
fundraise. And so just like the only
time they could fit in.
And then we recorded
this podcast after that.
So I was just broken.
So I spent the entire weekend doing
nothing.
I have both boys back home.
They've taken over our lives.
We don't have a single glass in the
house. I don't know where they go.
They were home less than 24 hours in
every single glass in the house that
disappeared.
It's a skill.
I'm not quite sure what kind of
skill that is, per say, but that is
a skill.
It is a skill. And then also just
having four people instead of two
people in the house means the
dishwasher is going all the time.
I feel like I'm ever doing is
unloading the dishwasher.
So no, not feeling particularly
relaxed or ready
for this. And then I absolutely
love my in-laws and I'm serious.
I'm not somebody who doesn't like
their in-laws and they're coming for
Christmas.
But right now, the idea of preparing
Christmas is wildly overwhelming.
And so I spent the weekend trying to
find places to maybe go out to eat,
but nobody's keen.
Nothing looks great.
And also, like set menus for 95
pounds a head.
That is standard these days.
I think we want to set Christmas
dinner. I mean, you're looking at at
least 100 pounds per person.
Which is crazy.
And then like I was looking at them
and they didn't even include the
sides for that price.
It's like, what do
I do? You have to pay staff extra.
But yeah, so because
that's like 600 pounds for
six of us to go out and although I
really don't want to cook, that's
maybe a bit toppy, although
it's great to just have that break
because every Christmas
I do everything because
gender And so
over the years I've gotten more
and more efficient.
So I buy everything pre-made,
so you just have to hit it.
Except I still need to make the meat
and it still takes a whole day
because of timings.
And I have this list
and I have to think about it and
our kitchen is separate to
the rest of the house.
And so everybody just sits in the
other room having a great time.
And I'm in the kitchen for the whole
day.
Bethany, where is my eggnog?
What's happening?
Yeah.
It's because I'm the only one who
actually cares about Christmas.
Like this year, I was saying to my
husband that he's going to have to
help because although I'm the only
one that cares about Christmas,
everybody else still benefits from
Christmas. And I don't want to just
be there all by myself and I'm
exhausted and I can't quite imagine
it right now.
So, yeah, so Christmas
time for relaxation.
So on that note, why don't we flip
on over to what is a wonderful topic
today we have.
What is a CEO's strengths and
gaps?
And we have an amazing guest for
this, which is David Angels.
She is the founder of the CEO
Roundtable, which we are part
as well, and the former CEO of
Wayne County.
And more broadly, David is really
the CEO coach of note, I would say,
in London as it stands right now.
So before we get to the he wanted to
talk about the strengths
side of things.
So I'll go through the strengths one
by one and I'll just kind of quote
them as the way that she described
it and maybe just get your view on
how do you learn that particular
thing or get better at it.
And the first one that she talked
about was being highly adaptable
and flexible and approach listening
to the opinions of others and
seeking to understand with empathy.
So if you want to get better
at being adaptable and flexible
in your approach, what are some
things that we could throw out there
to folks to think about?
Well, it's funny because part of
Wind Avenue was going through the
strengths and the weaknesses or the
strengths and the gaps, I would say
is that a lot of the strengths seem
to be attributes, whereas the gaps
are like gaps in knowledge.
So I didn't think we were comparing
apples and oranges.
And so some of that
is just an attribute to some
extent you're born with the ability
or not, but then you can get better
at it. I was not a particularly
patient person and I've definitely
learned to listen more as I've
gotten older, and that has been
a combination of noticing.
I was impatient and exploring why
I'm not patient.
And what does that mean about me and
what are my insecurities
that are feeding it. So that's part
of like therapy and doing the work
and introspection.
And then the other part is just
practice.
So just listening
and see what happens when you're not
trying to jump in with your ideas
and have faith that your
idea will come up, you know, when
there's time. But otherwise
just hold on to what the other
person is saying and the number
of times where somebody has an idea
and I'm like, Ooh, yes, that's a
really good idea for all these
different reasons. And in my head I
just go and we'll wait.
And they might talk longer than I
want and they might be a bit rumbly,
but the nine times out of ten get
to all of the different reasons why
it's a good idea and the
interconnects that I also
had. And it's just like, okay, look,
I can have faith that other people
can figure out these interconnects
too, and that they might
not realize why their idea is a good
idea and they have to think it
through out loud.
But they get to all those points.
And so it just becomes
an ability to let go
and trust other people more,
because over time it's proven
over and over again. So it's kind of
like practice, see that it works,
reinforces it, continue to practice.
So the second one she'd spoken
about was a high resilience
threshold, working through barriers
arising and committing
wholeheartedly.
So what do you make of this in terms
of getting better at that?
I just laughing at my preamble,
which I think is all about I was.
Really.
Digging deep, being resilience,
ignoring your own needs.
Yeah, maybe not the healthiest way
of doing that, but I think
resilience really is one of those
that you have a certain amount
that you're born with and then you
can reinforce it.
Some people are just not as
resilient as others and maybe
sometimes not just resilience, but
also like questioning ambition and
what you want in life, because it's
fine to choose different levels of
grit and hard work.
So I have been born
and blessed and cursed
with a massive period and work
ethic. You know, I work hard,
I do my a star.
I am not lazy, but the
resilience for me comes from
not just working hard because
they'll break yourself, but
taking time to reflect after
something shitty has happened and
seeing that I survived it.
So the next time something shitty
happens, I know I'll be able to
survive it again.
I guess it's like I just really like
empirical evidence.
So I take the time to review my
empirical evidence and
I have empirical evidence that I'm
resilient and therefore believe I
can do it again.
I've had this conversation many
times in the past where at the end
of the day, there's been some
massive issue within the company.
A single person or several people
have freaked out about whatever is
going on and, you
know, sitting down with them to talk
them through what has happened.
And the fact of the matter is we
live to fight another day.
And regardless of what's happened,
things are going to move on.
So as long as we kind of anchor
ourselves to what we're trying to
accomplish for the
purpose of why we're here and why
we're at this company, why we're
bothering to wake up the morning and
we'll get past this.
I think that kind of mentality and
mindset, kind of sharing that with
individuals I think usually tends to
help.
So you're actually building
resilience within your team
rather than talking about how to
build resilience within yourself.
I guess kind of both in a way,
because I tell myself the same
thing. I think as you get older and
more mature, I think these
machinations of company tend to
impact you less and you care less
about them in a sense.
Like you care a lot about your
career and your focus and delivering
good results. But it's like.
Holding everything quite lightly, I
guess, in terms of how it actually
impacts you. And I feel like only
through experience and time I've
gotten to a place where the minutiae
of what happens in these companies
does not impact me or affect me
elicits, you know, crazy dramatic, I
suppose.
Take it for what it is.
It's a software company.
Nobody's going to die.
We're going to move on.
I can have a great career regardless
of whether this company succeeds or
not. But I'm here.
And because I'm here, I want to make
this work and I want to do my best
job to make that happen, I guess.
So I think it's a bit of like that
thinking that I'm trying to like
plant in myself and also plant in
others where we're here
eight hours a day working our asses
off. Let's make an impact.
Perspective is always very good.
I think just because of the year
that I've had. As everybody knows,
my resilience wasn't actually
necessarily work related.
Like, there's just been a lot of
deaths this year to get over and
a lot of health issues where
there's still a level of resilience
and understanding that life can
throw a lot at you or a lot at
me and I can survive it.
All right. Number three, gap
filling.
So overseeing and managing areas
where there may be functional
leaders missing and filling those
gaps for whatever time period.
How do you get good at that?
I don't know how you get good at it.
I don't know if you should get good
at it, but it just seems to be,
again, something that happens a lot.
I like that has been
the number one
story of my career
at New Voice Media.
I was SVP of Strategy, but I
basically did all of
the bits of other people's jobs that
didn't know how to do and was like
the unsung hero of all of
those things. Or as our
very scary French
chair called it, I was in the shit
list.
Right. Okay, that's that's.
That's great.
Yeah. It was like, so inspiring.
And then even now at
peak, we have
our head of account management going
on maternity leave.
And guess who's now the acting Matt
leave cover.
Nice.
Right on top of everything else.
Yeah.
What was the most random function
you've ever led for a while.
The marketing one does bring to mind
because marketing is probably
where I'm least
knowledgeable but have
the biggest opinion.
So it's a bad.
Nightmare for the marketing team.
Exactly.
But in fairness to myself, I try to
hold all that stuff in check and do
my best job to be a proper CEO,
which is listen to what's happening.
Listen to the experts that are on
the ground list, experts that I know
outside the company that are good
marketers and try
to ask really smart and useful
questions to make sure that we're
thinking about the right things
where whether I'm the expert or not
in that case doesn't matter.
But as long as I'm kind of holding
people to account, asking good
questions, driving the program
forward, let the experts kind of do
their thing, then generally
speaking, you're in a decent
position. So what's your most random
backfill?
For me, it was
s.p.a..
So financial planning and analysis,
because I didn't know it was
a thing.
I didn't know it was a discipline.
I just was self-taught into
figuring out how to build models.
And for like three and a half years
at peak, I was the FP and a
function.
So basically our CFO
says looking at the future
is what strategy does.
You're looking at the future.
In order to look at it, you need to
model it.
Go And I did
because I was young
and inexperienced in experience and
didn't realize.
And so I did it for
three and a half years.
And then we got bigger and then we
raised money from T V,
and then we had like more
sophisticated people come in
and a new CFO who hired
somebody whose entire job was FPGA.
And I was like, this is
a discipline.
This is a job. Like this is one
person's job. This is a just one
fifth of my job.
It was such an eye opener for me,
and it was like we raised
120 million off the back of my
mom.
Really?
Wow. Okay.
That's impressive.
No idea what I was doing.
That was enough logic.
I was fine. Yeah.
Wow. That's amazing.
Especially like fundraising.
That amount of money based off a
model with a nonprofessional at the
helm of it.
So for Bessemer and TCV both.
Actually, this is a question for
you. When do you need proper
modeling, do you think?
In 2024?
I mean way, way before we
had it,
yeah. I think with your series
A, given the size of Series A's now
a days, you definitely need
a finance professional.
You need it for the model in the
future and you need it
for not
ridiculously spending your money on
stupid things.
Like it's just a good bit of
experience.
I think part of the reason why we
could get away with me doing
whatever I was doing was
because we had a very experienced
team except for me.
I was the least experienced
by far.
And so although I was the
glue that held things.
Together and did everybody's shit
jobs.
They also gave me
context and experience that I
didn't know about.
And you also need experience
and you need to find it somehow.
You need a combination of people who
don't have experience with people
who do.
And what I see a lot is
companies that get to their series
A where just everybody
is new to the world.
And now once you have
a sizable amount of money in your
bank account, you start to need to
have some people who are not new to
the world.
Typically, when you come in to a
series A, the team,
a lot of teams are pure
newbies to the world, as you've
described it.
How many kind of like more senior
executives do you think you need on
the pathway from A to B?
So we had to mix that team a little
bit in terms of seniority.
So I definitely go for some sort of
finance
person. I go for I hate
the term, but I don't know how else
to say it. A finance person with an
operations fight.
So you can get some amount
of like, what's this leadership
team do? Who should be in the
leadership team?
The importance of meeting regularly,
the importance of having clear
reporting, plus a
good model plus fiscal
responsibility.
And then I would
put somebody in the technical area
as well, because quite often
technical co-founders are great at
hacking stuff together, but don't
actually know how to scale an
organization as you tend
to need somebody who knows how to
scale on the
product side, and those would be
the minimal viable hires
I would make.
So why don't we park it here and
get on to our conversation with
Tiffany and Ole's.
So what are the strengths of CEOs
en masse? What does that look like
for us?
So the ones that indexed most
highly and you won't
be surprised by some of these.
Definitely. If I wasn't building
strong relationships with key
decision makers in the business.
And that means anywhere, right,
say board here
below and rest of team.
And I feel like that's the real
strength of CEOs generally like
they're generally very humble
servant leadership able to
really connect and take people on
the journey. Then you've got owning
and managing their functional areas
that lend well to their strengths.
They're very resilient, as you would
imagine, from all the things that
they then have to do and go through.
And when they work through barriers,
they tend to be quite
consensus driven in their approach
with others and then will commit
wholeheartedly towards decided
the highly adaptable, flexible.
They love corralling other people's
opinions, understanding what other
people think situations and
they embrace perspectives even when
they're not their own.
So they can be that person who
really helps to homogenize
and curate opinions
and understand what different people
are thinking.
Gap filling.
No surprise there.
So leading other functional areas
when there's a leader missing, we
get drafted into that lot.
And then changing processes if
they're not effective, but doing
it in a very systematic, pragmatic
way.
And I often hear this spoken about
as treating it like product.
So internal stakeholders, your
customer.
So thinking about that way,
those are the biggest drags. I mean,
there are lots, right? And this is a
certain segment of a population,
but it is the segment of the
population. It was very mixed in
terms of gender, so 5050 gender.
And actually, in terms of the CEOs
that we got responses back from,
these are not incredibly early stage
CEOs. These are actually people who
are quite experienced in their
roles. So this is why I thought was
super interesting because some of
the gaps then are interesting given
that's the context.
They're not newbie CEOs
who are early stage of their career.
These are folks who've been doing it
for a little while.
Given that we're talking about
fairly senior or senior CEOs,
I don't know. How dare we have gaps
because we're perfectionists where
they start to kids.
What are those gaps that you find in
the CEOs?
The first one and again, there are
some of these where you're like,
Yes.
Generally speaking, this would seem
to be a gap. But being an external
spokesperson for the business
and whether that's attending
networking events, speaking
at conferences.
And I actually love this one because
this one is incredibly nuanced, I
think, around
the fact that actually some CEOs are
incredibly comfortable being an
internal spokesperson.
That's why external is interesting.
And even those CEOs who are
incredibly comfortable being an
internal spokesperson sometimes
struggle speaking at board level,
which again is the tipping point
possibly between internal and
external. Maybe I'm wondering
if it's struggling to speak at the
board or this dynamic around
disagreeing commit and then showing
a united front in front of the
board. This is something I
definitely found difficult myself
the last time around because I
wouldn't necessarily always agree
with the decisions that had been
made that we were then representing
to the board.
And then if I was asked specifically
my opinion, I
would find it difficult because
I didn't want to show not a united
front. And it's like, where
is your loyalty?
Is your loyalty with the board or is
your loyalty with the exact
team slash the CEO
as I don't know if it's a discomfort
so much as a hard
place to be.
And having to decide when
you state your ground and
when you disagree and commit.
I also found it quite difficult
sometimes in board situations, this
when I was operating to know
what my role was.
And it sounds a bit weird, but it's
like if the CEO
is updating on all of these
different things and he's this sort
of being the face of the company,
it almost has to be pre-contract
it's that you have a role at the
board, otherwise you end up.
Sort of.
Sitting there.
I think CEOs generally
perceive themselves as very internal
facing people, so they see
themselves as that, you know, they
do the all hands, the strategic golf
sites and they may be wonderful
speakers, but they don't see
themselves as the external person
for the company. They're their
audience. Sales are not the seat of
the company. They don't feel like
it's part of their remit, I think.
So part of it, I think is partially
a mindset shift to understand
that the external side is equally
as important.
And I think that customer
centricity, really understanding
some of the issues that they're
having, you know, in much part of
senior level, because you can bring
that external relationship, that
external kind of understanding back
into the company and have much more
of that real connection to the
marketplace. And I think that's not
a sales role and it doesn't have to
be a CEO role. It can be a CEO role.
By the way, there's another gap in
there, which is interesting, which
we should come on to talk about.
But I was having a fascinating
conversation with Andrew Richardson
recently.
We were talking about the same
thing.
Lots of CEOs, the external
spokesperson thing can also go to
customer, right?
CEOs can have limited interaction
with customers and therefore you
then have less of a connection to a
customer's problems are and so on.
And you don't see yourself as a
salesperson as
such. And I think that could be
quite problematic actually as zero
because you get a whole different
view, as you say, on the business by
talking to customers and seeing it
from their viewpoint.
But I think there's two elements to
external. There's the external
spokesperson versus having customer
relationships and that spokesperson
I can again see why the CEO might
not always feel comfortable doing
that, particularly if you have a
co-founder, CEO
or founder CEO, where it's their
vision, their baby.
They're the ones who are thinking
five years ahead and evangelizing
all the time.
You're never going to sound as good.
You're never going to be that
founder who just, like loves it and
thinks about it 24 hours a day.
And so it's around figuring out what
kind of spokesperson you can be,
where you are authentic
and understand the business, but are
not going to necessarily be
emulating our corporate copy of a
founder CEO who's just in
a different level.
Absolutely. And finding the things
that you're passionate about talking
about for you
then will make the whole external
spokesperson piece will be easier.
But I agree with you, it's very
difficult. It's a bit role based.
Again, what's your role in doing
it? Why? What's the outcome?
Was the desired outcome of you doing
it? Because whilst it can be to
raise your own brand, this has to be
a business oriented, reasonable say
to do it.
And when I was at mine, Candy, mine
was a lot talent, a lot of talent
related as an encouraging
folks to understand that it was a
great place to be and all of that
kind of good stuff bringing people
to us, which I felt like was a great
role actually as an external
spokesperson because I loved being
so much that I could really
evangelize that.
And it was a slightly different
perspective to the see from the CEO
who's talking, as you say, about why
we do what we're doing, how we're
going to go, the vision and the
mission and all of that kind of good
stuff. But it's a great one.
And Brandon, you mentioned another
gap.
So Brandon, is all the gaps.
Among the gaps and all of the gaps
right now.
But yeah, so that one was a great
one. Would you like to move to
another gap?
Well, I want to know about the gaps
that Brandon's mentioned.
What are these ones that Rand is
getting?
So this one around sort of
being a negotiator,
which is also related to the
customer side of things, which
came out of the gap.
And again, understandably, because
whilst you have a group of CEOs,
you may have a spike in customer
operations or go to market
sales, etc., you also
have a lead the day, right?
They have a very different scheme, I
would think, because so many CEOs
come with a CFO background.
CFOs are good at negotiating as
well. And really on the money, maybe
it's the CEOs that come from a pure
ops background that struggle with it
because those of us from sales are
used to negotiating and those of us
from CFO worlds
are as well, or at least should be
like a good CFO really needs to know
how to negotiate.
True.
I think it's yeah, as you say, it's
pure ops because if you've come from
a sales background, you have it
already.
CFO is an interesting one because I
found that not all CFOs have that.
Maybe that would be a gap for other
CFOs. I mean, because how else are
you going to get really good?
Well, first of all, to stand
your ground and make sure that
the deals that you're doing and that
your sales team are doing are good
deals, Sydney, to understand and
actually be in deals or have a team
that are in deals.
And then also when you're buying
major contracts, having
the CFO in as that final
bad cop to lower the price is just
essential.
I used to have a great guy that
worked for me. I called Alex, who
was a very, very commercial finance
person, and he would go and
renegotiate things like payment
terms and stuff, which from a
financial perspective is incredibly
important.
It's slightly tangential, but like
you tend to have some who are
more commercial and some who are
more technical and they tend
to be camps, right?
It's another little piece of opinion
of mine is for scale
up start ups and scale ups.
You need commercial finance
people and not technical finance
people. Yeah, because your actual
technical is going to be quite low.
Probably it's going to be quite
straightforward versus the
commercial side of things, which
might be a lot more helpful and
there's just no value add in.
If you get somebody who's just
straight technical because you need
someone who can negotiate with fund
fundraising, understand
the best ways of structuring
those types of deals, somebody who
can work with your customers
and structure deals well there and
your suppliers.
So anyhow, if anybody happens to be
listening who's hiring a CFO or a
finance person, those are my $0.02.
And I would also say for the CEO,
I feel like I'm constantly
negotiating in different forms.
And usually it's more complex
situations where the commission plan
for the sales reps is broken for
some reason, and the sales rep, the
leader of the sales team has been
caught out. They need to talk to
somebody about it in terms of what
to do because person is really
upset for whatever reason that VP
of Sales needs to have a
conversation around what we need to
negotiate with with that person
or, you know, other nonstandard
situations where a leadership team
has also either contractual issues
or something that's happening in
terms of. They're winding down
and the terms associated to that
wind down and how to get the best
out of that person. There's some
level of negotiation that needs to
occur. So I feel like for the CEO,
there's often this but nonstandard
negotiations, spectrum of things and
pop up all over the place where, you
know, it may not be strictly like a
supplier negotiation, but there's
definitely a lot of nonstandard
negotiations that need to happen
where we are involved to come up
with the best outcome for an
individual or for a team.
It's interesting because I think
CEOs have the skills for
negotiation, but when you put the
label negotiation on it,
we get a bit freaked out.
So, that's salesy, that's external.
That is an area,
an agreement I'm not used to.
Whereas if you think about the
strengths that you mentioned, one of
the first strengths was doing great
stakeholder management, which is
just negotiation.
Well, and even company comms, right?
A lot of company comms is actually
objection handling really.
And so there's lots of kind of
pieces of it that really fit in the
internal piece.
But maybe it's the external
exhibit like this is sort of not
known today is a bit more
uncomfortable.
So yes, that's an interesting one.
The other gap that Brandon mentioned
was resource allocation.
And this came up quite strongly and
I have having been
spoken to the CEOs about this one,
I now realize why,
because on the face of it, you're
like, they should be really good at
that. And again, out of my
experience, married Theirs was,
well, in these companies
you're constantly having to rejig
resource allocation.
It doesn't just stay the same.
If you're scaling, you're like,
okay, where do we need people?
Or if you've got different parts of
the business that are running some
bits of working, some bits won't be
working. So you might need to
rightsize certain bits of it at
different times or change the
structure in different places.
And I think they, they get the sense
that they therefore are
always sort of
second guessing themselves,
Michaela, to do it potentially a
little bit, but quarterly
rightsizing.
As for how I used to think about it,
where every quarter I then kind of
look at the organ and think right
we good at the moment or we
got some weird bits happening
in different places.
We've got the right structures, we
got the right people. If we got the
right levels of this stuff
because of this thing.
But I think it's it is a challenge
and it's knowing when
you've got the right balance as
well, especially if you think about
where you're investing versus
where you're not.
If you're trying to be profitable,
that means, you know.
So I think it's quite tricky
area and RMB ambiguity
and they might be good at it but not
think they're good at it.
That's the other thing because it's
really hard and it's changing
like it's a problem that never ends.
And so if you have to change, does
it mean that you got it wrong?
It just means that the company has
changed.
Yeah. And it kind of feels like
there's two aspects to it.
Like what is the purely financial
side of the financial modeling?
Because you're trying to model out
the future of the company over the
next, you know, three, six, nine, 12
months and what that looks like and
you're constantly iterating it based
on actual revenue and actual budget
and these sorts of things, you're
thinking through how best to
allocate funds for the future in
terms of hires or what have you.
So there's purely that side of it
that there's an entirely different
dynamic around the actual people in
the company. The skills that you
have, the capabilities that you have
or don't have.
And it's much more really
understanding, I guess, your
existing employee base in terms of
what they're good at and what
they're capable of doing in the
future type of thing.
But being able to combine those two
things together and do it on this
iterative basis with the functional
leaders I think we're at, that's
where it all comes together, where
the CEO hopefully is connecting all
those dots to try to think that
through holistically for the
company, working with whatever
functional leader that they're
working with.
And then I think the newest element
to throw into that, which might also
make it is I'm struggling with
the moment is where does
Jenny fit in and therefore
where your allocation of resource
of finding new skills,
investing in technology and
what can and cannot actually be
done more efficiently.
With Jenny, it's like a new resource
to try and allocate.
When I even found that I'm a
fractional CEO, a very small
business now, we still have
the same challenges, just on a much
smaller scale.
It's like we'll change things and do
things and then like about a month
later we'll be like.
So the right thing to do
or have we really so
set ourselves up for success here?
And then think about it again, so
much so that as soon as I heard this
from the CEOs in the survey, I was
like, Yeah, this sounds just because
it just keeps moving.
You can't ever say you've done it.
And then would you recommend on some
cadence or basis thinking through
it quite specifically?
Because generally speaking, as a
CEO, I think about it when I need
to think about it as opposed to
setting some kind of time slot or
something like that. But what do you
make of that?
I would if the company is scaling,
definitely. And that's what the
situation I found myself in, which
was like, I feel like I am the only
person potentially who
is thinking about this in the
holistic round in the same way,
and the CEOs of making deals
and doing other things and
developing the company in different
ways. So it's like, right, this has
to be me. So I'm going to think
about I'm going to just deliberately
time box it, just keep thinking
about it and in different.
Pieces.
So, I mean, it worked for me, put it
that way. That worked well in the
situation I was in.
And then quarterly works because
that's when you're budgeting or
you're trying to decide like, what's
the hiring plan for the next
quarter? So it's an opportunity to
pause and make sure that the plan
from the last quarter is still
necessary.
Even in scaling territory,
it feels like you hold
your nerve for a bit just to make
sure everybody gets it and then you
so it kind of is a step to growth
path versus can't just keep adding
more and more and more and more
people and expecting that's going to
be efficiency.
That also works well in a quarterly
cadence.
Yeah, it's an interesting one, that
one.
So this is something that we're
trying to do something about at the
moment, but it's got two bits to it.
Understanding financial reports
was one side of it and
the other side of it.
And this nuance, this whole talk
about, okay, of course it's always
nuanced,
understanding business metrics
in businesses that you don't work in
which different business models,
but the metrics that drive success
in different business models,
what we talk about first metrics
or financials.
Let's go financials.
Okay. So the financials on the
financials one is interesting,
right? So I believe
that, again, from talking to the
folks at the events and
afterwards, it's not that they don't
understand financials personally,
as in and I had this with a
wonderful lady who's a client of
mine who in her own health was like,
This isn't a strength of mine,
actually. Then we went through the
financials, and the observations she
made about it were brilliant.
She's very astute.
It's all good. However,
if you then went one layer
deeper than that and you asked
her or them off the back
of a balance sheet or something like
that, more complex
questions around financial
management.
No, it wouldn't happen.
And so I think that's where this
comes in. It's like to a point
where you could make strategic
business based decisions off
the back of reading
your balance sheet, for example.
That's where this I think
falls down versus
being able to read financial data.
And if you think in certain board
scenarios where you've
more often than not you've got more
financially literate folks,
possibly less operationally literate
at times, then they're likely
to have really in-depth knowledge
of company valuation and how
you do it, what you're looking for
or funding mechanisms or
any of these things that Sarah
might not they may not
have as much of a view or opinion
on that dependent on their knowledge
of what they've been exposed to.
I feel like in terms of the
financial instruments, it's always
there's always a new one.
There's always like currently
every person I speak to, I guess
because of the avoidance of down
rounds, are talking about Collins
convertible, low notes.
And like five yeadours ago nobody
talked about it.
And now, like every single time I go
to a meeting, I talk to somebody
and they're like, we're negotiating
a clean and we all just know about
it. Now, every time I go to drinks,
somebody is negotiating one and
wants to know about something.
But anyhow, I do agree that you
learn it as you need it.
And we're not
CFOs unless we were CFOs to
begin with, which is
for me, it's not necessarily a skill
that I would go out and desperately
try and improve
versus just having a good CFO
or the ability to Google things.
I think it's important to know what
your strengths are and where you
need to know enough and to
learn what you need to learn when
you need to know it rather than like
go out and just decide to learn
it for no particular reason.
When you're in a business, that's
not going to be funding.
The challenge here, I think, is that
there's a level of proficiency
that's expected.
And so how do you get to that
without then massively overdoing
it? I even think if I look back,
I was a hybrid CIO, CFO, because
I qualified in my evenings from just
accounting because I'd sit
in the board meeting sometimes and
I'd be like, I know what they're
talking about.
This financial I'm not Rachel is
like.
I would say this, though, I kind of
feel like to Bethany's point, I
feel like I've picked up finance
where I've needed to understand it
to help run the business, basically.
So when I think about my financial
acumen, a lot of it revolves around
financial forecast, not the PNL
staff essentially to help run
the business effectively and think
through how we spend money and
what the revenue creation is going
to look like and making sure that
burn rates appropriate.
Anything that revolves around that,
I'm very interested in.
And to your point, Bethany, you
know, I've Googled, you know, ad
nauseum, I've looked at all sorts of
videos and stuff like that.
At this point in my life and career,
I can very much pair with a finance
person where collectively we can
work together, where there are
excellent. I'm modeling, I'm
excellent at understanding the
business and what happens in the
business itself.
And you combine those two things
together, then boom, you have like
models that actually really
represent the business and you can
actually do some proper modeling to,
to figure out how to spend money and
how to ensure that you're ramping in
a sensible way.
And then if you talk about the board
level conversations, because those
are different to the modeling that
Brandon's talked about.
It's much more fundraising strategy,
corporate debt, different
types of instruments
where like balance sheet
matters and what are you
capitalizing and what are you,
you know, kind of like the art
of working on your financials
so that you look the right way
depending on what your valuation
like. Is it a revenue based
valuation? Is an EBITDA based
valuation?
How do you make it look the way it
needs to or is close to it as you
can? But I guess for me,
all of that's come through experience,
through conversations.
And I'm very much been a just
in time learner and also
on the boards that I sit on, my
pitch is I'm the operator.
I am like the friend of the CEO.
I can understand what's
hard in your life, but I've
also done so many fundraising
rounds. I've hung out with
investors. I understand how they
think. I know what an investment
banker does, that I can help
translate on both sides.
And what I am not going
to do is help with your fundraising
strategy and conversely,
your board members, who have always
been investment bankers, should not
be trying to help you
on your go to market strategy.
You're like, if we understand our
lanes and we can talk a little bit
across them and know enough that
if something sounds really wonky, we
can intercept.
But I think it's very valuable
in board conversations for people
to understand where your level of
expertise is and why you're sitting
at the table.
And I'm not going to try and pretend
that I'm a financial expert
and I'm going to understand the
investment strategy in the way
that these guys who do it all day
long and for the most part, our
guys, what they negotiate, how
they think about it, all the ins and
outs, it's fascinating to learn.
No, I'm with you.
And I think to tie your points
together 100% and I think this is
a level of proficiency that even
a level proficiency that gives you
the just gives you the confidence to
be in the room when it's being
spoken about.
I totally agree on the forward
facing piece. And I think that's why
the balance sheet side of it is
interesting because that's more of
the forward facing.
We know what will we be doing with
the business, how do we leverage our
assets, all of that sort of thing.
And that's the bit that really
missing.
We talk about the business metrics
side.
I'm curious on that one.
Yeah.
So one woman's opinion, I just may
as well like to cloak
myself, say one woman's opinion
since I sort of
understood some different business
models. I feel like I then
got more of an appreciation for the
business models I worked in,
whereas I worked in subscription
business models for a really long
time. Right? So I know subscription
business models like the back of my
hand. You could ask me anything
pretty much maybe.
And I sort of I'd have a view
of whether it's right or wrong.
I have you and then I start learning
about other ones and was like, Hey,
that's interesting because if I'd
have known that you could apply some
of that to that.
And actually just knowing one thing
is all very well, but you then are
in a complete vacuum and
it's only after then, it's not
like I've been seeing
all the different business models
out there, but just enough that I
can then sort of have a bit of
objective perspective.
And yet you tend to find that
actually because people stay in
certain industries,
they may like me, just be
one, they may have one that's
they know inside and out, and then
you throw something else at them and
they have no idea how it works.
So it's the informing of like one
business model against another and
actually sort of the importance of
different metrics and different
places.
And even what you can beg, borrow
and steal.
It's interesting because I have this
emotional reaction of like, I'm in
my space, I have my metrics,
nothing else matters.
And because I haven't looked, I
don't know if I think it would be
interesting. I think it's a fair
challenge. And again, for me,
it goes back to Jenny
has captured my imagination.
What are any of our worlds going to
look like in five years, let alone
ten years time?
What are our new business models
going to be?
So I can get the idea of going
out and learning different ones now
just to realize that there is
many options as there are
to help open my mind to what the
future might be.
Rather than beg, borrow and steal
for what today looks like.
Because I really I'm trying to see
how are all of our businesses, what
are our lives going to be like
in five years?
Yeah. And I would almost double down
on what you said, if any, because I
kind of feel like the more you
understand other types of businesses
and how they operate from a business
model point of view and their
pricing and packaging and that sort
of thing, it is helps inform
how you think about your business
and your context as to what's
happening, because oftentimes
things will come up or things will
change, right?
So suddenly we're going from
enterprise selling into product like
growth and you're like, okay, well
what does that mean?
So, so product like growth.
I found I was stealing bits from my
past to think through the PLG
side of things and product line
sales and so on.
It's an interesting one.
And even if I think about mine,
Candy, so my Kelly was of course
subscription, but we then went
into licensing
and licensing royalty went
into music music royalties
every time we went into a new piece.
No idea. I was.
Ooh, sounds interesting.
I have to go figure out how that
works then.
But then the more I got into it, the
more I was like, Gosh, this is
really fascinating because depending
on the assets that you create, the
value you create, you can monetize
it in many different ways, but you
may get so fixed in one space
that you can't actually see that
there's opportunity.
You know, I mean, there are
multitude of ways to
create even more value for the
business from this thing,
this piece value asset we've
created.
And yet it depends if I can see it
or not, if it's even in my
peripheral vision
and it does come back to you,
There's another gap on here, by the
way, that's around future facing
projects and opportunities for
businesses.
And again, I wonder if this is
because normally it's seen as the
purview of the CEO.
No, no. This shows the development
of the business is down to you.
But actually, I
think it's one of the most
interesting bits.
So I always loved being part of that
as a CEO.
And so developing knowledge
in that area. But interesting that
it's a gap.
A big gap as well.
The gap is future.
So defining future based
opportunities for business, whether
it be, I think, sweating
current assets in a different way
or M&A,
corporate development ways
to grow a business that may be
slightly outside of your
kind of experience, set
Some of these gaps I think are just
like a lack of opportunity rather
than something that you need to go
out immediately.
Like I guess I'm just thinking it's
a just in time learning and
you figure it out.
You need to.
I think there's like a step down
situation where you have
the same product repackaged,
repurposed for a different
marketplace.
Somebody needs to figure out how to
sell it into that new space and not
sell it in this space where we
structure our program to go into
that new space whereby you're
pulling the assets of the company in
a different direction and how you
operationally pull that together,
programmatically set it in motion
and get the resources behind it to
make it happen without distracting
the company in a way that is not
helpful, basically.
There is definitely an art and a
science to that, and I think the
operator having space and capacity
to be able to focus on things like
that is something is really
important.
Absolutely.
Well, it's interesting and it always
brings me back to this.
And again, so tangible example, when
I was at mind, Candy, we created a
secondary product for children,
which was a creative space
that they could be creative in
and sort of a community social
network type of thing.
And because we then
got to a point where we didn't feel
like we the right people to run it,
it got divested, we sold it to
Super Awesome, who's clever
because we sold it to them, but with
a kickback that then meant that
we then could keep
cash coming in from it as they
monetized and put it through their
advertising channels and really sort
of boosted its revenue.
So the more they then did that, the
more money. We then got back
for a period of time, which helped
the business to sort of stabilize
itself over time.
I would have thought that not at the
time.
I was like, Well, and of course my
clever, clever buy was a bit like,
That's really good.
That's just such a good thing to do.
There's something about that skill
set around spotting opportunities.
I don't have it, by the way.
That's not my natural mode of
operation at all.
If we think about sort of CMO as
being a true partner to the CEO
founder, and this is where I got
involved in this because I used to
then love having conversations with
them about it, or I was like, this,
I didn't know anything about This is
really interesting and stuff that
they would then tell me and I'd be
like, I wouldn't even have noticed
that. Wouldn't even if that wouldn't
have come into my brain.
Different way of thinking.
So I wonder if it's that sage
or trusted advisor,
CEO, CMO partnership thing.
Having a bit of kind of that
way of thinking is sometimes
helpful.
I think it's also entrepreneurs are
just rule breakers
or not even a rule, not
series. I don't even know if they're
breaking rules.
It's just like,
yeah, there are no boundaries,
nothing.
And CEOs are
quite often rule creators,
enforcers and followers.
And therefore our brains are not
always necessarily going for
like infinite possibilities
where as entrepreneurs
tend to and everything
has a plus and
like a dark side and a light side.
And so the light side
is what you're talking about with a
lovely kick back.
And then the dark side are just
deals that are horrible
and you never actually see any money
from or possibly
illegal, you know?
It's like it's always true, isn't
it?
But I don't think that's I think the
the relationship in that way is
where the CEO can really be helpful
to the CEO, which is sometimes, as
we know, CEOs can have all sorts of
crazy ideas about all sorts of
things and drag the company in
different directions that are super
unhelpful and very destructive in a
lot of ways.
So the question of having a sensible
CEO sitting there to talk that stuff
through, but also for the CEO to
have some level of like ally
element to them where they're not
going to simply dismiss what the
CEO. Saying outright, but actually
having that open minded space to
think it through with them, to
bounce back and forth a little bit
and to help the two of you come to a
mutual conclusion.
One, it's the worst thing you can
say to a co-founder right now.
First is, yeah, it's a great idea.
I'm not sure we can do it now, but
let's put it on the backlog or
something, you know, let's discuss
it and actually see if we could.
But the worst thing is, I know right
then you are a blocker and a barrier
and all of those things.
So the old adage from improv,
it's always the yes and response.
For our listeners.
If they could only remember one
thing from our conversation today,
what would it be?
I think this piece of string space
management is actually really
important.
I mentioned to you I've been to all
apps the session, I've been thinking
about this where I was like, I love
this because I now know how I can
support my zeros further.
However, how do you build
on your strengths and really lean
into those and get proficient
enough in the areas that
are your gaps so that you are
your perceived gaps in order that
you feel confident in your role.
Because I think that's the important
piece about it.
It's actually about, as you were
saying, it's like just internal
learning just in time.
Learning is absolutely fine.
Like that's a good way of going
about things.
And how can you know enough that you
just feel confident in those rooms
and spaces where you need to hold a
good conversation.
So I think that's the takeaway.
Lovely. So thank you for coming back
on to the operations room.
If you like what you hear, please
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will see you next week.