Sean Lane 0:06
Sean, Hey everyone, welcome to operations, the show where we look under the hood of companies in hyper growth. My name is Sean Lane, if you're listening to this show, chances are you care about growing in your career. We all do, right? We're all trying to figure out the right mix of experiences, the right opportunities for growth, to better ourselves and hopefully do meaningful work, but it can be hard to chart that perfect path, if such a thing even exists, and it can be even harder to know who to take advice from when charting your course, one thing I've tried to do is to look at the people who have had an unfair advantage in terms of the number of data points that their advice is based on one such person. And our guest today is Chris orlop, [email protected] a skill transformation platform for sales and revenue teams. Now I know Chris because I've been following his content for a long time. He came and did training at a company I used to work at, so he's someone I already know and trust. But Chris talks to CROs and VPs of sales all day, every day, and he posted something on LinkedIn that caught my attention. He said that after nearly 1000 conversations with the senior most sales leaders in organizations, he was able to find a clear separation of skills between the seasoned CROs and the up and coming VPs of sales. So of course, I wanted to learn what he had found and whether the rest of us might be able to chart our own paths based off of his findings. In our conversation, we talk about the spectrum of CROs that are out there. We cover what it means to lead what he calls an Ambidextrous Organization, and why I came to believe, through this conversation that the people who come up through traditional sales paths are really poorly positioned to become great CROs. To start though, I wanted to better understand the circumstances through which Chris gets such close access to these sales leaders in the
Chris Orlob 2:06
first place. They're all sales calls or customer calls, so I'm like in the thick of doing more selling than I've ever done in my career, and they're always with either VPs of sales or Chief Revenue officers. And I think they it's probably by way of, like, my online presence and reputation, but I have a way of building trust very quickly with like, CROs, like I can run a standard discovery call that an account executive might not be given the time of day on, and just because, you know, I'm in the position I'm in with P club, and I talked to so many CROs, I can have a very similar conversation, but they open up far more quickly. Now I have some tips and tricks for making that happen, but that's where it comes from, right? I probably talked to about three to five new CROs per week. I'm constantly prospecting out of LinkedIn. You know, anytime, anytime a CRO views my profile, that person's gonna get hit up, and then we hit plenty of customers as well that I stay in touch with and continue talking with. So that's where the conversations come from.
Sean Lane 3:09
And I would imagine your ability to get their trust super fast stems also from just like you know, what makes them tick, right, and what they care about. And so what is it like? What when you go into these conversations, what is it that you can cut through all the noise, that you know, maybe the typical discovery would spend time on and get right to what it is they actually care about? Well,
Chris Orlob 3:31
I try not to poison the well before I hear from them. So like, the way I'll tee it up is like, look, I talked to, you know, three to five people who look just like you have very similar roles to you every week, and I want to share what I'm hearing from them to help inform you. I want you to leave this meeting better than you know how I found you, but before I share that, I don't want to poison the well. So talk to me about your you know, biggest challenges when it comes to x area. X area for us is usually like skills within their revenue organization. And so like me, teeing it up in that way, like, sounds super simple, but it makes them more likely to do very open ended discovery, because they know insight and value is coming a little bit later. They're like, Okay, I'll, you know, I'll play this game. He has a reason for starting in an open ended way, in the way he does, versus, if I didn't give that and I just started with like, so you know, what are your biggest challenges? They'd be like out for hell sake, it's gonna be one of those today, and then I'll always come back to it later, right? We do a skill analysis for our discovery motion, right? It's like, what outcomes are you trying to achieve, and what skill gaps Do you see throughout your organization? And they'll share theirs, and then after they've sufficiently shared, then I'll start to share what other CROs are seeing, I'll say win rates are typically 16 to 18% where they use like, well into the 20s. Purchase decisions are getting scrutiny from the highest levels. They're more complex, more risk averse, spying committees, and I share all those. And everybody, if you're an ICP, everybody is feeling the pain. And they're like, Yeah, that's exactly what we're dealing with. And it encourages them to further expound on what I've already been asking them about.
Sean Lane 5:04
Chris makes this sound so simple and straightforward, but he's getting valuable information through discovery with the most senior sales leaders in the companies that he's talking to, and he's getting permission to ask these questions through both his reputation, yes, but more importantly, a promise of value and insight to come later in their conversation. Now this isn't an episode about pulling off good discovery, but it's important to recognize why Chris is in a position to distinguish between the best CROs and some of the up and coming VPs of sales. He's pattern matching across a bunch of different data points. So I wanted to know, after all these conversations, what has he learned? What are the true points of differentiation?
Chris Orlob 5:49
I think there's a handful. I'll do my best to rattle off like the top few. I think the biggest one is like true CROs evolved from being a sales leader into like a true company executive, right? They're not just thinking about net new logos, right? That's a piece to the puzzle. They're not thinking about like just hitting the revenue number. They're thinking about a PNL. And that's not to say that, like all of them, are focused on profitability or cash flow. They're not, but they're at least aware of those things, and they might be sacrificing profitability or cash flow by over investing in growth, right like, there's a time and place to do that as a company, and if you're on a you know, if you're on a tear, then you may as well start to over invest in that. So they're very familiar with all those things they they don't just talk about revenue, they talk about unit economics and efficiency and all the things you would expect a senior executive to be familiar with right there. I don't want to say they're accountants, but they're more financially fluent than like a typical VP of Sales who, who only knows what they had learned as a rep and as a frontline manager was just just hit your quarterly number. The chasm between being kind of like an entry level sales leader, right? Like frontline manager, maybe director and a senior executive, is very big. It's a far broader skill set, and many of those skills start to spill outside the boundaries of just being a sales leader. So I think that's a big one. Another one that I've noticed is just and this isn't true for all of them, they often have more class, right? Like a VP of sales, like up and coming VP of sales. A lot of them have class too, but, like, you can kind of tell if somebody's, like, a first time VP of Sales immediately, if their insecurities are coming across in a way that is not very class worthy, right? Like they're kind of, like, arrogant. Maybe they get sold to by some green rep and they like, make fun of them or something like that, whereas, like, a seasoned CRO who's been doing the job, they'll never do anything like that. They don't have like, this weird, insecure chip on their shoulder, right? They're they're past that point in their lives. So that's a couple things that come to mind. I think there's probably more. You're like P and L fluent and you're a true senior executive, I think that's the big one.
Sean Lane 8:04
So you talked about this chasm right between the VP of sales role and the CRO role, and kind of all of those more unit economics focused areas of expertise or just knowledge or things that you have to know to be able to succeed in that role. And to your point, most people come up through being a rep, being a manager, then being VP of sales. And so like their level of exposure to that stuff as a quota carrying rep or frontline manager is very limited. And so how do people make that jump? What do you think is the right way for folks that either get exposure to or expose themselves to that type of stuff, so they can even put themselves in a position to be a successful CRO later on
Chris Orlob 8:47
down the road. I think the successful ones, they all probably had a little bit of a different path. Years ago, I read this article about it was called the winding path to becoming a CEO. And so they were talking about CEOs, not CROs, but I think it's equally applicable. And the whole article is they analyze the backgrounds of a lot of, like, successful CEOs, not entrepreneur CEOs, but people like who climbed through the ranks. And the commonality was they all had, like, this winding cross functional path where they spent a little bit of time in different functions which gave them the full purview over the business. And so I actually think that's one of the keys to becoming a CRO I think you need to have like that direct selling and direct sales management experience to get there. I know there are some exceptions to that, but I think if you've spent time doing that, and then you play a little bit in something like rev ops, or maybe even like product marketing, or some sort of functional area that's related to what you would be doing as a CRO but gives you like the fuller purview, I think that can be incredibly helpful. One of the most impressive CROs that I've ever met, I guess, technically, is job titles, Chief Commercial Officer is. Is a guy over at Black bod. His name's David. I can't remember his last name, but he spent, he's like a 20 year sales leader, but he spent like 10 years in finance before that, and so he has, like, this unfair combination of deep financial acumen and deep commercial acumen, and I would guess he attributes that to him being successful in his role. You know, I can't confirm or deny that, because I've never asked him that question, but it's something I've observed
Sean Lane 10:27
that leader's name, by the way, is David Benjamin, Chief Customer Officer at Black bot. I looked him up, and if you go far enough, back on his resume, He previously served as the managing director of the UK's Guardian news and media company. He's run services arms of large communication services firms. He's launched international GEOS at box. So yeah, I'd say he fits the bill that Chris is describing for the varied path to top CRO another trait that Chris highlighted in his original LinkedIn post was that he believes top CROs think in systems and not just in deals. And I'd imagine that these different tours of duty in different roles that he described, are probably great leading indicators or inputs to having this systems type of thinking. Chris told me it's a requirement to think beyond just deals if you want to take that next step,
Chris Orlob 11:20
deals are great. Like thinking just in deals is great if, like, your company is small and you just gotta hit your number and that kind of stuff. Because, like, you can hit your numbers by just getting super close to deals. But if your job is to scale the organization, you're not gonna do it by, like, heroics and random acts of selling and random acts of closing deals. You do it through a variety of systems, like basically an ecosystem of systems, or a system of systems. So like one of those that everybody's familiar with is a rhythmic, predictable sales process where everybody's speaking the same vocabulary in the same language. We focus on that a lot internally here, right? We're still a startup, and so we do have a lot of heroics, right? Like, I'll close deals at the end of the quarter, but nobody's impressed with that kind of stuff. Like, especially my co founder, he's like, CTO coo. He almost doesn't care about the heroics, even if it's like, some big deal. He's like, great. How do we make this repeatable, predictable, scalable? And so he's very into, like, standard operating procedures and documenting processes and that kind of stuff. So I think unfortunately, you don't really learn the system skill until, typically, you get to the second line in sales leadership. And even then, sometimes you don't, and you have to unlearn a lot of bad habits, right from throwing Hail Marys with four seconds left on the clock to like building, you know, an organization that can run even if you took all of July off and went on sabbatical or something like
Sean Lane 12:49
that. What I'm hearing from you that I would not have expected from this conversation is that people who come up through the typical sales ranks are actually really poorly positioned to become good CROs,
Chris Orlob 13:03
is that fair without the mentorship and like course correcting? Yes, I would say that's true. And
Sean Lane 13:11
so I think people would typically imagine that that wouldn't be the case, right? You would come up through that path, and then you would ultimately get there. And so is it possible for someone to be a great CRO and come up through that path, or is it you have to go through maybe the kind of windy circuitous path that you described?
Chris Orlob 13:32
I think the windy circuitous path is like one of the many ways you can achieve the same outcome, which is like having that breadth of experience. I think you can be a CRO strictly by coming up through new business, like new logo acquisition, but you're going to need mentorship, or something that helps you gain the broader skill set and perspective and experience. And so like if you became a CRO, and all you've ever done is closed new business through being an IC and then a sales leader, and you've never had mentorship. I think you're probably not going to be a high potential CRO. You're probably ready to be a VP of sales. But like, what people don't understand about the C suite is your team. Is not the team under you, it's the people sitting next to you, right? The C suite is the team. And so as CRO you've got to be able to speak the Chief Product officers language. To some extent, the Chief Technology offers officers language, the CFOs language, the CMOS language. And if all you've ever done is like, close new business, and I'm not shitting on like, you have to have that, yeah, yeah, yeah. But if all you've ever done and you go into your first ELT team and you see all of these impressive execs who can go both deep in their functional area and wide across other functions, you're gonna get smoked. Yes, I've been in those teams before when I didn't have that skill set, and it was one of those meetings where I'm like, I'm not going to say a damn thing in this meeting, because I'm going to expose how underprepared I am to be here.
Sean Lane 15:11
This is a helpful reminder that a CRO teammates are not just the folks that report to them. They lead the sales team, the team that they are on is the executive team and each of their peers, each of their teammates, have their own areas of expertise. If a sales leader has gotten by on salesmanship and energy alone during their rise through the ranks, then they're going to be drowning when they get into this chair, just like we as operators need to be able to speak the language of our internal customers, so too do the best versions of these sea level execs. By the way, this is pretty compelling evidence for why more operators are going to find themselves in these sea level roles. Many of you have done tours of duty yourself, and of course, these leaders also need to be able to take this systems thinking and leadership beyond just the C level meetings and set the tone for their entire sales organization as well. How Chris thinks that the best leaders do that in 30 seconds as robots leaders, our roles require juggling marketing forms enrichment and complex lead routing, the entire inner workings of the go to market falls on our shoulders. But what if there was an easier way? That's why I'm excited to announce our new sponsor, default. Imagine this, a lead submits a form on your website instantly. Default, enriches the contact intelligently, routes different sized companies to different paths, schedules meetings and logs everything in HubSpot or Salesforce, all automated, all in real time, and perhaps most importantly, all in one place. Visit default.com/sean Lane today, or click the link in the show notes to learn more and revolutionize your rev ops today. Okay, back to Chris before the break, Chris was teaching me about the traits that he has observed that separate the best CROs from some of the rising VPs of sales. One thing we chatted about is the idea that the senior most sales leader has an outsized impact on the expectations within your sales org, as well as even the personality that the team takes on. So what happens when a sales leader doesn't necessarily have the systems oriented mindset that Chris described? Is there a way to compensate for that? Somehow? I bet you're gonna like Chris' answer.
Chris Orlob 17:33
If you find yourself in the CRO role and like you have some of those weaknesses, I think what you should consider doing in addition to covering your gaps, is partnering with like a very seasoned rev ops partner, and respecting that person and making it clear to the organization that like they're your right hand person, not just like some peon that works for you. A good example of that was Ryan longfield, who was the former chief revenue officer at Gong. He was my boss for a while. Ryan was extremely good at a lot of things. He was probably the best people leader that I've ever met. Great when it came to like PNL and seeing the business from like, a bigger perspective. He wasn't like, an amazing systems guy, though, right? He respected it, and he could respond to it, but he couldn't go create the systems, and he didn't really need to, because he had an amazing VP of Rev ops who was Brian Bayless, and so they were almost like the two headed leader, at least when it came to leading the revenue organization through an operationally efficient way. At the very least, you need to know enough about this stuff to be dangerous about it, if you're totally like enough when it comes to that you're gonna fall apart. But I also think that's true with every leadership job. Is like, you're gonna have some gaps when you get to the C suite, it's there's such broad jobs, and you can cover for those by hiring great partners, right? CEOs are the same way CEOs like, eventually they don't want to be doing anything functionally, right? Because now they're working in the business instead of on the business, and some of them end up in purely visionary roles, right? It's just vision shaping. It's just strategy. They are the brains of the organization. They have no hands, and their entire hands as like their ELT team, and that's fine. I got a little bit off topic there, so I'm gonna let you steer me in the right direction. No,
Sean Lane 19:27
I think that's good. And I think what I'm hearing right is there doesn't have to be this perfect blueprint for the perfect CRO it's about that person surrounding themselves with complimentary skill sets right, and being able to recognize where maybe those blind spots are. We've had people come on the show in the past and say, Look, I actually think that future CROs will come from ops right, and that they folks who come up through the ops chain or backgrounds are going to be really well positioned to be CROs. And, you know. Maybe, to your point, they'll be missing some of the quota carrying experience, but they've got the systems experience, and so maybe they can fill in those blind spots that they might have with other leaders. But what I'm really wondering is, can a leader today get away with so many blind spots that are on the systems driven side of things, just because it seems like so much of the process and system driven aspects of your sales process, of running your team, of your operating rhythms, forecasting, unit economics, like have to be there. Yeah. Well,
Chris Orlob 20:34
I think one of the things that comes to mind is like there are different types of CROs, right? Like a CRO who runs a large sales organization that sells to small businesses, right? Like, high velocity is super different than a CRO who sells pure enterprise software and so, like, if you want to be a CRO, you should think about like, what your strengths are and what type of CRO job lends itself to that, because I've never been either of these jobs before. So this is me speculating a little bit, but I would think that if you are a CRO and your organization closes nothing but like $2 million deals and on up, and you're just a deal junkie, you could probably actually thrive in that environment, right? Because at some point when you get into very large enterprise, if that's all you're doing, it's so consultative that the systems, like, it's important, but not nearly as important as just getting in there and selling and closing deals versus, like, if you took that same person with that same skill set and you put them in like, a 200 rep or that sells to mom and pop shops, they would be the worst CRO ever for that job, because you're not, if you're ever on a sales call for like, a $6,000 deal, that's the worst use of your time in that kind of job. And your job is like analyzing data to see where the hiccups are within your sales motion and course correcting things based on what you see. And again, like I'm speculating a little bit because I've never done either of those jobs, but that's World According to Chris.
Sean Lane 22:07
The World According to Chris makes a lot of sense. We can't possibly prescribe a universally applicable recipe for the perfect CRO but the more of the ingredients that someone possesses, the less blind spots they have to cover. Now, if you're an operator listening to this, what you should hear Chris saying is that you have the opportunity to offer the complimentary skill sets that your sales leader might not possess. You're there to help cover their blind spots for them and act as their right hand in running the business. This is why, by the way, you're seeing so many CROs bring their ops leader with them when they start new jobs at new companies. Sales leadership is really hard. There's a broad charter of things that you're responsible for. So anything that we as operators can do to ease that burden, I think, is just really, really valuable. In his role at p club, Chris is actually in a pretty similar role, where he's building a complimentary partnership with sales leaders, and he sees time and time again examples where the value of Rev Ops is shining through. There's
Chris Orlob 23:12
this guy named Scott Leese, who you might be familiar with, if you're not familiar with you should totally interview him for this. He constantly makes the argument that the first hire he would make as a chief revenue officer, or SVP of sales, is his rev ops partner. And he talks about that at length, about like, how they are going to set up your sales organization for success. And I'm sure it has to do with all the things that we've been talking about so far, like systems and, you know, just building an operationally sound, rigorous business. One other thing, I don't know if this is totally related to the question, but one of the best sales leaders I've ever met is named Justin Geller, who's VP of mid market over at Gong. And I worked alongside him and learned a ton. And his whole thing was, like, as the sales leader, like, you have a lot of different jobs, right? Like, there's culture building, there's closing deals. But more than anything, in his organization, he was concerned with people being what he called the operational motor. Now, I never got the chance to, like, ask him what he meant by that, but I can give you a sense. It had to do with dashboards. It had to do with holding the team accountable to, like, building pipeline and that kind of stuff. And, like, was he in there closing deals with people? Yes, but he was more so moving the organization forward from an operational perspective, because he had like, 50 or 60 people that rolled up to him at the time. I think now he even has more. It's like 100 or 150 so I
Sean Lane 24:38
think the operational motor that you're describing and the partnership you're describing, if you can ensure that it extends beyond the dashboards and the reports and actually drives towards outcomes, you become invaluable to that sales leader, right? And that's what we'll talk to guests about, talk to people that I. Coach about who are in rev ops roles. Like, you have to get to a place where you're impacting the outcomes of the business and outcomes that that sales leader is trying to drive. They don't care about the workflow you built. They don't care about the automation that triggered the thing that made the field value change. Like, do not care at a certain point. You have to know what those outcomes are and stay in alignment with them. How do you find that balance? Like, how do you find that balance with sales leaders? Because you're doing the same exact thing in the work that you're doing right where you're picking the metric or the productivity value that you're trying to move the needle on. And so how do you zero in with them on the thing that they care the absolute most about
Chris Orlob 25:40
I don't think it's that hard. It's just you have to have the conversation. So, like, if I was in rev ops and I saw like, six or seven projects that I could be working on from like an ops perspective, I think the first thing I would do is go to my CRO and align on the outcomes right, like, maybe we're trying to increase ACV or something like that. And once I'm clear on that, then I would align with him or her on like, here are the six things that I see that I think can move the needle on this. And here's how I think they can move the needle. And am I right in prioritizing these in the same way or in the way that I'm proposing? Or would you flip those a little bit? I think so many this isn't just rev ops. This is, like, everything, especially Product Marketing enablement. All these like, you know, almost supporting roles fall victim to this. They're so into their craft that they go work on stuff that, like, they find intrinsically joyful that has no bearing on, like, the organization's priorities. I did that when I was in Product Marketing all the time, like, my first year in Product Marketing. And I'm like, data sheets are, like, super important in product marketing, right? We should get some of those going only to, like, find out that nobody cared about them. Like, nobody needed data sheets. Nobody wanted them. In those kind of roles, Product Marketing, enablement, rev ops, all of those, like, revenue support roles. I actually think it's better for you to be idle and doing nothing than working on something that you don't know is in alignment with your organization's priorities, because all you're doing is creating, like, work debt, right? If you start working on a project and you find out it's not important, it's a little bit harder to scrap that thing and you just wasted a bunch of time, versus, like, keeping that vacuum open and like your calendar open until you know you're working on a priority that's worth $10,000 an hour in revenue to the organization if you were to complete it. And
Sean Lane 27:34
I actually think the CRO is the best person in the entire company to have that conversation with, because they probably can relate more than anybody, maybe the CEO, right? But more than anybody, to the fact that, like, there is some stuff that is going to be a longer term investment that you're not going to feel the results of for a longer period of time, right? That is important work that is in a longer term investment. And then there's going to be that urgent stuff that actually will move the needle. But, like, nobody's balancing that more than the CRO and the rev, ops folks, right? And so I think that's where the alignment comes from. It says, Okay, we're going to invest in this sales training that, you know, we're not going to see a value from today, right? We're going to see it in five months on the next set of sales cycle, when those comes through, right? And so I think people shy away from those conversations sometimes when in reality, like that's the whole gig, especially in a partnership between ops people and sales leadership. Yeah,
Chris Orlob 28:31
one of my favorite ways I've heard that described is an Ambidextrous Organization, where you are focused both on the long term and the short term simultaneously, and that gave me a little bit of an epiphany, because I used to always think these things are in conflict, and you can only choose one or the other, and they are in conflict. But that doesn't mean you can only choose one or the other, right? Because, like in sales, if you're not taking care of the long term, right, that has obvious consequences, but if you're not taking care of the short term, you're not going to be around for the long term, and so you do have to be able to flex both of those muscles
Sean Lane 29:16
before we go. At the end of each show, we're going to ask each guest the same lightning round of questions. Ready? Here we go. Best book you've read in the last six months. It's
Chris Orlob 29:25
sitting on my desk right now. I'm embarrassed by the title. It's called How to Make a few billion dollars, and it it is by the former CEO and founder of United rentals and expo logistics. The guy has founded like $4 billion companies, none of which were tech companies. And I always like exploring outside of tech. I always get better ideas from exploring industries that are outside of tech, rather than, like inside SaaS and tech, which is where, you know, I spend most of my time
Sean Lane 29:55
Cool. I'll have to check that out. Normally I would ask favorite part about working in ops. So I'll ask you. Your favorite part about working with ops,
Chris Orlob 30:04
the fact that I don't have to do it right? Because, like, that's a great answer. No. I mean, when you become an entrepreneur, when you go to, like, the seminars and coaching groups like the best ones, will tell you your highest leverage activity as like a CEO is to create something that has product market fit so strong that it's like taking a hot knife and slicing into butter. That is your job. That is the highest leverage thing you can do. And any day to day responsibilities like you're always going to have some. So this is a bit aspirational, but your aspiration should be you have a leadership team that is taking care of all of the day to day so that you can delegate and elevate and spend your time on something that is almost only going to have long term effects. And so I would say the same, not just about or rev ops or ops, but like any functional head, at least to me as like an entrepreneur and CEO, is like CTO the fact that I don't have to manage engineers, awesome sales leader, awesome rev ops, you know, I want today and this month taken care of by other people, so that I can focus on what is 2025 gonna look like for us? And then 2026
Sean Lane 31:15
flip side, least favorite part about working with ops. I don't think
Chris Orlob 31:18
this is just ops, but it happens with ops, one of the things that irritates me is when people come to me asking for a policy or decision on something, and they're not giving me an option or recommendation to respond to, right? So, like I heard this from, I think it was Jack Dorsey, the Twitter guy. He said, Your job as, like a senior executive should be editing rather than creating, right? You should be responding to things that your team is bringing your way as a recommendation, rather than you creating something wholesale. And a lot of times, it takes people leaders a long time to learn that if you're going to the CEO and saying, What do you want to do here and there's no recommendation, it's kind of irking versus like, Hey, here's the context, here's the problem we're solving. We have three paths. Here's the one I recommend, and why? What do you want to do? Those are the types of conversations I want to have with
Sean Lane 32:11
people, someone who impacted you, getting to the job you have today. Amit Ben dove,
Chris Orlob 32:15
CEO of Gong. He gave me a lot of both inspiration and advice as an entrepreneur, I would be remiss if I didn't call out a bunch of other people who are at Gong UD letter Gore taught me a ton about marketing, and then Ryan longfield, Jameson young and Justin Geller, like, kind of the the like, just three best sales leaders I've ever had the pleasure of learning from some of them working for And I've learned a lot from those guys.
Sean Lane 32:42
That's awesome. All right. Last one, one piece of advice for people who want to have your job someday, when
Chris Orlob 32:47
you're starting a company, define the problem and market you're going to serve and forget about the product for a while. Latch onto that as your North Star. The first time I was an entrepreneur, you'll go through, like, a year of trying to figure out product market fit. And if you don't have a North Star, it gets really easy to pivot from like, one random thing to another, versus if you define your market, in my case, it's sales and the problem, in my case it's sales skills, then that's now the guardrails in which to pivot your company. Right? If something's not working, you don't go pivot and become the Uber for cupcakes or something random like that. I don't even know what that would look like. You pivot within the bound of the market and problem you're solving. And that just makes finding product market fit so much easier, because you can ask yourself, Well, are we in the market we want to be in? Yes. And is there a problem here, right in the problem space we've defined. Is there a problem? Is that our true north? Yes? If so, then the solution we're trying to market and sell just isn't working. We just have to find another one that ties to those true Norths. And if you don't have that true north defined, you just kind of flail around trying to find product market fit, and you never really get there. I
Sean Lane 34:08
thanks so much to Chris for being our guest on this week's episode of operations. If you like what you heard, make sure you leave us a review on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcast, six star reviews only. Also make sure you're subscribed to our show so you get a new episode from folks like Chris in your feed every other Friday. All right, that's gonna do it for me. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you next time you.
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