Speaker 1: Cool. Welcome everyone. Looks like we got folks logging in now. We’ll have everybody a minute or two to get situated. Grab a cup of coffee, a beer, whatever you need today to, uh, to get you through a Thursday. And we’ll, uh, we’ll get things moving, but excited to see everybody jumping on. A lot of familiar faces that we see in there too. So, Jeff, I’m pumped, man. This is gonna be a good, uh, a good episode. I know, uh, judging just by the, uh, registration list, we’ve had a lot of people excited about sitting [00:00:30] around the big boy table. So <laugh>, 

Speaker 2: I’m pumped for this. I, I, you know, I was just thinking Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I’m just sitting here waiting till Thursday is happening. <laugh>, now that we’re here, we’re gonna be sad about tomorrow. 

Speaker 1: Hey, tomorrow’s Friday. We were, we were joking around with the customer, uh, earlier today. Like, get as much as you can done by, you know, around noon Eastern time, because nine for you. Cause that’s gonna be early in the morning, but basketball games start tomorrow for March Madness. And, you know, the minute that happens, people, uh, for [00:01:00] some reason emails don’t go out nearly as fast, you don’t get as much done as weird <laugh>, 

Speaker 2: You know, it’s, uh, it’s like, you know, it’s this slowing, slowing effect around email communication, uh, calls, especially during, uh, Michigan and UCLA games. I’m definitely, uh, might be a little slower than usual. 

Speaker 1: It’s weird that way, right? So funny. Um, cool. Rick, how’s it going? Hi. All right, let’s kick it off, man. We got a bunch of folks in. I know a couple other folks are still, uh, logging in, but man, we, we got a lot to talk about. So, we’ll, uh, we’ll get moving. So [00:01:30] Jeff, excited to have you here, man. Another, uh, episode of Shops Talk, where we bring some of the best industry experts in the game over, uh, from our community. Onto the episode, we’re gonna talk all things operations, and I think today, more than anything, uh, excited about how do we get into this operational leadership capacity. But, um, first things first. Uh, so excited to have everybody from an attendee perspective. Uh, always have to thank our, uh, our sponsors Salesforce for, uh, allowing us to partner with our community to really help elevate more, uh, operations [00:02:00] folks. But, um, you know, we’re excited as always, Jeff, I’ll let you, uh, let you introduce yourself, but, uh, take it away. Tell everybody who you are and why we’re here to talk about. 

Speaker 2: Yeah, I appreciate that. If everyone’s wondering why the Mario Brothers background, um, I always remember when you’re leveling up and passing a level, you always jump and trying to hit the top of that flag. Sometimes you don’t always get there, um, but it doesn’t mean that you don’t pass the level. Um, so I’m the head of Revenue Operations at a venture backed company called Upkeep in Los Angeles. We sell to the maintenance and reliability space. My particular [00:02:30] role is leading a team of go-to-market operations professionals, supporting three core departments. That’s marketing, sales, and customer success. Um, also sales enablement roles under, um, our team as well. Um, prior to coming to Upkeep, I’ve had a variety of roles. I think like most operations folks you’ve interviewed, we’ve tumbled into the role itself. Um, was in consulting, sales, finance, eventually in finance, supporting sales over at Google and learned the craft of, you know, cutting territories quotas, [00:03:00] um, customer acquisition cost, unit economics, and then eventually laying on, laying on layering on all the technology. And I’ve been at startups for the last seven years, primarily focused on that 10 to 100 million journey. 

Speaker 1: I love it. Do you, uh, and, and for everyone here that I’m sure is, uh, attending because they follow Jeff on, uh, on LinkedIn, uh, I will always tell ’em this, but I’ll tell ’em, you know, very loud today, thank you for, uh, all the content and, and being a thought leader behind this. Obviously your, your background [00:03:30] has given you so much, uh, experience and exposure to how to run revenue operations, right? Um, but you know, like I said, I know a lot of folks are here because we get to see, uh, see you in action every day dropping, you know, knowledge on us left and right. So, uh, thanks for being the, uh, you know, the rev ops guru and the, the person out there screaming it from the, uh, the top of the mountain. So, um, for sure excited to, to get things kicked off. 

Speaker 1: Uh, one thing we always do, we always like, uh, participation from the audience. So, uh, we keep this very informal, relaxed. If you have a question, [00:04:00] pop it in the q and a. Uh, we always do like to kick off a poll, which I will launch. Now, um, obviously we talk about this from a, uh, leadership perspective, but you know, we want to hear from the crowd folks that are here right now. Are you a rev ops leader? Yes. No. Would like to be, uh, we will very much talk about the would like to be and how to get there in a second. But, uh, yeah, we always like to see and hear, uh, who’s in the audience at what level of their operations world. So, uh, what’s fun for me, I know y’all get to see the, this on the attendee side, we, we [00:04:30] see, uh, these responses, you know, 13 people so far, a healthy mix. 

Speaker 1: Yes. 31, 30%, yes. 30%, no. And 50% in this group right now would like to be in, uh, operations. Leadership. So, uh, this is perfect. Um, we’ll, uh, we’ll kick it off, Jeff, cuz I, I really think, um, it, there’s a lot of different ways to start to approach how to be a leader in the rev op space, but I think more importantly, let’s figure out for a company themselves, if we think about it from a company perspective, when should [00:05:00] a company actually start a rev ops role with leadership? Um, you know, when is the right time for that company? You know, like I said, your, your experience has, uh, afforded you a lot of ways to look at it. But, you know, what do you think when, when should a company really start their rev ops leadership role? 

Speaker 2: Uh, personally, I think as soon as possible. Um, but it, it doesn’t always work out that way, right? So, um, particularly at the startup phase where companies are really solving for product market fit, um, it’s, it’s too premature at that point to bring in any sort of go-to-market operator. Um, and depending on your business motion, right? [00:05:30] Like you wanna meet your buyers where they are. So if you’re in a B2C space, you’re probably gonna lean much more towards marketing operations skillsets. If you’re product led and you’re really getting those free trial motions, um, you might have some sales touch, you may not. So again, you’re probably gonna lean much towards, uh, more of the top of funnel, um, operations. But if you’re like me in the b2b, you know, software and sales space and you’re, you’re gonna have to interact with a sales rep or a sales development rep at some point. 

Speaker 2: Um, and so what you do is typically you’re building up these departmental skills. So depending [00:06:00] on your buying motion and where your buyers are, you’re probably gonna lean, um, on hiring a marketing ops or a sales ops, uh, professional. And let’s be honest, rev ops is kind of a new terminology that we’ve labeled on an old craft. Um, but it is, but it is new in some ways as well, cuz folks are thinking about revenue as the byproduct of delivering great value for customers. And the way to do that is aligning all of the internal pieces of the company. And so what you’re typically looking at is, um, a few telltale signs of when to bring in [00:06:30] a revenue operator. Um, and, and you’re really focusing on alignment that is information asymmetry and it’s, it’s not flowing between these different groups. So you have these substantial silos within the company and you’re typically gonna build out your revenue operations function as kind of that great alignment, um, spokesperson within the company. Um, and there’s a lot of different organizational structures you can explore as another topic to, to go down as well. Um, but typically you’re gonna have these departmental skill sets brought in first and then I, I, what I typically [00:07:00] see is someone layering on afterwards bringing in that rev op leader. 

Speaker 1: I love that. Oh, you know, the, the coolest thing that I, I took away and just listening so, uh, so closely, and I’m sure everybody else took this away, you didn’t throw a number out. I think too often when companies are trying to grow and they hit these benchmarks and it’s like, cool, we have 50 people, we need to go get operations, awesome. Now we have 150 headcount, now we need an operations leader. I don’t, it’s so tough to put a linear, uh, example to that. [00:07:30] Um, sure is benchmarking data perfect. And, and as ops nerds, we love some, some good, uh, some good analysis and benchmarking data. But I think so often what you said where it comes to how your business is operating, have you hit these certain milestones subjectively and objectively? Are you starting to understand how these components work with your business? 

Speaker 1: That’s the right time. Um, and I, you know, I, I always like to think that it’s not always, uh, like it’s not always a number. It’s like, cool, whoa, we hit a a million in recurring revenue or suite, we now [00:08:00] have 5 million or we have 15 employees. Like those aren’t, those are all sometimes directional indicators, but they’re not always like, align the sand, like, sweet, now I gotta go hire somebody at rev ops. So, uh, I absolutely love that. Um, so I think when we think about, uh, you know, we, we’ve answered the question of when a company thinks about, you know, bringing in, uh, in leadership in the operation side, I think what’s really cool, we see this, you know, sometimes a 50 50 coin flip. Um, do you promote from within to find that? Um, or [00:08:30] is that something you go out and hire for? 

Speaker 1: And I think when we go into this next, uh, next question of it is, you know, how do you go about negotiating how to change your role? So I think a lot of folks that are, they’re here and we, we saw this by the poll results, right? About 50 folks or 50% of people in here are saying, yes, I want to be there. Uh, so we’ll answer that question directly for them. You know, when we think about negotiating that revenue operations manager or sales ops manager to director of rev ops or director, director or vp, uh, whatever your title structure is for your company, how do you go about talking about that, [00:09:00] uh, that strategic move and how do you really negotiate your, your change for that role? 

Speaker 2: That’s a great question cuz I was a team of one for, for several years and a team of one, um, your metric, your metric for success is, is somewhat different from, you know, revenue leader, um, as a team of one, you’re, you’re really focused on am I delivering value at the project level, uh, under budget, under time, and am I delivering all the tactical things that are important? But at the end of the day, you know, shifting from you, there’s, there are different levels. [00:09:30] Uh, what I posted before, um, you know, you start off as this executor, right? And the goal of the executor is to take care of home base, take care of the tackling and blocking, you know, lead routing has to work at all times, accounts and data governance has to work at all times. And so these things about, you know, how do you move from there to the advisor, which is the second level. 

Speaker 2: Um, so that first level of the executor and to exit there is like a moving through stages. You have to become what I consider a worry free search. Um, there are no [00:10:00] questions around the fidelity of your data or if the systems are are buggy or whatnot. Uh, you get to the point where you can build in that fidelity, that second level is the advisor. And I’d like to think about it as, you know, more than just building a report or building a dashboard, you have to take the time to ask, so what, why does this matter? What’s the impact? And communicate to it. You know, we often try to manage the business through metrics, but metrics based management often ends up being having this exercise. And yes, that’s a north star, so how do we do that? [00:10:30] And so what you want to answer instead is start coming up with how to do that. 

Speaker 2: And that’s where you come up with your insights and actionable recommendations. An old playbook that I learned as a consultant was, your slide should have three bullets and then at the very end you should come up with, uh, risk and opportunities. And then the last slide should be, you know, next steps. It’s like, okay, that sounds very canned, but it actually made a lot of sense. Um, so you’re walking the narrative. And then the last thing is being a, becoming a partner in, I think that’s the highest level like zen where you have a seat at the [00:11:00] table. And besides just providing insights and actionable recommendations, you’re actually looking at holistic trends in the industry. Are you being subsumed by competitors? Is the share of the market growing or shrinking? What is that for tell for the entire stack? So for example, last year was an opportunity for those with strong balance sheets. 

Speaker 2: You actually probably saw your cost for keyword go down on your top of funnel and then all of a sudden it started ramping back up towards the back half of the year. And then a lot, this happens a lot of industries. And so folks started [00:11:30] thinking, okay, do I outspend everyone? How am I gonna do this? Cuz we, we just adjusted to this new normal. Instead start, people started thinking ahead. As soon as keyword costs are going up, let’s start developing that content hub strategy. And marketing ops has to start thinking about, okay, how are we gonna segment, how are we gonna route these leads? And you have to start looking at a head, an so those three levels, executor, advisor, and partner is how you’re really going drive towards, you know, what, where you can get there. Um, so that’s one roadmap. And then obviously there’s the tactical pieces of how [00:12:00] to get there. 

Speaker 1: I love that. And the things that take so much away from that. And, and you and I have talked about this so often as you, as you grow in this role, so much of your pie chart, if you think of your pie chart of the day, um, even if you go down to like the, the executor versus the advisor side, if you just put those two wedges in there, um, so often we, we, we start to see early in our careers, we’re so tactical and we’re so execution heavy, like let’s go remove this roadblock, let’s go build that report, let’s go build this validation and we, we’ll [00:12:30] get real nerdy on the Salesforce side. Um, but then you start to realize as you become that partner and advisor, uh, your pie chart starts to shift. Cuz you’re not as tactical, you’re very much starting to be the strategic partner in the business. 

Speaker 1: And I think you’ll know it is goofy to say, you’ll know when you know, like you, when you get pegged or get, you know, get tapped to be like, yes, I need you to start thinking strategically for that is the absolute appropriate time where you get to start saying, cool, if I get to start thinking strategic, how do we build [00:13:00] our functionality, our group, our titles, more people in the group, uh, to those right roles? Because I think more than anything it has to be a timing thing. I think you have to be with the company and making sure that, um, that you’re really, you know, moving the ball forward. If you want a promotion or if you want that next title, like earn it. And it’s never just given, it’s never, uh, you know, something easier free. You have to actually go and earn it by becoming that partner. Um, you very much, uh, you very much get to do that. So, uh, we’re gonna go a little, not not too far off course, [00:13:30] but I will say we do have a question from the audience. So, um, you know, one thing from an anonymous attendee, how should someone move from system ops leader? So Salesforce to the broader rev ops leader? That’s a phenomenal question. Uh, I got some opinions, but Jeff, what do you think? 

Speaker 2: So, you know, the best thing about, um, you know, folks are looking for guidance on how to drive their decision making. And the the best thing about working with marketers, sellers, and folks and customer experience [00:14:00] is that they have incredible business intuition. And oftentimes what I’ll find is when I’m doing an analysis, uh, my insights are actually really on course with a lot of that intuition, but every once in a while, and hopefully more often than not, there are those gotchas and the the gotchas are in those, you know, those little segmentations where those time series es, there’s things that folks really can’t notice. The great thing about becoming, you know, systems admin is, is that you are kind of the person who owns the keys to all the data in there. Um, and so if you have the opportunity to, you know, just start trialing [00:14:30] and surfacing a few insights here and there, like, hey, I’m noticing a couple of these patterns. 

Speaker 2: And so when you’re in ops, there’s typically two paths to get into ops. Um, there’s the like accidental path, which is the one I did <laugh>, where you, you have the, you know, the business acumen, right? Because I I was in sales before and finance, and so I got to study the business from, from outside and then I layered on all the, the technology later. So the Salesforce side and you know, everything along those lines. Um, and then there are other folks who come in from the technical, um, [00:15:00] technical route and then you’re layering on the business acumen. So which from whichever corner of the earth you’re coming from there, there’s, there’s the path for you. So what I would suggest is, you know, really working with one or two stakeholders, um, that, you know, are really lacking insight and you can see that they’re operating based on gut and buzz. 

Speaker 2: And one of the things you can do there is really start validating some of their theories and potentially even negating some of their hypotheses by looking at the data. That would be a quick win for, for anybody out there. Um, and then once you’ve started [00:15:30] to become this, this well of information and insights, um, and you’re, you feel confident that you can drive recommendations, um, but even before that you’re gonna have, you’re gonna see this effect. Folks are gonna come to you and say, Hey, I noticed that you’re providing you, you have some great insight and things that I didn’t really noticed before. Um, you’ll actually start getting this crowd outside of your window <laugh>. So 

Speaker 1: Yeah. Happened 

Speaker 2: Spot on in the early days. 

Speaker 1: Yeah. Well I think the one thing and, and great question, thank y’all for, for an, for asking that and Jeff obviously for, for answering. [00:16:00] I think what’s, what I always find unique, and this was pretty, uh, almost predictable to a certain degree, but you know, very, uh, normal through my, my career with this was you get in, you start owning all these systems and again, it’s your keys to the castle, right? Um, people know that. And it doesn’t surprise me to hear it from any of our customers or you know, friends in the, in the community that say, yeah, I got, I got pulled into, you know, really help do the last set of our, uh, our board deck data. Like they needed all of our trends, all of the, the, [00:16:30] uh, KPIs we have and I own those. And, and if there’s anything you get out of that, it’s such a sense of accomplishment. 

Speaker 1: Like, man, all my hard work of making sure that we track these things the right way. What are our conversion rates? What are, how’s this rep doing? Are we going after this vertical? Now what territory’s performing best? You built all that and to be rewarded by having, you know, an executive ask like, Hey, I need your help. Making sure that we can show this story the right way to our board. It’s, it’s one of the best feelings. Um, I think the, the other thing I would add onto this, and, and you said this too, uh, [00:17:00] find those opportunities to be strategic. Because as a systems person, you’re always gonna be making sure ticket counts, low things are up and running, there’s no breakages, but find that one or two times a week where you see all these things, you get to go to your leadership and just be suggestive and say, Hey, I was running through a lot of these things and I noticed these three things. Here’s what I would say. Can we talk about how we can strategically implement something and lead by example first? And of course it, it comes, it, it’ll pay itself off, uh, as you, [00:17:30] uh, as you continue to grow in your career. But it’s, uh, yeah, one 

Speaker 2: Type, one type that I seen is interesting. Um, you know, a peer mine, um, was going through this recently, which was, um, they started delivering these metrics, um, and then what ended up happening was folks started asking for more. But, you know, my, my friend, my peer, he, he couldn’t deliver, um, the results cuz he, he, he was spending so much time in the weeds. And so, um, you know, we, we started crafting a game plan for him, which is let’s [00:18:00] start measuring all, you know, let’s measuring and measuring your time and how you’re spending it and then, um, uh, keeping categories of, you know, what kind of tickets or projects you’re battling and, and eventually started becoming this measurable, uh, impact that, you know, we could carve out these insights, but there has to be a trade off. Some of these things have to give in order to do that, we have to increase capacity and here are some suggestions to increase capacity. We either automate the work, we drop it completely in terms of scope or we augment the investment in a number of categories, [00:18:30] whether it as people, process or systems. 

Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, you’re spot on. I think you kind of zoom out of a lot of that and there’s only so many hours in the day that you can get some stuff done. And I think historically operations folks, you know, myself included, um, had a really hard time articulating how much time that spent to go build these things, especially from a system side. Um, anybody that knows me and, and Jeff and I riff on this all the time, when, when you’re owning technology like this, like the Salesforce, the Marketos of the world, the insert name here of all the go-to-market tech, [00:19:00] um, as a time consuming job. And it’s really hard sometimes to say, Hey team, it took me 12 hours to go build this one thing. Um, but you, you do yourself a favor. Keep a lot of of check marks on it, keep, uh, you know, time, check yourself on all of it. 

Speaker 1: Cause that’s how you build that use case, you know, back to the business too, to, uh, to actually continue to, to build your teams. So, um, this is a really fun question and, and I love this because we, again, we all know Jeff because he drops knowledge on us every day and, uh, and LinkedIn and, [00:19:30] and such a, and you have such a great brand behind rev ops. Um, when we think of how an ops team, uh, can work to transform their own brand to earn that seat at the table, I love this question cuz it’s, it’s, it’s very open, but it’s, you know, there is a whole brand to this and there’s a whole Mitchell on our team, our sales engineer. He, he says this all the time when you’re in rev offs, which she was running rev offs before, you know, joining us. He was like, if you’re not building enough trust and collaboration with the rest of the business, your, your brand is what [00:20:00] matters the most. Because if something breaks, they’re gonna point the finger at you. But, um, you know, when you think about it from your team perspective of building a rev ops brand within the business, um, you know, what is it that that people should be thinking about so they can earn that seat at the table? 

Speaker 2: So one of the most interesting things in within Revs is you can think of your org or your role as internal product managers, um, with developing a product or your customers. And those are your internal stakeholders where whether it’s your marketing organization and your sales organization [00:20:30] and there’s almost a miniature NPS that could happen, right? You have these net promoters in the business who go to you because they know that you’re gonna deliver on whatever level of inquiry that, uh, you, you know, whether it’s a tactical support item or a huge project or some sort of input into some sort of important or a strategic conversation that needs insights from the data. And so one of the things that you can do to build a credible brand is really viewing your organization as product managers, uh, to the rest of the organization. And there’s a lot of playbooks [00:21:00] that are out there from product management, which is one, um, really canvassing the organization for user stories. 

Speaker 2: And this really a simple three column exercise. What are you doing currently? What would you like to do and what’s the solution? And then really building out for every single important project, um, having some structure around it so that everyone is involved, whether you’re a, using the D framework, you’re a driver, a approver contributor, or informed, um, you’re bringing those playbooks to fruition. Um, second [00:21:30] is project management technique. So, uh, or, um, you know, classifying your support tickets to me it’s, you know, your internal customer support. Uh, in my organization we have P one s, which are your highest priority, P two s and P three s. We go through an exercise where we’re calibrating how much time it’s gonna take so that we can appropriately build out our SLAs and the organization comes to us because they know that their issue is going to be heard and hopefully responded to with an sla. 

Speaker 2: And it gives me an opportunity to work with my team to make sure that we set our own internal [00:22:00] benchmarks around, okay, what’s our delivery standard? What’s the level of quality for any net new projects? And then how do we make sure that we work with others so that we can understand and listen to the rest of the business so that we can innovate internally, build out some maybe new kickass lead routing. Maybe we are doing something around lead scoring and maximizing off our internal database, whether it’s a sales process and really understanding, you know, where our deals getting stuck in our sales process and what are the data points that we’re missing, and then how do we calibrate and figure out how do we surface those insights. [00:22:30] Those, those are really interesting things that, um, make rev ops or sales ops or whatever we call ourselves, um, different day in and day out. 

Speaker 1: I love that. All right, so it’s almost like you can see the q and a section cuz this is, uh, something that Rick just asked and I, and I love it cuz you mentioned this at the very beginning. Um, so like between rev ops and sales ops. So this is a common answer or a common question. So we’ll segue into some q and a please for everyone on, uh, drop some questions in. That’s exactly what we’re here to do is help, uh, help the community kind of solve some problems. And, and [00:23:00] best way to do it is by asking questions. But, um, fun question man. What’s the difference between sales ops and rev ops 

Speaker 2: <laugh>? Um, so there’s, uh, there’s, there’s two answers here, right? One, um, one is your job title, right? You’re, you’re called sales ops, but probably in reality you’re, you’re actually doing rev ops <laugh>. Um, so let’s just think about, you know, when the, the funnel, when is a prospect or a lead firmly in the hands of marketing top of funnel. Um, and then at what point does it exit that marketing [00:23:30] funnel and go into sales, a hand raise and it’s now ready for a sales conversation. And to me, a sales development rep, you know, I’m classically from the school where I believe SDRs are in sales. They may report to marketing, but in reality, a lot of their tactics, they’re really the, the, the the decision point they’re trying to inflect from the prospect is really far down the funnel, right? And for me, marketing is at the point of awareness and consideration to the intent where they hand raise and they move into sales. 

Speaker 2: So sales operations begins and ends [00:24:00] when, at the point of which a prospect is ready to talk to a salesperson, right? Whether, whatever the job title is, um, and then it exits as soon as it starts going into customer experience or loyalty or implementation along that part of the customer journey. Um, but let’s be fair, there are a lot of folks here who are probably, you know, sales operations titles that are really configuring things in Marketo and cardon and launching campaigns. They may even be listed, um, uploading lists for field marketing. Um, although we’re [00:24:30] probably all inside calling on Zoom these days. Um, and so, you know, at the end of the day you probably have 90% of your role sales ops and then 10% in uh, rev op in my opinion that tilts towards calling you rev ops. But, um, in my view, rev ops is the entire journey really thinking about the buyer throughout from the time they become aware that hey, I need to fix something and I’m seriously considering options and I’m researching and I just found sonar and thinking about, um, how do, how do I fix this? Do I build or do I buy it? Um, hey, I really want to start talking [00:25:00] to someone in sales. This looks great. Let’s talk about implementation. How do I get started with this? And then how do I tell all my friends and family to use it? Uh, to me it’s, you know, that’s rev ops all the way through the entire journey. 

Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely. And I think the, the best question, and I love it cuz it’s so loaded, let’s just call it, it’s a loaded question cuz it’s, it’s a, we’re seeing such a high trend of it, right? Like we see the Rev, I think there was a report on LinkedIn, uh, rev ops titles increase 400% year over year. Um, which does not surprise me in the least. Uh, [00:25:30] I think there are many differences like you pointed out. I think the one thing that I would do the same way you just suggested it, Jeff, watch how you’re impacting the customer journey because it’s, if you’re only supporting that open gate and closed gate in the sales cycle of it, you’re a sales ops. If you’re working through marketing side and you’re making a lot of configuration changes and strategic decisions from a Marketo or Pardot or Elco, whatever you’re working on, all the way down to the gain sites, the churn zeroes. 

Speaker 1: [00:26:00] If you’re working in the customer success side, if you’re working with finance and you are in the NetSuite world or whenever it is, you’re on the e r p side one, bless you. Cause that’s not easy. Uh, but two, uh, I would consider yourself, uh, very much rev ops because you’re, you are in charge of watching that revenue journey. Um, I think, again, I’ve said this candidly to some of our customers, some of our advisors, some of our investors, I think the market is still figuring it out. I think we’re still trying to figure out where we decide [00:26:30] what that, uh, that title looks like, why we have it that way. Um, so it’s, uh, I think it’s gonna continue to evolve, but I think if there’s anything that you take away from it, if you’re supporting more than one second on the business, there’s a good chance you’re in the, in the rev op space and you’re watching that revenue come through. If somebody asks you what’s our retention rate? You’re gonna be more on the rev op side than just the sales op side. So I love that. I told, uh, I told Jeff before we started that I had a couple surprises for him. Only I know that he’s a huge, huge baseball fan, uh, and a big [00:27:00] Dodgers fan being in la Uh, so I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell him that baseball season’s right around the corner and we wear 

Speaker 2: <laugh>, 

Speaker 1: Our, sorry, our branded sonar Atlanta hats that you’ll, uh, you’ll have one, you’ll have one in the mail. Oh God, he’s going to get his, uh, his Dodgers hat. I know it. 

Speaker 2: Point this out. <laugh>. 

Speaker 1: We have one of those from like the nineties I think. So here we are, uh, <laugh>, but it’s like, man, if I can ever take a dig at Jeff and [00:27:30] baseball and baseball’s right around the corner, it’s definitely gonna be today. So, uh, we’ll, we’re gonna be sending you some Atlanta, uh, sonar gear so you can at least rock the a while you’re, uh, out in ni la, but oh 

Speaker 2: Man, kidding me. 

Speaker 1: I I knew you had it right there. It was not rehearsed by the way, everybody, he, uh, he just keeps his la hat right by him all the time. Um, but I will say, uh, the other thing that we always do inside of all this, I’m gonna keep my hat on cause it’s gonna be messing up my hair like crazy. Yeah. Um, we always like do a couple little rapid fire things. So last couple of minutes, and again, if females, any other quick questions, drop ’em in. [00:28:00] Um, we can also answer ’em offline and w ops, but, uh, rapid fire questions, gonna toss ’em out. Oh, man. Yankees, Rick, ugh, sorry. Um, sorry, I’m not sorry. Nobody’s, nobody’s that big a Yankee fan. Um, what, uh, what has your interest peaked right now on Netflix or on any streaming thing? What are you watching these days? 

Speaker 2: Oh man. Um, let’s see. Uh, the wife has been watching, um, a lot of like Star Wars, clone Wars, so I like through Osmosis, been watching a lot of that. Um, I’m actually a huge nerd around [00:28:30] ancient history. Um, I just finished, uh, was it Barberin on, uh, barbarians on Netflix? Yeah. Thought that was incredibly interesting, um, on the fact that no one knows what Latin actually sounds like the accents and the way it’s pronounced is gone. Uh, so I thought that was really interesting. That was really cool. 

Speaker 1: Love it. I love it. Uh, by osmosis the same way, uh, by default we’ve been watching a lot of, uh, below Deck. Uh, I think we’re all in like a traveling, my wife loves Below Deck, so [00:29:00] I watch that by osmosis and I’ll say I’ve become a fan of it now as well. But, uh, but I do like to think that, uh, we all watch whatever is, uh, just in the background of us. So I can probably name every character now on that, so I love it. Uh, last question for you, cause I know we’re getting close to the top of time. Uh, we do this with a lot of our guests and I’m gonna do it with you today too. So as a, uh, as a Jeff, when you think back in your, uh, your operations career, what advice would you give yourself? And obviously the rest of the folks that are here, uh, on our show today, what advice would [00:29:30] you give them as they’re growing their, uh, operations career? Um, if you were to rewind the clock and give yourself some of that advice, 

Speaker 2: Um, 

Speaker 2: You’re a team of one, um, you know, take a vacation <laugh>. Um, and, and the really important thing about that is, um, think about your career as something that you own and that you’re not a passenger to and that you drive, you’re in the driver’s seat. Um, I can tell you that I thought I could solve everything as a team of one for a very, very long time, and I [00:30:00] should have asked to build a team earlier, but I just didn’t know how. Right? And, um, and, and part of the thing is the only way to scale the impact of what Rev ops could be is that you are stronger as a team. Um, and so, you know, really advocate for what that might look like, not just for you personally, but for what the company needs. And if you’re in the best position to take a leadership role and you’re willing to be gracious and step up, um, do so. But first take a break. Everyone needs, um, a [00:30:30] a bit of an opportunity to get outside themselves and then jump back in the saddle. 

Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, take a vacation. Uh, my wife yells at me all the time cause I don’t take nearly enough time off. But, um, it’s, it’s so true. You, you do take a couple of those days to, even if it’s a day, even if it’s a staycation right now, I think a lot of folks are staying home, but take some time to catch your breath and the thing that you’ll find so quickly when you get back from that, you are a hundred percent more efficient and you are get your, your mind is more clear. You’re thinking, uh, about problems in a whole new light. So, [00:31:00] uh, completely agree and I think you, you mentioned this to a certain degree, it’s, you know, if you want that leadership position, be humble enough to, to ask for it, but also go prove that, uh, that you’re the right person for it. 

Speaker 1: It’s, you’re in, you are in the driver’s seat, you’re a team of one right now. Um, we’ve all been there. I was there, uh, and started as a team of one and built teams out from it. But, um, you have to, you have a lot to prove to the business that you’re the right person. Then the nice thing is you’ve got folks like Jeff, you’ve got a community like Wops to ask questions of and really figure out how, uh, how to make [00:31:30] that journey your own. Um, but yeah, you’re spot on man. I love it. I know we’re about two minutes over time, time flies when you’re having fun. But, uh, Jeff, I can’t thank you enough for jumping in, man. I know the community loves it. Um, I know I learned a lot today, so hope everybody else did. Uh, and don’t worry, you’ll be getting your uh, Atlanta hat in the mail pretty soon. So <laugh> 

Speaker 2: Awesome, we pull down the flag. Awesome. Level up, <laugh>, 

Speaker 1: Flag, <laugh>, love everybody. Have a phenomenal Thursday and great rest of the week. Uh, again, if you, uh, saw this, found it on LinkedIn, um, and you’re not part of W [00:32:00] Ops, please reach out to us. Jump in the community. It’s a great place to talk to Jeff, myself and, uh, we can all collaborate together. But, uh, hope everybody has a great Thursday afternoon. Jeff. Thanks again. We’ll talk soon. Take care everyone. See ya. Go Braves. Right, right. Jeff say go Braves, 

Speaker 2: <laugh>, like you caught me out guard there. That was awesome. <laugh>. 

Speaker 1: See 

Speaker 2: You smile on my face. <laugh>.