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Global Tech Leaders' Podcast

Global Tech Leaders' Podcast

By Ross Lauder & John Quigley

The Global Tech Leaders' Podcast helping Business Leaders and Individual Contributors with actionable insights to hit their number and figure out the nuances of truly operating a business globally today. Squeezing the Essence of the Lessons Learnt from The Planets Top Tech Leaders. This is your guide to joining the fast track to Global market scaling.
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The journey from thinking he was not smart enough to Head of Digital Sales at Vodafone. Jimmy Kehoe talks leadership.

Global Tech Leaders' PodcastJun 25, 2021

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Women in Tech Series: Gwen Tormey Chief Operating Officer at Corestream shares the broad view of an organization.

Women in Tech Series: Gwen Tormey Chief Operating Officer at Corestream shares the broad view of an organization.

Welcome to the Women in Tech Series from the Global Tech Leaders Podcast. Today we are speaking to Gwen Tormey Chief Operating Officer at Corestream. As COO, Gwen Tormey owns Corestream's strategic roadmap and annual planning and runs the Business Analytics & Data, Operational Excellence, Marketing, and Retail Discounts teams. She has significant experience in business and product operations, strategy, finance, and M&A. Gwen holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and a BS in Management Science & Engineering, with distinction, from Stanford.

We kick off by asking Gwen to share with us her career journey and what has led her to where she is today.

  • She was born and raised in New York.
  • Started in Management Science & Engineering.
  • Private Equity.
  • Health Technology.
  • Industrial Chemicals.
  • Back to Business School.
  • Physical Therapy.
  • Funding.
  • The move to Tampa.
  • Early growth stage.
  • Getting connected.
  • Corestream is a voluntary benefits technology platform catering to large enterprise-size clients.
  • From 5 people to 130.

We ask Gwen what the COO role means to her and why she loves it.

  • CEO in waiting.
  • Mentor.
  • What the company needs.
  • Multi-dimensional thing.
  • Very organised and detailed.
  • The broad view of the organisation.

Then we ask Gwen about the framework and what actionable insights could help someone listening.

  • It's not perfect on day one.
  • Building year after year.
  • Get people used to measure.
  • North star goal.
  • Smart Sheet.
  • Metric drivers.
  • Leadership meets monthly.
  • Weekly team meetings.

Next, we ask Gwen why is Corestream so exciting.

  • Invest in team and culture.
  • Most of the team is remote.
  • Ensuring people are happy and fulfilled.
  • Career development and feedback.
  • Mission-driven.

We ask Gwen what culture means to her.

  • Empathy and humility.
  • Culture Council.
  • Culture Interview.
  • Town Hall Meetings.
  • An employee of the month.

Lastly, we ask Gwen if she has any accountable tools or hacks to share.

  • Followupthen.com
  • Block out thinking time.
  • Mural.
Oct 27, 202241:51
Women in Tech Series: Isabelle Andrieu Founder & CEO of Pi School and co-founder of Translated.com shares what leadership means to her.

Women in Tech Series: Isabelle Andrieu Founder & CEO of Pi School and co-founder of Translated.com shares what leadership means to her.

Welcome to the Women in Tech Series from the Global Tech Leaders Podcast. Today we are speaking to Isabelle Andrieu Founder & CEO of Pi School and co-founder of Translated.com. An interesting translation platform that has been around for 20+ years with 1000+ people. For the first time ever employing some salespeople.

We kick off by asking Isabelle to share her career journey and what has led her to where she is now.

  • Raised in France, first of three kids.
  • Met her Italian husband in college.
  • Help people communicate better.
  • Starting a new adventure.

We ask Isabelle how she made a difference culturally.

  • Companies need people.
  • Team members.
  • Responsibility to help people grow.

We ask Isabelle to share some of those growth stories.

  • Improve and evolve.
  • Change with the company.
  • Trust.
  • Understanding and fundamentals.

Then we ask Isabelle what was one of the things that used to happen back in the day that would identify when you were onto something special.

  • Resilience.
  • Also an investor.
  • Breakthrough.
  • Business Development.
  • Luxury places to work to attract talent.
  • Six villas in Rome.
  • Plants from all over the world.
  • Sports during lunch.
  • Healthy snacks.
  • Weekly massages.

Next, we ask Isabelle what kind of traits would a person need to have to be a part of Translated.com.

  • Kind people.
  • Changing the status quo.
  • Hungry to learn and make an impact.
  • Train resilience.
  • Result driven.
  • Switching “I” to “we”.

We ask Isabelle what it means to be a leader.

  • Seeing others grow.
  • From intern to senior leader.
  • Impact.
  • Women are doubted.
  • Burn out.
  • People pleaser.
  • Selfish.

Next, we ask Isabelle what she feels is her superpower.

  • Empathy.
  • Getting things done.

Then we ask Isabelle if she has any productivity hacks or tools she can’t live without.

  • Calendar.
  • Yearly vision.
  • Asana.
Oct 26, 202244:06
Women in Tech Series: Kristi Faltorusso Chief Customer Officer at Client Success shares the importance of balance and boundaries.

Women in Tech Series: Kristi Faltorusso Chief Customer Officer at Client Success shares the importance of balance and boundaries.

Welcome to the Women in Tech Series from the Global Tech Leaders Podcast. Today we are speaking to Kristi Faltorusso Chief Customer Officer at Client Success. She is an award-winning Customer Success Executive with experience in building, scaling, and transforming Customer Success organizations at hyper-growth B2B SaaS companies. Over the past decade, she has helped many companies redefine Customer Success resulting in increased retention, long-term revenue growth, and customer advocacy.

We kick off by asking Kristi to share her career journey and what has led her to where she is today.

  • Wanted to be an attorney.
  • Public Relations.
  • Connecting with people and stories.
  • Digital Advertising.
  • SEO.
  • Taught at Long Island University.
  • First to teach SEO in the country.
  • Customer Success.

We ask Kristi what is Customer Success and why is it so important.

  • The function of helping your customers be successful in that partnership.
  • Popping up in a ton of industries.
  • Complexity.
  • Customer Succes Management System.
  • Scale and drive efficiency.

Then we ask Kristi does a rockstar person look like in the Customer Success world.

  • Empathy.
  • Change Management.
  • Different software changes how they do it.
  • Communication.
  • Grit and tenacity.
  • Mindset.

Next, we ask Kristi how they measure impact.

  • Early stages of onboarding.
  • Different experiences and journeys.
  • Clear expectations.
  • Don't jump into onboarding.
  • Partnership kick-off discussion.
  • A lot of confirming.
  • Variant models.

Then we ask Kristi are woman better Venture Capitalists.

  • Risk-averse.
  • Bigger risks.

We ask Kristi what holds women back and where she feels we are winning with women in business and tech.

  • Family.
  • It all starts at home.
  • Balance and boundaries.
  • Better operating models.

We ask Kristi how would she design a world that works for women when they need time off to have kids.

  • If they are good hires, hire them.
  • Compensation, women don't negotiate.
  • Women holding women back.

Lastly, we ask Kristi if she has productivity hacks to share.

  • Post it.
  • Clear goals.
  • Make your bed. 
Oct 25, 202246:42
Women in Tech Series: Shanthi Rajaram President & CEO at Amazech Solutions shares how we shouldn't curb curiosity.

Women in Tech Series: Shanthi Rajaram President & CEO at Amazech Solutions shares how we shouldn't curb curiosity.

Welcome to the Women in Tech Series from the Global Tech Leaders Podcast. Today we are speaking to Shanthi Rajaram President & CEO at Amazech Solutions. Technologist, leader, and problem solver with over 20 years of experience in areas of Business Management developing and driving strategic initiatives, technology adoption, software products, selling and implementing IT solutions, recruitment, etc. Highly energetic and driven in identifying opportunities and providing suitable solutions with a roadmap using cost-effective models with the right mix of global professionals. Demonstrates trust, accountability, thought leadership, and a customer-centric approach in all areas of work.

We kick off by asking Shanthi to share with us her career journey and what has led her to where she is today.

  • Technology came easy.
  • Civil Engineer.
  • Always been fascinated with solving problems.
  • Developer.
  • Small fish in a big company.
  • Built for a small company ecosystem.

We asked Shanthi what would be her advice for parents to steward kids to explore developing tech and software.

  • Technology isn't going anywhere.
  • All careers have the technology.
  • Data science.
  • Get comfortable with it.
  • It comes intuitively to younger people to figure out technology.
  • Don't curb curiosity.
  • Collaboration between parents to share different skills.

Then we ask Shanthi, a big advocate for women in tech, to share some of the initiatives she is involved in.

  • Women in business & women in technology.
  • DFW Alliance of Technology and Women (DFW*ATW)
  • GirlsInSTEM
  • Ignite.
  • What to expect in business.

Next, we ask Shanthi how you teach resilience.

  • Bounce back.
  • Effectiveness.
  • Think before doing.
  • Navigate and balance growth.

Then we ask Shanthi to share the story of Amazech.

  • Companies and websites.
  • Started as a services company.
  • Showcase capabilities.
  • Marketing solutions and marketing services.
  • Embrace what helps you.
  • Security Apps.

Lastly, we ask Shanthi what tips and tracks she has for productivity.

  • Phone.
  • Laptop.
  • Excel.
  • Microsoft Teams.
  • Calendar.
Oct 24, 202247:07
Women in Tech Series: Sarah Klegman Chief Happiness Officer & Head of Brand at Proper shares the power of showing up as your full self.

Women in Tech Series: Sarah Klegman Chief Happiness Officer & Head of Brand at Proper shares the power of showing up as your full self.

Welcome to the Women in Tech Series from the Global Tech Leaders Podcast. Today we are speaking to Sarah Klegman Chief Happiness Officer & Head of Brand at Proper. A former comedy producer and creative marketing executive with over 15 years of experience leading creative content strategies, Sarah has spent the last four years shaping Proper’s distinctive customer-facing brand experience and spirited company culture.

We kick off by asking Sarah to share her career journey and what has led her to where she is today.

  • Right after college became a talent manager and producer.
  • The comedy world is a blast.
  • Office Manager at a start-up.
  • Social Media.
  • Baking blog.
  • Podcast: What's wrong with you?
  • From 6 to 250.
  • Having fun while working.

Then we ask Sarah how she encourages others to learn from her journey.

  • Protect yourself.
  • Continuously check-in.
  • Outcomes over appearances.
  • Sacrifices.
  • Authenticity and pride.
  • Prioritizing your own health.
  • Use your voice and don't strive for perfection.

Next, we ask Sarah if should people be who they are at home, and at work as well.

  • As much as possible.
  • Time and a place.
  • Make space for people to be themselves.
  • Proper People.
  • Diversity.
  • Showing up as your full self.
  • Thoughtfulness.
  • Just launched the Calm App.
  • Psychological safety in the workspace.

Then we ask Sarah, how they find people who fit into their culture and company.

  • Documenting and brainstorming qualities.
  • Hiring Manager.
  • Values Fit Interview.
  • Theoretical Assignment with a panel.

Next, we ask Sarah to share more about Proper.

  • Provides tech-enabled accounting and bookkeeping services for the property world.
  • Property accounting.
  • Fully scalable.
  • Standardise processes.
  • Internal technology.
  • Automating.
  • Level of security.

We ask Sarah to share about their adoption journey.

  • Series B.
  • Improving customer and people experience.
  • How to use scale culture.

We ask Sarah what a rockstar looks like in her world.

  • Impact and value.
  • See ways of making things better.
  • Curiosity.
  • Takes feedback well.

Lastly, we ask Sarah if she has any productivity hacks or a tool she can't live without.

  • Water and intentions.
  • Jira.
  • Time blocking.
  • Focus.
  • Meeting agendas.
Oct 21, 202248:60
Women in Tech Series: Jen Spencer CEO at SmartBug Media shares the power of making room for experimentation.

Women in Tech Series: Jen Spencer CEO at SmartBug Media shares the power of making room for experimentation.

Welcome to the Women in Tech Series from the Global Tech Leaders Podcast. Today we are speaking to Jen Spencer CEO at SmartBug Media, HubSpot Partner of The Year. SmartBug Media is a globally award-winning intelligent inbound marketing agency that helps businesses grow revenue by generating leads, engaging accounts and building brand loyalty through inbound marketing, sales enablement, revenue operations, web development, digital strategy, marketing automation, and public relations.

We kick off by asking Jen to share her career journey and what has led her to where she is today.

  • “I wanted to be in charge.”
  • Volunteering time.
  • Teacher.
  • Public Relations and Digital Marketing.
  • Tech start-up.
  • Joined as VP of Sales.

We then ask Jen what drew her to sales and what makes a rockstar salesperson.

  • Marketing ROI.
  • Buying persona.
  • Extension of marketing.

Next, we ask Jen what is she seeing out there with marketing budgets.

  • Pressure.
  • Not a lot of room for experimentation.
  • Technology stacks.
  • The promise that some technology makes.
  • Doing more for less.
  • Audiences are changing.
  • Mapping the journey.

Then we ask Jen how they gain new clients at SmartBug Media.

  • “We drink our own champagne.”
  • Intelligent inbound marketing.
  • “We wanna be our own best case study.”
  • 5M to 500M
  • Klaviyo Partner.
  • HubSpot.
  • Salesforce.

We ask Jen about being a leading woman in tech and what is her perspective on diversity.

  • Girls in Tech.
  • Volunteers.
  • Woman led.
  • Infinity Groups.
  • Lady Bugs.
  • Woman in Leadership.

Then we ask Jen how intentional they are in their process of hiring.

  • How and where.
  • Who you have now is who you are attracting.
  • Removing barriers.
  • Global team.

Lastly, we ask Jen what tools or productivity hacks can't she live without.

  • Executive Assistant.
  • Organised email system.
  • Calendar with colour coding.
Oct 20, 202242:30
Women in Tech Series: Chelsey Krisay Chief of Staff at Trainual shares the power of celebrating failures.

Women in Tech Series: Chelsey Krisay Chief of Staff at Trainual shares the power of celebrating failures.

Welcome to the Women in Tech Series from the Global Tech Leaders Podcast. Today we are speaking to Chelsey Krisay Chief of Staff at Trainual and rewriting the rule book for your organisation's playbook. She is very much a people person with an operational background. Prior to helping launch Trainual in 2018, Chelsey was the first employee at Organize Chaos, an operations consulting firm also founded by Chris Ronzio, CEO of Trainual. In her five+ years at Trainual, she has helped the team grow from 1-90 employees (and growing), exceed 10M in ARR and earn top rankings on notable workplace awards like Inc Best Workplaces.

We kick off by asking Chelsey to share her career journey and what has led her to where she is today.

  • Grew up in a small town.
  • Majored in business, communication and psychology.
  • Digital advertising to events.
  • Organised Chaos.
  • Standard Operating Procedures.
  • A little bit of everything.

We ask Chelsey, how do you sell that the company is new and we want you to build it with us.

  • Outbound.
  • People were excited.

Then we ask Chelsey do they use their own solution at Trainual.

  • Today yes.
  • In 2018 no.
  • Process super solidified before documenting it.
  • Everything is documented.
  • Company retreat.
  • iOS & Android.

Next, we ask Chelsey who would they target at Trainual.

  • Target persona businesses with 5 to 500 employees.
  • People-powered businesses.
  • Repeatable processes are set in stone.
  • Recruitment process.
  • Videos from leadership.
  • Broken down into roles.
  • Implementation Specialist.
  • Chrome extension.

Then we ask Chelsey about her being in different areas of Trainual.

  • Broad skill set.
  • Customer Success.
  • Trailblazer.

We ask Chelsey what trends she has seen in the small businesses they work with.

  • Still need to document processes.
  • Especially with onboarding.
  • Tracking.
  • A read report with date and time stamp.
  • Integrated with Panda.doc.

We ask Chelsey what leadership look like to her.

  • Transparency.
  • Leadership and financials shared.
  • Company-wide meetings.
  • Q & A
  • No mysteries.
  • A lot of autonomy.
  • Celebrate failures.
  • Empowering.
  • Accessible.

We ask Chelsey what she is experiencing around culture.

  • DEI training.
  • Diversity Week.

Lastly, we ask Chelsey, what her productivity hack is.

  • Clockwise.
  • Asana.
Oct 19, 202236:19
Women in Tech Series: Wendy Harris Head of EMEA at Gong speaks about keeping the door open for other women.

Women in Tech Series: Wendy Harris Head of EMEA at Gong speaks about keeping the door open for other women.

Welcome to the Women in Tech Series from the Global Tech Leaders Podcast. Today we are speaking to Wendy Harris Head of EMEA at Gong. Prior to this, Wendy led European sales at CarGurus for over three years and before that, she was the Head of EMEA enterprise sales at Dropbox. She also spent over a decade working in financial services as a trader for Goldman Sachs. Wendy brings a wealth of technology sales management experience to the role. This year, Wendy will be hiring in Dublin across a variety of go-to-market roles including sales and customer success.

We kick off by asking Wendy to share her career journey and what has led her to where she is today.

  • The path less travelled.
  • Getting into tech.
  • Joined as the first employee for Europe at Gong.

We ask Wendy how daunting it was to enter the tech world.

  • Your ramp will be longer.
  • Cut in the title and cut in compensation.
  • Real intent.
  • Do it to the best of your ability.

We ask Wendy what her thoughts are on the importance of industry experience for a leadership role.

  • Established companies.
  • Robust training.
  • Impact.

Then we ask Wendy how that journey fine-tuned her process of finding talent.

  • Open to hiring people from different industries.
  • Finance.
  • Get out if you're miserable.

Next, we ask Wendy where she feels her sense of accountability comes from.

  • Upbringing.
  • Experience in sports.
  • Competitive.
  • Hero or victim of your story.

We ask Wendy how should we coach grit and tenacity.

  • Self-awareness.
  • The world owes you nothing.

Then we ask Wendy what they do at Gong and how she copes with accents in EMEA.

  • A revenue intelligence platform.
  • Once you see it, you can't un-see it.

Next, we asked Wendy what she would say to people who ask about the human element of this technology.

  • Democritises information.
  • Makes sales reps stronger.
  • Insanely good technology.

We ask Wendy about global expansion.

  • Hard to get off the ground.
  • Strategic priorities.
  • Local pull for the market.
  • Hire a local person.

Then we ask Wendy what challenges has she faced in the tech world with it being made dominated.

  • Used to being the only woman in the room.
  • If you are the first woman in any room, it's your responsibility to keep the door open for other women.
  • Identify as “me”.

We ask Wendy how we translate culture.

  • Roar laughing.
  • Take holidays.
  • Leaders set the tone.

We ask Wendy what is the outlook of the company for the future.

  • Benelux, Nordics, Germany and France.
  • Gong Assist.
  • 110 by the end of the year.

Lastly, we ask Wendy if she has a tool she cants live without that helps her stay organised and accountable.

  • Block out the calendar before 10 am.
  • Trello.
  • Hyper-organised.
  • Filing cabinets in her head.
  • If you say you’re going to do something, do it.
Oct 18, 202241:53
Women in Tech: Chelsie Rae Lee cofounder and President at Caroo shares how she develops control for the day.

Women in Tech: Chelsie Rae Lee cofounder and President at Caroo shares how she develops control for the day.

Welcome to the Women in Tech Series from the Global Tech Leaders Podcast. Today we are speaking to Chelsie Rae Lee co-founder and President at Caroo. She has spent her life designing and building B2B & B2B2C software platforms that solve meaningful problems while driving significant growth.

Chief Product & Chief Revenue Officer Specialties, Founder of a successful pandemic pivot from zero to 1M+ users in 18 months, Customer & Market Research Expert, Product Analytics & MVP focused Product leader.

We kick off the show by asking Chelsie to share her career journey and what has led her to where she is today.

  • Math Degree.
  • Electrical Engineer.
  • Curious about human problems.
  • A customer experience that drives revenue.

We ask Chelsie how she went from Math to helping people.

  • Take what you know you can do.
  • What problems are you attracted to?
  • You are using your skills in different ways.

We ask Chelsie about mindset and why it's important.

  • Mindful practise.
  • Above-the-line perspective.
  • Want to get it right not be right?
  • Read and meditate.
  • Develop control for the day.

Then we ask Chelsie how she ended up co-founding a business.

  • Help people do the best work of their lives.
  • Breakroom food and snacks.
  • Office food and beverage.
  • Help people be seen.
  • Open culture.
  • Proud of resilience.

Next, we ask Chelsie why she cares so much and where it comes from. And what gave her the courage to go for it?

  • You uncover your life's purpose.
  • You remove layers.
  • Grew up with a Mom who cares.
  • People should be seen and belong.
  • The power of small gestures.
  • I was a small kid leading other small kids.

Then we ask Chelsie what makes her tick.

  • Not a curious listener.
  • Philosophy.
  • The content of life.
  • Strategic level.
  • The tech world is for curious people.

Next, we ask Chelsie what challenges women face in tech that she has seen.

  • You have to be better than everyone else in the room.
  • Women with conviction.
  • Companies led by women are more profitable.

Then we ask Chelsie to share more about Caroo and why is it a great place to be.

  • Care for the whole human.
  • Making a difference in the world.
  • Impact.
  • Fear and failure.
  • Accountability.

Lastly, we ask Chelsie how she stays organised and if there is a tool she can't live without.

  • Financial performance.
  • Successes and what could be better.
Oct 17, 202243:54
Women in Tech Series: Lin Chan Chief Financial Officer at Hayden AI, shares how you need to be the producer of your own movie.

Women in Tech Series: Lin Chan Chief Financial Officer at Hayden AI, shares how you need to be the producer of your own movie.

Welcome to the Women in Tech Series from the Global Tech Leaders Podcast. Today we are speaking to Lin Chan Chief Financial Officer at Hayden AI. She has extensive experience in international finance with start-ups and multinationals. Her industry experience includes commodities, manufacturing, and cleantech including solar, nanotechnology, software service, internet, communications, storage, semiconductor and consumer products.

We kick off by asking Lin to share her career journey with us and what has led her to where she is today.

  • Grew up in Malaysia.
  • Always wanted to be in business, as her grandmother was very successful.
  • Lived with Aussies.
  • Great place to develop.
  • Learnt confidence.
  • Met her husband there.
  • Going public.
  • Tech world.
  • Silicone Valley.
  • Exit and plan your strategy.
  • So many tech startups.
  • HDMI
  • The world of cannabis.

We ask Lin what she feels is the most challenging part of her financing role.

  • Duty to the board and shareholders.
  • Step up with the risk of losing your job, and going over the CEO.
  • Stressful.
  • Buddhism.
  • Disclosing it to the chairman.
  • Straight shooter.
  • Public controller.
  • IPO

Next, we ask Lin what are the stages of funding in an organisation and how they go about raising the money.

  • Projecting growth.
  • Revenue.
  • Profitability.
  • Treasury.
  • HaaS
  • External market data.
  • Seed money.
  • Series A - first round of funding.
  • Series B - scale up operations.
  • Trust.
  • No one can do what Hayden is doing right now.

Then we ask Lin what advice she would give other women CFOs that are in the making.

  • Have tough skin.
  • Don't expect to win any popularity contest.
  • Take money to make money.
  • In a startup everything is flexible.
  • Available and accessible at all times.
  • You are the producer of your own movie.

Lastly, we ask Lin, about a tool she uses to stay organised that she can't live without.

  • Spreadsheets.
  • Powerpoint.
  • Notebook.
  • Phone.
Oct 14, 202245:18
Women in Tech Series: Kate Hammitt Chief Marketing Officer at Splashthat.com shares the details on “The Culture Book”.

Women in Tech Series: Kate Hammitt Chief Marketing Officer at Splashthat.com shares the details on “The Culture Book”.

Welcome to the Women in Tech Series from the Global Tech Leaders Podcast. Today we are speaking to Kate Hammitt Chief Marketing Officer at Splashthat.com. She is a consultative, data-driven senior executive recognised for driving growth in B2B and B2B2C organisations across industries. She is passionate about finding and optimising revenue opportunities in start-ups and established business environments.

We kick off by asking Kate to share her career journey and what has led her to where she is today.

  • The University of Virginia.
  • An American swimmer.
  • Athletics and academics.
  • Golf and events.
  • Sports Marketing.
  • Technology space.
  • Event Marketing.
  • Communication, demand gen and field marketing.
  • From sporting events to corporate events.
  • Formative years.
  • Health Care System.
  • Juggling many roles.
  • The perfect role at the perfect time.

We ask Kate what she feels has changed around expectations in the marketing world. And what should marketing be?

  • The modern buyer.
  • Content.
  • Positioning for the organization.
  • Interacting, adapting and agile.
  • Identifying and solving problems.
  • Scaling.
  • Marketers and non-marketers
  • Letting the buyer educate.
  • Product market fit.

Then we ask Kate what is the difference between a Director of Marketing, a Chief of Marketing and a VP of Marketing.

  • A Director has subject matter expertise, the t-shape marketer
  • CMO has the full umbrella of responsibility around marketing and the broader business and a seat at the table. Primary person to align with the greater revenue organisation and that there is clarity on purpose.

Next, we ask Kate what is Splash and what they do and why is it exciting to be there.

  • They have been around since 2013.
  • Event Marketing Platform.
  • In-person, hybrid and virtual.
  • Tracking and measuring the success of the event.
  • Purpose-built for repeatable events.
  • Integrations.
  • Nothing you cant do regarding events in Splash.
  • US, EMEA & APAC.
  • 200 people.
  • High growth mode.
  • Engaging events.
  • The Culture Book.

Then we asked Kate, what advice does hse have for people that are hungry to join a new organisation.

  • Culture.
  • Understanding the team.
  • Ask what happens when a project doesn't go well, and how the organisation handles it.
  • What does failure look like, are you pushed to those areas?
  • How do people behave and react to failure?
  • Leadership philosophy.

Lastly, we ask Kate how she stays organised and if she has any hacks.

  • Calendar blocking.
  • Say and Go.
  • EverNote.
Oct 13, 202242:52
Women in Tech Series: Mary Drumond Chief Marketing Officer at Worthix shares how the role of a CMO is being the guardian of the customer.

Women in Tech Series: Mary Drumond Chief Marketing Officer at Worthix shares how the role of a CMO is being the guardian of the customer.

Welcome to the Women in Tech Series from the Global Tech Leaders Podcast. Today we are speaking to Mary Drumond Chief Marketing Officer at Worthix. She is the Chief Marketing Officer at Worthix and the host of the Voices of CX Podcast. She has a passion for consumer behaviour and extensive experience in Marketing Research, specifically Customer Experience (CX) and Customer Experience Management (CEM).

We kick off by asking Mary to share her career journey and what has led her to where she is today.

  • Leadership
  • Orchestrate talent.
  • Studied education.
  • Founded her own company.
  • Macro vision and strategy.
  • Technical skills.
  • The buck will always land on you.
  • You are ok with being wrong and failing.
  • It is being comfortable in discomfort.
  • Thrives in the circumstances others run away from.
  • How we are raised.
  • It is being afraid and acting anyway.

We ask Mary what advice she would give to the upcoming CMOs and what their role is.

  • Represent the customer.
  • Guardians of the customer in the company.
  • The customer's journey.
  • The human aspect.

Then we ask Mary what is CX and how you do it right. Tell us about Worthix.

  • The worth index.
  • The customer value.
  • Market research.
  • Collect better data.
  • The next question is based on your current question.

Next, we ask Mary how they sell.

  • B2B SaaS and enterprise-focused.
  • Quantitative and qualitative.
  • They integrated with CRMs.
  • The blend of outbound and inbound.

Lastly, we ask Mary to share a tool she can't live without in her world that keeps her on track.

  • A lot of reading and research.
  • Reports.
Oct 12, 202247:16
Women in Tech Series: Rashmi Vittal Chief Marketing Officer at Productiv speaks to the impact that lasts in your absence.

Women in Tech Series: Rashmi Vittal Chief Marketing Officer at Productiv speaks to the impact that lasts in your absence.

Welcome to the Women in Tech Series from the Global Tech Leaders Podcast. Today we are speaking to Rashmi Vittal Chief Marketing Officer at Productiv. Rashmi is an accomplished marketing executive with more than 25 years of pre-IPO and large corporate enterprise software experience, building and leading marketing teams that bring to market innovative, high-growth SaaS-based solutions for CMO and CIO buying centres. She excels at developing revenue-generating GTM strategies aligned to product roadmaps that drive market awareness and pipeline growth. Rashmi understands the importance of strategic positioning paired with creative storytelling to educate and motivate change and has led many messaging initiatives in her career.

We kick off by asking Rashmi to share her career journey and what has led her to where she is today.

  • Grew up in a family of engineers and doctors.
  • Highly successful people have a routine.
  • Was into global expansion and global marketing.
  • Business classes in Spain.
  • Started in enterprise software.
  • Built servers.
  • Went back into QA methodology.
  • IBM for 10 years.
  • Strong leadership curriculum.
  • Got her MBA.
  • Adventure technology.

We ask Rashmi how learning discipline young adds to her leadership style today. And how does she test for coachability?

  • It evolves over time.
  • Intellectual curiosity.
  • Critical thinkers.
  • Management consulting.
  • Care about the people you work with.
  • Scenario.
  • Team sports.
  • Performance.
  • Coached daily by your teammates.

Then we ask Rashmi, what success looks like in a leadership role.

  • High expectations.
  • Impact lasting in your absence.
  • Guide and unblock you.
  • Feedback-driven performance.
  • Collectively achieving goals.

Next, we ask Rashmi if she ever struggles with confidence and if so how she manages it.

  • Imposter syndrome.
  • Belief and conviction.
  • Failure and success.
  • If you are scared, take it.

Then we ask Rashmi what occurs when she experiences imposter syndrome.

  • Self-doubt.
  • Haven't done it before.
  • Micro problems.
  • Will others see it?
  • Embarrassed and exposed.
  • Discipline and time.
  • Commitment and resiliency have taken a whole new level.
  • Leaders become therapists.
  • Accountability and adversity.

We ask Rashmi to share the Productiv story and how they help the world.

  • Ex-Google, Amazon and LinkedIn Executives.
  • 4 years old.
  • The only SaaS management platform built on SaaS intelligence.
  • It helps IT procurement.
  • Create their own connectors.
  • Think about managing renewals.
  • Empowered data for the negotiating table.
  • Mitigating risk exposure.

Lastly, we ask Rashmi how she stays productive.

  • Framework
  • Spreadsheet.
  • Presentations.
  • Reports.
Oct 11, 202248:42
Women in Tech Series: Cecilia Lavin Sales Director at InEvent shares how building relationships comes first in sales.

Women in Tech Series: Cecilia Lavin Sales Director at InEvent shares how building relationships comes first in sales.

Welcome to the Women in Tech Series from the Global Tech Leaders Podcast. Today we are speaking to Cecilia Lavin Sales Director at InEvent. An innovative event-based video-driven platform. Having previously been a Vice President of EMEA. She is an experienced and driven sales and business development professional with over 14 years of experience in the events and hospitality industry ranging from technology products and services to venues, catering and events management.

We kick off by asking Cecilia to share her career journey and what has led her to where she is today.

  • Accidentally fell into it.
  • Driven by personality and personal skill set.
  • Wanted to be self-sufficient.
  • Met amazing people on the way.
  • Catering assistant at an event venue.
  • Offered a sales role.
  • Very natural.
  • Build relationships with people.
  • Swedish.
  • Played lots of sports. Chatterbox.
  • Workaholic.

We ask Cecilia why she feels women have to work harder and what she feels is teachable.

  • Being a natural at it.
  • Trust.
  • Personality and genuine.

Then we ask Cecilia, how the sales journey changed since she first started and what it's like over at InEvent.

  • Very different from when she started.
  • Too easy to find leads.
  • Overwhelming amount of contact.
  • It's not about what you want to do.
  • It's about the prospective client.
  • A fan of cold calling.
  • Do you have the time?

Next, we ask Cecilia what is her philosophy on sales leadership.

  • The leader to walk in their shoes.
  • Inbound and outbound.
  • Are you helping your customers win?

We ask Cecilia to share more about InEvent and how they impact people's lives.

  • Software business that helps facilitates events and broadcasts and streams.
  • Help clients deliver high-quality events virtual or in-person.
  • Exploring their issues and hurdles.
  • Partnerships.

Then we ask Cecilia, what has she seen with women in sales tech and what would her advice be.

  • Women don't ask for what they want.
  • When women are bossy.
  • Skillsets of a Mom.
  • In tech, you never stop learning.
  • Putting in extra time.
  • Diversity inclusion.
  • A bigger mission that aligns with her mission.

We ask Cecilia how she stays organised.

  • Traditional pen and paper.
  • Correct Book.
Oct 10, 202246:51
Women in Tech Series: Kirsten Hurley Managing Director at Thoughtbot shares the importance of diversifying your talent pool.

Women in Tech Series: Kirsten Hurley Managing Director at Thoughtbot shares the importance of diversifying your talent pool.

Welcome to the Women in Tech Series from the Global Tech Leaders Podcast. Today we are speaking to Kirsten Hurley Managing Director at Thoughtbot, helping make product teams a success. She has a background in professional services and business development.

We kick off by asking Kirsten to share her career journey and what has led her to where she is today.

  • Steered into journalism.
  • Always been interested in psychology and communication.
  • Student debt.
  • Technology evolving.
  • Computer literacy.

We ask Kirsten what makes her successful in sales.

  • Empathy.
  • Love understanding what makes people tick.
  • Genuinely interested.
  • Consideration and benefit of the doubt.
  • Prompt you can coach people on.

Then we ask Kirsten what advice would she give young women wanting to get into technology sales.

  • What company does something that you think is sexy and innovative?
  • Exceeding targets.
  • You doing well, so stay there.
  • Weaknesses in your skillset.
  • Unconscience bias.
  • Valued for contribution.
  • Make an impact even in the background.
  • Living the values.

Next, we ask Kirsten to share what Thoughtbot is and why are things exciting over there.

  • 20-year anniversary next year.
  • They build web and mobile applications.
  • Team of designers and developers.
  • Opensoucre technology.
  • Just over 100 people globally.
  • From the US to London.
  • Remote working company.
  • Diversify their talent pool.
  • Build better products.

Then we ask Kirsten what a diverse team has brought to the business.

  • Translations.
  • Fixed addresses.
  • No landlines and more mobile phones.
  • Geographically diverse.

Next, we ask Kirsten more about her role and how many people she takes care of.

  • 25 people
  • Directors and Product Manager.
  • 5 designers and others are developers.
  • She is responsible for sales.
  • Always has a team member in those sales meetings.
  • The marketing team works closely with her.
  • A lot of inbound communities.

We ask Kirsten how one gets into leadership.

  • Coaching realm.
  • Skillsets to be nurturing.
  • Learn from advice.

Then we ask Kirsten, does she have a tool that is key to keeping her organised.

  • A pen and paper lady.
  • Prioritising a to-do list.
Oct 07, 202244:12
Women in Tech Series: Sarah Scudder, The Manufacturing Maven, and Chief Marketing Officer at SourceDay shares the importance of constant learning.

Women in Tech Series: Sarah Scudder, The Manufacturing Maven, and Chief Marketing Officer at SourceDay shares the importance of constant learning.

Welcome to the Women in Tech Series from the Global Tech Leaders Podcast. Today we are speaking to Sarah Scudder, The Manufacturing Maven, Chief Marketing Officer at SourceDay.

A podcast host in her own right. She is a new Texan and has not lived through a Texas summer before. She is learning how to exercise outside in the humidity. She feels it has been an awesome move to become a CMO and join the Source Day team last year.

We kick off by asking Sarah to share her career story and what has led her to where she is today.

  • Runway model in high school.
  • Looked at the business industry in her twenties.
  • Double major.
  • Business and marketing.
  • Involved in everything on campus.
  • Technology-focused solution.
  • One of the top 3 salespeople in the nation.
  • Demand Gen engines.

We ask Sarah to tell us about the content and the demand generation piece.

  • Supply chain.
  • The buyer role.
  • Secure supply chain.
  • Covid is one of the best things that ever happened to the supply chain industry.
  • Progressive buyers.

Then we ask Sarah what successes around demand gen is she seeing out there.

  • Stigma is out of control.
  • On the pulse of the customer.
  • Get out and get involved.
  • Subject Matter Expert.
  • Customer insights programme.
  • Customer advisory group.

Next, we ask Sarah to share any glass ceilings that she has come across and does she have any advice for other women.

  • Never reported to a female.
  • Very male-dominated industry in the country.
  • Do your own learning and education.
  • Entrepreneurs make better marketers.
  • Work for a good boss.
  • Constantly learning.

Lastly, we ask Sarah, how she best stays organised.

  • A no-meeting day.
Oct 06, 202233:26
Women in Tech Series: Bineeta Mitra, Head of Compliance and Information Security at Signeasy shares the value of a supportive culture.

Women in Tech Series: Bineeta Mitra, Head of Compliance and Information Security at Signeasy shares the value of a supportive culture.

Welcome to the Women in Tech Series from the Global Tech Leaders Podcast. Today we are speaking to Bineeta Mitra, Head of Compliance and Information Security at Signeasy.  She is a strategic thinker with an excellent background in auditing, finance and compliance. Now working in a highly relevant and cutting-edge industry at the moment as we move into a digital economy. She is based in Mumbai, India and has great experience in the UK.

We kick off by asking Bineeta to share her career journey and what has led her to where she is today.

  • Transitioned from finance into technology, accidentally.
  • Charted Accountant.
  • Family conditioning.
  • Fascinated by technology.
  • Technology auditor at MTV in London.
  • MBA at Warwick University.
  • Financial Crime Compliance.
  • Financial Consultant.
  • More security and compliance awareness.
  • Keeping clients secure.

Then we ask Bineeta about Indian society and expectations around destiny.

  • Standards are Engineers, Chartered Accountancy, Lawyers or Doctors.
  • Families saw success in these professions from family and friends.
  • Cultural conditioning.
  • Best educations.
  • Stable opportunities.
  • Father is a huge motivation.

Next, we ask Bineeta how we attract and retain more women in tech.

  • Supportive culture.
  • Women in the workforce are speeding up growth.
  • Female role models.
  • Male members of the workforce.
  • Demonstrate support.
  • Feedback and failure.
  • A professional in technology.
  • Attitude matters.
  • The right kind of mentors.
  • Women do enjoy working in technology.
  • How we perceive ourselves.
  • Take a chance at technology.

Then we ask Bineeta to share more about Signeasy and why it's exciting over there. And we dive deeper into Bineeta’s role at Signeasy.

  • Making e-signing easy.
  • More than a decade.
  • Improving services.
  • A team of 90.
  • Big companies and individuals.
  • Consistent training.
  • Improved controls.
  • Type 1 and type 2 compliance.
  • Review agreements.
  • Managing third parties and customers.

Lastly, we ask Bineeta to share with us how she stays organised.

  • Vanta
  • iPhone
Oct 05, 202233:15
Women in Tech Series: Erica Lanyon, Demand Gen Leader shares the meaning of digital body language.

Women in Tech Series: Erica Lanyon, Demand Gen Leader shares the meaning of digital body language.

Welcome to the Women in Tech Series from the Global Tech Leaders Podcast. Today we are speaking to Erica Lanyon, a marketing leader and a growing market demand gen specialist in B2B marketing. She has been a consultant in corporate marketing for most of her career, enabling her to identify the right prospects in the right markets and engage with them along the customer-buying journey. She has a knack for building marketing departments from the ground up and transforming them into accountable, revenue-generating centres of excellence. Specialising in demand generation, marketing automation, campaign management, building & maintaining lead scoring models, and closed loop reporting to name a few.

We kick off by asking Erica to share her career journey so far and what has led her to where she is today.

  • Lives in a Tech hub.
  • Started from rock bottom.
  • Utilise brest practices.
  • The best marketers of the time.

Then we ask Erica how she feels things have changed in the marketing world since she first started.

  • Cost centre.
  • Pretty websites and brochures.
  • Marketing automation.
  • A seat at the table.
  • The buyer's journey changes.
  • Digital body language.
  • C-level marketers.

Next, we ask Erica how has she found selling accountability.

  • The transition from traditional marketing to modern marketing.
  • The future of modern marketing.

Then we ask Erica what is the difference between lead generation and demand generation.

  • Qualify.
  • What does it mean to you?
  • Market demand.
  • Target the right audience.

In terms of personas, we ask Erica if they still matter.

  • It does.
  • Understand their world.
  • The way you talk will be different.
  • B2C is a different beast.

Then we ask Erica, what challenges has she faced as a women leader in Tech.

  • Quality and diversity.
  • The only female in the room.
  • Slow starting to change.
  • Women are a fit.
  • Conversations.
  • Companies are making the shift.

Next, we ask Erica, who inspires her.

  • Executive Coach.
  • Integrity.

Lastly, we ask Erica if there is any gadget or tool that she can't live without.

  • Her husband.
  • Coach and mentor.
  • Soundboard.
Oct 04, 202236:48
Women in Tech Series: Eunie Nyakundi, Chief Commercial Officer at AIfluence, shares how mentoring others keeps you refreshed.

Women in Tech Series: Eunie Nyakundi, Chief Commercial Officer at AIfluence, shares how mentoring others keeps you refreshed.

Welcome to the Women in Tech Series from the Global Tech Leaders Podcast. Today we are speaking to Eunie Nyakundi, Chief Commercial Officer at AIfluence. She has had an illustrious career at IBM. She has a  passion for Marketing, Technology and Business Development has given her the opportunity to drive positive change, create new markets and achieve sales growth targets through strategic planning, lead generation and customer acquisition across Africa. She has been recognized by Business Monthly East Africa in 2021 as one of the top 25 most powerful women in the c-suite who impact business and she received the 2014 Rising Star award for the banking and financial services sector.

We kick off by asking Eunie to share her career journey and what has led her to where she is today.

  • Always been interested in numbers and studied finance.
  • Stumbled into advertising.
  • Lifestyle brand.
  • IBM
  • Fusion of advertising and technology.

We ask Eunie what her strategy is around failing, how she uses positive reinforcement and what leadership means to her.

  • Agile.
  • Retrospective.
  • Dealing with humans first.
  • Common goals.
  • Clarity on what is key for the business.
  • Comfortable culture.

Then we ask Eunie what is her blueprint for relating to people.

  • How to apply it.
  • Respect.
  • Focused on the solution.
  • Integrity.
  • Being accountable for your words and actions.
  • Softer skills.

Next, we ask Eunie, what is it like being an African women in tech.

  • Making information easier to digest.
  • How information is presented.
  • Think fast, think slow.
  • Reflective mode.
  • Elevate.
  • Power of mentorship.
  • Mentoring others, keeps you refreshed.

Then we ask Eunie to share what AIfluence does and why is it an exciting place to be.

  • A digital media platform for brands and advertisers to connect with influencers to drive awareness.
  • Leverage word of mouth.
  • Influencing is not a job it's an outcome.
  • Continuous journey.

Lastly, we ask Eunie what is her secret to staying organised.

  • Writing everything down.
  • Connecting with people.
Oct 03, 202246:10
Women in Tech Series: Shilpi Puri, Director of Media at Recruit CRM shares their plans as a unicorn-focused organization.

Women in Tech Series: Shilpi Puri, Director of Media at Recruit CRM shares their plans as a unicorn-focused organization.

Welcome to the Women in Tech Series from the Global Tech Leaders Podcast. Today we are speaking to Shilpi Puri who is the Director of Media at Recruit CRM. She has had a very interesting career with 17 years of experience across digital marketing functions like content marketing, social, search, and paid media. She has expertise in brand positioning, brand management, communication, marketing strategies, content strategy, customer acquisition, and campaign execution. She is very hands-on experience in project management, client coordination and interaction.

We kick off by asking Shilpi to share her career journey and what has led her to where she is today.

  • Born in New Delhi.
  • Bachelors Degree.
  • A postgraduate in journalism.
  • Writing is her forte.
  • Setting up B2B function.
  • An exciting startup.
  • From 3 to 17 people.
  • Everyone works remotely.
  • Culture of transparency.
  • Less dependency on each to learn new things.

We ask Shilpi what unicorn means and what is it like to work at a company that is unicorn focused.

  • Bootstrapped.
  • Getting to a $500M revenue figure in the next
  • New York Stock Exchange.
  • A lot of learning through experiments and a lot of new things.

Then we ask Shilpi how they manage culture with a remote team all over the world.

  • Set of values that we all closely follow.
  • Formal meetings and informal meetings
  • My story sessions.
  • Twice a year outbounds, 4 days together in a hotel with team building.

Next, we ask Shilpi to share what have they learnt about Zoom fatigue and how is it managed.

  • Which meetings are essential.
  • Showing up only when needed.

Then ask Shilpi to teach us more about brand building and what she has learnt.

  • The story is important.
  • Empathise with your customer.
  • Education content.
  • Demand generation.
  • Position me in their minds.
  • Educating and performing your customers.

Next, we ask Shilpi what is the role of emotion led in B2B marketing in recruitment tech.

  • Buyer journey.
  • Paid customers.
  • Nurture people.
  • An ecosystem of campaigns.
  • Moving from one campaign to another.

We ask Shilpi what her thoughts are on KPIs aligned with revenue goals. 

  • They should be aligned.
  • Marketing is a cost function.
  • There has to be a sync-up between these two departments.

In terms of outbound versus inbound, we ask Shilpi how is that working for Recruit CRM.

  • Inbound only.

Then we ask Shilpi how we break boundaries that can open doors for women in marketing tech.

  • Men travel more.
  • More companies putting confidence in women.
  • A leader is as good as their team.
  • Train and mentor younger people.

Lastly, we ask Shilpi what tools she uses to stay organised and on top of it all.

  • HubSpot
  • Documents and technology.
Sep 30, 202242:13
Women in Tech Series: Isabela Fernandes, Executive Director at TOR Project shares the importance of anonymity.

Women in Tech Series: Isabela Fernandes, Executive Director at TOR Project shares the importance of anonymity.

Welcome to the Women in Tech Series from the Global Tech Leaders Podcast. Today we are speaking to Isabela Fernandes Executive Director of The TOR Project. She joined in 2015 as a Project Manager and has led teams into collaborative strategy building and road mapping to an unprecedented level in the organisation. She leads the UX team and implementation of some of the critical improvements to the platform as the Executive Director.

We kick off by asking Isabela to share with us her journey and what has led her to where she is today.

  • Got into computers in the late 90s.
  • Self-learning and self-taught.
  • Free software movement.
  • Federal Government in Brazil.
  • Twitter.

Then we ask Isabela to share more about what TOR Project is and what they do.

  • The mission is about human rights.
  • Privacy.
  • TOR Network.
  • Run by volunteers.
  • Onion of layers and encryption.
  • Keeping people anonymous over the internet.
  • “We don't want to take over the internet, we want to change it.”
  • Leakage of MetaData.
  • Non-profit organization.
  • Disguise connections.

Then we ask Isabela how they balance those who want to be anonymous versus law enforcement and what kind of scenarios can she share on this.

  • Human rights defenders.
  • Law enforcement can do investigations.
  • Anonymity.

Next, we ask Isabela, does the TOR Project give people their own version of the internet.

  • No, you have the same version and the browser is similar to the usual one.
  • Success stories of using TOR Project.
  • Influence change.

Then we ask Isabela how is the TOR Project funded.

  • Grants from private foundations.
  • Grants from the government.
  • Direct donations.
  • Donations in cryptocurrency.
  • To collaborate with TOR Project go to their website.
  • Annual memberships.
  • Mobile VPN and New York Times
  • Volunteers running services all around the world.
  • Never be satisfied. Challenge everything.

Next, we ask Isabela, in terms of women in tech, what has been her experience as a female leader in technology.

  • Never easy, wasn't easy 20 years ago and it's not easy now.
  • Shared computers.
  • Wrote code on paper.
  • Women don't stop fighting.
  • Never give up.
  • Changed the culture at TOR.
  • Culture of diversity and respect.
  • Equity.

Then we ask Isabela what advice would she give younger women that want to enter the tech world.

  • Mentorship.
  • Believe in yourself.
  • Don't let others blur your vision.
  • Trust yourself.

Lastly, we ask Isabela what is a tool she can't live without.

  • Paper and a pen.
  • Calendar.
  • Communication tools.
Sep 29, 202240:14
Women in Tech Series: Elizabeth Olson, Director of Marketing Communications at Telltale Games. She shares how the gaming world has evolved since the 90s.

Women in Tech Series: Elizabeth Olson, Director of Marketing Communications at Telltale Games. She shares how the gaming world has evolved since the 90s.

Welcome to the Women in Tech Series from the Global Tech Leaders Podcast. Today we are speaking to Elizabeth Olson, Director of Marketing Communications at Telltale Games. She is also an entrepreneur and consultant in brand and strategic marketing in her own right. She is known for creative campaigns. She loves giving a product or brand a face and personality and determining and positioning the audience's strategic direction.

We kick off by asking Elizabeth to share her career journey and what has led her to where she is today.

  • Was a fine arts student.
  • Study of rhetoric.
  • Radio, journalism, marketing or PR.
  • Fine jeweller.
  • Temp agency.
  • Bookkeeping for Fun Co.
  • Game and Former.
  • Virgin Interactive and working with Disney.
  • PR was not easier.
  • We checked email a couple of times a month.
  • Lion King and Aladin.
  • Reverse engineer.
  • Marketing woman gamers.

Then next we ask Elizabeth how her experience in gaming shaped her marketing strategy. And we ask her what was it like with little to no women in gaming tech at the time.

  • Gamergate.
  • Press events took place in strip clubs.
  • Sexual harassment.
  • Emulate or die.
  • Waste of time to be bitter.
  • Diversity efforts.
  • Focus on the stories.
  • Mainstream.
  • Stray.

Next, we ask Elizabeth to share her thoughts on the addictive side of games for kids and the pressure on parents about it.

  • Personality and upbringing.
  • It is more complicated than we think.
  • Open world games.
  • Perfect storm.
  • Second Life.
  • Computer in your pocket.
  • Parents in their 80s playing games.

Then we ask Elizabeth what advice would give other women that want to enter the gaming industry.

  • Many resources now.
  • Networking with intent - finding community in it.
  • Find your spot of sunshine.
  • Tenacious.
  • Critical thinking and problem-solving.
Sep 28, 202242:45
Women in Tech Series: Gina Riley, Career Transition Coach & Career Velocity System Creator at Gina Riley Consulting

Women in Tech Series: Gina Riley, Career Transition Coach & Career Velocity System Creator at Gina Riley Consulting

Welcome to the Women in Tech Series from the Global Tech Leaders Podcast. Today we are speaking to Gina Riley Career Transition Coach & CareerVelocity System Creator at Gina Riley Consulting.

We kick off by asking Gina to share her journey and what has led her to where she is today.

  • Knew what she wanted to do in high school from leadership programmes.
  • Communication Degree led to Human Resources.
  • Intell for 10 years.
  • Stayed home for 15 years.
  • Serious interview prep.
  • Own your career and advocate for yourself.
  • Executive presence.
  • Appearance, communication and gravitas.
  • Grace under fire.

Then we ask Gina how can we get better at reading the room.

  • A shift in maturity.
  • Confidence and humility.
  • Asking the right questions and then listening.
  • Get a mentor and become a mentee.

Next, we ask Gina, what should we be doing to better promote ourselves and we ask her to share her thought on imposter syndrome.

  • You cant be the world's best-kept secret.
  • Thought leadership.
  • Go to an expert.
  • What are you known for now?
  • What is your leadership approach?
  • Future focused.
  • Get a coach.
  • Humility.

Then we ask Gina, why is it tougher for women to get into leadership positions.

  • Paying attention to executive presence.

Then we ask Gina, what gadget or tool she can’t live without.

  • Journals.
  • Taking notes of everything.
Sep 27, 202242:10
Women in Tech Series: Erica Jenkins, Chief Product Officer at Crayon shares how being prepared means having a picture, proposition and data to back it up.

Women in Tech Series: Erica Jenkins, Chief Product Officer at Crayon shares how being prepared means having a picture, proposition and data to back it up.

Welcome to the Women in Tech Series from the Global Tech Leaders Podcast. Today we are speaking to Erica Jenkins who is the Chief Product Officer at Crayon. She is a very passionate B2B leader accelerating product management processes to reach the highest possible revenue and leading successful acquisitions throughout the course of her career. She thrives in the $10-100M growth trajectory organisation and helps other product managers on her team grow. She is a very big believer that successful companies are product led when sales and onboarding customer success are in place. She has scaled businesses from 10 to 300 people and various companies, she comes from real estate and has grown from startups that have been bootstrapped right through to well-funded and IPO-led organisations.

We kick off the conversation by asking Erica to share her story and what has led her to where she is today.

  • Online marketing for real estate.
  • Three of us in a basement.
  • Early social media management days.
  • Customer focused.
  • Back to startups.
  • Monitoring B2B tech.

We ask Erica if would she clarify the solutions we create in tech today to solve real problems.

  • Lean into the “day in the life”.
  • Customer empathy.
  • Proof of concept.

Then we ask Erica to share more about Crayon and what they are doing to solve problems.

  • A lot of signals.
  • You can't do everything.
  • Road map reviews and Slack community.
  • Feedback channel.
  • Salesforce.
  • Gong.
  • Product Board.
  • Zendesk.
  • Comptitive intelligence.

We ask Erica what is her single most important line of truth from a data perspective.

  • Percentage of wins.
  • Wins vs open opportunities.
  • Discipline.
  • The people you serve.
  • Fast time to value.
  • Saving time.
  • Quality of life.
  • Security and compliance.

Then we ask Erica if she has dabbled with the product-led growth phenomenon.

  • Customer execution.
  • Hub and spoke.
  • Internation and external.

Next, we ask Erica why she feels not many women are Chief Product Officers and what advice would she give women.

  • It slowly grows.
  • Be clear and thorough.
  • Expensive problem solver.
  • Overly dramatic.
  • Data as your backup.
  • “Fight for the seats I've had.”
  • Come with a picture, proposition and data.
  • Strategy and research.
  • Being precise is helpful.

Then we ask Erica how would she describe her leadership style and what advice would she give to growing leaders.

  • Forgiveness versus acceptance.
  • 15min decisions.
  • Collaboration.
  • Customer experience.

Next, we ask Erica if she has any tips that she can't live without that keep her on track.

  • Product feedback and planning tool.
  • Jira
  • Product Board.
  • Alignment.
  • Unified front.
Sep 26, 202240:47
Women in Tech Series: Kelly Griswold, CEO at Onna shares the importance of a learners mindset.

Women in Tech Series: Kelly Griswold, CEO at Onna shares the importance of a learners mindset.

Welcome to the Women in Tech Series from the Global Tech Leaders Podcast. Today we are speaking to Kelly Griswold, CEO at Onna. Kelly was originally appointed as Chief Operating Officer back in October 2020. Having originally joined the company as Chief Strategy Officer. She oversees sales, customer success, partnerships, finance, marketing, and the people team. Her focus is on the day-to-day operations of the company. She has a strong track record of partnership and deals origination, negotiation and execution experience in the United States and in International markets. This includes M&A execution experience with a top-tier investment bank and in the renewable energy space. She has a deep understanding of financial structuring and growth strategies in energy and financial services.

We kick off by asking Kelly to share her career journey so far and what has led her to where she is today.

  • Goal orientated.
  • Luck and timing.
  • Internship.
  • Played water polo.
  • Analytical skill set.
  • Renewable energy.
  • A young mother.
  • Align yourself with good people.
  • Have goals and be ready to pivot.

We ask Kelly how has she utilised her sports industry experience and applied it in business.

  • A company is like a team.
  • We choose to be here.
  • Accountability.
  • How one fits in a team.
  • Game plan.
  • Coach vs individual contributor.
  • A winning recipe.

Then we ask Kelly what are things she can and can't coach, and what she looks for in an interview.

  • A diverse set of backgrounds and mindsets to think outside the box.
  • Prioritising diversity.
  • A unique set of challenges.
  • Red flags.
  • Level of engagement.
  • Be intentional in your sourcing strategy.

Next, we ask Kelly what could we be doing better when it comes to hiring and the image of hiring.

  • Bringing in examples and highlighting success stories.
  • Making it less daunting for women.
  • Don't feel the pressure to conform.
  • Learners mindset.
  • Pathway paved for success.

Then we asked Kelly to share some of her challenges faced as a women.

  • The sea of sameness.
  • My leadership voice.

In terms of people she works with, we ask Kelly what role can they play in supporting women in tech.

  • Women and men both balance work and family life.
  • Paternity leave policy.
  • A 50/50 sport.

Next, we asked Kelly to share more about Onna and what they do that is so exciting.

  • A platform that collects and structures data from content collaboration and communication applications.
  • E-discovery and litigation.
  • Search across systems.
  • Click to connect.
  • A gold mine of insights.

Then we ask Kelly what the future looks like for Onna.

  • 150 employees right now.
  • Focused on growth with efficiency.
  • Customers are the centre.
  • Partner with customers.

We dive into asking Kelly how she stays organised and if there is a gadget or tool she can't live without.

  • Learners mindset.
  • Prioritize and accountability. 
Sep 23, 202245:56
Women in Tech Series: Christine Spang, co-founder and CTO at Nylas, shares how a mindset of curiosity is vital for modern developers.

Women in Tech Series: Christine Spang, co-founder and CTO at Nylas, shares how a mindset of curiosity is vital for modern developers.

Welcome to the Women in Tech Series from the Global Tech Leaders Podcast. Today we are speaking to Christine Spang who is the co-founder and Chief Technical Officer at Nylas. She has had an illustrious career in the corporate world and comes from a development background, she attended MIT and grew out from there creating products.

We kick off by asking Christine what drove her to get into becoming a developer, its underserved by women, and what sparked her interest to choose this journey.

  • Born in Canada and her folks were Norweighen immigrants.
  • Her grandmother had a mini farm, where they would farm and build things.
  • She remembers helping her folks build a barn on her grandparent's farm.
  • She was really good at Math at school and moved up north really young. She was into music at her public school and played the french horn and was in the marching band.
  • Always loved reading and got lost in books, her Dad would blast oprah music.
  • Grew up in the suburbs, there wasn't much to do, so games and books allowed her to explore. That led her to online text-based games and story building.
  • Then she started learning about programming and discovered the world of open-source. Which blew her mind.
  • Came across a blog, joined this group and became obsessed with open source which led to her attending MIT. That's when she knew she wanted to be a software engineer.

We then ask Christine, why she thinks there is such a gap in developers in today's society with our demands and which subjects would she advise those who feel a fit for this.

  • Cultivating a mindset of curiosity and questioning things.
  • People should aspire to create an environment where people can choose to get into something without barriers.
  • We need the builders of modern software to represent people all over the world.
  • Try and treat people the same, and support the curiosity of little girls and little boys.

Next, we ask Christine if she has experienced bias in her career and if so, what is the one thing she would change?

  • She has trained her mind to believe everyone has good intentions.
  • She has personally been lucky or oblivious to it, if not it drives positive feelings away from herself.

We asked Christine to share a positive experience from her career so far.

  • Especially when starting a company, the modern world is all about standing out and being memorable.
  • Over and over again, people remember her because she stood out and was memorable.
  • As a female technical founder, it's easier to bring more women in.

We asked Christine to tell us more about Nylas and what they do and what is the purpose.

  • She has been working on this for 9 years and started with 2 people. Now 250 people.
  • Nylas is an API platform company that is focused on communications data and helps people make use of that data and structure it.
  • APIs are leveraged. The core concept is, saving people time.
  • Code literacy is a trend right now.
  • Building a new code native generation.

Then we ask Christine, what kind of questions does she ask to prioritize tech projects?

  • Revenue impact is a valid consideration.
  • Pick a focus and define what success looks like.
  • Thinking about performance and scalability.

Regarding the 4-degree aspect spoke about earlier, how do we shift the bias and how do you deal with someone who takes a 1-year course?

  • Focus on interviews that simulate what people will actually be working on.
  • You have no reputation or/and no money so harder to be convincing.

Lastly, we ask Christine how does she manage her time?

  • She has an Executive Assistant 
Sep 22, 202244:48
Women in Tech Series: Janelle Raney, Chief Marketing Officer at Pathlight shares how using your personal brand helps you show up.

Women in Tech Series: Janelle Raney, Chief Marketing Officer at Pathlight shares how using your personal brand helps you show up.

Welcome to the Women in Tech Series from the Global Tech Leaders Podcast. Today we are speaking to Janelle Raney, the Chief Marketing Officer at Pathlight. She has had an illustrious career in organisations like Citrix and Zoom and is now at Pathlight as a CMO. She worked in product marketing, analytics, market strategy, positioning, and launching PR. She has a degree in Mathematics and an MBA from NYU.

We kick off by asking Janelle to share her career journey and what has led her to where she is today.

  • She went to Vanderbilt University as a bio-medical engineer after 1 year switched to arts and science and became a Math Major.
  • After graduating she moved to New York and worked for Liz Claiborne, in the fashion industry, and joined the management training program.
  • She fell in love with marketing there, especially the data creativity side and while there she attended NYU. She got a degree in Marketing and Finance.
  • Took a year off and travelled to decide what is next, moved to San Francisco to get into the tech industry and worked for a company called QRS.
  • From there got married, had kids and started her own business. From there she went to Citrix. Zoom came knocking on her door and became an awesome team before everyone knew Zoom.
  • She loves startups, and this brought her to Pathlight and they were solving a big problem.

We then ask Janelle why she decided to go to San Francisco instead of the Wall Street trend after NYU.

  • The opportunity to be creative in tech, especially as a women.
  • She loves innovation!

We ask Janelle what she feels they got right from a cultural perspective at Zoom.

  • She remembers having a meeting where they discussed establishing the values of the company and the CEO Eric, it was care.
  • It comes down to the principles, Eric cared passionately. They had an outage once, he took it personally and Eric moved from his corner office to a cubicle on the engineering floor and stayed there for months and was a servant leader.

Then we ask Janelle, regarding the women in tech, what she feels has changed around inclusion.

  • More women are graduating than men right now but it's not fully levelled.
  • It starts with equal pay.
  • Companies perform better with diversity.
  • Paternity leave.
  • Know your worth in the market.

Next, we ask Janelle, what can we do as leaders to progress and promote the inclusion of genders?

  • Salesforce reviews this annually and has done a stellar job.
  • Diversity of thought.
  • Working Moms.

We move on to asking Janelle, what advice she would give to young women wanting to get into tech.

  • Personal branding, how are you showing up and building networks?
  • Don't just report, bring your thoughts and all of what makes you unique.
  • Make sure you’re getting credit for your successes.

Next, we ask Janelle how important is it for men to be a support system for women.

  • Her husband is the home chef.
  • Find your home balance.

Then we ask Janelle to share more on dyslexic thinking as we see it on her profile.

  • Richard Brandson, speaks about it.
  • The way they think is different.

We then ask Janelle to share more about Pathlight and what are they doing.

  • Pathlight empowers frontline employees.
  • Health score.
  • Performance intelligence platform.
Sep 21, 202230:25
Women in Tech Series: Melissa Cheong, Managing Partner at Blackhorn Ventures shares her view on global problems.

Women in Tech Series: Melissa Cheong, Managing Partner at Blackhorn Ventures shares her view on global problems.

Welcome to the Women in Tech Series from the Global Tech Leaders Podcast. Today we are speaking to Melissa Cheong who is a Managing Partner at Blackhorn Ventures. They invest in entrepreneurs who are improving resource efficiency with science and engineering-based market solutions. She is very passionate about opportunities to use the market to drive scalable, social and environmental impact and believes that together technology and entrepreneurship have deep potential to transform markets and the way that we do business today. She has helped to build and grow organisational platforms allowing them to thoughtfully and efficiently deploy capital at scale. She has worked in various finance and investment roles with organisations such as Zoma Capital, Imprint Capital, Treehouse Investments and so much more.

We kick off our episode by asking Melissa to share her journey and what has led her to where she is today.

  • She was a banker in London and New York and was a hedge fund investor.
  • Focus on social entrepreneurship.
  • Customized profiles.
  • Tech-based business models.
  • Early-stage investment funds.
  • Global problems.

We ask Melissa how their diversity policy has impacted their organisation.

  • It is very top of mind for the entire team.
  • Diverse organisation.
  • A fair number of women on the team change the culture and rhythm.
  • Structural built into policies.
  • Value creation.

Next, we ask Melissa how they find that level of nurturing and how that impacts their profile companies.

  • Leadership and Development Coach
  • A well-rounded skill set.
  • Mitigating risk.

Then we ask Melissa, about female-led businesses, and what could be done to connect them to private equity firms.

  • Seeing growth in infinity groups.
  • Not being overly transactional.
  • We all make time for it.
  • Embrace your own experiences and what you are good at.
  • Surround yourself with people who are good at the things you are not good at.
  • Know when to call a friend.
  • Expert generalist.
  • Technical female founders.
  • Eliminate subconscious bias.

We ask Melissa who or what has been her influence.

  • Confidence was debilitating.
  • Linear activities.
  • Problem solver.
  • New mother.

Lastly, we ask Melissa if she has a gadget that helps her stay organised.

  • Voice to text.
Sep 20, 202244:21
David Farquhar - CEO at Intelligent Growth Solutions, talks about servant leadership and how to never hire yourself.

David Farquhar - CEO at Intelligent Growth Solutions, talks about servant leadership and how to never hire yourself.

On today's show we have David Farquhar, CEO at Intelligent Growth Solutions, he is a transaction-oriented serial entrepreneur with a track record of delivering shareholder value, currently leading the rapid global growth of vertical farm manufacturer Intelligent Growth Solutions. Prior to this he had retired, following the turnaround, transformation, growth and exit of global enterprise SaaS vendor Workplace. He has started 20 companies, sold 13 and has the hard-won experience of having lost three.

Where he learnt the best business lessons. We think it's safe to say that David has written a book on growth and more importantly culture.

We kick off by asking David to share his career journey and what has brought him to where he is today:

  • Far less glamorous when you living it
  • Combination of 2 things.
  • First, he's no good at anything else.
  • He had a tough childhood, really bad at taking orders.
  • Loves food, tried Hotel Catering Management, didn't have the aptitude to focus for long enough - married to a Chef.
  • He was a bad boy, he had an Aunt who was financing him, and Father gave up on him.
  • Aunt gave him a choice; Army, Navy or Air Force?
  • Went to the Army for 8 years and came out as a Captain, did him the world of good.
  • Came out with many friends.
  • Spent time all over, with many cultures.
  • Discovered he had an innate instinct in terms of looking at a situation, making a plan, and communicating clearly peoples contributions.
  • Enjoy helping others succeed, giving people permission to succeed and get on with it.
  • “Proceed until apprehended.”
  • Good at getting other people to do all the work, that's how he ended up as a CEO.
  • Thanks to the talented people around him.
  • 130 people to 90
  • Give people work life balance.
  • A win/win situation.

Next we ask David, what are the tools he uses to size someone up, what's on his clipboard when he is inspecting the team?

  • I'm not heavily into the science bits of HR
  • When he took over Workplace there was a HR contractor and she always showed him charts.
  • Took the lid off her and she became hugely successful with a great career after that.
  • It's about looking at the human.
  • I want to read their face, how they engage, body language etc.
  • You need to give people time so you can learn about them.
  • Learned never to hire himself.
  • You want people to bring a different perspective.
  • Solve problems together.
  • Don't be the smartest person in the room.

Then we ask David about how he shows up for people and as a leader, does he show up the same way at home and at work?

  • Serve to lead.
  • Manage by walking about.
  • What can he do to make them successful? He gives anyone access to the board.
  • Don't believe in hierarchy.
  • He learnt about hierarchy in the war, this is not war, we are running a business.
  • Him and his wife fight over the oven!
  • They do a lot of work in the community.
  • Kids are brilliant, they do their best to support them to be very independent.
  • Supported his wife through Cancer, supports a hospice.
  • They have a mentality about helping and supporting people.
  • “It's like at Christmas, you get so much more out of the gifts you give others than the ones you receive.”



Mar 28, 202248:01
📈CRO Series: Jary Carter @ Wordpress VIP discussing Org Structure, Alignment and Metrics that Matter

📈CRO Series: Jary Carter @ Wordpress VIP discussing Org Structure, Alignment and Metrics that Matter

On today's show and as part of our special 10 Episode CRO Series we will be discussing topics like: Cx, GTM, Functional Alignment, Metrics that Matter, Pipeline / Forecasting, Digital Strategies, Digital Transformation, RevOps and today it's all about Org Structure, Alignment and Metrics that Matter. Again, we promise to give you actionable insights from our guests who are tenured and experienced CRO’s who come from high growth SaaS companies.

Today we welcome Jary Carter, he has had an interesting career in Novell, Omniture, Alfresco, Magento, Oro and now is the CRO at Wordpress VIP.

We kick off by asking Jary, what is it like to be CRO, we ask him to share his career journey and what has led him to where he is today?

  • Mom asked him at 12 years old, what is he going to do for work
  • Started as a Business Development Representative
  • Field sales
  • Account Executive at Omniture
  • Running sales at Magento
  • Founded ORO
  • Since early 2019

We ask Jary, how he feels about the passion for technology as a sales guy, how important is it?

  • One of the top 3 things
  • The business user
  • Understanding where the market is going
  • Talking to analysts and customers
  • Publishing out, everything we seeing in the market
  • Contextualize the market

We touch on the CRO role and ask Jary what excited him about it?

  • A place of maturity
  • Building an ecosystem
  • Commercial leader
  • Sees the bigger picture of where the organization is going
  • Capture the market opportunity
  • Hand off points
  • Customer success
  • Good transition

Then we ask Jary, at Wordpress, what is his typical customer and how are you servicing them?

  • One in two websites are built on Wordpress
  • 43% market share
  • Mid to large size customers
  • $100M companies
  • Fortune 100 Companies
  • Offering very approachable technology for a marketer or a business user

We ask Jary, what is a typical day for him and how does he spend his time at Wordpress VIP?

  • Spend a lot of time with those who report to me
  • Collaboration
  • Head of Partnerships
  • Head of Sales

Then we ask Jary, what are the metrics that he looks at?

  • Try not to get buried in it
  • Close ratios
  • Areas that need to improve
  • Customer conversations

Last but not least, we ask Jary what he feels is his super power?

  • Ability to recognise high performing individuals and show them a career path that gets them to where they want to be
Feb 14, 202239:05
📈CRO Series: Theodore Carroll @ Logiq.ai discussing Digital Transformation

📈CRO Series: Theodore Carroll @ Logiq.ai discussing Digital Transformation

On today's show and as part of our special 10 Episode CRO Series we will be discussing topics like; Rev Ops, Cx, GTM, Functional Alignment, Metrics that Matter, Pipeline / Forecasting, and Digital Strategies and more importantly Digital Transformation which is why we are here today with Theo Carroll, CRO at Logiq.ai. Again, we promise to give you actionable insights from our guests who are tenured and experienced CRO’s who come from high growth SaaS companies.

Theo is the CRO at Logiq.ai, we ask him to share his journey and what has led him to where he is today?

  • Dad was in technology
  • Embryonic technology
  • Classical sales
  • Fortune 200 companies
  • A white space for what is happening next

We ask Theo what excited him around product market fit, leading into digital transformation and what it means in his world?

  • The gap
  • Integration architecture
  • Concept of controlling data
  • Intelligent router
  • Create automation around the flow of data
  • Manipulating data to organize it
  • “Compute capability work for you”

Next we ask Theo, where is he seeing the greatest demand and impact?

  • Security
  • The hot store is expensive
  • Data driven business
  • Put your best people to work

We then ask Theo, if he thinks there is still a serious lack of insights for sales people?

  • Companies are upping their game
  • Latency everywhere
  • Building the bridges
  • Self service and automation
  • Exception reporting
  • Team sport
  • Collective around brand and success
  • Predictable revenue forecast

We move on to asking, what kinds of trends is he seeing and how should someone get started with their digital transformation journey?

  • What can be improved
  • How do you protect the data?
  • Do we have control, at what level?
  • Where can I find TCO value quickly?
  • Digital transformation and technology curve

Last but not least, we ask Theo, what he feels is his super power?

  • Create the right kind of culture
  • The opportunity for people to accomplish more than they thought they could
Jan 20, 202230:13
📈CRO Series: Brian Clark @ Ox discussing Sales Methodology, Talent & Cx

📈CRO Series: Brian Clark @ Ox discussing Sales Methodology, Talent & Cx

On today's show and as part of our special 10 Episode CRO Series we will be discussing topics like: Cx, GTM, Functional Alignment, Metrics that Matter, Pipeline / Forecasting, Digital Strategies, Digital Transformation and today it's all about RevOps. Again, we promise to give you actionable insights from our guests who are tenured and experienced CRO’s who come from high growth SaaS companies.

Today we are joined by Brian Clark, CRO at Ox. Brian is a tenured sales leader with over 20 years of global sales strategy and execution experience across multiple industries and channels. He is a builder of high energy, high growth, and high integrity sales teams. His passion is to recruit and mentor top talent. He has consistently delivered abnormal growth figures leading Fortune 500 accounts in highly competitive and complex global markets.

Prior to leading teams, he has been fortunate to be the top performing salesperson for 3 different Fortune 500 companies. He is well-versed in operating within matrixed organizations such as Hewlett-Packard, CA Technologies, Salesforce, NCR Corporation and now Ox.

We kick off by asking Brian about his career journey, his path and what has led him to where he is today?

  • A son of a sales person
  • Always made time for his family
  • First job was a sales job
  • Didn't know I wanted to be in technology
  • Recruited by Hewlett-Packard
  • Ecommerce
  • Learning how to relate
  • What am I lacking
  • Hardware people can't make the leap to software
  • Sabbatical for 7 months
  • Run a true role globally
  • Genesis of a startup

We ask Brian, between the hunger and the asking of the right questions, how do you rate that?

  • Clients don't get paid to study themselves
  • Study their business
  • Become students
  • Question strategy
  • Be interested not interesting
  • Learning beats knowing

Next we ask Brian, to share with us who is Ox? And what do they do?

  • A complete fulfillment automation platform built for the future of supply chain
  • Build automation software
  • Easy to adopt
  • A front end and a back end
  • Consume data
  • Onboarding faster
  • Again, be a student of their organization
  • You have to know what value you bring upfront

Then we ask Brian, in terms of talent, what kinds of people does he look for and what are you seeing?

  • Every job is remote
  • Lead by love or fear
  • Different challenges
  • Convincing of the culture
  • Grit

We move on to sales methodology, we ask Brian what is his favorite and why is it important to him?

  • Go native and be a student
  • Mutual plans
  • Create a healthy tension
  • Rock the boat for change
  • DITLO - day in the life of
  • Facts vs feelings

Last but not least, we ask Brian what he feels is his super power?

  • Culture
  • Culture eats strategy for breakfast
  • If you take care of the people, the people take care of the business
  • A Dad first
  • Giving back to the community, gives the team a higher purpose
Jan 19, 202247:15
📈CRO Series: Jason Reichl @ Breadcrumbs.io discussing RevOps

📈CRO Series: Jason Reichl @ Breadcrumbs.io discussing RevOps

On today's show and as part of our special 10 Episode CRO Series we will be discussing topics like: Cx, GTM, Functional Alignment, Metrics that Matter, Pipeline / Forecasting, Digital Strategies, Digital Transformation and today it's all about RevOps. Again, we promise to give you actionable insights from our guests who are tenured and experienced CRO’s who come from high growth SaaS companies.

Today we welcome Jason Reichl, CRO and Founder at Breadcrumbs.io. Cofounder at Go Nimbly, the first revenue operations consultancy with the goal of allowing high-growth companies to increase the revenue of each of their customers by 26% through eliminating operational silos. Since 2013, he has transformed the most innovative SaaS and PaaS businesses from the inside, exponentially improving the way they are able to deliver the Go To Market experience their customers demand. And the hashtag to take away is #silonomore

We kick off by asking Jason to tell us all about his journey this far and what has led him to where he is today?

  • Obsessed with community
  • Punk rock
  • Redundant service cluster
  • Bluewolf
  • Interest in SaaS
  • Nimbly - unified operations
  • RevOps Evangelist
  • Perfected theory of revops

We ask Jason, how vital is it to have product market fit from get go?

  • Great sales people
  • Best performer
  • Customers already want your product
  • Maximize the value of each yes

We get deeper and ask Jason, tell us what is RevOps?

  • Framework and mindset
  • The most impact
  • Level of maturity
  • Looking at customer data
  • Volume, value, velocity and conversion
  • Where are customers seeing the gap

We ask Jason to tell us his definition of the customer experience?

  • Engaging on a personal level
  • We’re selling to other businesses
  • Mature the buyer
  • Team based sport
  • Vanity metrics
  • What metrics should you track
  • Revenue indicators
  • Which KPI will drive revenue
  • Leading and lagging

Next we ask Jason to share what are his favorite tools out there?

  • KPI - accelerate revenue
  • Normalized data
  • Operationalised questions
  • Build intentionality
  • Build generalist
  • How do they fit in your stack

We ask Jason about the components of RevOps?

  • Operations Management
  • Tools
  • Enablement
  • Strategy
  • Interview the field
  • Interview the customers
  • Process and rules

Lastly, we ask Jason what he feels is his super power?

  • Self Managed Culture leading to great processes
  • Autonomy
Jan 18, 202242:43
📈CRO Series: Chris Kaufield @ Alitheon discussing All Things Digital & GTM

📈CRO Series: Chris Kaufield @ Alitheon discussing All Things Digital & GTM

On today's show and as part of our special 10 Episode CRO Series we will be discussing topics like: Cx, GTM, Functional Alignment, Metrics that Matter, Pipeline / Forecasting, Digital Strategies, Digital Transformation, RevOps and today it's about All Things Digital and GTM. Again, we promise to give you actionable insights from our guests who are tenured and experienced CRO’s who come from high growth SaaS companies.

Today we welcome Chris Kaufield, CRO at Alitheon. He commercializes B2B platforms and leads revenue growth. A builder of digital and physical products. He is currently delivering a computer vision solution to trace premium goods through supply chains.

My customers have had many names: enterprises, subscribers, developers, and friends. A 25+ year career spans startups and global orgs, from new IP and the first $1 of sales to $1B+ ARR businesses. From SaaS to augmented reality to blockchains.

At Microsoft, I kicked off Office 365 sales, driving $400M+ of the company's earliest B2B cloud revenue. I then launched a range of SaaS, APIs, and edge devices including Microsoft Surface Hub and HoloLens.

We kick off by asking Chris to share his career journey and what has led him to where he is today?

  • Mix of invention and new tech
  • New opportunities and new customers
  • Destined to be a maker
  • Help people change
  • Reliable and repeatable way
  • How do you bring the people together

We then ask Chris, what does the contrast of sophisticated and highly disruptive tech look like in his world when going to market?

  • Developing a new category is hard
  • Solve the problem of lost luggage
  • When to create a new product and when to create a new category
  • Staying power
  • How big companies have the patience
  • Known or unknown

Then we ask Chris to share more about Alitheon, who are they and where are they heading?

  • Invented a way to look at a surface of an object with a standard camera and convert it to statistical information which could provide a unique key to that surface
  • An object can tell you what it is
  • Developed for years by the original owners
  • Casting marks and forging marks
  • Partners in Japan
  • Universal algorithm
  • Everything is unique at a close enough glance

Next we ask Chris what is his philosophy around the CRO role and what excites him most?

  • People want to see what a finish product looks like
  • Know it boundaries
  • Product stack
  • Difference between creating a fascination and creating a buyer
  • SaaS model
  • From kit to reference design
  • Reduce PHD people in sales team
  • Work through a playbook

We then ask Chris, GTM, how does he create a plan for this and who is involved in that?

  • Numbers are lighting up
  • Make your tech valuable enough that others want to sell it
  • Partner led market
  • Team effort
  • Offer a blueprint
  • No new is bad news from a partner
  • Equipped and self-sufficient

Lastly, we ask Chris, what he feels is his super power?

  • Packaging a product
Jan 18, 202244:20
📈CRO Series: Travis Shipley discussing Functional Alignment, Org Structure & GTM

📈CRO Series: Travis Shipley discussing Functional Alignment, Org Structure & GTM

On today's show and as part of our special 10 Episode CRO Series we will be discussing topics like: Cx, GTM, Functional Alignment, Metrics that Matter, Pipeline / Forecasting, Digital Strategies, Digital Transformation, RevOps and today it's all about Functional Alignment/Org Structure and GTM. Again, we promise to give you actionable insights from our guests who are tenured and experienced CRO’s who come from high growth SaaS companies.

Today we welcome Travis Shipley, CRO at Shiftboard, backed by Shiftboard innovation technologies. Organizations can optimize their workflow, scheduling and practices that result in lower labor costs, improved efficiency, compliance with regulations and creation of a better employee experience. Shiftboard has supported over 265 million scheduled shifts for thousands of customers, including Fortune 500 companies, providing the employment pipeline for over $9 billion in wages earned. Prior to that Travis was a Vice President at Wrike, a well known software project management system. Vice President of Sales prior to that at Zones.

We kick off by asking Travis to share his career journey and what has led him to where he is today?

  • Graduated university
  • Went into sales
  • Became a leader
  • 10 years at Microsoft
  • Sales and business consulting
  • Coaching and mentorship

We ask Travis, in his world, how did he initially get that big promo at Microsoft, how did he navigate that?

  • Self Drive
  • Two proposals
  • Most challenging point of his career
  • Learnt from mentor
  • Train and motivate
  • A lot of advice
  • Getting involved in deals
  • Stand side by side

Then we ask Travis, with his mindset, what made him go for the opportunity?

  • Level of immaturity
  • Little bit of arrogance
  • What was my approach
  • A depth of growth

To understand his background, we ask Travis what his parents do?

  • Dad was mechanic and engineer
  • Prove him wrong
  • Grit

Next we ask Travis, who is Shiftboard, what problems do they solve and why is he passionate about them?

  • Built for complex shift scheduling
  • High compliance
  • High complex
  • Employee flexibility
  • Huge ROI benefit
  • Schedule flex
  • Schedule pro
  • Thought leader
  • Use cases
  • High functioning teams
  • Land and expand

We ask Travis if they have any partners?

  • Enable ourselves
  • HRIS system
  • No white label program
  • Integrate and create
  • Com Plan

We then ask Travis to share with us his take on the Com Plans?

  • Leaving it up to Executives and what that means
  • Pull in the team
  • Top sellers
  • Data driven sales leaders

What advice would Travis give fledging CRO’s?

  • Standardization

Last but not least, we ask Travis to share with us what he feels is his super power?

  • Data driven sales leader
  • Finance manager in college
Jan 14, 202247:22
📈CRO Series: Kathleen Waid @ Prove Identity discussing Talent, Pipeline & Forecasting

📈CRO Series: Kathleen Waid @ Prove Identity discussing Talent, Pipeline & Forecasting

On today's show we speak to CRO, Kathleen Waid from Prove Identity. We have a continued theme of The CRO Series. We will be discussing topics like; Rev Ops, Cx, GTM, Functional Alignment, Metrics that Matter, Pipeline / Forecasting, and Digital Strategies and Digital Transformation. Again, we promise to give you actionable insights from our guests who are tenured and experienced CRO’s who come from high growth SaaS companies.

One of the top 50 women in SaaS 2021 (The Software Report), she believes that service to others is the best preparation for life and business. For more context, you'll have to check out her LinkedIn post, which has over 130 likes.

We kick off by asking Kathleen, how does someone decide to be a CRO, what has led her to this point:

  • First job was a collector
  • Credit card fraud
  • Fraud prevention department
  • Performance of what we could do
  • Industry expert
  • Sales career
  • Fell in love with SaaS
  • Sales leadership roles
  • Bleeding edge technology solving problems for not only banks but consumers too
  • Growing well at Prove

We ask Kathleen, what does she feel sets apart a CRO from the organization? And what makes a great CRO?

  • Report to our board
  • Sales is always a part of it
  • Not only closing the deal
  • Being direct
  • Black and white
  • Grow at a greater rate
  • Clarity
  • Revenue is the kingpin
  • Connect everyone to their roles and what they do
  • Very little grey when talking revenue
  • Revenue is a team sport

Next we ask Kathleen, every sales person has missed a forecast or slipped in their career, what do you think about forecasting accuracy?

  • Sell what is your personal brand
  • Quality solutions that help their consumers
  • Hold salespeople accountable - keep CRM up to date
  • I don't want to do many overrides
  • Revenue protection
  • Clear check points
  • Discovery, validation, proposal and negotiation
  • Win rate
  • Business intelligence
  • Business plan for validation
  • Breathing ground for collaboration
  • Think about your customer, and the seat they are in
  • I was the buyer
  • Winning 92% of deals
  • Live revenue
  • Data elements

We ask Kathleen about their retention rates?

  • Haven't had regrettable losses
  • People give feedback
  • You have to be accurate
  • If you don't know, say you don't know
  • Scoring system
  • Coachable or not
  • I set the tone
  • Who we are as people
  • Passionate about culture
  • Expectations are high and we say so

Lastly, we ask Kathleen what she feels her super power is?

  • Talent
  • Hire people better than me
  • People who feel empowered
  • Who you can learn from
  • Should be finding people who can do your job tomorrow
  • Continuous process of improvement that we all need to be engaging in

Just one more thing, how are things going at Prove, what's the latest, hiring?

  • Yes, a lot
  • Almost double
  • Growth is on the horizon
Jan 13, 202238:54
📈CRO Series: Gregg Carman @ Nuvolo discussing GTM, Revenue Plans & Budget Allocations

📈CRO Series: Gregg Carman @ Nuvolo discussing GTM, Revenue Plans & Budget Allocations

On today's show and the theme of The CRO Series we will be discussing topics like; Cx, GTM, Functional Alignment, Metrics that Matter, Pipeline / Forecasting, Digital Strategies, Digital Transformation and today it's all about RevOps. Again, we promise to give you actionable insights from our guests who are tenured and experienced CRO’s who come from high growth SaaS companies.

Today we welcome Gregg Carman, CRO at Nuvolo, previously CRO at Humanyze, Senior Vice President at Mattersight and CRO at Kaleo Software. He brings with him a wealth of experience where he grows revenue by 3X and doubles his team size.

We kick off by asking Gregg to share his journey with us and what has led him to where he is today?

  • Technology for nearly 30 years
  • Started as developer
  • Siebel Systems
  • Moved on to management for 10 years

We ask Gregg how much of that is down to product market fit, the execution piece, what do those categories look like in his world?

  • Starts with people and the team
  • Hiring people who are highly competent
  • Shared values
  • Follows the same north star
  • Collaborative, listening first
  • Quantitative and qualitative

Next we ask Gregg, what is your sales motion, is it enterprise, partner led etc?

  • All of the above
  • Partner ecosystem
  • Strategic advisory group
  • Consultants and specialists
  • Technology alliances
  • Distribution strategy

We ask Gregg, what informs the GTM planning piece and how do you decide which markets to go after?

  • 8 years into the journey
  • US public sector
  • US and Canadian health care markets
  • Recurring value for your customers
  • High velocity business
  • The value piece

In terms of revenue planning, we ask Gregg to share his insights.

  • What has the journey been
  • Bottoms up approach
  • Are you underinvesting

Lastly we ask Gregg, what he feels is his super power?

  • Finding highly talented people
Jan 12, 202241:44
📈CRO Series: Christopher Bray @ Aura discussing GTM & Functional Alignment

📈CRO Series: Christopher Bray @ Aura discussing GTM & Functional Alignment

On today's show and the theme of The CRO Series we will be discussing topics like; Rev Ops, Cx, GTM, Functional Alignment, Metrics that Matter, Pipeline / Forecasting, Digital Strategies and Digital Transformation. Again, we promise to give you actionable insights from our guests who are tenured and experienced CRO’s who come from high growth SaaS companies.

Today we have Christopher Bray, CRO at Aura, who has an illustrious career spanning many decades in Dell, McAfee, Symantec, Cylance and now at Aura. We welcome him to the show.

We kick off by asking Christopher about his journey, and what has led him to where he is today?

  • Grew up in more than one culture
  • Learnt how to make friends quickly
  • Global role for most of his career
  • Started in Europe, South Africa and then the US
  • Dell in Southern Africa
  • It is so diverse
  • Learnt how to think on his feet
  • Malware and threats
  • Aura as a brand is new
  • The technology isn't
  • Taking technology and pulling them together

Next we ask Christopher, what does the CRO role mean to him?

  • Multiple functions
  • Marketing team
  • Engineering team
  • Customer facing team
  • Account management
  • Project Management

Who is Aura and how are they helping the world?

  • Protecting consumers
  • Identity and privacy
  • Device security
  • Informative, engaging and empowering
  • AI
  • Product does the thinking for you

We ask Christopher what are the next big plans for Aura?

  • An exciting acquisition coming up
  • Very disruptive in the marketplace
  • Fun and exciting culture to be a part of

Next we ask Christopher how they are structured and what markets do they operate in?

  • Market segmentation approach
  • Partnership
  • Layer of security
  • Enterprise sales
  • Understanding performance marketing
  • Partner Sales
  • Diverse background beyond pure sales
  • Patience of long sales cycles
  • Appreciation of how to drive performance KPIs

We then ask Christopher, do they invest heavily on the support/ onboarding side?

  • Yes
  • Partner Solutions

Next we ask Christopher, could he tell us about how they begin the process to inform the direction for the year ahead?

  • We can unpack this for hours
  • Really strong ops team
  • Strong relationship with finance
  • Account by account basis
  • Stack right
  • Scenario planning
  • Transition to Google Suite
  • Multi-tab spreadsheets
  • Alignment

We ask Christopher, do they have competitors or are they dominating?

  • Depends..
  • They see us as competitors
  • We stand apart

Last but not least, we ask Christopher, what he feels is his super power?

  • Building phenomenal high performance teams
  • Solving complex business problems
  • The best ideas don't always come from headquarters
  • Learnt very early on that you should understand your people super power
  • We don't have a price list
Jan 11, 202247:09
📈 CRO Series: JD Miller @ Motus discussing The Top 5 Metrics that Matter

📈 CRO Series: JD Miller @ Motus discussing The Top 5 Metrics that Matter

On today's show and the theme of The CRO Focus Series we will be discussing topics like; Rev Ops, Cx, GTM, Functional Alignment, Metrics that Matter, Pipeline / Forecasting, and Digital Strategies and Digital Transformation. Again, we promise to give you actionable insights from our guests who are tenured and experienced CRO’s who come from high growth SaaS companies.

We have Dr. JD Miller, to say he has had an extensive career wouldn't do it justice. He worked at organisations such as OpenText, LexisNexis and more recently at Motus.

To kick off, we ask JD to share his career journey thus far and what has led him to where he is today?

  • Planned to be in law
  • Virtual teams
  • First sales job
  • Ended up going public - largest tech IPO of its time

We ask JD to share with us, white house experience?

  • The card in the pocket

We ask JD how are sales people more informed today and we ask him to share more of Motus?

  • Raise the game and provide a lot more value from day one
  • Zoom fatigue is real
  • Buyers are more educated
  • 17 touches from not knowing us at all to taking a call
  • Inform your knowledge of us
  • Are we spending our resources properly
  • Sales process begins with lead generation
  • Conversation around who is responsible for which piece
  • Everyone is aligned to win the customer
  • Where do the handoffs happen

Then we ask JD, how many sales agents do you have?

  • A five step process
  • 10 questions - you always need to have answered to get a deal done
  • The buyer isn't necessarily the user

Next we ask JD, what is his view around the core metrics that matter most?

  • Intersection of business and humanity
  • Past performance is my biggest predictor of future performance
  • You can expect more of them as time goes along
  • The Great Resignation
  • Makro level of set metrics
  • Individual human level - how do you help them see where they are going
  • A number without a plan is daunting
  • Inverted pyramid
  • The path of least resistance

We then ask JD, do they use any software that tells their team where they need to spend their time?

  • The organisation is run on Salesforce
  • Clari - has an AI that tells you a deal is likely or unlikely to close
  • Predictions
  • AI on forecast accuracy

Last metric for JD?

  • Monitoring the spend
  • ROI on dollars spent and allocation of people

Last but not least, we ask JD to share what he feels is his super power?

  • Creating repeatable processes that you can plug anyone into and get results
Jan 10, 202239:33
Corey White, Chief Executive and Experience Officer at Cyvatar.ai, tells us how he is always moving towards what scares him.

Corey White, Chief Executive and Experience Officer at Cyvatar.ai, tells us how he is always moving towards what scares him.

In today's episode we have Corey White, Chief Executive and Experience Officer at Cyvatar.ai, prior to that he had an illustrious career at Cylance no less, he was at CompTIA and McAfee. He is a servant leader so very excited to talk about what that means. He has proven himself in organisations such as Cylance, where he was the first employee consultant in the organization to build a team to a 150+ globally which is not an easy task. Culminating in the acquisition of Cylance by Blackberry for 1.5 Billion. To say he is experienced in AI is an understatement.

We kick off by asking Corey about his career journey and what has led him to where he is today?

  • It was not perfectly planned out
  • Knew he liked computers
  • First job was Microsoft
  • Introduction of the internet
  • What is a cookie
  • Could not sit still on a support call
  • Figure things out

We ask Corey how does the fact that his mind is so fast, how has that helped him in his career?

  • Mindset
  • Let go of ego

Then we ask Corey, what is a big red flag for you when interviewing new team members and how does he build culture?

  • No one can be successful without knowing who they are
  • Spark Type Test
  • “I’m a maker” - love building things
  • Be a better person
  • Roles that match your innate skills
  • Align skill and happiness

We ask Corey, you know what to look for when hiring, how do you manage those people with servant leadership and what does it mean to him?

  • You’re doing everything
  • Trust those people to do the job
  • When hired, I now work for you
  • Hire the right people
  • Support them to be successful
  • Servant leader mindset

Next we ask Corey how has AI affected the cybersecurity game and how it's used to win the war on threats that exist today?

  • AI is a very good tool
  • People, process and technology
  • Without the right people using it, it's almost useless

We ask Corey, how are things going at Cyvatar.ai?

  • Solution and secure
  • Fully understand what the challenges are
  • Subscription businesses
  • Platform businesses

Then we ask Corey, how does he stay organized, any life hacks?

  • Goes back to knowing yourself
  • Assistant ingrained in my life
  • Find a very very smart assistant
  • Executive hack
  • She's the organised version of Corey

Last but not least, we ask Corey what he feels are his super powers?

  • Listening
  • I'm constantly moving towards what scares me
  • Stuck afraid
Dec 17, 202133:59
Tristan Pelloux, Director of Strategwhy, shares how a personal blog led to fintech leadership

Tristan Pelloux, Director of Strategwhy, shares how a personal blog led to fintech leadership

In today's episode we have Tristan Pelloux, in business strategy, fintech, he is an entrepreneur, advisor and mentor at multiple organizations. He is currently the Director at Strategwhy. He's been involved in multiple finance roles throughout Virgin Money in the UK, board member at Audencia, Founder and Chief Pencil Officer at Fintech Review.

We kick off by asking Tristan to share his career journey to date and what has led him to where he is today?

  • Went to business school in France
  • Moved to London - plan was investment banking
  • Financial services
  • Moved to Barcelona
  • Fintech Review - online media on fintech
  • Strategwhy - management consultancy
  • Passion for innovation in financial services
  • Started as a personal blog and involved into interviewing people in the industry
  • Taste of corporates
  • Now working with startups

Then we ask Tristan, how has he adjusted from corporate to startups?

  • It has been an interesting journey
  • You celebrate small victories
  • Much more control of your destiny
  • Opportunity to say no

Next we ask Tristan to tell us more about Strategwhy and what their plans are?

  • Helping businesses launch
  • Always find things to improve
  • Market place - market strategy
  • Helping people figure out what is the right target
  • Broad skill set

We ask Tristan, what is the biggest issue he sees when people are ready to take their product to market?

  • Some people have a great idea
  • They lack the process from idea to execution
  • What's your value proposition
  • Why are you better than the guy next door
  • Ask many questions

Next we ask Tristan what exciting things is he seeing in fintech, what are people not seeing?

  • The power of trying to cut all the middle men
  • Sometimes friction can be a good thing

Then we ask Tristan how he finds securities being addressed?

  • Cyber security
  • Moving to a more secure environment
  • As technologies evolve they find new ways to rob/hack you

We touch on Fintech Review. It's a big venture, we ask Tristan to tell us a bit about what they cover there?

  • Business, finance, technology and economics
  • Started as a personal blog
  • Started to interview people
  • Weekly newsletter
  • Passion project
  • Keeps him updated about what's going on in the industry

We ask Tristan about BREXIT and does he see London playing a major role in the financial services sector?

  • Very much present
  • These hubs are expensive to live in
  • It’s harder to move to London from Europe

Last but not least, we ask Tristan, what he feels is his super power?

  • Highly organised
  • Excel tracker
  • Red book
Dec 13, 202131:54
Veronica Romney, Dream Team Architect tells us about the wild wild west of online entrepreneurship

Veronica Romney, Dream Team Architect tells us about the wild wild west of online entrepreneurship

In today's episode we have Veronica Romney, a dream architect by training, very involved in helping people realize their best selves, an area we are passionate about so we’re very excited to have her on the show. She believes that you can create a business alone but you cannot scale it alone.

We kick off by asking Veronica to share her career journey and what has led her to where she is today?

  • Never left marketing
  • Graduated in marketing
  • Different twists and turns
  • The nerdy side of marketing
  • Parents are entrepreneurs
  • Entrepreneurs birth other entrepreneurs
  • Center our work around our family
  • Sold agency and became a speaker
  • Tony Robbins speaker
  • I’m a Chief of Staff who thinks like a operator
  • Left brain, right brain

We ask Veronica how her experience has been with the shift in marketing?

  • Data or die
  • The wild wild west of online entrepreneurship
  • Both sides of the marketing lane

Next we ask Veronica, what has been her experience with entrepreneurs who make it and those who don't make it?

  • It’s timing
  • Overnight millionaires
  • Virtual economy
  • Doing things by yourself is chaotic and insane but you have control
  • Can you let go
  • Working with human beings, things happen
  • Mindset stuff - internal dialogue

We ask Veronica, what are her deal breakers?

  • No entitlement zone
  • Describe your organization problems
  • If there's no finger pointing to self
  • It's hard being a leader
  • Not on anyone's team
  • The client is the company, not the person
  • I hate you because you’re right

We ask Veronica, how does she tell people they are wrong?

  • Will use my gift of discernment
  • Pick the timing
  • Set expectation upfront
  • One company and one heartbeat

Then we ask Veronica, does she think people are born great speakers?

  • Receive energy from people all day
  • I love teaching!
  • Speaking is teaching on a bigger scale
  • I’m Cuban
  • Studious person
  • You can work on this skill
  • You have to enjoy teach and talking at least

We have to ask, what is it like to work with Tony Robbins behind the scenes?

  • It's a massive brand
  • Amazing training
  • Converted all speakers into virtual workshop trainers
  • Chaotic and messy - building the plane as we fly it

Next we ask Veronica, how does she start working with people?

  • Meet clients where they are
  • Some have no marketing leadership
  • Mid tier leaders
  • Onsite together with the team
  • Cocktail of marketing and operations

We ask Veronica, what does a billion dollar company filled with doers look like?

  • Like a highway with no lines
  • No rules, no stop lights
  • Fast and dangerous
  • Three people doing the same task
  • Doers expected to QA and manage their own deadlines
  • You are the problem in your business

Last but not least, we ask Veronica, what she feels is her super power?

  • High execution
  • Good will hunting of organizations
  • Master Team Architect - Dream Team Architect
  • Marketing centered teams
Dec 10, 202136:46
Joe Cecala, Founder and CEO of Dream Exchange - Part 2

Joe Cecala, Founder and CEO of Dream Exchange - Part 2

In today’s episode we have the exciting Part 2 of Joe Cecala on the show, he is so impressive that we were not able to record everything in one episode. So we welcome Joe back.

We kick off by asking, why does he think there isn't more diversity in companies? And why does he think people need public money to scale?

  • It's more than 1%
  • One black owned company in the history of stock exchange
  • What are the future prospects for me in this job
  • Trade credit relationships
  • Becoming bigger than the problem
  • Too Big To Fail
  • Market cap
  • Survive, instead of expand and thrive
  • What is your idea? What is your product?
  • Microeconomics at its core
  • Your public capital market
  • Phones have changed the way we live

We ask Joe why do the best folks rise to the top or do they not and miss the trick sometimes?

  • It is not the case, that the best idea always gets the venture capital investment and rises to the top
  • There is no place for the small public company to go for access
  • “Create a gigantic funnel that begins to create a communication environment between the public investing community and the ingenious entrepreneur”
  • Balance, the ends versus the means
  • Using the world's resources and not destroying the world's resources
  • Would love to see a public company record label that supports the artist community
  • We’re going to Mars
Dec 06, 202155:20
Joe Cecala, Founder and CEO of Dream Exchange: Part 1

Joe Cecala, Founder and CEO of Dream Exchange: Part 1

In today's show we speak to Joe Cecala, to say Joe has done it all is an understatement.

He is the co-author of securities research published in Oxford University’s Handbook on IPO's. Main contributor to the Main Street Growth Act, to create venture stock exchanges. Joe Cecala is the Founder and CEO of Dream Exchange, creating a new national stock exchange as well as the first ever venture stock exchange in the U.S.

As a former military officer, civil rights lawyer, securities lawyer and CPA, Mr. Cecala is a visionary, passionate about effecting positive, lasting change on society.

Dream Exchange newest venture has over 3800 social media followers and 25000 email subscribers and features media publications such as Complex, Wall Street Journal, Black Enterprise, The Root and more. He's been on over 100 of these appearances.

We kick off by asking Joe to share his journey thus far and what has led him to where he is today?

  • Forrest Gump
  • Archipelago
  • Methodology technology
  • Trade volume
  • Community projects
  • Meaningful job creation
  • Formulating solutions
  • Asian markets

Next we ask Joe, what kinds of growth has he seen in the markets, and what does he mean by profitability and market share?

  • Concentrated risk environment
  • The value of the idea is skewed whether or not the investment will work out or not
  • Your not an entrepreneur if you have a day job doing something else and if you have never put payroll on your credit card
  • From pilot to commercialisation
  • No transfer of risk
  • I like 12%
  • The Sales Acceleration Formula
  • Do they make milestones
  • Early Facebook employees
Dec 03, 202143:37
Yogesh Shetty, Founder and CEO of Avibra tells us how intelligence is equally distributed but opportunities are not

Yogesh Shetty, Founder and CEO of Avibra tells us how intelligence is equally distributed but opportunities are not

In today's episode we have Yogesh Shetty, he is the founder and CEO of Avibra, a mission-driven wellness platform that makes low and no-cost benefits accessible to everyone, regardless of their socioeconomic status. Shetty, despite growing up in the slums of Mumbai, rose through executive ranks in the U.S. to lead technological innovation at both JP Morgan Chase and New York Life. Shetty’s deep understanding of finance and insurance, coupled with his empathetic heart, motivate him to give back to society daily by democratizing benefits in the U.S.

We kick off by asking Yogesh to share his journey and what has led him to where he is today:

  • Brought up in Mumbai in extreme poverty
  • Raised single handedly by his mother
  • Inspired to do something different at an early age
  • Hard work, passion, focus and patience
  • A+ student - good at academics
  • The first digital transformation
  • Financial technology
  • Breakthrough moment
  • Head of Engineering
  • Wrote a book
  • Vice President
  • Managing Director
  • Insurance is at the beginning of digital transformation, like fintech

We ask Yogesh, what gap did he see, what made him choose insurance?

  • Noble asset
  • Financial asset triggers when a human is at the very lowest state of their emotions
  • Very emotionally attached
  • Your margin is an opportunity for innovation
  • Funeral expenses

We ask Yogesh to tell us about his belief system of daily habits and how he helps others?

  • Big thanks to his Mother, he is who he is because of her sacrifice
  • Success means - someone helped you
  • Intelligence is equally distributed but opportunities are not
  • When we say luck, its attributed to people
  • Short life span - if we all pushed each other up, the world would be far more superior
  • He has a strong team - they make him invincible

Next we ask Yogesh, what are his thoughts on opportunities being disguised in plain site?

  • What is your purpose in life - then carve out a plan
  • What is your appetite for risk?
  • Look out for a bigger opportunity
  • The purpose of every entrepreneur is to make this world a better place
  • Impact the world

We then ask Yogesh what he thinks it is in human beings that makes them entrepreneurs?

  • Wiring is a continuous process
  • Humans are trained for change - we are not trained to stay the same forever
  • Purpose and experience

Then we ask Yogesh what he looks for when he is hiring?

  • Good assessment of the organization's strength and weaknesses
  • Find people that are 10x’s better than him
  • The success of the company is a reflection of people and not the CEO
  • When you have surplus around you, you cannot innovate
  • EPIC Framework - energy, passion, information, compassion
  • 50% of your life goes to work, 40% to sleep and 10%  to spending time with loved ones

Lastly, we ask Yogesh, does he have a time hack or a gadget that he cannot live without?

  • Reading
  • No emails over weekends
Nov 19, 202150:20
Bobby Umar, CEO of Discover Your Personal Brand tells us how we need to disconnect to connect.

Bobby Umar, CEO of Discover Your Personal Brand tells us how we need to disconnect to connect.

In today's episode we have Bobby Umar, CEO of Discover Your Personal Brand, A TEDx speaker, a keynote speaker, a Virtual Trainer and Coach and an expert in thought leadership and storytelling.

We kick off by asking Bobby to share his story and what has led him to where he is today:

  • One of those people who felt lost
  • Went into engineering, was not inspired
  • Side hustle was a theatre company
  • Aerospace design engineer
  • Maybe entertainment - did an MBA
  • Found his mojo
  • Brand marketing
  • Had some health issues - diabetes
  • Almost lost his wife
  • Discover Your Personal Brand
  • Motivational speaker journey begins
  • First TEDx Talk
  • The beginning of social media
  • The speaking and events business collapsed during pandemic
  • My why statement

How did Bobby scale his side hustle in such a short time, we have to ask!

  • Never slept
  • Always working
  • Slept 5 to 6hrs a night for a long time
  • Good at building community
  • Health challenges

Next we ask Bobby how do people push through the “give up” moments and soldier on?

  • Most people are fearful of change
  • Stuck in mindsets
  • Most people are miserable in their job
  • Deep diving into your brand - what is your legacy?
  • Work on your mindset
  • Clarity
  • Coaching
  • Community
  • Its dressed up in work

Then we ask Bobby, how do you become a TEDx speaker?

  • Work on your story telling
  • Every talk is rooted in a story
  • Having clarity on your topic
  • Structure and know your audience

Next we ask Bobby to share a turn around moment?

  • Pandemic
  • Didn't freak out
  • Had 300 Zoom calls that year

We ask Bobby where he thinks modern workers will be placed, availability of people vs people feeling obliged to be available?

  • Annual talk of the year - The Future of Connection Now
  • Integration of technology
  • We need to disconnect to connect
  • Turn notifications off
  • Sometimes put your phone far away
  • What is the future of this
  • Information and Technology Age
  • Companies have to adapt to people wanting balance

Next we ask Bobby what type of profiles of people is he helping that makes him so passionate?

  • Executives
  • Corporate people
  • 40s and 50s
  • Business owners and entrepreneurs

We also ask Bobby, what helps him breakthrough to people?

  • Vulnerable storytelling
  • Listen to them

Last but not least, does Bobby have any hacks or gadgets he can't live without? Any hacks for time?

  • Integrate life tasks
  • And other tools to help you
  • Being everywhere with less work
  • Standing desk
Nov 15, 202145:28
Saeed Ahmad, MD at CallSign tells us how the future of transformation will create more entrepreneurs

Saeed Ahmad, MD at CallSign tells us how the future of transformation will create more entrepreneurs

In today's episode we have Saeed Ahmad, Managing Director of the Middle East and North Africa at CallSign. CallSign is on a mission, they are pioneering digital trust through proprietary technology that uniquely mimics the way humans identify each other in the real world. It’s a positive identification of genuine users delivering privacy and safety with minimal friction whilst ensuring bad actors are blocked through swipe and type users can be personally recognised. Saeed is very experienced in the banking trade and has transformed his career from traditional to digital advocacy.

We kick off by asking Saeed to share with us his career journey and what his led him to where he is today:

  • Spent 28 years in technology
  • Data security
  • Worked closely with the government security group
  • Career started at IBM
  • Pure digital transformation
  • Banking
  • Joined KPMG

We ask Saeed, what has been unique about challenges in his unique world?

  • Hub71: Abu Dhabi's Unique Global Tech Ecosystem
  • To foster entrepreneurs
  • Access to capital
  • Abu Dhabi ecosystem
  • Digitising
  • Dealing with the fraud
  • Detecting that its you

Next we ask Saeed, what does the future of transformation look like?

  • Dealing with fraud
  • Identity in the travel business
  • New opportunities for new players
  • Entrepreneurs will come out of this

We then ask Saeed, how do they scale?

  • Core team
  • All part of the ecosystem
  • Bridging the gap

Next we ask Saeed how does he deal with delegation?

  • Surrounding himself with people he can trust
  • Delegate to them
  • Allow them to do their jobs
  • Learning to step back

Lastly, we ask Saeed how he stays productive and organized?

  • Getting in very early
  • Taking the time and space to think about the day and week ahead
  • Key outcomes
  • Text reminders
Nov 08, 202146:05
Pete Moore, Managing Partner, DA - Dream Architect at HALO tells us how “experience is what you get, when you don't get what you want.”

Pete Moore, Managing Partner, DA - Dream Architect at HALO tells us how “experience is what you get, when you don't get what you want.”

In today's episode we speak to Pete Moore, Managing Partner, DA - Dream Architect as he calls himself at HALO. He spent 20 years in the fitness and wellness sector and coined the trademark term HALO - Health, Active Lifestyle & Outdoors. Which has become rather common in the finance world as an umbrella term for everything health and fitness related. He's been in the trenches, he knows what it's like to not make payroll, to sweat and lose sleep at night. He published a new book called Time to Win Again. He says that “pressure is a privilege”.

We kick off this episode by asking Pete to walk us through his career, what has led him to this point and what the journey has been like:

  • Soccer goalie
  • Wanting to be part of the win
  • DLJ
  • Harvard Business School
  • Career journey
  • Trading LEAP options
  • Goldgym.com
  • Banker guy running around in internet clothing
  • What it feels like to write a personal cheque
  • I'm like you but now I’m helping you
  • Integrity Square
  • Brand promise and personal promise
  • HALO sector
  • The right finance groups, with the right entrepreneurs and the right ideas

We then asked Pete, where does he see you gain credibility, what is his why and when does he know someone is investable or not?

  • Why? Because I care
  • I love sports and fitness
  • They trust me because I am honest
  • It changed communities
  • I look for people who are realistic
  • Every company has a special sauce
  • Experience is what you get, when you don't get what you want
  • Orange Theory

Then we ask Pete, what does the onboarding process and training transition look like?

  • Rockstar people
  • Every company should have a uniform
  • If you do the little things, they mean way more than they think

We’ve been waiting to ask Pete this, why is pressure a privilege?

  • Use to be very hard on himself for failing
  • If you are not doing something important and you might fail, it's probably not that important
  • No idea what's on the other side
  • When you get success on the other side, you have earned it, it doesn’t happen to you by accident
  • Failure is like a badge of honor
  • Just get out there and win
  • Suck it up

Lastly, we ask Pete, how does he stay organised?

  • Google calendar
  • Colour code
  • He removes what had been done from calendar
Nov 05, 202150:08
Nagaraju Bandaru, Chief Technology Officer at Mosaic, tells us how clean energy is for everyone

Nagaraju Bandaru, Chief Technology Officer at Mosaic, tells us how clean energy is for everyone

In today’s episode we speak to Nagaraju Bandaru who is the Chief Technology Officer at Mosaic. He is a product executive with 20+ years of experience in innovation, architecture, product delivery, and operations and has led growth and transformation initiatives for startups, private equity groups and large public companies. Prior to Mosaic he served as VP and Chief Technology Officer of Clarivate Analytics formerly known as Thomson Reuters and held executive product development in customer care leadership positions at Intuit no less.

He holds a Masters Degree in Computer Science from University of Hyderabad.

We kick off by asking Nagaraju to tell us about him, what brought him to this point and what has been his journey that has brought him here:

  • His father was a government worker so his family moved every few years
  • Didn't have much friends but learnt new languages often
  • Oldest of three
  • Always good at solving problems
  • He saw two people companies turn into huge multinationals
  • At Intuit he realized he was a technologist at heart
  • Mosaic has planted a huge foundation, great team with the ability to make impact

Next, we ask Nagaraju to tell us how important the fundamentals are for leadership.

  • Driven for results
  • Goals and how to measure them
  • Active coaching

We then ask Nagaraju why he is passionate about the meaningful work at Mosaic?

  • Clean energy for all
  • Huge upfront costs to getting your home energy efficient
  • Being able to make that financing available

We ask Nagaraju to tell us about the journey for a homeowner to become energy efficient.

  • Green energy
  • We make the point of financing easy
  • Taking the hassle away from the homeowner
  • Expanded to home improvement companies

We then ask Nagaraju about the innovations around his industry?

  • 18 month deferred interest loan
  • Loans to finance their clean energy projects
  • Battery becoming more mainstream

Moving on, we ask Nagaraju what does the modern home of the future look like?

  • 131 trillion dollars
  • Solar alone can make a huge dent
  • The ecosystem if very large
  • Financing is the biggest part

Next we ask him about culture and leadership and what it means to him?

  • It's important how you inspire your time
  • The ability to think strategically
  • Building a high performing team
  • Drive for results
  • Innovative leadership
  • Inspiring teams through your action
  • Trust - show up everyday
  • Your good judgement and your decision making
  • Customer empathy
  • Team work
  • Equality and diversity
  • Empathy and care

Lastly, we ask Nagaraju what gadget he can not live without?

  • His drone
  • Ariel photographer
Nov 01, 202145:18
Brian Vallelunga, CEO of Doppler, shares how they are building a whole new category.

Brian Vallelunga, CEO of Doppler, shares how they are building a whole new category.

In today’s episode we speak to Brian Vallelunga. “Managing secrets is a very unsexy space,” acknowledges Doppler CEO Brian Vallelunga, recently featured in Forbes 30 Under 30.

At scale, Doppler helps developers maximize time building core applications rather than worrying about secrets management. Brian raised 2.3M in a seed round from Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins, engaging Peter Thiel. Recently raised from Google, another 6.5M and brought some amazing investors as well.

We kick start this episode by asking Brian to tell us more about his career journey, the bumps along the way and what has led him to this point:

  • Something that was pivotal for Brian, as a kid government use to do these trips where you travel to a new place and learn the culture
  • Opened his eyes young to see how big the world is
  • He was picked on a lot
  • Fell in love with building things with technology
  • Was not a great student, pretended to take notes but was actually coding
  • Started working in high school as a software engineer for 3 years
  • Got a internship offer from Uber
  • Learnt so much so quickly - as an intern he would visit executive meetings and just listen

We ask Brian to share more on secret management and why it excites him:

  • Universal secrets manager - help developers store very sensitive data

Then we ask Brian what does the scale journey look like for Doppler:

  • Long term right approach, chose the very best
  • Building blocks - high passion, ownership and great at what they do

We then ask Brian, where does the next 3, 5 and 10 years look like for Doppler:

  • Pouring concrete right now
  • Stores, management and automation
  • Building a whole new category
  • Change the industry

Then we move over to leadership and we ask Brian how does he bestow his ethos:

  • Culture is how people operate while the CEO is not in the room
  • Spend a lot of time on onboarding
  • Hire in waves

We have Brian dive deeper into onboarding and that their process is like:

  • Company notion doc
  • Code instruct machines and docs instruct people
  • The new people have a 121 with everyone in the company
  • Weekly events and team bonding
  • Emulate it and then do it
  • Once every 3 months, fly people in groups to the office all inclusive and make them feel like their having a 6 star experience
  • Memorable experiences
  • Make vegetables taste like candy

Lastly, we ask Brian what are his go to gadgets:

  • Buy very few but pricey and keep them forever
  • Loves his Apple watch
  • Tonal
Oct 04, 202145:09