People I Work Best With

I coach outliers. If you’re a founder or emerging revenue leader of a high-growth company, who wants to continue in your role through IPO or other successful exit, I can help you and your company reach success by leaning into your strengths and values as a leader.

When it comes to fit, product and industry don’t matter as much as your curiosity and commitment to growth. Some, if not all, of the following statements likely resonate with you:

You haven’t seen this movie before. It’s likely that you have not been the Founder or a Senior Executive of a company that has the potential or is expected to scale rapidly on a compounded basis year after year. Or if you have, you had previously “failed” in the role. This might be your first time building a global company.
You take full ownership of your leadership growth. You recognize that you, like every leader on the planet, will always be an unfinished product. You feel that leading people is a privilege and as a result you take the initiative to do the work required to be the best leader you can be, for the benefit of your team.
You are curious about what is the best version of yourself as a leader. You understand that leadership is a form of expression of your own principles, formed by your unique experiences. As a result, you value the need to understand yourself more in order to unlock your full authentic leadership potential.
You have a limited leadership support system. It’s likely that there are not many people with your similar profile in similar roles at or outside your company. As a result you may even question whether you are worthy of your leadership role. You may not have many experienced mentors (purely focused on supporting you with no additional agenda) helping you navigate the leadership-related challenges ahead of you.
Your mission is bigger than yourself. You are motivated to make a positive societal impact and this is reflected in the type of company you have decided to lead. You believe in servant leadership and fundamentally believe that the best company results originate from maximizing the potential of the talent you have the privilege to lead.

Common Client Scenarios

Founders

I specialize in helping product-centric Founders scale business functions. Founders generally find that their product has validated product-market-fit (at least your initial PMF) and now face the daunting task of doubling or tripling your revenue year-after-year. If you’re a Founder and the following illustrative topics resonate, I might be able to help:

This might be your first time running a business of this scale. You’ve never hired senior subject-matter-experts to lead functions outside your area of expertise. You need help defining the right executive hiring profile, designing an org chart that allows you to maximize time in your zone of genius, assessing experienced candidates and managing senior leaders after they join.
The business and product roadmap have always felt aligned but are starting to show misalignment as the team scales. You need to rebuild the process for how the product team receives and prioritizes needs from different customer segments (ex. geographies, verticals) with your own product vision.
Annual planning used to be something you can start in December and is completed by a few people in a few whiteboard sessions. Now, with multiple offices and a much larger team, you need to manage a holistic, integrated strategic planning process to drive alignment.
Your board has grown after multiple rounds of funding and the dynamics aren’t the same anymore. Some board members are more aligned than others. Either way, you want to manage your board so that it’s not just an audience you report to, but it actually works as a sounding board for you.

Revenue Leaders

According to a study by Felicis Ventures of 30 outlier (successful IPO and >$5bn market cap) successful companies, “0% of the Series B sales leaders were still the head of the function by IPO or Series E” and only 1 in 30 public company CROs had been promoted from within.

I will help you beat these odds by advising you on how to evolve from being a sales leader to a company executive. We’ll accomplish this by partnering together to navigate key decision points you will likely face as your organization scales. If you’re an emerging revenue/sales leader and the following illustrative topics resonate, I might be able to help:

You’ve proven success in one segment or one motion and need to extend into others. This may mean expanding from SMB to MM and Enterprise segments, or adding a Sales-Led motion to the Product-Led engine, or vice versa.
You want to build a high-performing team without losing the soul of the team. You need to balance performance accountability while building an empathetic team culture.
You’ve been told that you are good at closing deals and building a team, but that you need to be more “strategic”. I can help decode what that means and how you can be more strategic by leveraging your strengths.
The complexity of your organization has increased exponentially. You need to think through how to organize all the various revenue teams so that the overall system is greater than its parts.
You have built the foundation to win your local market and now face the challenge of expanding internationally. You need to prioritize which markets to target and expand while maintaining a consistent global team culture.
You need to design a sales compensation plan that is aligned with the company’s values while incentivizing the right behavior to drive growth.