Hi everyone, welcome to Stacking Growth Live. I'm Sydney Waterfall, I'm taking over the podcast today, and I'm joined with another Sydney, Sydney Sloan. And I'm super excited for our conversation. I'm going to let her introduce herself, and then we're going to get into it.
Sure. Hi, I'm Sydney Sloan. I'm the current CMO at DRAHDA. Been here for a whopping six weeks, which has been a roller coaster ride.
Previous to that, it was the CMO at Salesoft, and then I've done a bunch of advisory work, it's been many decades at Adobe. And so I just love sharing what I've learned along the way and can't wait to chat with you, Sydney. Thanks. We are excited to have your level of expertise and experience on our podcast.
A lot of our listeners are aspiring CMOs, or going into that path or existing CMOs as well. So today I wanted to send around the conversation on a couple of different topics you've recently joined DRAHDA. And I wanted to jump in and kind of go through your perspective around knowing when it's time to step away from a current role. Yeah.
So I left Salesoft in December of 2021, and I've been there for three and a half years. And that's kind of my tenure. Like three and a half to four years is in any job. And so the way that I've, it works for me, and I know everybody's different.
But it's like the first year is your honeymoon year. You know, you're coming in, you're assessing, you're putting all these new plans and processes in place, and then you're harvesting that in the second year. And by the third year, you have to challenge all the thinking of the two years prior and reinvent. And that's hard.
Like you have to say, kind of, OK, I came up with this idea. It worked or didn't work and rethink it. And by that time too, you really have kind of your team in place. I think it takes about a year or so to really figure that out.
It depends on the pace of growth as well, where you're challenging yourself at each stage. Like you can't get to 50 million and then going for 1,500 is something different and then a 100 to 250 is different. So at every pace as a leader, you have to do that challenge. So it usually takes me about three and a half years.
And then it's like, am I still feeling challenged? I still feel passionate about what I'm doing. The energy to keep going that I love sales off. I still do.
And it was hard for me to step away. But that was like the pandemic. And I had two teenagers. And we did this massive rebrand where literally for 10 months, like it was all hands on deck.
And frankly, I was burned out. I couldn't imagine. Like I need to commit for another chapter. Or should I leave?
And I had a couple of opportunities come my way. And I had 10-10 so I decided to leave. And so yeah, that was like if you can't commit for like the next year, if you're too tired. And I know I love the team of good hands.
I had an awesome interim CMO that we've been grooming. And I knew that things would be fine when I stepped away. So that also makes it easier. What is your favorite kind of growth stage?
You mentioned it really depends on the stage of the company and what level of growth. So for you, where do you find yourself drawn towards? Well, when I first got into tech, I think I was in point number 75. And the company might have been at 10 million.
But that was, I was there for three or four years. And we got to do the first. The first user conference, the first sales kickoff. If everything was first back in that day.
And I enjoyed doing that. It was a long, long time ago. And then we were acquired into Adobe. And actually, we were the first enterprise product Adobe had that was still direct.
So that was a lot of work. It was like two years to get Adobe to acclimate to doing business directed selling to enterprises. And even at Adobe, I changed jobs every three years, different product lines and things like that. But the last product that I started at 10 million was $1.50 billion and $750.
And it kept coming back to it. It's called Adobe Document Cloud Now. And Adobe Experience Manager was part of that. And I come and I go on a different project.
And so that was a lot of learning. And so I've seen global scale, a large brand. And then it's gotten smaller and smaller and smaller. And interestingly, like a $200 million would just quit public.
And then the last three have been VC backed. $15 million, $75 million, we're close to $15 million. I like the scale stage. And so where you know you have product market fit, you've got customers.
And you can start being more strategic about thinking about growth and you have the resources to do it. So I think anything under $50 million would be challenging. I was trying to go bigger, to be honest. And when I was talking to companies that were in the $300, $400 million, I struggled with the lack of innovation and kind of the role of marketing.
The CMO was more about demand gen. And I like strategy and go to market strategy. And so that's part of it too. So I'm happy in the scale to $200 million.
I don't need the badge that says I went IPO, but it'd be nice. But I don't need it. That's how I went before. Yeah, I think challenging yourself with different opportunities at different stages, you have a lot of different learnings that kind of compound and add to your career.
I like to prioritize that for myself. But like, oh, I haven't had that challenge before. And I feel like that would be very rewarding. And I'm going to learn and grow.
And then once I kind of learn and stop growing as much, I have such a rapid pace. I typically get bored. And I kind of say, I need to be challenged again. So I can definitely resonate with that.
And I think it helps broaden you to understand what do you really want to do next? If you've done the same kind of rinse and repeat type of thing for a couple of jobs, you're not really sure what you do want to do next. You're going to have that one comfort zone. So I think that's awesome advice to our listeners.
And to me, I always love your advice. I'm LinkedIn. I always take it. So how did you go about finding your next role in this economic climate right now?
Yeah. Well, speaking of LinkedIn, I did do a post on this. It went viral. I was just like, I didn't think it was going to take me behind a job.
I had a good track record. I worked really, really hard at cultivating strong relationships. I've got a fantastic network that I'm so grateful for. And I'm like, hey, I feel like I've proven myself.
And I wanted to go bigger. That was my first thought. So as I was working with recruiters and saying, I don't want to talk to anybody in 100 million. And after a couple of months, I got close in a couple and was realizing in this economic environment, CEOs were less willing to take risks on people that hadn't been there done that at their scale.
So I was really excited about this. I was like, I don't have a billion-dollar company that scaled really fast and really cool. Start founders and a great story. And yet they're like, oh, but you haven't done a CMO role.
I'm like, I've been in a billion-dollar company. I was like, they were over 15 years. I know how this works. And so I can get it.
I can get the fear of the founders. They're less willing to take risks than maybe they were three years ago, just given the economic environment. And so then I reset expectations. I was like, OK, I'll start opening up more doors, talking to more people.
It still had to feel right though. I had to be excited about the product, the problem they were solving, and have that really strong, respectful connection with the CEO. Do they respect what I can bring to the table in terms of a market orientation, not a marketing, like I know how to do marketing, but also I really get passionate about the market. And so this was the challenge for draw-up.
I never thought I'd be in the security landscape. That's kind of what I was like, and things that are down the tech stack. No, thank you. But actually, when I started talking to Adam and realizing that this is an area that's in transformation.
So we do compliance risk and governance solutions for security teams to help them with their compliance efforts if they're getting SOC 2 or ISO and doing their audits. That's what we automate, and we do it a new way. And what they are enabling to do is to build trust in the business relationship. That's why people do these things.
So they can be trusted by large organizations. And trust your data secure and all that kind of stuff. So I was like, OK, I can buy into the trust value. And we're going to change the role of a person and how they work.
So what was done very manually before now can be automated. So they can do different kinds of work. They're not just tracking evidence and controls around the audit. They're getting to real time, identify areas of risk and opportunity and translate that to business.
And so I love being able to transform not only industries, but how people work for the better. And it makes that personal impact. So that's what ended up clicking for me. And I was also very interested in the performance management space is interesting.
As you kind of go through cycles, all of a sudden, I had all these FinTech at one time. And then all of a sudden, performance management. I'm like, oh, performance management. How do we help our employees be better?
And I get really into it. And I have two or three companies that I was working on. I got to learn a lot about these different industries. But at the end of the day, it was like, who had velocity?
It wasn't pulling back, which not many companies are. Where do you see that insane product market fit? I mean, Drawd has gone from two and a half years to over 3,000 customers. That's insane product market fit and grown over 600 employees in two and a half years.
So there are that many out there right now. And so I'm very grateful to be here. Sorry, that was a long way to answer. But I love it.
I made a lot of ground to cover in that eight month. So you mentioned, did you take some time off because you're really burnt out and it's tired. So I want to kind of maybe go back to month, one or month to take some time off. When you started reaching out or looping in your network and recruiters, when did you dabble into that?
So when I actually left sales often, and if you're listening to this at whatever minute we're in, I went to Zoom right away and literally did what I tell people never to do, I left one job and then three days later I started another one and I was burned out. So I shouldn't have done it. And I felt bad because I'd accepted a job and I used my network in order to help and I didn't want that people down. But I should have known better that I wasn't ready.
And so I got there and tried my best to fake it. And after six weeks, I was like, I just, I can't do it. I just don't have any gas up to the tank. And I was going to my acupuncture and she was still gonna say things.
She's like, you're negative on the energy scale. And you can kind of tell, I'm extrovert, I bring passion to what I do and it was gone. It was more than gone. And so I decided to take care of myself.
I took a year. It was a whole year. And the kind of saving grace in that, because I'm a single mom and it's hard to be able to allow yourself to be like, okay, this is an investment in me. And I, for my own health and wellness, I need to do this.
But I was lucky enough to have Craig Rosenberg, so this is more than a decade, and I thought this is an investment in my life. And then I got into my life but I have to run a lot of space to get to the other people and everybody else. And I said, well, if there was a crisis if there was a crisis there, well, if there was a crisis like that, in another state of life, I would be, if there was a crisis because it's like, I have to work, if there's a crisis, it's like, if there was a crisis, there's a crisis that would be a crisis, so it's going to happen, and if there's not, it's going to be a crisis. But if there's a crisis, Another way to do that is like, hey, if you're not sure, then just offer to be a fractional.
Come on as a contractor before making that commitment to nature, it's the right thing, because you don't want to make the wrong decision, and then have to back out of it. So that gave me that ability to be more selective and not as stressed about needing to find a job to pay for groceries. I think it's very speaks a lot of how just mature you are and how vulnerable you're being a sharing that. But to recognize that in yourself and prioritize yourself, I think it's very challenging for anybody to do, and to recharge and to deal with the stress of life and family and bills, because I think that advice is amazing.
And a lot of people that unfortunately have been played off or found themselves in a maybe less than ideal situation have been going the fractional route. And they seem to have at least some of the people in my network are having some great success with it. And they're getting that feeling back of that, I call it like their mojo or their confidence back. And it's amazing to see.
And then they can choose the right company the right time when it's right for them. So I love that you. I think too, Sydney, in this, like, in going to scale, I got to work with 10 companies as an advisor. And I learned so much.
And what was super cool about it is I got to partner with other people like Matt Amundsen and Craig. And so I was learning from them. And just having that break and being able to still be helpful to people but not have the stress of the day to day and managing people that you're still giving and learning. I learned so much from the people I had the good fortune to work with at scale.
I call them all out. Like we were building best practice templates, probably stuff that you're doing now at Refine Labs, right? Being able to help other companies also let you learn about what's going on. And it was FinTech.
It was generative AI companies. It was robotics. I had two robotics companies, three robotics companies, actually. So it was so interesting, too, to kind of like, OK, how do the common areas of what I've learned as a marketer apply and what's different based on the industry that this particular company is operating within and how do I come up to speed?
I'll tell you some things that are saying, needing to know ICP? Doesn't matter what industry you're in, you have to do the hard work to get to that super clear ICP. And it changes at each stage as well. Because your product changes, your customers means change the macroeconomic environment changes.
And so you have to constantly be looking at ICP as one example. The fundamentals, like customer interviews, research, ICP, kind of never go out of style, as they say. Yeah. Being relevant to your audience, exactly.
That is one of the reasons I do love working at Refine and being here. And I've stayed here is because the vast amount of experience that I get, I feel like, is unmatched. And it just opens up my perspective and my mind, honestly, in working with different clients. I'm on the internal marketing side now, working to promote their Refine Labs brand.
But I still jump in and I still work with clients or I'll just jump in and I'm working with, how could we innovate here? Let me go work with a couple of clients and try to figure that problem out. And that's really the part that gets me the most excited as a marketer. So I can definitely resonate with that.
So if you have the shout out to the listeners, if you have the chance to kind of do some of that side consulting or fractional work, I'm always a huge component, a proponent or work for an agency at some point in your life. For me, it's been a huge accelerator. Yeah, agree. So why did you want to do this again?
Like when did you feel like you were ready to go into a full CMO in-house role? I've originally said six months is how long I thought it would take. I ended up buying a house down the street from my parents and my little renovation turned into a big renovation. So I did actually have a full time job, I think, just working on that.
But it was fun. And it got to spend time with my mom and my dad when doing that. And so that was, maybe there's a post inspired in here too because I talked about don't let life pass you by. And I was.
And for the young people, this is, listen into this part because I know it's so great to have a great career. And I've been lucky enough to have one. But I've sacrificed a lot in doing that. I have two teenage kids now, I used to travel the world.
And I would do it differently. I would really try to emphasize balance more. And I do see younger people doing younger people earlier and they're doing that more now. And I think that's healthy.
Because work is one thing, but don't let your work define who you are. And make sure you've got that balance in life, your friends, your family. And so I was able to, when I was off, spend quality time building relationships with my parents that I hadn't done before. And I got to learn a lot about them and their stories.
And I feel like such in a better place. That's probably what my soul is missing. And when you're going through a time in life where things aren't going so well, who do you have to lean on yourself? See, I make sure yourself is healthy first.
Your family is second. Friends, family, whatever you call your family to be. Your spirit. I spend a lot of time with meditation.
And just my acupuncture segment, just really exploring what energy was and how to regain it and how to let the negative go and bring positive in. And maybe that sounds hokey, but that's what worked for me. And I'm a much different person and a much better person because I took the time to do that. Gosh, I reengaged with friends.
I hadn't seen them so long. And it was just all that. So if you're going to take time off, make sure you do the things to get valued of that time off and have a sense of like, what do I can still have goals? Like what do I want to do for my personal health?
Like what do I want to do for establishing friendships that maybe had been put in the back burner because it's work with friends center. So think about that. If you're off or if you're thinking about taking time off, how are you going to use the time wisely? Just like you need a plan for your career or your current role.
I think that's amazing to have a plan for like, how are you going to enjoy the time off? What's going to fulfill you? What's going to reduce your anxiety? What's going to bring you joy?
Those types of things. So that when you're ready to go back or when you're ready to do maybe something completely different, maybe you want to start your own business or maybe you want to go into a completely different field that you feel ready. Yeah. So and sweet.
I thought it was great. No alarm clock. You know, hit the snooze. No, no, no.
There's still less than the kids just going stuff like that. Like still like, you know, all my acupuncture and plodies, everything that I was doing, you know, kept me like, I had a reason to get up every day, which I think is also important, but I didn't have a nine and before years before I was doing a six. So yeah, that was great. I'll take nine over six.
I mean, I'm a morning gal myself. So I'll go to bed early and wake up early personally. So when you felt ready, you start reaching out to recruiters, like what did that journey look like? You have, I mean, you're very well connected.
You have a great presence on LinkedIn. I'm sure you have a great, you know, role of decks and your cell phone network. So what did that kind of look like for you to get started thinking about your next gig? Yeah.
I think some really good advice I got when I was going for my first CMO to my second. This is my third one was, you know, now that you've gotten the role and gosh, did it ever feel good, right? It's really, really hard got the CMO role and just loved it and wanted to do it again. But the advice I got was the second time around, you know, you, you were also defined not only by your role, but the company you pick.
So similarly, I took time. I think I probably interviewed maybe 20 different companies, but in that time too, and I do this for a lot of folks that will reach out to me is I networked with a lot of the VC talent people and networked with a lot of the recruiters. So my work, I built out my network of recruiters to probably 20 people and got to know them. And then, and then I found, I found sales offers, which was great.
I stayed connected a lot because I think of my presence because I invite people to like reach out to me and they do and I follow up and I make those introductions. So I've been a good source for those recruiters too. I mean, it's all just one, you know, one big bowl of karma. And so the, I facilitated that.
So yes, I reached out to my three or four favorite. I didn't start, I didn't do a gunshot. Like I was just like, I wanted to start slowly and I knew who the ladies and gentlemen were that mostly ladies, they got the really good, the good roles. And then of course you have inbound a lot of course that I had a lot of people reaching out and kind of vetting that and meeting new people.
But I was very picky at the beginning. Like I would say no to more than maybe I had in the past because I had a thought in mind and I wanted to, you know, put my effort into the ones that look like the fit that I wanted. I did get a couple of jobs that I really wanted by the way. Like that sucked and, you know, it was humbling.
And I just like, okay, well, again, that big bowl of karma telling you that that wasn't the right fit for whatever reason and the right one will come along and just continue to have faith that that would happen. But yes, I mean, I think recruiters, I think if you're, you know, a VP or under, then absolutely LinkedIn, I remember, you know, younger in my career, like I'd set aside an hour a day to just work on LinkedIn and work on my profile and go look at other people's profiles that I respected and like augment mine and make connections and just even if they don't have a job, if it's a place you want to work, like reach out to the person to do an informational interview to learn about them and build your network. And it's worth it. Like it takes time, but it's totally worth it.
I'm about ready to post 12 roles. Like they just try to prove and, you know, I'm hoping, you know, you already have some prospects I'm sure that you're already here for. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
People that I've been dying to work with, they know that's good too. How did you kind of bounce back from that? And you know, you mentioned you kind of got a few roles that you were really hoping you would get and you shared earlier, you know, a lot of the feedback might have been the stage or you haven't done that exact role before that they were looking for. How did you reflect and kind of bounce back?
Did you take some time to think about it or did you just say we're moving forward? There was one where I stopped taking other calls for a while and was like just pursuing that one because, you know, you want to put your best foot forward. And when that didn't happen, I took like a week. And I was like at this stage too, even with Dhrada, I had three companies, two performance management companies in and Dhrada.
And I was like, if one of these doesn't pan out, I think I'm going to have to take two months just to reset because I mean, like it was a lot, I think it was like 120 interviews out including recruiters. Like that's a lot of preparation. That's a lot of, you know, and trying to cut, you know, doing a research every time ahead of time. I mean, it's no different than a sales job, right?
Like you're prospecting or trying to find that right fit. And so like I kind of could tell I was getting tired and, but again, I didn't want to settle. And so I was like, you know, if this doesn't happen, I think I'll take June and July and just restart. Because again, I had that, I was at that scale ventures.
I had something that was still keeping me engaged and incoming in. So I didn't feel that pressure. So I go back to like, if you have something, then you can be bigger. So you accepted the role at Dhrada.
I bet you're super excited. You're very energized about it. And what did that look like after you met with the executive team, got the offer. How did you start?
I started on John first, our first customer event in San Francisco. So that was an awesome way to start. I actually just moved up my start eight, two weeks ago. And so I got to be, like, see how we showed up, learn our customers and our audit alliance and our partners.
And so I just said the whole day meeting people, asking questions, what they thought about Dhrada, all the partners are getting value out of their like, it was great. It was perfect. Couldn't ask for a better start. And usually I would give the advice of, you know, for the first 30 days before you make any decisions, just talk to as many people as you can.
But I knew that wasn't Dhrada. I knew ahead of time. So I jumped in the first weekend on a big deal we were working on with a partner and just still trying to balance, like meeting as many people as I could. So I prioritized the leadership team.
So that's my team one. That's the people I have to have a relationship and let my marketing leaders know, like, hey, I'm just going to work time with ELT to start. And in Got FaceTime, I spent four days with our CEO in the same office, like learning, talking about what he thought of the market and that was super important in our head of product. We had our mid-year sales kick off within four weeks.
So partnering with the head of sales, we kind of completely revamped all of our, like, our value card. So like what they were planning to do versus what we ended up doing was totally different. And so we did a whole workshop on discovery. So just spending time, like, in working sessions with my peers and just learning about them, letting them learn about me, but also doing it in a productive way.
And so that was like the first 30 days were pretty crazy, but I also know that's wrong. And I think because I've done this a few times, I can bring that experience and be able to run at that pace and still do the meetings and introductions because I have some of that pattern recognition from doing it multiple times before. But the trust that you build and that first impression is super important. And so for me, it was like, we're a remote first company, but I've been in San Diego almost every week.
Like just I'm there. I want to spend time with people. I want to get to know them. I want them to get to know me.
I love collaborative working sessions. So that's been important in getting going. And then also doing it with the marketing team. So we did a new great campaign planning workshop at two weeks, last week, I think it was.
We did our OKR for the second half of the year. So, you know, just going. What needs to be done? Love it.
You mentioned, you actually recently posted about this on LinkedIn, which I love the questions to ask of, is the business healthy and how to figure that out and types of questions ask. You put some red flags in there. People aren't willing to answer that or get pushbacks. Clearly you asked most of those questions and you felt really comfortable at Dhrada.
When you started in the early six weeks in, what are you looking into the business? What are you looking into? And the go-to-market side, on the revenue side, on the retention side. What is that first kind of analysis or deep dive like for you?
I do think for what I enjoy doing, there is an order of operations. And to me, that starts with understanding of the market. And I had to learn this. Again, I've been in security before.
So I really had to spend time understanding not just our category, but all the tangential categories for which we work within. So I understood the relationship between the value we provide, what other vendors provide for the GRC, the governance, which can combine team and the Cso. So starting there, then the second was kind of looking at our ICP and how did that match our kind of account database? And so frequently everybody thinks they need more and more and actually know you need less less less.
You just see the right contacts and the right accounts in the less less less. And so I've been doing a lot of segmentation work with our data team and our marketing team to really understand what are the different growth options. And so that's next week we'll be presenting our findings of different segments, like really looking at what are all the different routes to market, which is why Dried was so exciting, too. We can go into SaaS tech, but everybody needs us out too, not just SaaS tech companies.
So what are all the options, all the frameworks, but evaluating that so we can facilitate a discussion with leadership around the bets we're going to make, what are the strategic routes to market for next year, and let's bring data to the equation, but also to have that conversation. So as leaders, the most important thing that we do is decide what we're not going to do. And so one of my favorite lines is now become a hashtag in our Slack channel. My favorite effort is focus.
So now many times I get to focus, they're like hashtag to me. But it's true, right? Like if we're smart about doing enough research to be confident in what the right opportunities are, then we eliminate a lot of the extra effort that is being exerted towards less attractive market opportunities. It doesn't mean that they're not valid, but if there's a bigger market opportunity right ahead of us, why wouldn't we duffled down there versus testing too many markets externally?
So that's that sort of operations from a strategic to go to market perspective. And then understanding kind of metrics-wise, like what's marketing doing? How are we looking at contributing to revenue in growing so fast and having so much inbound? Like I just knew, I just could tell like there's a leaky bucket, right?
There's a leaky bucket. And so how do we start looking at the whole funnel and the sales process and all our handoffs to like just grab the low-hanging fruit of the leaky bucket? Last week we found three really leaky buckets. So hey, that's a win, right?
Now more of the leads that where we have hand raisers are being followed up by are inbound. So I think doing that inspection at the same time, it's that balance between strategy, but also making sure that you're looking at your processes and kind of letting your team know you're going to hold them accountable to the return on investment and the quality of opportunities that we're passing through to the sales teams to increase marketing's, you know, stature. Like, you know, we want them to trust us and that we're delivering high quality leads. I've reached out to you something about the high-intent opportunity as a hypo.
I'm a hero. High-intent revenue opportunity. Yes. High-intent revenue opportunity.
Yes, I was researching on the website. As we set our new stages and metrics, because I'm much more of an account-centric marketing person than a lead-centric one. So we are changing our models and putting in new technologies, we could fix the sense, and you know, so what will we do in the thing? You're going more for IBM all-bound type of method.
Seems like delivering that. Yeah, I think, and I'm a fan of six cents and demand-based. I think that people used to think about account-based being an enterprise thing, but it's not anymore. It's a segment thing, right?
And so, yes, if you're really smart about identifying those different segments, you can run it through an account-based approach, but you can still have 5,000 VC-backed startups as a segment, which drives your funnel on the SMB side, and then you're doing more strategic things on the enterprise side. So I think it applies to all-bound types of enterprise. Yeah, it's definitely expanding. And I think that's why you see smaller companies or less mature companies trying to figure out what does an account-based approach look like, how do we report on that, how do we understand what's working and what's not.
We are going, a lot of our clients are very similar and standing that up and going from, okay, we've got our demand conversion funnel down, like we fixed the leaky buckets. We feel confident in our sales processes. We feel confident in that. We can repeat that.
We have a decent inbound motion. Of course, they always want to scale hand-raisers as much as you can and capture that demand. And then convert it. But for really more focused, targeted demand creation, a lot of people are taking the account-based approach just to those points that you just laid out to have them more efficient.
Yeah, definitely. So what is the top couple of things you're looking forward to most as being the first CMO at Dhrada? That's a good question. I think we're lucky that we're forming a new leadership team, and many of us have had experience.
So kudos to the folks that, I mean, no jokes. Scaling that fast is so much work, and they've worked so, so hard. So being able to bring the person, oh my gosh, seriously. And so being able to respect what's been done, but also having a vision to the future.
So I'm excited to introduce long-range planning, which is like a year. I knew what happened the next year. I knew where these students would go from releasing every future to a quarterly-based rhythm and just giving more space in between so we can do deeper work on the more important things. And having the ability to identify that and then to work with the teams to align around it.
So just allowing that experience to be leveraged. I think too, and I really enjoyed this, having being able to partner with the founder on a market-based approach. So in my time at scale, I learned this phrase of you have to love the problem more than you love the solution. And sorry, no, you have to love the problem more than you love your product.
So if you love the problem, then you have more insight into the customer's world in the market, and that's where the connection happens. And so I think that bringing that customer orientation, trying to predict what our customers' world will be like 18 months from now, so we can start preparing and telling that story and helping them prepare for what their world's going to look like. So if we were to put on our marketing hats and say, what do we think the world of marketing is going to be like 18 months from now? What's going to change?
Nobody could have predicted by the way the last three years that we just went through. But I think it's still a really important exercise. How are we going to continue to evolve? So what I would say is a marketer, efficient, scalable growth, a heavier investment in customer adoption and retention.
And thinking holistically about the customer experience, finding new ways digitally to connect with your audiences and being relevant. I think that will continue to evolve. And the biggest one is what the hell are we going to do with AI? What the hell?
We're talking about it a lot. But as I'm doing my new org design, I'm challenging myself and the team to design AI into the org design. Put it in the box. Where is what role is AI going to play in your new marketing organizational structure?
It is like, you know, like that time thinking about process and thinking about it as a role. And how do we leverage it in a way that we might have to leverage a person in the past? That's super exciting. I've hired a lot of leaders thinking about that, either hiring a dedicated person to bring AI in and infuse it in the organization for efficiencies or redefining roles based on AI tasks that can be taken off their plate and that talent can be utilized in a much more impactful way.
So I love that. So as a CMO, how do you plan to report and measure the impact of the business and holistically, but also maybe as the account based approach and as a marketing team? Well, I mean, I think it always has to be revenue, right? And so what's marketing contribution to revenue and are we becoming more efficient and more predictable?
So of course, I want to increase velocity, but I want the predictability. And so that's where we have to kind of build the right stages and get people to use the stages appropriately for fixing some of that right now. We're kind of people are hiding these and they're a little back pocket anymore. And so just clean it up so we can have like a real, build a real machine that allows us to look at the telemetry, make adjustments, encourage people in the pipeline meetings to bring ideas and how we can improve.
It's not a readout meeting. It's a triage meeting, right? Like, what can you find that we can go fix this month? Let's do that and make a good thing versus people being nervous about, oh, this isn't working right or this isn't working right, like celebrate when those things are identified so they can be fixed.
And that's just a different mentality that we can bring. Yeah, it speaks to the hero definition is we not just like not all leads are created equal. Not all pipeline is created equal. So that's one thing that we advocate for is look at your pipeline through a standardization, which we call hero.
It's standard as is every pipeline source on win rate. So, you know, when inflating pipeline from certain sources and so that leads to better predictability and quality of the pipeline and all that so you can we'll try to find out that I'm sure. Yeah, it's about scaling efficiently, right? Like you can grow fast, you can drill a lot of resources out of it now how do we set up that next sale of the business to be more efficient in the way that we do it and find that things that work and just do it, you know, tell it doesn't work anymore and then move to the next thing.
Awesome. I have one final question and then I'll let you guys. I know you're very busy. What has in your opinion changed the most over the last two to three years in marketing or just go to market in general?
I think we talked about it, right? I think two things. I'll do it through the first answer is everything. Everything.
Which is which is if you're seeing a mo for the first time because there is no play book to follow like it is what it is today. So learn that. The second I think is AI is really going to transform and I am embracing it. I think it's awesome.
And I use chat to be tea every day for personal stuff or just like help with ideation and just it's why not. And then I think digital sophistication. So, you know, there's going to be all these new tools and like, you know, be care like I still want to keep a clean house in my my tech, right? Like I don't want to be over and I don't want to over a lot of overlap.
So I always challenge like if we want to buy something new, what are we taking out? Because it's just a lot to manage and maintain and the more that we keep our techs that clean, the easier it is to manage and adapt. So I would still say that that you know, it's digital sophistication because you don't want to keep it as simple as possible because you don't want it to be overwhelming where all you're doing is managing your tech and not actually focusing on content and results and customers. So, keep an eye out on Drada.
I can't wait to see what you all do as a company and follow you, but I also followed them now that you joined there. And it sounds like you're going to have a lot of hiring at posting. So for all of our listeners, check out all the rules that might be coming up. Yeah, drop it up on.
Come, come. Or DM me. Yes. Yes.
Reach out to Sydney. And thank you so much for having this chat and I can't wait to chat again.