George Lagone of RevenueShift

so sitting here with George Leone from revenue shift thanks

for having me awesome uh so we know that you are a sales consultancy to improve

Effectiveness is some of the words on your website I should probably know those right better at this point um

would love to just kind of dive into a little bit of an overview the business

and I know that you recently minted the organization uh you and the other

Founders have been in the business for a long time um so would love to know just a little bit about what the business is

and maybe a little bit about um the origin story and how you saw the opportunity to launch the business in

Chicago sure um our our business is really about helping sales organizations

commercial organizations uh run their sales organization more efficiently we tend to tell people we work on the data

side of sales um so once you have your go market strategy in place helping

execute on pieces of that so everything from customer segmentation targeting on

down through Ro design or design and getting into sales performance pieces uh

blocking and tackling things quotas comp territories and all the change management and administration that's

associated with that helping companies out with that so imagine taking the

output of your CRM data and your incentive compensation management or

sales Performance Management systems and basically saying what can we do what

what story is this telling us what can we do better to drive growth with with our company um and that's what we help

with um by uh by definition we're industry agnostic we we kind of service

all Industries we've got a few different areas of of strength that we service um

our origin story really is the three of us had worked in Sal Effectiveness

practices and sales compensation practices at a number of large consultancies previously uh I spent some

time inh house at a big fintech uh working as one of their heads of sales compensation and we really saw an

opportunity in the market uh to service our service our clients in a way that

kind of split the difference between what a traditional management consultancy does and what HR and Comp

Shop um and kind of bridge both of those two things the work we do too is pretty

Niche um it it's a we're we're Boutique firm um we're playing to grow but this

isn't a hey we go from being Revenue shift to being the size of Accenture right right um it's a defin it's a

defined practice size it's something that tends to work well on kind of a smaller scale so friends of ours that

have gone to larger consultancies and tried to scale this up to where they care about it it tends to fail right

because it it it feels like there's a finite amount of work here where it works well kind of in the you know four

to5 million kind of practice Yeah range for it so we saw an opportunity to kind

of capture that for ourselves and do the work the way that we wanted do custom Solutions um spoke projects for our

clients that we really weren't able to do when we were under the hood of a larger Farm makes a lot of sense I I can

relate kind of right yeah my my also shifted what I was doing for business but I definitely understand uh shifting

that focus and being able to capture kind of an inch Market sure so sales Effectiveness to the lay person let's

call that me yeah uh I've got to me that sounds like you're gonna help my team sell better yeah and if I try and

imagine what that looks like I guess I have a I'd like to learn a little bit more what that looks like and there's

kind of two maybe jumping off points one might be what is a common problem

that somebody has that they kind of bring to your desk sure uh so what does a lead look like what does that

conversation sound like right um and then I think maybe we can start from there and then uh if you want to think

of an example client without naming names that sort of thing sure then understand what are some of the things

that uh that your team does to make them more effective right one of the one of

the things that we commonly run into is uh clients will come to us and say uh

George you know we think there's areas of growth that we see identify but we're really not capturing can you help us

diagnose this and it very very common iteration of this is you know we think

there is more new logo opportunity out in the marketplace that we're not capturing our sales people are too

focused on current book of clients going back to the well um and trying to extract more from what we have going on

what is it about us that's inhibiting us from going after new clients and getting

that that kind of inorganic growth um it and the solutions for that are Myriad

right but it really starts with us digging into their previous sales and sales performance data to find out what

type of people are you or what type of clients are you targeting right now um are they of the right size do they match

your uh ideal client profile do you have the right roles lined up against them do

your people have the right skill set to sell the way that you want to capture

Revenue um some of the solutions that we'll put forth for them may be uh SE

res segmenting their accounts we may be developing new values for their targets

um designing new sales roles for them so kind of repositioning their talent to

capture or showing them where they have gaps in their current uh Talent base to

uh that farm accounts versus hun newal accounts is a really common thing one of the other things that we commonly see is

people come to us with a compensation problem and it's George my my

compensation costs are too high for the revenue that I'm collecting or we don't think we're incentivizing the right

Behavior something like that um and a lot of times that's that's a portion of what's going on we tend to say that

that's that's the symptom that shows up though a lot of times that gets attention and the root

cause that's actually driving the issue is something further up the chain interesting yes you're having a

compensation problem that's actually rooted in the way your sales org is structured let me show you how right for

instance very interesting so when and I'm trying to I'm trying to put my company into the shoes of that

conversation yeah and uh and I I'm sure there's value to be added our sales team

is a team of two right right so uh what are what's like a typical size team of

an organization that you work with yeah um and you mentioned some of the industries that you you're you're

agnostic to Industry as as is my business but at the same time you start making a name for yourself you or

certain industries are going through the same are going through flux at the same time sure right um so i' would love to

know just kind of what is a typical client look like for you yeah it it's

it's a great question typically people want to say you know what's the what's the size of from a revenue standpoint of

clients that you're that you're servicing where that's really not the greatest proxy for us um it tends to be

the size of the commercial organization it is what drives who we work with um

and also do you have a you know kind of Highly measured datadriven sales force

and what I mean by that is okay if you are a defense contractor contor who is

you know has billions and billions of dollars of market cap but you have these discrete teams that go after defined

contracts and very parameterized you know Business Development or sales type motion that might not necessarily be the

best fit for us right it's not kind of a market facing sales motion Investment Banking is very common too that's not a

great fit for us do all this work um create create deals run deals and then

at the end of the year there's just sort of this pool of money that they want to divvy up on a discretionary basis those

things aren't great fits for us right what is really good fits for us is technology right you have a defined

Salesforce it's very commercially Le business right engineering and the commercial award are the two things that

drive tech companies right um great fit for us generally large sales forces have

crms in place lots of data to work with similarly um Industrial Products

Manufacturing great places for us to work with interestingly enough uh Professional Services consulting firms

and and Associated Services firms tend to be really good about collecting data

having um defined motions in the marketplace very organized sales organiz

organized Salesforce tends to work well with us so it's really about what is the

commercial org typically look like in an industry to see if it's a match with us

yeah awesome um so if you're comfortable I would love to uh I can use the word

case study yeah but to kind of contextualize some of this with maybe a recent example maybe a project your

team's currently working through now or maybe one you love talking about that uh

just capture some of those elements and what what I'd love to share a little bit about is uh we again specifically a

question about a day in the life of Revenue shift yeah but um I think you know when I hear about

organizations like yours I understand the value prop I I uh I have so many questions on

what is that experience like yeah right and uh in my business says that same thing I need a this great here's what it

looks like here's how much CH can be better what's that experience G to feel like yeah um and so for kind of the

behind the scenes what if you could think of examples or something to draw from to maybe tell us you know kind of

what their problem was what you kind of honed in on how that how that went

right um I'll give you some of the some of the play byplay of a of a client we're currently working with we're

probably 30 to 40% of the way through uh through our engagement with them um they

are a communication platform as a service company uh and also do uh do SMS

verification uh number of players in that space uh they have uh they have an

interesting model um consumption based technology model which isn't which isn't uncommon but it's uh

it's interesting just because signing a deal is is only worth the ink on the paper right you actually have to get the

client to use the thing that you sign for term with them to actually collect

Revenue um W which uh which introduces unique challenges and one of the things

that that these companies this whole industry is kind of dealing with right now is

commoditization and also new entrance that aren't necessarily dependent upon

uh text for two-factor authentication right using using other mediums for it

um things like that and how do they drive sales grow in this environment

what do they do with it um and the problem they came to us with was was again we're looking for help with our

sales compensation right we think our our incentives aren't really driving the right uh the right behaviors and we need

to fix that and we get under the hood of it and similar to what I was uh describing before there's there's

definitely an issue with aligning the aligning the sales roles to each and every uh each and every deal in

segmenting their customers too not just along the lines of how much are they spending right now but what's total

potential for them and who should they be dedicating fewer or more resources to

and also who should be you be peeling out of that current client um type

environment and have hunting for new uh for new customers which right now for

them everyone is a hybrid seller has responsibility for new logo and for uh

and for growing internal yeah so we are tackling the the compensation problem

with them uh but there's also an element of hey let's make sure your roles are

are kind of positioned correctly to to attack the market as well interesting now the with really quickly about how

many people are in that sales organization yeah they are um us only

okay so big already if the sentence starts us only so this is yeah so it's a so it's it's a global organization uh

over a thousand employees um commercial organization is north of North of 10

approaching 20% ahe count for them so so somewhere depending on what you call a salesperson um it is somewhere between

100 200 that's so interesting so uh determining the kind of the the the

right people and the right roles right is one of the things that you're working on what are the some of the things um so

I'm gonna shift this to day in the life of somebody working at Revenue congrats I got a job I'm in your brand new

offices I'm excited I get to hang out with George every day right um what are

some of the things that those people are doing to come to these conclusions yeah absolutely and we always say that this

is a it Discovery is a yeah I know it's a cliche but it but it's really a a

three-legged stool right it's what can we find out from external market research what can we apply from our

experience to you and then what can we discover by talking to your people and looking at your data right kind of

pulling those three things together yeah figure out what the story is with with your your organization your industry

your growth story and our some of the things that that you'll see us do and I

talk about that because a lot of the work is really about is really about the research the finding out right where the

design the solving problems and and actually designing Solutions is really just just kind of output of it um so a

lot of what we'll do uh on the intake of every project interviews with everybody this is going to sound familiar to you

being being in Professional Services and one of the differentiators I feel like is you know how deep are you getting

with your clients to really understand their problems are you getting the perspective of not just the chief

Revenue officer for us who a lot of time is our lead but also a few of the people who are boots on the ground selling

right and kind of all layers through that are you talking to adjacent organizations marketing customer success

Etc to really try to get a 360 perspective on what's going on in the

company and developing that perspective listening really well which you guys did

really well for us understanding what we do so it'll you know so I think it uh I I I think it should translate to kind of

what you're used to is honestly one of the big one of the big things that we do

one of the big differentiators for us that we take the time to really do that well getting past that it's kind of

putting together all of that all of that research looking at it in the context of

what's going on with the client what's going on with their Marketplace and and bringing forth a set of hypotheses right

that some of which are what we were contracted to work on but there's always some that are hey we discovered this

other handful of things maybe you want us to attack them for you maybe they're

a next phase maybe you're not concerned about that but kind of bringing them all of these hypothesis that we have and

then moving forward and actually designing Solutions right is that creating new roles is that segmenting

your accounts differently getting under the data of your previous sales to see

you know what type of clients are we best at going after do we need to Target our efforts more um it and really

digging into that data piece so kind of on one hand it's it it's that Discovery the research curiosity the the other big

skill set and and thing that people drive at is the data mining the analysis

the modeling to understand kind of the the hard quantitative reality yeah of it

too putting that together and and figuring out what do we do or what are potential ways we could go very

interesting and what what's cool about that is obviously so a lot of a lot of

firms will hire Professional Services teams sure you're focused on sales m is

different right because there's a belief that you've seen it all before you got a recipe let me go in and plug in and tell

you what to do there's always I've always felt as a business owner that somewhere there's a door and there's a

bunch of people in that room that have all the answers for all the things I'm trying to figure out just where do I find that door right and the truth of it

is is part of that is true you have seen it all you have seen a lot you know what works but at the same time I find it so

interesting how many businesses particularly in Professional Services start with one

ask and the point and shoot folks will say that ass cost 10 bucks and go do it

for them right but where the difference is is using as a starting point and then

all comes down asking questions absolutely um I remember we're doing a project one time so I I can relate this

we're working for uh a bank they were actually the first Internet only Bank

ever like no Vault a lot of fun I they had a vault de had candy bars in the closet to meet compliance and Legend is

the CEO in the middle of the final banking audit they go where's your Vault it's like we're Internet only like you got to have a vault he went to Walmart

it's still there yeah um but you know same thing we're asking a lot of questions we're diving and we're talking

to kind of everyone it sounds like you have a similar process sure which I think is one of the most fun Parts about

the jobs you get to learn all sorts of ins and outs work um and uh and so you

we're talking with different Bankers we're hearing about how the real estate Bankers all came from Real Estate so they understand the business and all

these awesome things let me ask customer service what the most popular question was and they said are you a real Bank

yeah like all right the rest of this is awesome maybe let's start there for a

little bit um I I should say that bank then successfully launched on the NASDAQ

there I mean they're uh big deal and super successful um this is very early on in start and they're successful then

too but um I also think it's interesting on you know humans delivering

value often comes down to asking the right question and with the Adent of AI and everyone

you know contemplating how that's going to start that's all kind of asking questions absolutely too they We call we

just call them prompts now right um so in terms of hopefully uh a good question

or I mention question what are um curious on touching on some of the trends that you're starting to see in

the space that you serve so you mentioned kind of different Industries hidden things um different ways of

people seeking uh firms like Revenue shift yeah what are some trends that you're

starting to see since you've started the business yeah trends that we're starting to see um one of the things I I started to

mention briefly earlier about about technology firms is this move away from

um you know call it 1990s early Au style selling software out of a box and you

know everyone kind of got on board and started digitizing everything and then software moving to as a service and now

everything it's you know X as a service right yeah and the third wave of that it

feels like is coming where it's going back to it where it's now on a consumption basis where it's kind of

piece by piece so we're seeing this move we think it's it's technology first but

it feels like for 30 plus years now everything is kind of followed tech tech

has been the driver in commercial organization structure and everyone is

followed in the wake of them and that's really the third thing that's happening now um and we're

seeing technology companies follow in the wake of that and move to that and we think it's only a few years behind that

um other Industries will will follow suit um think about it where you're

driving your car you turn the key and it's three bucks every time you turn the key instead of like paying a lease

payment for instance I know it's super dystopian but uh but but we see some

Trend go going that way um and there's it and there's plenty of companies that

are struggling with that transition so we're getting called about that quite a bit right um the other thing that that

we're seeing is the uh is the commercialization of Professional Services firms uh like us where it was

very much and it still is uh human to human contact a lot of relationship driven um I think the the kind of I

would say professionalization of the sales function in Professional Services is really really hitting stride really

now yeah that's interesting I'd love to learn a little bit more about that so coming from Professional Services myself

the old challenge back in the day was you would and I I'm overdoing it but you

have the salesperson and they land the big huge deal they hand it to the team to execute

team's like what the heck did what you what did you s how do I do this and they got unraveled this and the other then

that evolved to from this is maybe maybe my my history is incorrect so my own

observations uh that then kind of evolved professional s saying hey well we should we should get our our doers in

the selling right and it's very much a Consulting model but then let's get some salespeople to go out and Logo hunt

right and those poor folks suffered a year of hearing when are you g to when

are you going to produce something right right and I'm trying to educate how long it takes to build these then they land

it and then no one wants to pay them right so what uh so it's interesting on

that and speaking to some of the trends that you're that that's Professional Services yeah back to software um and $3

to turn the key to your car um in some ways that's an easier sale because it's

less of a commitment sure kind of because the other part of is it is it's expensive to get rid of your car and get

a new one um but compensating for it I just closed the deal but to your point

earlier I closed Inc on a paper MH how does that performance get into that that

model then so that that's what you're work that's what you're focusing on yeah and it's a difficult problem right I

mean um Revenue predictability is what every CFO wants yeah out there right and

the more you the more you move to a consumption based model and part of that

is why SAS was so spectacular right and the move to that not only did it make it easier for companies to adopt complex

systems and for uh the producers of technology to roll things out on on a

fast basis not have to do physical updates I mean there were there was all sorts of great things from from that

aspect but Financial people loved it because you could see hey when I signed a deal I know exactly what the what the

tale of this revenue is and I know what this looks like right I mean we talk about Revenue multiples and AR multiples

for deals right that's that's all where that was driven off of yeah um so this

is this is now really upending this and and I think um a a big thing that's

driving it is uh places wanting to get rapid adoption adoption from small even

smaller clients than they were from from SAS to start really driving the engine um where it's like hey you it it was a

$3,000 piece of software that then we sold as a license for 300 now a single use is three bucks right right and

starts to kind of democratize it more potentially doesn't end up hurting the consumer or whoever the user is in the

long run yeah still to be seen but yeah the the the challenges with it and you

know it incentivizing and driving the the right sales behaviors in that

environment is is very very interesting and I I have a working the theory that

are we going to see um kind of sales R despecialization where for years and

years we have seen uh and again technology leading this where you had a salesperson and then you split okay you

had uh a hun in Farmer right an account executive and an account manager and so

on and so forth right customer success a pre-sale engineer a postale engineer right and all of a sudden there's this

massive blo in the commercial organization well now you have a salesperson who's getting the in the

paper but if you want to compensate them for money they bring in they've got to stay involved in the deal so is this

going to swing back to having fewer but longer cycle sales people right or sales

roles sales ha count y involved in deals where you were chopping that up amongst

four five six roles before um so again something we're playing with and talking

about it's the it's not even bleeding edge it's just theoretical at this point

but yeah we we see if if companies don't want to kind of pay

for what can be hopes and dreams at the times of of the signature I you've got

to keep those commercial people who sign the deal involved with it right um so yeah number of different methods you

could do it difficult problem to solve lot of big tradeoffs but uh but really inter interesting we're having fun

working on the on the issues yeah I I definitely want a professional helping me yeah answer those questions um so uh

couple of questions so you've you've grown when we first met as when I should

disclose that we have done work together yes uh with that being said when we first met you were two two and a half

three right within that your headcount now is more than triple that I or I

don't want to do over we are we're six in an intern six okay it's a double and a contractor and it depends what way you

SK it yeah but significantly yeah well welcome some say well it depends how I

um with that all said so you've been adding people what how does someone prepare for this because they are you um

what's an ideal candidate look like what would be who's someone that should be excited to work at a place like Revenue

shift not a place like at Revenue shift yeah absolutely I think the the people that are absolutely ideal candidates for

us um I think a lot of the times have have come from uh have come from large

Consulting maybe before um typically have a pretty data heavy background um

half of our staff is uh is proper data scientists um really so yeah can can can

dig in I mean use use Python more than they use Excel um can run machine

learning models right they hate hate the word AI because they think AI is just a yeah you know just a marketing term for

what's really machine learning and data science right right um and uh it and it's it's people who really who really

love working in the data but want to do it in pursuit of a business outcome and don't just love the math for the math

yeah um where I feel like those type of data scientists maybe they go work for I don't know a prop a prop trading shop or

cyber you know cyber security company doing algorithm development for them right um when you have that that want to

work in data but also actually solve business problems and really Commercial Business problems tends to be get a

really good fit for El so that's fascinating I did not expect the I did not expect python to come out of the

conversation yeah is that so I would imagine are they working in tools that

your team has at a proprietary is that because they're diving into client tools

and extracting data from that manner no this is them you know again part of us

um running uh bespoke engagements is if we need to write code to get a job done

we do it right um not necessarily putting together a product but just find the best way to process data for for

folks and it's one of the things and maybe I didn't do a good job of talking about this before but but we think one

of our our big advantages in the market is is the fact that we use data science

machine learning and apply it basically everywhere we can on on client engagements yeah um where that is

another one of those things that's really hard to do at scale at a at a large firm um you just there just aren't

that many highle data scientists out there to go around right the the deits

the accent of the world Etc not to give them air time but uh you can't you can't hire 50,000 data scientists right and

it's just something that that's better suited for a for a boutique firm when you really need kind of that what I just

described right narrow kind of skill set where it's like you really like reading the Wall Street Journal and you know how

to code python you know right um so one last question on that uh

because that's so fascinating so what if um uh what would be an example of a uh

your team had to write some code to solve the problem yeah so one of the things that we

are we are early in pitching this and this is

for uh industrial wholesaler that that operates kind of Nationwide um but has

really really disperate systems um just kind of the way that they grew up um it

is writing a suggestion engine for them um when you have a uh a local branch in

one place that is selling one item what's the next best thing to suggest to somebody right and this is this is

getting down down towards um you know kind of Amazon level you know hey you

bought this what's the next thing that you could do but it's either can be suggesting you know what's the next best

product but also can talk about hey I've looked at your CRM data and I know that

after you made this call you've sent an email and you close four deals doing that not only can I tell you what

product do you need to push forward but this is your next best sales motion yeah that you should that you should be doing

this is a thing that's actually the biggest place that we see this is in Professional Services right where it's

you know you have these really big client relationships there's a lot of things going on a lot of people touching it

um figuring out what's the next best thing for me to do or ask about or potential adjacency and it's mining the

customer data the performance data the CRM activity data to build an engine

that drives off of that off of that data what should I be doing next wow so

that's um much deeper level than just going in and saying let's organize this

place differently and change your mod uh which I knew it was beyond that anyway but um but that that's very exciting um

and I can I'm already just thinking of like a million ways I'd want to throw you guys on problems that I see all the

time as well as someone who who uh I should send you their resume one of the things that we do with it too is it in

terms of if you think like large law firms or something like that where it's uh or accounting firms places like that

where the uh relationships are held by you know maybe a few partners and

they've been mining these relationships for years to drive Revenue but it's hey yeah that's where current revenue is

coming from but let me figure out where my growth is coming from and maybe it's not those people who were traditionally

defined as ring makers previous right is it another place and do I need to be dedicating more resources to hey here's

Junior partner who's three years in but has landed XYZ Tech firms and like we

see the trajectory of those and like that's the next place for us is really there should we be investing in that

interesting yeah uh well you're on to something there um because we do uh

worked a lot of law firms I have a lot of friends in law firms right and some some of this is is has been said on

every podcast that's ever mentioned the state of law firms and Ai and shaping and mentoring and remote work and

everything else so the The quick summary the the theme is is the old traditional model you'd hire the junior person that

was really smart pair them with a rain maker as they grow they learn they learn from observing how they're doing all

these things and everyone's worried if that's going to happen and while we're still worrying about that AI came in

specifically generative AI right uh where there's a belief that I I know of

places that built chat Bots and they pointed at their internal documents and

the questions they would have an intern go grab and find they're asking the chatbot producing these materials and

stuff like that right and so it sounds hunky dory right you're saving on cost and efficiencies and the junior but how

are you training the people that are going to let you retire right right and how are you growing The Firm when what

you were relevant um what your reputation is for is no longer the cool

thing right um so that's a that's a fascinating product uh that that makes

me want to put you in touch with some other people um Okay cool so uh

questions i' like to i' like to ask uh first one is um so I'm thinking about the growth of

Revenue shift which is largely your focus within the organization right um

what are some things that keep you up at night yeah that's uh that's great um

besides impending election holding up a capex spending which everyone is worried about right now um it I think it is the

um I I'm not going to sit here and say that I worry about AI taking our jobs um a lot of the a lot

of the things that I described to you that we do um is uh as far as like

incentives role design or design the books have been published right the data is out there um our job is really to

contextualize and add our experience um you know and and help try to customize

it so I I guess I don't I don't have a fear of of AI I think like like a lot of

people do right now um it where I have

concerns with is people getting disillusion thinking that

um technology is going to solve all of these problems for them right and start

to equate what they've been sold today sales performance management or

incentive compensation management can do for them and have that kind of reflect badly on us even though like it's not

part of it it's like that's an input for us and we try to help you out with it yeah someone told you that that was

going to solve all of these problems that maybe I can help you with depending if we we get under there

um but uh it it's just how much of that has been oversold right um and we we run

into that a lot our space the Technology Solutions are in our space are I think a lot like a lot of other spaces are

really really saturated and it feels like it um it it's kind of right to be

normalized a little bit Yeah and what's interesting too is particularly people writing the checks for the licenses and

everything else everyone hat people hate Microsoft Excel right it's one of the most enabling tools that's ever been out

there abely you know people hate Google search results show me a better you know so like there's uh there's there's a lot

of uh a lot of risk in technology is part of the solution as an enablement platform and how you use it versus

people saying I have this it should just work yeah yeah we got a wonderful project management system I complain about it all the time right I don't need

you to fix my business problem I need you to fix my technology problem that's not it's not really what you

have um okay uh so that's was a fun one so next one might be a little bit more fun and I might have asked this one

before but um again going back to revenue shift

growth uh things that keep you up at night um how you can help clients if I

were to give you 10 million bucks yeah how would you spend that it it's it's a

great uh it's a great prompt um but uh

but have talked to friends friends who are Bankers investors PE firms and uh have been offered Capital oh yeah so

some offer you 10 million yeah and not necessarily 10 million right that'd be awesome um I would disappear uh

but it it's so our our business isn't terribly Capital intensive right yeah um

and and given that given that level of investment I think it would be and I

mean I'm just H hypothesizing because I really don't know what I would do with it um it would be about taking some of

those solutions that I I just discussed and and maybe productizing them we're setting that up kind of off to the side

and say hey can we like while we're becoming a Prof you know while we're growing as a Professional Services firm

is there also some of these technology issues that we're discovering and seeing in that we can slide off to the side and

create a product or or technology solution around it I guess that would be what I would do if I was given $10

million but it again our business is it

is pretty it is pretty Boutique is pretty Niche um I'm guessing the the

total market for it probably isn't you know it isn't half a billion dollars in the in the US I'd be surprised if it was

anywhere near that so a large level of investment for that we couldn't the the

the marketing effectiveness of that money wouldn't be would be terribly much for us um so yeah I guess that's what I

would do with it Dave well so funny considering the the vo is coming from he's trying to get me to say marketing

budget um but it's interesting I like answering the question because what what typically comes out of it is is is a

couple different variants uh so after everyone gets over getting taking a vacation all that but um

typically uh it either goes in a direction of a bunch of marketing initiatives or things like that or big

hires that people have been wanting to do but are waiting for that kind of right time sure um the

innovators it reveals a product maybe that they're thinking about or some sort of

innovation right and so um as I asked that question uh often to folks I ask it

to clients too in that case is to help say well hey maybe we can help with that right um

but uh it it's a very interesting one that as you have a model that is working it is continuing to innovate and there's

two ways of in innovating one is doing something that you do better or positioning it differently sure or

switching a couple things around right and profal service we call that methodology right right and then the

other is can we do something that can we'll have to go through our own sales

shift right yeah such as productizing creating something that can be maybe sold distributed differently right and

bring value uh even more efficiently than your than your team is doing by being a product yeah it it it would have

to be a really great mouse trap for us because one of the things that we value is the time with our clients having have FaceTime learning about their businesses

like are part of the reasons why me Tom Mark and all of our staff really like doing consulting right so yeah in order

for us to to shift away from doing Professional Services work we'd have to think we had something really really hot

on our hands yeah 100% that's awesome uh cool so for other businesses that are

out there that could that are having trouble with sales are looking to make their team more effective find those how

do we get more logos which you and I use at nomenclature new clients correct

correct yeah it's a um one of our conversations talking yeah you know get

more logos someone's like what do you mean by that like new clients clients as opposed to farming and growing and

servicing um but is there you know any kind of advice for folks that are uh that are trying to

solve those types of problems either inh house or even working with teams um some things that they might want to consider

or some things to look at internally on their organizations yeah that would lead them to say there is an opportunity here

to utilize you know someone like Revenue shipon doing these things yeah

um take taking that kind of in a in a few pieces I think it is is

um number one I think anytime you you start to get in issues with uh with the

commercial or I think getting in getting some sort of outside outside look in

rapidly um and not just yeah I know I do that for a living but I mean whether that's a mentor a board member somebody

like that get fresh eyes on it what's going on what do you see in the market look at the way that we're aligned do

you think we're doing the right thing right and and start start to develop some data points some hypothesis about

what's going on or what you think some potential issues could be um as far as

um when to uh you know specifically when to when to bring us in and things that

that we would help with with our clients um I think it's taking a very honest

look at the capacity of your team to get

things done because a lot of times we run into with clients either they have the skill set on their team but don't

have the bandwidth or or vice versa right and a lot of times it's hey 2024

oh you know we're going to redesign our comp plan you never get around to a 2025 now you're calling us it's like you

could have been on this a year earlier had you kind of looked and been like hey let's be honest can we really get this

done or not um and I think everyone wants to be a lot of people who are

business are kind of naturally optimistic about how much they could get done in a given amount of time right um

but uh but but kind of being with our honest with ourselves about what we could tackle on our own versus what we

need to go outside for or hire for however you solve for that um I think

would serve people really well and it's I know I'm rambling a bit here but hey it's a podcast um so it it was sort of

like uh when we started working with you guys working with working with and saying you know we don't have I

thought I was going to build my website on our own right very quickly learned that like I do not have any sort of

bandwidth to do this you know nor skill right so it's G to duple really quickly figure that out um our it support and

our man service providers etc etc like very quickly right away we learned that

we needed Partners if we were going to scale this thing run this thing grow this thing um and I think mature

businesses need Andor should take some of that same perspective on on their own

I was forced to because it was a it was a startup but yeah have some of that same attitude yeah no I love that and I

couldn't agree more um uh particularly with the getting an outside perspective

yeah uh and it's funny because sometimes when I talk to other business owners

they're they're looking for a peer or right or someone they can look at me and I've gotten a lot of benefit out of

forming relationships with other organizations that I could consider consider my competitor right little bit of that is everyone you know misery

loves company not because we want people to be miserable we still want to feel like we're the only one going through but uh I've also found that and so I'm

camping on to your your thing to have somebody else look at it on people that don't know the business yeah because

when you have those conversations it forces you to you one of the biggest challenges that all of us have is uh

used to be called an elevator pitch right now people work I probably still is called an elevator pitch um but

condensing it but it forced you to explain your your what you're doing what you're trying to accomplish in just a totally different way right um and I

find I've always found that learning from other Industries and how they are solving problems um and in my case even

10 and 12 year olds I I throw business questions at my kids all the time and it's amazing what they come back with

right because it's just like oh yeah that was that was good in fact we started testing on my neighbor uh he he

does sales um uh for an extrusion company okay and uh at any rate he was

saying yeah you know everyone's saying they're working hard and they're just kind of working every's tired and whatever he like Jamma I don't what what

what should I do here she's like oh get him yoga lessons he's like and they actually went

ahead and did that um but that they is end up doing

Wellness breaks and that type of stuff um not like she transformed to company but it's just so funny it's like oh yeah give them something to relax to yeah

throw candy in the meetings let's have some fun sure um I've also uh had that go the wrong way when asking 10 12 year

old so um cool well awesome uh this was uh

great conversation absolutely um I already knew personally knew a lot about your business right uh and even learned

some more Dynamics to it uh which is exciting and you know really what I'm trying to accomplish uh here with all

these conversations is you know it's Chicago right um and I just think it's it's a

unique business environment and unlike most other cities uh not more than 13%

of our revenue is generated by one particular industry right right and so where's the rest of that coming from

sure well you know you ride the train whether you're riding the train from the suburbs or taking a train from you know

Logan Square whatever it is there's all these people around they're all paying their bills what the heck are they doing right and I walk down the street you

know the where we're sitting right now is in uh Tech Nexus there's 50 logos

sure right on the wall there what are these places what are they doing um and

so a culmination of I've always found interest in my role working with businesses learning how other people are

making money right or building businesses what the problems they're solving I didn't even know that was a problem um and uh and also I talk to a

lot of folks that are coming out of school um and want to know um you know hey what do you know anyone what's out

there sure and I started hearing like I would just like to talk to people just to understand what these jobs are what's

going out there so um thanks again for your time today I think is very informative on covering all the above

yeah um yeah until next time absolutely thanks again thanks

George all right cool

uh yeah good I think I think

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