David Katz - VP, Sales @Tessian (Formerly @Intercom, @Dropbox, @LinkedIn) - The Art, Timing, & Tactical Guidance for Moving SaaS Upstream, Full-Stack Commercial Teams - Functional Hiring Best Practices, Team Prioritization & Stakeholder Engagement

Guest:

David Katz - VP, Sales @Tessian

(Formerly @Intercom, @Dropbox, @LinkedIn)

Guest Background:

David is the Vice President, Global Sales @Tessian - Tessian has raised $60m from legendary security investors like Sequoia and Accel and have over 150 employees located in New York, San Francisco and London.

Prior to Tessian, David was the Senior Director, Global Sales & Customer Solutions @Intercom - Responsible for the Account Executive, Account Management, Sales Engineer and Customer Success teams (100+ people) Globally across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC.

Before joining Intercom, David was the Director, Mid-Market & Enterprise Sales @Dropbox - Responsible for a regional direct sales team of more than 40 Mid-Market and Enterprise Account Executives working out of HQ (largest P&L globally). 

Prior to Dropbox, David was Manager, Mid-Market Sales @LinkedIn.

Guest Links:

LinkedIn

Episode Summary:

In this episode, we cover:

- The Art, Timing, & Tactical Guidance for Moving SaaS Upstream

- Full-Stack Commercial Teams - Functional Hiring Best Practices

- Team Prioritization & Effective Stakeholder Engagement - Mistakes, Lessons Learned, & The New Mindset

- Talent = #1 Priority - Evaluating & Onboarding Top Talent

Full Interview Transcript:

Naber:  Hello friends around the world. My name is Brandon Naber. Welcome to The Naberhood, where we have switched on, fun discussions with some of the most brilliant, successful, experienced, talented and highly skilled Sales and Marketing minds on the planet, from the world's fastest growing companies. Enjoy!

Naber:  Hey everybody. Today we have David Katz on the show, DKatz as he's lovingly known. David is the Vice President, Global Sales @Tessian - Tessian has raised $60m from legendary security investors like Sequoia and Accel and have over 150 employees located in New York, San Francisco and London. Prior to Tessian, David was the Senior Director, Global Sales & Customer Solutions @Intercom - Responsible for the Account Executive, Account Management, Sales Engineer and Customer Success teams (100+ people) Globally across Americas, EMEA, and APAC. Prior to Intercom, David was the Director, Mid-Market & Enterprise Sales @Dropbox - Responsible for a regional direct sales team of more than 40 Mid-Market and EnterpriseAccount Executives working out of HQ (largest P&L globally). Before Dropbox, David was Manager, Mid-Market Sales @LinkedIn. Here we go.

Naber:  DKatz. Awesome to have you on the show. It's great to see your bearded face. How are you?

David Katz:       I'm great, BNabes. And for those at home, you should also clarify what our full names are, although nicknames are great. I think I once called you just BNabes or even beautiful Nabes.

Naber:  I dunno if you remember that. I mean that would've been, that's going pretty deep back into the archives of my history and memory.

Naber:  Haha, that's pretty good. If you called me beautiful, first of all, I think I do remember you calling that, second of all, you may be the only person that's ever called me that. So if I don't remember, that's pretty bad cause that's an amazing story for myself. Thank you for that. Appreciate the confidence boost as we get started. And I'm just looking, I'm just looking to match your beard skills and your hairstyle. I feel like you've nailed the combo. I feel like you've really nailed the combo.

David Katz:       So for those at home that are just listening to the audio, if you went and actually just googled David Katz at Tessian or found me on LinkedIn, you'd see this shiny bald head. And yeah, I mean when we worked together, I had some hair, but maybe one or two of the things we'll talk about is the high pressure environments I put myself in more recently that caused me to lose all said hair. But I say like, dude, this look without a beard and glasses to soften it up. Like, if you could imagine this, without glasses. I'll take them off so you can see and then imagine now, if you take those things away, you're getting into the Doctor Evil territory. And I don't know if that's necessarily all look that is inviting and encouraging of future conversations. So anyways, I appreciate that.

Naber:  Yeah, it's an evolution. I'm sure that it feels right that Dr Evil is what you're moving towards in your life. But I'm sure you've perfected the morning routine pretty well with the head, the beard, the glasses. Like it's gotta be a pretty solid morning routine at that point.

David Katz:       Less than five minutes.

Naber:  Nice. Awesome. That's what I like to hear. Every, every guy wants to hear that. All right, so let's hop into a couple things. One, we'll go through some personal stuff first. Mr Smarty pants grew up in New Hampshire, went to Syracuse, some interesting history, interested in debate, and government, and voracious reader obviously, and I'm sure that started at a really young age. So we'll talk about all that fun stuff as a kid, what you were like, then we'll hop into the professional stuff, talk about some of your superpowers, talk about tech businesses you've worked with, and ultimately get into your superpower mindset as well as methodology, and some frameworks around some of the things you're really good at. Sound okay?

David Katz:       Yeah, let's do it.

Naber:  Awesome. let's start personal first. So 5,000 population town lake Winnipesaukee. I'm totally gonna screw up any one syllable that I'm sure. So, you grew up in that town. Let's talk about what was it like being DKatz as a kid? What were you interested in? And what were some of your hobbies and things you were good at growing up?

David Katz:       I was a high energy and devious child, but not like in a malicious way. Like I wasn't getting arrested or lighting Barbie dolls on fire, per se. But I was a bit of a menace to society or to my teachers at least. I definitely was always pushing the boundaries of what I feel like I could get away with. And I feel like that's pretty much just continued throughout my entire life. Let's just see how far we can push this. And now I'm being penalized by having a two and a half year old that's doing the same thing. And what my mom used to tell me as a kid, whic is now coming true, which is, I hope you have a son just like you someday. For better, for worse, that's coming to fruition with my two and half year old. So yeah, I mean you said it, I grew up in a small town, 5,000 people. And it was an amazing, beautiful place to grow up. It just wasn't super diverse. Like there wasn't a lot of opportunity to be exposed to a lot of different things. It was a it was a very touristy environment that I grew up in. The population would grow by like 10x in the summer. People love to coming up to the lake. I mentioned to you earlier, Jimmy Fallon named his daughter after Lake Winnie, this lake I grew up on. It's just like a beautiful, nice, small town that kind of grew up on. But yeah, always interested in government, government affairs, and debate. I had this amazing teacher in high school, Mr Zoolof, who was very supportive and encouraging. I just felt a strong connection to. And, from taking classes with him, decided to really pursue a career in political science and public policy, or this thought I wanted to. So that's when I went to school for up in the upstate New York at Syracuse University.

Naber:  Very cool. Shout out to Mr Zoolof off. I like that. So one more thing about, DKatz growing up. What were you interested in? What was the first thing you did to make money? Tell us a little bit more.

David Katz:       Yeah. So, I was very interested in extreme sports growing up, or what I thought were extreme sports at the time. So it was a bit of a daredevil. I spent a lot of time in the emergency room. But I was very into freestyle skiing, wakeboarding, mountain biking, hiking, climbing, pretty much anything where I could lose a sense of gravity for some small period of time. I really enjoyed as a child. And it wasn't until my twenties where I started having real serious injuries that I didn't rebound from so quickly, and I decided maybe need to slow down. But yeah, I mean like I was a bit of a speed freak. I wanted to go, high and far in the air in whatever I was doing. So, outside of school and things I was interested in politics. I was really most first and foremost interested in just, thrill and just kind of chasing that feeling, as a kid.

Naber:  Okay. So I have a hundred questions on that stuff, but we've got to move on so I won't indulge in my own curiosity. So you're going through high school, you're making a decision to go to, upstate New York, Syracuse University, The Orange, which I think is like one of 11 schools that have a mascot that don't end in "S", I believe, something like that. One of 10 or one of 11. We don't need to go through the trivia, but that's actually a fun trivia question. So why do you make that decision to go to Syracuse? Walk us through what you were like for a couple minutes while you were at Syracuse.

David Katz:       Yeah, I mean, first and foremost, I didn't get into Georgetown, which was my number one. And I just, I didn't get it, and I was pretty bummed about that, honestly. I just really wanted to be in DC. I really wanted to be in that, that environment cause I really want to study political science and public policy. But I would say in hindsight, I was very fortunate that I didn't get in that I went to Syracuse. It was an incredible program that going to be part of, I met my future wife and mother of our son, and soon to be our second son. She's due literally any day now. And yeah, so it worked out for the best. One of the things that was really attractive to me about Syracuse was the curriculum for the public policy program was very hands on. It was actually a much less academic approach to learning. Most of the curriculum was made up of internships and kind of co-op style work. So you literally get thrown in the deep end. Even as early as being a freshman and a pimply faced 18 year old there I was working on different programs, like the Syracuse Housing Authority. And I'm getting to be involved in the community at a young age. Really kind of shaped the way I thought about learning and our education system more broadly, which is probably another topic for another time of things I'd like to do much, much later in life regarding education. It was just super hands on curriculum you actually got to get out there in the world and mix it up and meet people. But probably most importantly was, the Head of the Department Dr Bill Coplan, who I got to be a teaching assistant for, told me, I can't remember if I was either a junior or senior, he told me, he's like, Katz your wasting your time man. Like you're not, this isn't going to be a career. You're to be in Sales. And I've said this before in other podcasts, but I was like so offended by that. Because growing up in a small town in New Hampshire, I didn't know anything about Sales other than like the guy at the footlocker trying to sell me shoes, or like the guy selling my parents their car. That was my only in the sense of like what Sales was growing up.

Naber:  Yeah. I always say that it's viewed as a dirty word often times. We're coming around as a society, especially in Western countries. But it's a bit of a dirty word as you're growing up. Yeah.

David Katz:       And it was to me, certainly when I was a young student. But I'm fortunate that he did plant that seed and ended up coming to fruition years later. And I personally credit him for that.

Naber:  Cool. Love it. And do you, what you don't say in that whole explanation is you were very good student. Obviously really intelligent, very obvious to people that have a conversation with you within seconds. So, you meet Shana, going through University, and you're gonna make your first decision on, what's next after uni. So why don't we do this. Walk us through. We're going to get up to LinkedIn. And then we're going to hop through LinkedIn, Dropbox, Intercom, and your recent move to Tessian. We're going to hop through those with some questions and going a little bit deeper on your playbook. But walk us through your decision out of school for the first job that you got, all the way through LinkedIn. and then we'll stop at LinkedIn and we'll pause for a couple of different things. I want to talk about that.

David Katz:       Yeah, totally. So, coming out of uni as you said, and for the Americans, that also means college. But having led and worked with international teams, it's definitely called Uni or university outside of the states. Same as resumes, their called CV's, right? Or curriculum vitae.

Naber:  I did a calculation on this. Like 5% of the world's population or so is in the US, and 95% is outside. You do the math, it's actually staggering as to how much the sociopolitical environment as well as, a whole bunch of other things that the US does and makes decisions on affects the other 95% of the world. But the disproportionate amount of people that actually vote for those things, which is like 1.7 to 2% at any given times, just depending on how many people vote, of the world's population votes on, and has say in what types of things happen in our environment in the US, then subsequently affect the rest of the world. And I just always think it's interesting when we talk about some of that terminology because when all of those folks are listening, they think to themselves, obviously it's called that, but it's just cause that's their mindset obviously. Anyways, keep going.

David Katz:       And that'll come back later too, I think. When you new companies, part of the onboarding experience is just getting a sense of are we speaking the same language? Because every company I've joined, and I'm sure this has been similar for you, and more recently in your consulting experience, people use terms so interchangeably. And what I learned early on is like, don't take that for granted and make sure you're really clear. Like, when you say that, what do you actually mean? Like, especially if you're going to work with companies that have international teams, people interpret language very differently. And even like, when I say inside Sales and what that means here in the States, that's viewed very differently, and has a different connotation in Europe. So anyways, just a little point there. So yeah, coming out of school. So I had no idea what the hell I want to do. I just realized through my internships in school that I didn't want to pursue a career short term in the government and nonprofits space. And I honestly, through a weird series of events, just fell completely backwards into a very interesting small Executive search firm called J Robert Scott that was a wholly owned subsidiary of Fidelity Investments. I'd never heard of it. It's not something people go to school and study and say, I want to work in Executive search when I grew up. I had no idea recruiting was a thing, and an industry, and it's actually massive. And so I fell back words into it, and it was just like the biggest point of luck in my early career to have that type of opportunity because I got exposed to so many cool people in cool industries. So we worked with hardware, software, medical device, biopharmaceutical companies. We primarily worked with early stage venture-capital backed companies, and we were working to like bring additions into their Executive team as they were growing and reaching different stage of maturity. We would help them add different roles, and functionality, expertise to their Executive teams. And so I was like such a cool way to essentially get paid out an MBA, straight out of school. And I got exposed to a lot of very interesting people, and got a sense of the way the world works, at least as it pertains specifically to the VC world.

Naber:  Awesome. I love the narrative to that value prop as well. That's really cool. Cause you say Executive search, it can mean so many different things for the value prop. I'd like that narrative a lot. So J Robert Scott, wholly owned by Fidelity Investments, and you're at J Robert Scott. What's the biggest thing you learned from there, and then why the jump to LinkedIn?

David Katz:       The biggest thing I learned was, there's no reason that I can't aspire to be a successful Executive at a company at some point in time. And the reason I said that there say that is I had so many people, I was like, how the hell did you become CEO and president of this company? And it's kind of funny and to say it that way, but like it gave me a lot of confidence. I can do this. And I think when you're young, or if you're a Sales rep, or if you're an aspiring Executive within the commercial realm, or really any role, I think you look at these people and you put them on such a pedestal. And the reality is they're just humans like you and I. And getting to sit in on some of these board meetings and hear some of the things that they would discuss, I was like, these people aren't that special. In many cases, they really think they are. But there's no reason while others can't have the type of success that they are, at least perceived to have, if you just work hard and kind of pursue the right things.

Naber:  Nice one. That's great. I liked that. That's a really good takeaway. And so you're moving into...

David Katz:       Yeah, you probably weren't expecting me to say that. You thought I was going to say something completely different. Something that would've made more sense like, the importance of hiring the right talent, and talent is the key to everything. Yeah, I could have said that. But you know what, like, no, that's what I really learned personally and selfishly.

Naber:  So, you're making the jump to LinkedIn. Why do you make that decision and kind of walk us through your journey at LinkedIn, for the time that you were there for each of the roles you subsequently jumped into.

David Katz:       Yeah, so when I was working in Executive search, I had an opportunity to move to San Francisco and help our firm establish a west coast presence. And so we actually hired a partner from one of the big Executive search firms on the west coast...amazing firm, been around for a very long time, very successful. And I think, I don't know if they're public now, but they were at one point in time. And anyways, we hired this awesome partner, Eric Lund, and we had a great working relationship. We got to work on a couple of projects together and really establish like a good working relationship. And he invited me to come out to the Bay Area and work with him. So I leapt at the opportunity, convinced my then girlfriend, now wife to move out with me. But as soon as I got here, like it's just, the environment's infectious. It's so hard not to get excited about wanting to go and work for one of these companies. And I was just so envious being on th outside looking in. And after about a year of helping Eric kind of establish our west coast practice, hire some other folks to join the firm, I was like, I gotta go get into one of these companies. I started thinking, what do I want to do functionally, like what kind of role would I want to go for, and then what type of company? And I think given my more recent experience, when when I decided to leave J Robert Scott, I was doing selling and I didn't really realize it. I was selling candidates on thinking about opportunities outside of what they currently had. I was selling those candidates then on our clients that we're working with to help them kind of place people at the companies they were invested in and part of. And then I was selling other, potential clients on hiring us to do work for them. And so I didn't realize it because it wasn't like a less structured way of, I didn't have quotas per se. I'm like, you more traditionally did in Sales in a SaaS Sales role, but really I was in Sales. And it was a pretty challenging role, because it's not a business risk, it's a personal career risk, right? You're selling people on why they should think about leaving one role as an Executive for another one that might be much more risky. And so it took a lot of listening, and I really learned how to listen very carefully to what was really important to people and see if it would be the right opportunity. But anyways, so then I figured out, okay, Sales is probably somewhere I could play. Then I started thinking about what's a Product that I'm super passionate about. I spent all day on LinkedIn as anyone in recruiting, right? So, I decided I wanted to pursue a Sales career specifically in LinkedIn. I actually didn't apply anywhere else. I didn't even apply to LinkedIn. I cold called my way in. There was a guy...Tyler Hubs, who had a background similar to me, and I literally cold called, left a voicemail, and he actually called me back. And he invited me down for lunch, and I got to go down and meet in Mountain View with him, with some of the team, and our then VP of Sales, James Volpentest, who I know you're very familiar with and worked for. And it was at a point where, LinkedIn was growing like crazy and they're like, yeah, like we'll take a shot on this guy. And I think the opportunity cost was low enough that they were willing to kind of take on bet on somebody who'd never done software Sales before. And so I joined, I joined as a Sales rep and that was, let's see, I'd say, I think I accepted my offer towards the end of 2010. And I think I joined in January, 2011.

Naber:  January 5th, 2011. That was our start date. Nice one. Okay, so you make that jump. Now walk us through your journey at LinkedIn for the different roles that you had.

David Katz:       So I started as an Account Executive, and loved it. Learned mostly through trial and error. Just because it was such a fast paced environment and things were kind of like half-built as you would imagine they would be at a company in that stage and for how fast they're moving. But I was super fortunate given the kind of culture at that company. And it's still, the culture at the time was just so collaborative and so focused on development. And my peers around me were so willing to invest in me, and give me time, and let me shadow, and learn more about their processes. They would sit in on my process and give me advice. And so I was fortunate, I got off to a pretty quick start at the beginning of the year. And then about halfway through the year, we had this weird situation where, there was a cohort of us that were doing pretty well, and then there was several cohorts of people who were not. There's like this huge gap where there was either people like blowing out their numbers, or there are people really not even coming close to their targets. And we had pretty aggressive goals that year. and we were getting ready to file and go public. And so it was important to get more predictability in the business. And so they offered me and several other folks this opportunity to become a team lead. Which at the time I thought I was like the coolest thing ever, and if I actually think more critically about it, I'm like, wait a minute. Like, I was kind of taken advantage of here. They were like, hey, how does this sound? We're going to pay the same amount of money, but we're going to, quadruple your risk. And we're going to have you take on quotas for four other people. Don't worry about the fact that you've closed more revenue than all four of them combined in the first half of the year. Like this is probably gonna work out just fine. And when I joined LinkedIn, one of my mantras early on was, I wanted to like really be part of this journey, and I wanted to sign up and take risks. And I wasn't sure if Sales was the right thing for me. I wasn't sure if software tech was the right thing for me, but I told myself like, look, I'm young at this point. I wasn't married. I didn't have kids. I didn't have a mortgage. I'm just going to say yes, I'm going to take on as much risk, as an opportunity as I can and see what comes of it. And so I jumped at it. I didn't really think about it too much. And was like, great, let's see if we can figure it out. And we did, and that second half of the year, I'm proud to say that the team I got to work with were exceptional people and their willingness to listen to some punk kid, who didn't have a ton of experience in SaaS Sales, and work with me, and work as a team was incredible. And we turned around and we hit our second half targets. Three of the four folks actually hadn't achieved their annual targets. Some of them got promoted. And that was the big inflection point for me. That was when I realized like I had found my calling. And I'm so fortunate, and honestly just lucky, that relatively early on in my career I had this Aha moment, where I was like, this is what I was meant to do.

Naber:  Very cool. Very cool. So, walk us through then your navigation into leading Sales Dev teams, and then your Mid Market Sales Management role that you had. And then we'll hop into one topic that I want to talk about because I know you started flexing your muscle pretty hard on it at LinkedIn. And then, we'll jump into Dropbox.

David Katz:       Yeah. So, after those six months as a team lead, I jumped at any opportunity I could find to get into a management role cause I was like, this is what I want to be doing. And I was fortunate enough there was an opening for a role managing a Sales Development team in San Francisco, and I interviewed for and got the role. And we actually, this is where BNabes and I got closes, we actually were both peers and we're managing, Sales Development teams. And our boss, Jeff at the time, like I think somewhat begrudgingly gave me the role. Like, I think he had his concerns. And if anyone, this is a total inside joke, but if you knew Jeff, he would know like he's not afraid to just tell you his concerns early on, and just make sure they're out there and open. Which is something that I learned is actually, an incredible trait to have is just be open and transparent with people. And he told me why he gave me the role, but he also listed all the concerns he had, and things he wanted to make sure I avoided early on. And fortunately he gave me the role, and he gave me a lot of coaching, especially in the early days on how to be successful as a people Manager, as a first time people Manager. So yeah, I inherited a team. My initial team was 15 or 16 reps, which is like twice the size of the team you should give to a first time Manager. And on top of that, Jeff, who was my boss, but it was in Dublin. So like we had this eight hour time difference. So it wasn't like he was on the floor helping me all the time, or if I had like some in the moment need, I didn't have him to go to. Luckily had some amazing peers that I worked with closely in the San Francisco office that would help kind of guide me and make sure I didn't screw up too bad. So I did that for a year. It was amazing. I loved it. Working with, developing people early on in their careers who want to pursue Sales, which just like such a rewarding experience. And I quickly made my goal just to get as many of them promoted as I possibly could and get them on to the next role. And this is where I actually learned about the power of brand and being viewed as a multiplier in people's careers, and how that would always mean that I would have my pick of the most talented people to recruit. And so advice for any of you who are in a management role, at a slightly larger organization where there's a lot of internal promotion, you want your brand to be known as a multiplier. You don't want to be viewed as an empire builder who just hoards the best talent. That will serve you well in the short term, but in the longterm it's going to bite you in the ass. You want to be known as the person who is focused on the development career of others. And if you do that, people will be knocking down your door to get on your team. And I feel fortunate, like I was able to establish my brand that way. And look at served people well on my team, but selfishly, like it served me well too. I always had the most talented people wanting to work with and for me. So it worked for all of us. So I got to do that for a year. And then in my last year at LinkedIn I went back to actually managing the team I initially joined. Which is such a weird full circle to go through in my time at LinkedIn. And so I got to go manage Account Executives, SMB & Mid-Market Account Executives that next year at LinkedIn as well. And cool enough, got to bring some of the Sales Development reps that I hired along the way on that journey with me.

Naber:  Awesome. Okay. So, I know that you started flexing really hard a muscle around hiring. Especially onboarding and hiring, and bringing on great talent. By the way, the skill that you just mentioned...it's talent, but the also skill that you just mentioned, but you're naturally good at it, so it's a talent...around making sure that you become and are known as a multiplier. Like that just has so much more effect on not just the people that, are coming to work for you. People that have worked with you, but like the people that are your peers, like your peers would want to come work for you also or the people that you've worked for would want to come work for you also and work with you because that's your style. It's given back to you company over company role of role. I mean, I feel that personally towards you and I know a lot of people that have worked with you feel that way as well, not just the people that are working for you. So it's got an amazing effect, and a big halo, including sideways and up. But one of the things I know that you started flexing your muscle on his hiring and onboarding great talent. Let's talk about, your philosophy around hiring and bringing on great talent, which you've done well beyond obviously those roles into Dropbox, into Intercom, and into Tessian now. So what is your philosophy on hiring great talent? And let's go through some of the methodology you have. If you have any best practices around each piece of that process as you try to bring them on board. From profiling the role, to sourcing and interviewing them, to evaluating, closing, onboarding, etc. So what's your philosophy, and what's kind of your methodology, and your processes you go through, with some tactics that you use?

David Katz:       Yeah, first I would say I am a recruiter's worst nightmare as a former recruiter to work with as a hiring Manager . And if any of them were listening to us, they'd probably laugh. And I think ultimately we have good working relationships, but like to say, I expect a lot, and I have a very high bar for hiring is an understatement. I would say what I learned from my recruiting experience, and then what I learned from some mentors early on, was the two things I was hiring for were mentality and dynamic. And I think the second one is something that people don't pay enough attention to when they're hiring. And I think it's really important to be intentional when you're putting a team or teams together that you also need to be hiring for a team dynamic, and you have to have the right blend of backgrounds and experiences of people in that team. And if you just hire a lot of people with with the right mentality that are just high achieving people but won't create the right team team dynamic, that team's not going to be actually as effective as they could be. so I'm pretty quickly realized that you needed to hire for diversity and hire for a specific dynamic. And that ultimately meant that there were times where I passed on people that I knew would have been very successful individually, but wouldn't have an additive to the team and the team dynamic. I would say like that's a big thing I learned early on, at LinkedIn. And the second thing I learned was you have to be intentional. So what I mean by that is intentional around your recruiting process, and your interview process, and be consistent. I think the tendency when you're moving really quickly or an environment where you're hiring fast is you just need to just hire great people and set them free. And I think people don't spend enough time up front really defining and being intentional about what their hiring process should be. What are the types of interview questions and interview experiences and exposures you want to have for that person that's coming in to make sure you're consistently testing for certain things, to see if they're going to be successful in your environment, but also make sure that they're going to be happy in your environment and for the state that you're in. And I definitely learned the hard way several times that you need to hire for the current state of things, and don't oversell an opportunity or role. You should not be afraid to talk about all of the hairy problems that your company has. And the people that are going to be right for you, like when you mention all of the challenges that you and the team are facing, they're going to light up. You're going to literally watch their body language change if you're in the room with them, where they're going to lean in and be like, tell me more about that. Like they're going to be attracted to those types of problems and that environment. And so often I see people, especially at high growth companies trying to hire people, just been there and done that at larger companies, and have been, quote unquote, in the end zone, so to speak. And that's really risky because if you've hired people who've only worked at very large established companies, they might have great training, but they might not, possess the mindset to be successful in a fast paced, ambiguous environment.

Naber:  Awesome. I like that. I've heard that consistently from great leaders that are excellent at hiring great talent, is the underestimation of the last thing you just mentioned around the importance of it. So, very quickly, you've hired a lot of people and a spectrum of different roles. Can you go through and talk about how you onboard really good talent as well? What are some of the things you've learned about onboarding great talent that you felt have been consistent, regardless of, of the role that you're bringing on?

David Katz:       Yeah, that's a good one. I think a onboarding is a staged kind of sequenced process that you can't try to throw everything at someone upfront in the first two weeks. They're not gonna retain 90% of the information you give them. And so I think you need to be very specific and intentional around the prioritization of what they need to know and at what time you need to teach them it. And really make sure you get the sequencing right there. And that'll be the difference between like, an okay onboarding and a really rapid one, is like what's really critical in the first couple quarters for the person to know and learn, and really focused us on those things. And then get comfortable, not teaching someone some of the finer skills that they're gonna need, six or 12 months later and stage it out. Make sure that those things are things you focus on as like the next onboarding once they're six or nine months in. So really think about those things. The other thing I would say about onboarding is I'm a huge fan of situational leadership theory, or the Hersey and Blanchard theory on coaching. And for those, go Google it and check it out and you can watch a quick video or it's just a Google image on it and kind of map it out. But the other thing I realized early on is no matter how much experience someone has, they are hiring, they're early onboarding you actually need to be very explicit and very directive with them around what you expect and what you want them to do. And no matter how much experience they have, they actually find a lot of confidence in having this like blanket of you being really directional. And I think the hesitation people have is like, well, I don't want to micromanage someone. And like, I don't want to seem like I'm being overly burdensome on them. It's like, no, I know that's your instinct. We don't want to do that because no one really likes to be micromanaged. But early on when you're new to a company, people find a lot of safety and confidence in that. So I think it's really important to be directive early on. Also be very clear early on of around the expectations of the role. Define what excellence looks like in the role and how someone should be kind of conducting themselves, and what their performance should look like over time, and what behaviors they should exhibit, and how they match back to your culture or values. Really lay that out early on. I can't tell you how many people I've talked to where I'm like, what are your cultural values and how do you talk about them in the first, the first two weeks of onboarding? Or even just companies that I've interviewed, or spent time, with or advised, where I ask them what their cultural values are, if you can't name them off the top of your tongue immediately, something's missing and you need to go back and revisit that.

Naber:  Awesome. All right DKatz, let's move into your jump into Dropbox. Why'd you move there? Walk us through, in a couple of minutes, the roles that you had. And then we're going to stop and talk about one or two topics there as well.

David Katz:       So I moved there because of a lack of patience and a naivete, most likely. Like I think, I got my first taste of success at LinkedIn, and if we're being honest each other, I probably took it a bit for granted. Like I looked back on it so fondly, and I made some incredible friends and mentors and I learned so much, and like as I said, literally changed the trajectory of my career and it helped me find my calling. But like, if I'm being honest, could I have stayed for a couple of more years and learned a lot more? Yeah. Did I probably prematurely leave because I thought I'd figured out everything in the world? Yes. I was definitely in that category of millennial, first time people either who knew everything. And also just, assumed that all of my success was due to like my own skill, and it wasn't any element of luck, or just working for an amazing company with amazing Product. So like I definitely felt this sense of like, I'm owed this opportunity. And all of a sudden this company Dropbox comes along, and everyone at that point in time had heard of it. It's one of the hottest companies out there. They raised a stupid amount of money at a stupid valuation. And for whatever reason, like they were willing to give me this opportunity to come and build something. And that was an opportunity I wasn't going to have, immediately at LinkedIn, and I decided to go and pursue it. Looking back on it, it was the best thing I ever could have done, but it was also 10 times harder than I thought it was going to be. I was all of a sudden out there in the real world, and building something from scratch without a lot of mentors or people who could coach me along the way or provide a playbook to me that I could rely on. And I had a lot of really brutal hard lessons in those early days, and that's when I started to lose my hair most likely. So I don't regret it. It was amazing. The type of talent and the things I learned from that experience were just incredible. And I was so fortunate to work with such incredibly talented people at Dropbox. It's funny, so many of us stay in very close touch and look back at like this, this alumni association we have of former Dropbox'ers, and it's incredible how willing people are around the globe to just drop what they're doing and help you if you guys overlapped together at Dropbox, is just insane. It's just, it was really special. So, yeah, it was definitely the naivete.

Naber:  And then, what were you responsible for? Walk us through your jumps to while you were at Dropbox.

David Katz:       Yeah, so I came into help them build a outbound kind of direct Sales motion and go to market strategy for their SMB and Mid-Market segments. At that time when I got there, there really wasn't a business Product, they were just getting ready to launch it. They'd been playing around with like an early iteration of it, and they were doing pretty well, from a self serve perspective. And they had some early traction with a small enterprise team. Just going out and literally trying to just win logos. But no one was paying attention to or focusing on like SMB and Mid-Market at all as a segment. And so I was brought in to help them see if we could figure out a direct Sales motion to cover those segments in North America. And so early days it was about trying to understand the build out a playbook of, what did we think they're going to market motion was going to be? Why would people want Dropbox for business? What problems can it solve for them? And then why did they need that in addition to what they were getting for free from Microsoft or Google, or are they already paying for from Box? And so we're kind of figuring out what our value proposition would be. And then once we figured it out, we started thinking around what was the hiring profile of people we wanted to bring that would help us, figure out something that wasn't completely built. and so I spent a lot of time focused on those things. And then, I joined there, let's see, that was the end of 2013, and we did some light hiring early, but then we really hit the go button in 2014. And I hired, well in the first five quarters, so including Q4 of 2013, I hired 55 people. In order to hire those 55 people I must've interviewed, upwards of 500 plus. Yeah, definitely more than 500. So it was crazy, spent whole days and nights interviewing. But it was, it was wild. We had some early success. We've found something that felt repeatable. We found kind of our ideal customer profile. We started figuring out the value proposition, why they would need us, how we could make that Sales motion repeatable. And then we started to start training the team on it.

Naber:  Awesome. Love it. Thank you for that. So, one of the things that you've done multiple times in your career is managing and building out that playbook for the upstream motion to go SMB, Mid Market, Enterprise. What does that playbook look like for you? And what are the steps that you need to take in order to be successful as you're building out, and executing on that playbook?

David Katz:       Yeah, it's it's a really fun motion. And to to your point, I did that both at Dropbox and then at Intercom as well, where we were moved from a very down market, more self-serve, kind of motion, or at least certainly as an acquisition strategy. Where it's kind of like, get in, land and then through kind of viral organic growth, and strong Product adoption, and Product love, we'll see some natural kind of organic growth, after they become a customer. And we saw that Dropbox and at Intercom. In both cases what was also similar is, and why I joined in both cases, was there was this sense that you could just move that self-service very efficient, acquisition model up market and start winning larger and larger customers over time. And what they realized in both cases was no, that wasn't the case. And there's kind of a natural breaking point where you get to a certain company size where you have clear definition of roles, and subject matter experts, and decision making processes, where the buyer is now all of a sudden removed from the end user. And where those things start to separate is usually where the self-serve motion tends to stop working really well. And so what you have to do once you figure out you've reached that point of ultimate decision maker and end user are now separate, is start thinking about how are we going to go to these decision makers, outbound after them and get their attention and interest in, and tell them why they should start thinking about us. And also the way you market, the look and feel of your company. B2C Marketing is very different, it's much more user-focused than B2B. And then, the same can be said for more SMB, Mid-Marketing Marketing focus, and Product Marketing in general, and brand, are very different than Enterprise. And if you go and look at companies, you can see this where, with an SMB mid-market you're still closer to the end user. So you can be more playful. Like your messaging is more playful. People are more willing to take risks, there's less, there's less cost for picking, the wrong solution, right? The deal sizes are smaller, the deal cycles are less. And ultimately, if someone makes a mistake it's okay, and you can kind of move on. Whereas you start getting into these larger companies with a lot of legacy technology and systems, it's going to be very challenging to switch something on in their environment, and get the adoption you want at a smaller company. And so the risk is much higher. And so therefore also, the education around how you're going to make them successful, the trust you need to build with them, is much different. And what I always found interesting from Dropbox and Intercom was trying to figure out the timing of how fast you move up market. And there's no great scientific way to go about it. Anyone tells you that if you're at the science, I just think they're lying to you. There's an art to it, of trying to figure how quickly you can move your Product up to larger companies and win them in a repeatable way. And then also, what are the one off really large companies that you're willing to go way up market for to win, knowing it's going to take all ton of your resources and time to make them successful. And there you're gonna have to set the right expectations with them around what your Product can and can't do in the short term. They're going to want to have a very heavy hand in your roadmap, and you've gotta be willing to hear them out on that. But trying to figure the timing of, how quickly can you take a certain Product and a team up market because the Sales motion is different. So there's a lot of education of your Sales team and training to get them ready for that. Many times you're hiring in a different profile, as you're moving more market, of Sales rep. The way you do lead generation is very different. You go from a lot more online webinars to live events and industry events, right? All of a sudden you're doing things like talking to analysts, like Gartner and Forrester and those things are really important. Your up-market, large buyers, there's just so much more risk associated to them making the wrong decision. And so there's just so much education you need to do to make them successful. And so like I always love trying to figure out like how fast you can move up-market and that's the kind of experience I had, at both those companies. The thing I would say I learned from both experiences is, you have to really know your segments, really define your customers, and what the different customers will look like over time as you move up market. And you have to do a ton of upfront research for your larger potential customers around what the Product has to look like, and what feature and functionality you must have, if not immediately, in the near term in order to make them successful and for you to be very credible. So I would say the biggest lesson I learned there, is you have to know your Product inside and out, and know its capabilities and its shortcomings, so that you can accurately wedge in and figure out how quickly can we move up market. And then in terms of working cross functionally, how willing is our Product partners to move up market and to build these types of things that larger companies will just need, just to gain entry into them. And so like really developing those relationships and having lots of R&D conversations where you're talking about feature functionality and roadmap. And really aligning to what are the things we're going to build and in what order, that'll help us move up market. And if you're very close to your Product team, and you guys have a good understanding of what you need to build and over what time period, that will then inform how quickly you can move up market and take on larger potential customers.

Naber:  Awesome. Love it. So we're on Dropbox right now. You've talked about a bunch of your experiences that transcend the companies you've worked at. So one quick question that actually, how do you make sure...so one of the biggest parts of this is making sure that you have a closed loop process, and a closed loop feedback system for Product. How do you make sure you do that from a Sales leader perspective? What does that stakeholder relationship look like? And kind of what's the cadence there?

David Katz:       Oh, that's a topic I can talk about for a long time. This is something I learned the hard way at Dropbox. Cause I would say I set myself back by thinking about it wrong early days. So, you have to realize that when you move into a role, at a certain stage, your idea of your teams changes the order of priority changes. And so this idea of like different teams. So there's the company team, there's your peer team, and then there's your team that you're responsible for. And you actually need to focus on developing relationships in that order. And also your decision making process has to, has to be in that order. So you have to ultimately, first and foremost as a senior leader, I don't care what your role is you have to do is right for the company, right? And for your customers. Even if that means, pushing back or deprioritizing things, that short term would be really beneficial to you and to your team. Right? You have to nail that. And if you don't, you're going to have a very short stay at on the Executive team. The second thing is you have to realize your second team is your peers. It's your cross functional partners, and they actually come before your team that you're directly responsible for. And that's a weird thing to say. And if you haven't been in that role yet, pay attention to it and you'll get, you'll feel what I'm talking about. And at some point in your career where your number one priority is understanding the motivations and the priorities of your partners in Marketing, and Product, in recruiting, really every function in the company, and that's your first team, and you need to support all of them. Even if it comes at deep Productizing things that would be important for your team and your team is shouting for, you have to support each other. And so when I learned early from the Dropbox experience, that carried over more successfully to my Intercom experience would be, make sure you are just very clear on your intentions, and why you have the beliefs that you do, and develop strong relationships built around trust with your partners. You need them to understand your motivations behind the things you're asking for, or that you are lobbying for with them. You're not always gonna see eye to eye on the roadmap, as an example. Or, from a Marketing perspective, the qualification criteria for opportunities. Or where you should be investing your SEM and SEO dollars. And so you need to know first and foremost that you're here to help them and make them successful. And you have to show them, through your actions, that you're willing to put their priorities and their interests ahead of your own teams. And so if you do that really well, you'll get to a place of like deep understanding of each other, and a good working relationship. And so, like I said, I said to myself back by coming in and kind of guns blazing and a little too aggressive in Dropbox, and I kinda came in a little too aggressive and it was like, we need to build this, then this, then this. And they were kind of like, Hi, yeah, I'm sorry, what's your name? You've been here for what a minute. So I didn't realize that there was a lot of work I needed to do there. And fortunately I was able to rebuild those relationships over time there, but it helped me get off to a faster start at Intercom. And so, so much of it is like how are we going to focus on the roadmap that I think is going to be the most beneficial to our current and future customers. And so you have to approach this as a partnership and ask them what type of input they want from you. You have to make sure that you have an input in their roadmap process. And I learned quickly that R and d teams are much more interested in hearing about problems to be solved versus solutions. Don't tell a PM or Head of R&D, Hey, I think this is what we should build. Like, that's not going to go well for you ever. But talk about customers. Ultimately all of us are passionate about our customers and want to see them be really successful. And no Product hears when the Product they have is painful to their customer, and not doing what they needed to do. And so get out of the way, and let the voice of your customer just come through very strongly. In fact, take your R&D leaders if you can on road shows, and have them just meet with prospective customers, current customers, and former customers, and just get out of the way. Don't voice your opinion, just let the voice come through directly to them. and you'll have a much more engaged, and much more open to feedback, partner within R&D.

Naber:  Love it. Excellent advice. Okay. moving into Intercom. Very natural transition and segue for us to leap into that. Why make the jump to Intercom? What were you responsible for? And I've got one more topic for us to chat about before we wrap up

David Katz:       Yeah. So, I used to get this question a lot when I was interviewing people at Intercom as well, and it was foremost my boss. So I was very fortunate, to first meet a woman that you know, Laurabeth Harvey, goes by LB. LB and I worked at LinkedIn in a bunch of capacities.

Naber:  Quick side story on this. I was LB's SD. Yes, that is how LB and my relationship started. I knew you love that.

David Katz:       That's so good. So yeah, so I was really fortunate to get to be exposed to and work with LB in a bunch of different capacities at my time together at LinkedIn. And then when I left, we stayed in touch. And if anything, our relationship got tighter. We would just start to compare notes, share war stories, I went to her for advice on a lot of things as I was trying to figure out what the heck I was doing at Dropbox. And I just always really respected her, and took so much away from every one of our conversations. Funny enough, like I had some catching up with her that, after eight incredible years at LinkedIn, she was starting to think about, potentially going and doing her own thing as a VP of Sales at an earlier stage company. And it just so happened that I had been reached out to by someone I knew at Intercom, who was doing the Executive search. And I was like...he started describing to me what he thought Intercom needed, and I was like, that's LB, that's my friend LB. I remember I immediately texted her and I'm like, Hey, this guy's going to reach out to you. return his call. And one thing led to another. And I think literally within like a month, I was doing a reference call for LB with Owen, the CEO of Intercom. And so she joined. And I never would've recommended she take that call if I didn't think that Intercom was an incredible Product, solving interesting problems, and like really on to something new, and nascent, and interesting. And so she joined, and then she spent the next couple of months trying to recruit me to come over. And pretty quickly her remit grew pretty substantially. She initially joined to lead direct Sales, and then for a number of reasons, she pretty quickly became responsible also for the customer support team globally, which was a pretty big team, as well as the self service business, and was responsible for the self-serve revenue as well. And so all of a sudden she had a lot more responsibility and it was like, I really need someone to come help me with this direct Sales component of this. And I was like, well, that sounds fun. I've only ever managed, led, and built Account Executive teams, and I've really only ever done it in North America. And so to have an opportunity to come in be responsible for the full stack, so to speak, of building a commercial team, from Sales Development, to Account Executives to, Account Managers, and success Managers, and Sales engineers, and getting to build new offices, and new countries, which is like too cool an opportunity to pass up. And to get to do it with a cool company with someone that I loved and respected, and had worked with previously, I was like, how can I not do this? So it wasn't really that, I felt my time had come to an end at Dropbox. It was more like, this is too cool of a thing to pass up. And they didn't fight me on it. I think when I laid out to my former boss at Dropbox why I was going to do it, he was kind of like, yeah, that sounds pretty awesome man. I'm gonna miss you man, and good luck.

Naber:  Very cool. LB amazing for so many reasons. so I love that story. I love the transition, and thanks for talking about, what you're responsible for. The last topic I want to talk to you about is best practices for building and maintaining those functions. You've had an interesting, spectrum that for in firsthand managing, all these different types of teams. Most the time people either inherit them or we'll take on one at a time. You have firsthand and frontline managed, and ultimately managed leaders of, all these different teams. So let's hop through them, and just talk about maybe one or two best practices for building and managing that team and the mindset you should have. and that's the last topic I want to talk about. So Sales Development, one or two best practices for building and managing those teams. So Sales Development, Account Executives, Account Managers, success Managers and Sales engineers. Sales Development first. One or two best practices as well as a mindset you should have when building and managing those teams.

David Katz:       Yeah. So, and this kind of applies to all roles. I'll take a half step back is, at some point in our careers you get to a place where you're responsible for things that you are not an expert in whatsoever. And that can be kind of scary, but like embrace it because it's true of anyone. Like you're going to get to a level where you're like, yeah, I have no idea how this thing works, but I'm now responsible for it. And it's an exciting and terrifying proposition. And so the first thing I would say is, that's okay. You're not alone. And everyone gets to a point in their kind of journey and career where they ultimately might have that situation. So the best thing to do in that situation is, hire people who know what the hell they're doing. The first thing I would say is, and this is what's really scalable, and it's surprising cause it seems so simple, but so many companies get this wrong from my, my experience, is hire in really senior leaders that will scale and build that function for you. And so really make sure, like, this is what I did when I started building out a Sales engineering team at Intercom. You know, I had worked with Sales engineers, I knew what a great Sales engineering partner looks like, but I didn't know how to build that function. I didn't know what the right KPIs were. I didn't know what the right comp plans were. Like, I had no idea. And I was fortunate to have some friends that led those functions that I could rely on early days, and be like, all right, what the heck do I do here? Like, how does this work? But the sooner you can go and just hire us subject matter expert in, who's an incredible leader, who's probably overqualified for the role in the short term, convincing them to come onboard is the right thing to do because that person will scale that, not function for you. So that would be my first piece of advice is like, you're going to find a certain situation, like go hire an expert. And then just trust them. Like, let them run, create a framework for them, but just to let them go and do their thing. And if you've hired really well, like you're going to be fine. So that's what I would say. But back specifically to Sales Development. Like what are you looking for? Again, I would focus more on the leaders then, versus the reps and individual contributors. So I would think about what are the really important skill sets you need for these different roles for frontline or Manager of experience. To me, Sales Development is operational excellence. You need math whizzes. Like I think there's obviously an art to it, but there's also science, and you need data junkies. Like you really want leaders who love looking at conversion rates, open rates, response rates, measuring every little piece of the funnel, and the top of the funnel, and also really have an interest in Marketing, and Digital Marketing, and can develop strong working relationships with your Marketing partners. Like focus on people who look and feel like that, have that expertise, and they'll really help you scale that function. For Account Executives, it's not to say that operational excellence isn't still really important, but I would say look for very strong coaches. I think the mistake a lot of people make is they hire people who are really high performing in their own right as individual contributors and as reps. And like, I just don't think that translates often into people who are going to be amazing leaders. So you need to focus on finding people who are like exceptional coaches, really good listeners, very situationally aware, have very high emotional intelligence and self-awareness, and are very strong when it comes to hiring. You can test for all those things when you're interviewing people. But for AE's, and also for that matter, for Account Managers, that's who you need. You need really amazing coaches. And that's the areas I would focus on, those leaders, in your early days, is look for those softer skills and those people will be very successful. As long as you're getting the right guidance. For Customer Success and for Sales Engineering, they're more technical roles. And so you also now are looking for people who have a strong affinity for, and love for Product. And kind of geek out on Product, and they're builders, and they're tinkerers in their own right. And those are things that you see come through in their experience, and things they like to spend their time doing outside of work. And so I think, you need to look for people who are very biased towards Product, and working closely with Product, geek out on it, and are very excited about it. And blend that together with like an amazing ability to be good coaches and be strong people leaders. And if you look for those things across the different functions, you're gonna do well, and you'll be successful. And you'll also be more confident that you can be outside of your bounds of experience, and that those people are going to be doing the right things. I think something I see people do all the time is, when they hire people into disciplines where that's not their area of experience, their domain, their just like so paranoid about it, and they spend way too much time worrying about whether or not, are we doing the right things? Is this person really good? Is Our team really good? It's like, no. Define on paper and get feedback from others on what you're looking for, make sure you're clear on the on the skills you want in that leader, but then just them, let them run and do their thing.

Naber:  Awesome. I have one more - what I think is a quick question - around, picking companies. You've done an amazing job, and this is a good transition for your move to Tessian, you've just gone through this process recently. You've done an amazing job of picking great businesses to work with at the right time, for both your experience, as well as what you can stretch and learn on, as you grow into the scope of the role and as you take it on. What are some of your career navigation and picking company best practices or tips that you have for doing the same?

David Katz:       So first and foremost, look to the team. And if you are considering joining an early stage company as the VP of Sales, or in any leadership capacity, first and foremost, it's the team. And I think the older you get, the more experience you have, the more you know what's personally important to you. And I think what you're solving for later in life is more, the people I'm working with and for, do they have the same philosophical beliefs and values that I have? That's what I would tell you to look for first and foremost. Do these people believe in the similar things and put the same weight on things are just like so important to me. And I tell them all the time, like the older I get, the fewer things really matter to me, but the things that do matter me matter exponentially more. And so really you start getting a sense of what are your core things you must have. And you can start asking and testing for those. So first and foremost, I would say that. Second then is, it depends on what you're going for, but if you like playing this crazy game of high growth company like, you want to be doing it at a company that has like massive upside. Like, I think it's silly to say that anyone who's joining as an Executive at an earlier stage company isn't financially motivated. Like, I want this thing to be big. I have very meaningful equity and I want to see that come to fruition for me and for my family. And so like you need to find places where you actually think that company has a chance. And so I think what you're looking for is big market opportunity. Like don't look for niche companies, look for companies that can sell their Products or Services to massive audiences. Second, the Product or service has to be something that is like to you when you hear it and you learn about it, like this is so straight forward, why is no one ever done this before? Like, anytime I've felt that way, that's when I made a career decision. And that was true at Dropbox, Intercom, and Tessian. It's kind of like, this seems so simple. Why has no one done this? And then you start digging in, you realize like, oh, this is really hard. But if you have an initial reaction, this is so simple, why haven't we done this? Like this seems such like such an obvious problem to solve. Then you're on to the right thing. And the last thing I would say is look for problems to be solved, not for feature functionality. The way you go to market, and the way that Product is sold will change and morph so much as you learn more about how's this going to resonate in the market? But like, if the Executive team that you're joining is focused on what problems they're looking to solve, and you believe that that's a big market opportunity to solve those problems, that no one's really done that before, or these are just new problems with the evolution of technology and the way we work, and that these are just new problems that need to be solved, that no one's thought about them yet. Like, then you're probably on this something. And so that's the last thing I would say, and the plug I would say for Tessian, is when I met Tim and Ed, our cofounders - our CEO and CTO - I was blown away by them. And I realized like, we just saw the world very similarly in terms of our values, and the things that informed our decision making, and what we were willing to make concessions on and what we weren't. And I just was like, so blown away by them and could really envision working well with them. And because if you're joining company this stage, like there's going to be times where you're celebrating, there's gonna be times when you're banging your head against the wall being like, what do we do now? And it's going to be hard. And you really want to feel as you're coming in as the VP of Sales, that you're going to be supported. And that you guys are in this together, and that you're going to work together through the hard times and figure things out. And if you don't feel that way, keep looking. That would be my final advice.

Naber:  Hey everybody, thanks so much for listening. If you appreciated and enjoyed the episode, go ahead and make a comment on the post for the episode on LinkedIn. If you love The Naberhood Podcast, we'd love for you to subscribe, rate, and give us a five-star review on iTunes. Until next time - go get it.