Navigating Financing & Startups: Mary Grothe

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Narrator

At a crossroads of uncertainty and opportunity. How do you navigate forward? This podcast focuses on making smart choices in a rapidly changing world. We investigate the challenges of being at a crossroads and finding opportunities that arise out of disruption. Listen in on future forward conversations with the brightest luminaries, movers and shakers. Let's navigate forward together and create what's next.

00;00;25;13 - 00;00;49;18

Lisa Thee

Hello everyone. My name is Lisa Thee and I'll be your host today for the Navigating Forward podcast. One of my favorite hobbies in life is collecting experts and thought leaders and learning as much as I can from them to be able to influence how I get my goals accomplished. And today, I have the honor of bringing in Miss Mary Grothe, who runs the House of Revenue and does all the things as a female founder.

00;00;49;18 - 00;01;16;13

Lisa Thee

And I am incredibly impressed by the way that she helps companies that are scaling up to grow their revenue, both from a marketing and sales perspective to help them accomplish their goals. There's so many things out in the world that maybe wouldn't have been successful without somebody that helped them to define and accelerate their sales operation process. And there's many companies that can look to Mary and her team for their value that they bring to brought to the world because they can tell their story better.

00;01;16;13 - 00;01;40;16

Lisa Thee

So welcome to the podcast, Mary. I'm so jazzed to be here. So thank you for the invite. Wonderful. So with that, do you mind telling us a little bit about your background, where you're from, and how you think that may have influenced where you've gotten to in your career?  

00;01;40;19 - 00;02;00;23

Mary Grothe

Oh yeah. Heavily influenced. I'm going to give you the Reader's Digest here because I'm such a talker and I could take up this whole time sharing my story. I'll be cognizant of not doing that. But I grew up in the performing arts in Northwest Indiana, a super cool upbringing as far as at an early age, learning to be on stage and learning about production value and like how that facet helped me tremendously in a sales career because I'm just not afraid to speak. I also love keynote speaking.

00;02;00;23 - 00;02;23;22

Mary Grothe

I love being in the spotlight, but I also understand what it takes to produce a great product. So that circle back to that in a second. I also had another side to my childhood, which was a bit challenging, being raised by an alcoholic mother and a family full of abuse and manipulation and a lot of not so great things happening in the household.

00;02;23;25 - 00;02;48;24

Mary Grothe

The qualities that came from that taught me to be a survivor, to be a creative problem solver, to handle adversity, to persevere or to fight. And those qualities have helped me tremendously in both a sales career and as an entrepreneur. I never had to have plan B. I trusted myself, my capabilities to overcome, to fight through, persevere and make things happen.

00;02;49;00 - 00;03;07;29

Mary Grothe

I was given a gift, I think, growing up that way. Now, I had an interesting thing happen at 18. I was trained to be a professional dancer. I had a scholarship for CU Boulder. I grew up in the arts. Dance was my favorite of my three triple threat skills. I got in a car accident and I couldn't dance.

00;03;07;29 - 00;03;29;03

Mary Grothe

It took that dream away. I entered into four years and there was also the period of time when I separated from my family. I was a lost soul and had no idea what my identity or purpose on this planet was. And somebody saw potential in me and they gave me a sales administrative support position with a Fortune 1000 payroll in our company for two years.

00;03;29;06 - 00;03;52;12

Mary Grothe

I learned the ropes. I studied sales. I got to go out in the field with the sales team and I made it known I wanted a spot on that sales team. It didn't have a college degree. It didn't have professional experience, but they put me in anyway. And within 30 days of being a B2B mid-market SaaS in-service sales rep, I became the top rep and I maintained that title for two and a half years of selling.

00;03;52;14 - 00;04;21;19

Mary Grothe

I sold millions in revenue In my first year, my quota was 150,000. I sold 758 K, which was more the number two and three combined. The second year they cut my territory in half. They doubled my quota and asked me to train reps and managers across the country, which I proudly did and not only did I help elevate the performance of dozens of reps across the country and allow that division to reach a whole new level of success, but I also sold 850,000 that year.

00;04;21;21 - 00;04;42;01

Mary Grothe

As I ventured into my third year. I started to feel a pool that maybe I had a bit of an entrepreneurial fire inside of me. I took a VP of sales and marketing position with one of my clients who was a startup, and I helped to quadruple the size of the company in seven months. At that point I said, I want to do this for a living.

00;04;42;04 - 00;05;05;00

Mary Grothe

At 27 or 28 years old, I can't remember how old I was. I started my first consulting company and it was called Butterfly Creative. I was a business strategist and a go to market strategist for entrepreneurs and startups. I helped 36 business owners in three years, all of them to get to a point of profitability and then recruit, replace myself and build a great team to take over for me.

00;05;05;02 - 00;05;30;09

Mary Grothe

During that time, I was a rookie entrepreneur. I didn't know how to price for my services. I didn't know how to delegate. I didn't know how to say no. And I reached burnout and a very poor burnout. By the way, I had shiny object syndrome. I ended up creating a kids TV and radio show called Million Dollar Butterflies to help build a foundation in our youth for entrepreneurship, money and business and understanding those three components.

00;05;30;11 - 00;05;46;17

Mary Grothe

But I ended up going broke. So I also met my now husband, and we decided that I was going to go back to Paychex, the payroll company, for three more years, sell millions, make a lot of money, let's buy a house, get married, have a girl, get married, buy a house, have a baby in that order. We did.

00;05;46;20 - 00;06;08;03

Mary Grothe

And then in 2017, I sold one of the top ten largest deals in history. And I took that six figure commission check. I started another company called Sales BQ, and my heart was in finding companies and a little bit more established than startups or second stage growth companies already accomplished their first 1 million had proof of concept and viability in the market and then helping them build their sales.

00;06;08;03 - 00;06;29;22

Mary Grothe

Org and that quickly shifted. After about 18 months, we realized that the buyer had changed since I last sold, and it wasn't about finding the sales unicorn that could do sales from start to finish, build their own prospect lead list, do all their prospecting manually, build out their full sales success on their own. Those people just they're just not in sales anymore.

00;06;29;22 - 00;06;54;17

Mary Grothe

They're very hard to find. And so we doubled down. We grew the size of our company and we organically grew a marketing services offering as well as a out, an outsource revenue operations offering with by the close of three years. So just this last end of 2020 when we closed out our third year, we rebranded from sales BQ to House of Revenue after we had nine successful what we call full service clients.

00;06;54;17 - 00;07;20;27

Mary Grothe

So they subscribed to us for a completely fractional revenue team for marketing, sales, customer success, revenue operations, those nine companies on average we doubled their Emrah within ten months. The average investment they made in our services was about 150 K and we groom 3.2 million on average. As we're hitting this new year, we are dedicating ourselves to those second stage growth companies between about two and 20 million that have plateaued their stock.

00;07;20;27 - 00;07;37;02

Mary Grothe

They don't know how to get to the next level and they're willing to make that investment to scale. So that's who we are. That's my story. And I have a beautiful four year old son and the most amazing husband. What else do you want to know?  

00;07;37;02 - 00;08;02;06

Lisa Thee

Well, I learned a lot in that story. Even though we've had a chance to cross paths in the past. Mary, I didn't realize we were both Midwesterners originally. I knew that we were both female founders coming into this conversation, but I didn't know that we were both working moms as well. So really inspirational. What you've been able to accomplish through this, these transitions. Do you mind sharing a little bit about what you learned along the way to help spare others from wasting time on things that helped contribute to your burnout over time?

00;08;02;09 - 00;08;28;04

Mary Grothe

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Lots of lessons here. Why not get your priorities right and it's okay to do it different than how most people you know do it. So example when I was scaling sales vacuum, I was working 100 hours a week. I was traveling almost every single week. I had a 15 month old son when I started the company and I decided to allow my husband to raise our son.

00;08;28;04 - 00;08;53;11

Mary Grothe

And that was the wrong answer, just in case anyone needed me to clarify that. But I used it as an excuse. But I'm scaling a company, so therefore it's okay because that's what you do. So I believed that and I ran for two and a half years at a million miles a minute. By the way, I was scaling a company our own so quickly that we had a lot of a lot of rookie mistakes.

00;08;53;14 - 00;09;12;25

Mary Grothe

We didn't build the infrastructure we needed to. We didn't clarify our own internal systems and processes. We had terrible new hire, onboarding and training. And as a result of those, I created more work for myself because I had fires to put out constantly. I had client engagements, I had to jump into all the time and it was the wrong way of doing it.

00;09;13;02 - 00;09;31;17

Mary Grothe

So when the pandemic shutdown happened in March 2020 and we lost 60% of our revenue over a three day period, which is maybe the worst three days of my life, as I watched everything I had sacrificed for over two and a half years, literally just come crashing down around me in three days. I didn't know when the bleeding was going to stop.

00;09;31;17 - 00;09;50;26

Mary Grothe

I thought we were going to lose it all. And I was sitting on the floor with my husband and my son looking at them. And two things happened. One, I didn't even recognize my own kid. I was looking at his face for the first time. So ultra present in the moment because even though I was around my son, I was always distracted mentally.

00;09;50;26 - 00;10;12;08

Mary Grothe

I was always thinking about things of the business. I was always on my phone or my computer. When I realized it had been probably two and a half years since I just sat down and without any other distraction or anything else on my mind and actually looked at my kid and the TV was illuminating his face. We're see on the floor and I'm looking at my he's so grown up, I don't even know my own son.

00;10;12;15 - 00;10;41;05

Mary Grothe

And that was a knife just straight into the stomach. And I realized I did this wrong. And I don't it doesn't matter the success that I had in scaling the company, because if I don't have success at home first in with myself and my marriage in the things that are non-negotiables and so important, nothing else matters. And so I made a commitment that day that I restructured my priorities and my life has never been better by restructuring my priorities.

00;10;41;08 - 00;10;58;20

Mary Grothe

We have now a set schedule for me. I work 9 to 4, Monday through Friday. I have breakfast with my son every day I take him to school. I have not traveled once in now over a year and I'm off by four so I can pick up my son. I make a great dinner for my family. I'm present.

00;10;58;20 - 00;11;18;23

Mary Grothe

If I do have work to do in the evenings, I do it after my son goes to bed and if I have a couple of hours on the weekend, that's fine. But ultimately I am so hyper involved in focus now with my family, my marriage, my son. And guess what? Great things come from that because now I'm more rested, I'm better, I invested in myself and now I'm better for others around me with our company.

00;11;18;23 - 00;11;46;13

Mary Grothe

And we lost all that revenue. We had to say goodbye to a few team members, but when we rebuilt, we had the time, the energy and the focus. And now the commitment to building infrastructure systems and processes that were life giving within our company, we rebuilt it so that not only I could have time back with my family and not be a workaholic, but we rebuilt it for all of our employees to build a culture where everybody gets that same time, not just me, because I'm the CEO, but every employee can work from anywhere.

00;11;46;20 - 00;12;04;25

Mary Grothe

They make their own hours. It's all flexible. They have all the time in the world for their passions, their hobbies, their kids, their spouses, significant others, whatever it is that's going to make them super incredible human beings and fulfilled, not have to wait till they retire to find a way to be fulfilled, but to actually be fulfilled while they work for us and then do great work for our clients.

00;12;05;02 - 00;12;23;09

Mary Grothe

But then we are the biggest we've ever been. So we hit 2.2 million in our third year. We had 26% EBITA, which is the most profit I've ever driven for any of my ventures, of my you know, that I've run my two companies in any year. And I finally had this piece inside of me that it can be done and I am a working mom.

00;12;23;14 - 00;12;50;06

Mary Grothe

And so hopefully this message is really resonating with female founders. You do not have to sacrifice. I am living walking proof that you can have it all. You can commit to it all and you can commit to yourself and be good to yourself at the core of it so that I can spread to these other areas.  

00;12;50;09 - 00;13;10;12

Lisa Thee

I'm so grateful that you feel comfortable to be vulnerable enough to share your story at this stage, Mary Because I'm sure it was a painful moment that you had to live through. I myself can relate to the impacts of burnout. After an 18 year in corporate America career in corporate America, I got very close to that edge myself and had to have some of those tough choices in my own mind. And I think it's so wonderful that you can share that directly. And as the wonderful Maya Angelou says, when you know better, you do better.

00;13;10;12 - 00;13;32;24

Lisa Thee

And it sounds like from the moment that you knew there was something more out there, you created it. I love that. Why? If I had not heard that quote, oh, my gosh, that is brilliant. Pure, pure brilliance in that quote. So you talked about leveraging and rebuilding your organization in a way that is aligned with the human experience of this digital transformation. Can you talk a little bit about how you're using technology processes, training, all the things to accomplish your goals and help make your company scale up?

00;13;32;24 - 00;13;59;12

Mary Grothe

Yeah, of course. Wow, what a big miss that was early on and it was short sighted. I was looking at the panel and not wanting to invest in technology because it's an extra added expense and I wanted to bootstrap and I wanted to be as lean as possible and that's wrong.

00;13;59;15 - 00;14;28;23

Mary Grothe

And now I have great empathy when our clients have that same mindset and they're super apprehensive and investing in technology and automation and more infrastructure, I'm like, No, listen to me. I was nervous too. And even our accountant and CPA slash like factual CFO, I love them and even even Matt was telling me like your investments in this technology, like it's huge for a company of your size and almost advising against it.

00;14;28;23 - 00;14;51;03

Mary Grothe  

I'm like, Now hear me out. And I walked through each of the technologies that we've implemented and shown how it makes us so much more efficient and produces better results. So our talent is very expensive. Our and we sell. I mean, if you look at our service, we sell talent, we sell people and my team goes to work for a company for 6 to 8 months and skills them.

00;14;51;05 - 00;15;12;28

Mary Grothe

Well, I have to employ the best, brightest, most brilliant talent that I can find. And they're not cheap, rightfully so. Like they've earned the opportunity to not be cheap. So I have to create that for them internally. But then I have to make investments on top of that to bring in technology is in order to streamline their work.

00;15;12;28 - 00;15;35;17

Mary Grothe

So can I give you one thing I would love to hear all the examples is if you can help spare any business leaders from making things harder than they need to be. I think we've we've done a service today. Okay, great. So I'll give you a couple of examples then. Since you asked so nicely would we look at our old processes?

00;15;35;17 - 00;16;04;05

Mary Grothe

I was adverse to spending money on project management tools. I really felt like these people are smart, they're talented, they're organized, they can manage their own projects Well, okay, when you're three people, maybe that's an okay answer. But something happens when you get to five employees, eight employees, ten employees. We're now 13 employees. Is I can't from a leadership perspective, if I don't have visibility into the key metrics I care about on projects, guess what I do?

00;16;04;09 - 00;16;26;06

Mary Grothe

I have to waste time of my team members to ask them for data and reports and what's happening and movement. I can save them that time as well as my own time by being able to have a technology that I can see and see all the key metrics. And then when I am asking for their precious time of the day, which by the way, is very well split up amongst their own three clients.

00;16;26;06 - 00;16;49;13

Mary Grothe

So I don't want to waste their time because they make our company a lot of money and they make their clients a lot of money. So I don't mean to waste their time by asking them information that I could have access to if I just had a platform that would. How is that information? Big realization point. Therefore, we were on free tools of Asana and Trello and employees had their preference on which one they were using.

00;16;49;14 - 00;17;13;19

Mary Grothe

We weren't using paid versions. And then finally, with our new SVP of Marketing, who joined us in summer of 2020, he just brought us Basecamp. And now we have not only pure visibility into every step of the process, but this is cool. Every step of the process is now structured and automated. So one example we have a new client process.

00;17;13;22 - 00;17;32;14

Mary Grothe

The new client process before was manually managed by the lead VP on the engagement. We would have a pre kickoff meeting internally. We'd have a checklist. We sent the client to review all the documents ahead of time and then we would build out the kickoff deck. We'd meet internally to do a dry run through on that. We'd schedule everything with the client.

00;17;32;14 - 00;18;01;04

Mary Grothe

We run the kickoff with the client, then we schedule multiple deep dives, afterward deep dives, then we have to compile that information, build our audit gap analysis, practice the gap analysis internally, get executive approval from me on what we're presenting, then run the gap, then align on the gap with the client, then build the implementation plan. There are so many moving parts and pieces and now there's three or four people on a project team and I'm sitting here with expectation of will they know what they're doing, they know how to do it.

00;18;01;04 - 00;18;27;00

Mary Grothe

They can just do it very well. Now, Mary, you do you have a video camera in my personal home office once every workday that is so relate Ball Yeah. So now we automate it and guess what? You put the structure in base camp and then it just so kindly alerts you. It's like, oh, reminder for the next step of this project is to and then nothing's missed.

00;18;27;02 - 00;18;49;07

Mary Grothe

So here's a cool pro tip for CEOs. Find out what triggers you and makes you mad and then put in a system to solve for it. So does it frustrate you and make you mad? Can I tell you what made me mad? Early stages as a CEO? Clients not paying their invoices. Number two, employees dropping the ball in missing steps of the process drives me crazy.

00;18;49;09 - 00;19;06;11

Mary Grothe

Those can both be automated. You can put systems in place to avoid that happening. And if it's worth your sanity, I to learn this the hard way as a CEO, when you get triggered and go into a negative emotional state, it can throw off the whole rest of your day. It can throw out the way you communicate to your team.

00;19;06;18 - 00;19;31;04

Mary Grothe

It can interrupt that professional calmness that leader should exude with their team. It's like, holy cow, the snowball effect something is powerful is just putting in a system more technology. Oh, such a breath of fresh air. Oh, I think we could all use some more fresh air these days. What a wonderful tip. So what I think I heard from you is you're leveraging tools and there are some free tools that you mentioned, like Trello.

00;19;31;06 - 00;19;53;06

Mary Grothe

And then I heard some paid tools like Basecamp. I've also heard JIRA is is frequently used in that space. So it's nice to know that other smart innovators have thought about this and have created some ways to accelerate the impact of leaders while also being gentler on their teams and being clear on expectations. It's really cool for automated invoicing.

00;19;53;12 - 00;20;26;12

Mary Grothe

Do you have any recommendations? It sounds like that was the other place where you've had some good success. Yeah, we just decided to rely more on QuickBooks and we love QuickBooks. It's a great tool for us. And lo and behold you can set up automated recurring invoices and be able to auto bill, have credit cards, and there's ways to work through it that I wasn't willing to explore before, and I didn't want to accept credit cards because I didn't want to have automatically 3% just taken out of our bottom line.

00;20;26;14 - 00;20;50;15

Mary Grothe

Yet I was willing to have manual reminders and conversations and waiting for checks and driving around town to pick up tracks and then drive them to the bank. And if that isn't worth 3% of our time, I don't know what is. And then I was able to also find ways within the pricing of the engagement to absorb some of that 3% fee through if people will prefer to pay, you know, via credit card, you can tack on some more.

00;20;50;15 - 00;21;11;22

Mary Grothe

But there were ways to work through that and the simplicity of it. Yeah, it's a life saver. I mean, just moving to the fact of saying we don't accept checks anymore. Game changer. Do you know, like it's is life giving, life giving. I don't know how many places I've gone and how many calls I've had to make and how many emails about where that stinkin check is. And it's not like malicious, you know, people not wanting to pay. Was it a bad thing? It does. They're busy. Two in checks are super manual and they're slow. And it's like, no, people have been automating payment processes every day.

00;21;11;22 - 00;21;56;02

Lisa Thee

So, Mary, I think that a lot of people could really use some demystification of marketing and sales because especially people that tend to launch companies or evolve into leadership positions within large companies, often at least the technology field come from more of a technical background and maybe don't have the full understanding or appreciation for the art that goes into the marketing and selling process. Do you mind explaining it in a way that somebody that doesn't work in this field, day in, day out, could understand?

00;21;56;05 - 00;22;30;02

Mary Grothe

Yeah, I have to just try to make this as simplistic as possible and then I'll elaborate for somebody who's as passionate and committed and understanding to engineering their willingness to for R&D and to make investments in the technology or the product itself, their ability to see the roadmap for it and the vision and align with customer feedback in going into V1 v2 v three and making in that premiere product.

00;22;30;04 - 00;22;54;04

Mary Grothe

There are people that exist in this world that have the same understanding and passion and ability to execute on marketing and sales. And just because if you're a founder that favors the technical or engineering side of the conversation, you will. I'm telling you right now, you will always struggle to be able to see the same amount of value in the marketing and sales side because you're just not built that way.

00;22;54;04 - 00;23;31;21

Mary Grothe

It's not in your DNA the exact same way a founder who is predominantly stronger on the marketing and sales side will struggle. And thank you. I'm raising my hand as well, will struggle on the detail and the technical aspects of a product offering and making sure that systems are created in order to be flawless in the creation of it and the delivery and the execution that is why most often you see pairs, whether it's co-founders or you have your your CEO or president, and their first strategic hire is who they are, not teamwork and teamwork, Correct?

00;23;31;23 - 00;23;54;16

Mary Grothe

Don't hire somebody else that looks like you, talks like you, speaks like you, thinks like you. You have to hire for the opposite mean make sure you guys like each other can get along, but you have to hire for the opposite talent. So what we often find with founders is they're either the technical founder or they're the visionary guru, and they can, you know, whatever those things are, sell ice to an Eskimo or whatever job to us doesn't like sales.

00;23;54;18 - 00;24;16;09

Mary Grothe

It's lovely. As a CEO and it's an incredibly valuable skillset. And once you're not the person in front of your customers anymore because you've grown past your your list of contacts, you have to start thinking through how do you put processes in place to help people succeed that that you bring up with you, Right? Yeah, that's exactly right.

00;24;16;09 - 00;24;36;29

Mary Grothe

And without that, you're going to continue to invest in your product or technology and it's going to be the best on the market, but absolutely no one will know about it. And that's a problem. And it goes both ways. So speaking more to that technical founder, I had a keynote once called a Founder Subconscious Fear to Revenue Growth, and I love the keynote.

00;24;36;29 - 00;25;01;14

Mary Grothe

I think I had more laughs in that keynote from founders because it was all true. I'm resonating. I advise for four or five startups today, and I'm typically the one that's coming in with the technical founder having some of these conversations, and I do hear a lot of fear of success. I think that's a very common thing, especially with the more technical the founder is.

00;25;01;16 - 00;25;31;07

Mary Grothe

Well, there's apprehension as well because they need a mathematical equation. They can't make a decision until they see a mathematical equation. Unfortunately, marketing and sales, whereas some people like you and I can be exceptional in data driven process and methodologies. It's not a mathematical equation. If it was, more people would be billionaires out there. The fact of the matter is, is the combination of art and science, there's a process and there's a methodology.

00;25;31;12 - 00;25;54;03

Mary Grothe

You can process the crap out of your marketing and sales, but there is an execution component that has more variables in determined on the actual art of the delivery that could be in written messaging, that can be in the cadence of your sequencing. It could be in the way that salespeople are engaging with prospects. It could be how your website is set up to attract customers, excuse me, to convert the customers that have been attracted to your website.

00;25;54;10 - 00;26;16;02

Mary Grothe

It could be the way the language that you're reaching out to your market through different channels, be it social media, paid organic SEO content, broadcast strategies like this podcast or webinars, panels, traditional advertising, being on radio, a billboard, TV advertising. There's an art in the way the message is delivered in a way to create an emotional connection with your brand.

00;26;16;08 - 00;26;39;10

Mary Grothe

Technical founders struggle because that type of understanding doesn't exist within their own DNA, an ethos of being just as the people who are exceptional in the creative aspect, in that art of delivery and marketing and sales typically struggle to systematize it, put data behind it, and believe that marketing should have a direct correspondence in how it makes your money.

00;26;39;12 - 00;27;14;29

Mary Grothe

And so there has to be a marriage between the two. So my top advice for the technical founder is to find a partner that has a proven track record someone like Liza, someone like us, somebody that's out in the market that's excited to come and work for you, or another agency that can truly speak your language and show you as best as possible a hypothetical equation of the variables and show you a reverse funnel on how many you need to attract to the brand through the top of funnel, the anticipated conversion rates and through what methods and then how sales is engaging in the middle of the funnel and making it more of a combined

00;27;14;29 - 00;27;34;13

Mary Grothe

effort between marketing and sales. And then what is converting into demo step proposal and then through the funnel, but then it can't stop. Then you have to look at the whole other side of this, which is customer success. And so many times founders and CEOs, when they're initially building out their revenue plan, they they're like, all we care about is winning the business.

00;27;34;13 - 00;27;54;12

Mary Grothe

But what are you doing from a client success to a point where most of the opportunities, when we go and engage with the client, we will find a million, two, three, four, 5 million sitting in their current client base of revenue that is unsold because they don't have revenue expense expansion plans. Many of them will have a low penetration rate.

00;27;54;12 - 00;28;14;20

Mary Grothe

So they have a theory of land and expand, get the client on one or two products or a single transaction, but then they're not being marketed to for repeat purchases or expanding and upselling and buying others, cross-selling to potentially other lines of business within your company. And the most forgotten part, referrals. We're not creating brand ambassadors out of the client bees and leveraging that for referrals.

00;28;14;26 - 00;28;33;03

Mary Grothe

And so it's often so short sighted to just stop at that point. It's a big battle to get that technical founder to be excited about marketing and sales, but then to take them into the client experience and how much more revenue can be generated out of that client base. It's critical to the success of their skills.  

00;28;33;10 - 00;29;01;28

Lisa Thee

Mary I am ready to worship at the House of Revenue. That was so well put, so well thought out, and I see it when I turn left, when I turn right or whereas when I stare straight ahead and the companies that we all have, brands that we feel warm with, have really thought through how to put those processes in place. I think about companies like Nordstrom's or Costco or Tory Burch, the places where I feel an affinity to their brands because they make it such a wonderful customer experience.

00;29;01;28 - 00;29;32;07

Lisa Thee

And I think you really hit on a lot of things there. I also think it's an interesting inflection point right now with leveraging machines, with things like machine learning and artificial intelligence to be able to do more strategic and personalized sequencing of the customer journey through the process of making the decision. Do you have any experience with looking at different tools to help in that space around leveraging the data that you collect from your customers to give them that surprise and delight?

00;29;32;10 - 00;29;51;26

Mary Grothe

Yeah, I wish I was automated in machine learning. Maybe that's in our next interview. I'll tell you how I brought that into place to look at the trends in data. Right now, it's a manual process for us that is very important. We typically serve about nine or ten clients a year and we are looking at this. You're potentially taking that up to 12 or 13.

00;29;51;27 - 00;30;13;11

Mary Grothe

We will never compromise quality though, or take on a client that isn't a perfect fit for us. So we're not rushing to hit that number. But when we look at the data, we do care about the trends because I don't want my team to have to recreate the wheel ever. I don't want them to have to spend more time or energy working on something than another VP has already figured out.

00;30;13;13 - 00;30;30;23

Mary Grothe

And so every month we report on key metrics internally on every single one of our client projects. And it's meant to be Aha is for everyone on the team. And we take that data and we accumulate it because I have to look at trends and I typically care about the trends by industry and also the stage of the company.

00;30;30;26 - 00;30;49;24

Mary Grothe

So I want to be able to identify what we're seeing within those two categories. And based on that, I can then have benchmarks and it helps me in perspective, like conversations, because they're always asking like, when do we get the hour? Why? When do we get our why? And right now I have like more of a melting pot of our nine engagements from last year.

00;30;49;26 - 00;31;09;04

Mary Grothe

I can give them generalized numbers, but as now, we're starting to take the specific analytics. And I mean, and it's not just like macro. I'm talking about every marketing campaign that we run. It's what traffic are we driving? It's down to each tactics of marketing every channel that we have in place. How many people are we attracting to the brand?

00;31;09;04 - 00;31;36;01

Mary Grothe  

What is the engagement score? What is the conversion score? We're looking at marketing activations to marketing, attribution tracking. So how much do those activations contribute to revenue influenced or sold within the company? And we're looking for the trends, We're looking at open rates and click through rates and engagement scores. We're also looking at the quality of leads coming through through each channel because it's one thing to drive a whole bunch of inbound leads, but if they're not qualified, that's just another waste of everyone's time and a waste of money.

00;31;36;03 - 00;32;08;24

Mary Grothe

So it's really searching more for buyers that have intent to purchase and are pre qualifying themselves through the funnel. And there's an art to doing that more art talk. But then it's also getting into granular of how sales teams are engaging in the funnel. So for some of our more like Texas companies that you'll see an outbound sales model or they get BTR, SDR in steps and stages and getting an ACE involved account executives and others for Demos, you can look at pretty granular metrics on outreaches in the style of outreach they're doing, and then you can get even more granular.

00;32;08;24 - 00;32;33;25

Mary Grothe

The industries they're calling, looking at trends within those and the level of decision maker in the size of companies and geographic region. And so, yes, there's a ton in the data, but when you can properly analyze all of this, then you're smarter and you're faster and every next engagement and you're able to deliver better results. So for us, analyzing the data internally, 100%, I mean, we have to be able to do it, otherwise we're just never going to get better.

00;32;33;25 - 00;32;51;18

Mary Grothe

And so, yeah, we have to rely on it. So finally it's find me a tool that automates that. So you say you have found the math that inspires the technical leaders once they take the leap of faith to start the journey, you can come back with really hard numbers that really help them to tune and understand the value of what they're doing.

00;32;51;20 - 00;33;17;14

Lisa Thee

Yeah, that's exactly right. So, Mary, at this point in time, what achievement in your career are you most proud of?  

00;33;17;14 - 00;33;56;07

Mary Grothe

Yeah, well, there's a lot of achievements that I've had to this point, but honestly, they're quite meaningless to the achievements that I've read centered myself on personally. And it might be a little fufu and silly, but I'll be very transparent with you. I'm with the number one sales rep. I'm looking up the bookshelf. I have tons of crystal up there, all the awards and recognition, and I've broken so many records and at the end of my eight year sales, well, sorry, when I was 29, after all this success and the hundreds of thousands of dollars I was earning every year, I was empty and broken and very sad and lost and finding comfort in martinis and Cheetos at night, looking on dating apps and trying to figure out why my personal life was an absolute mess even though I had all this success.

00;33;56;08 - 00;34;17;06

Lisa Thee

Mary I think we would have been good friends at 29 if we had a martini. Like I overall might. I'll take my first place. Okay. But then I just realize, like, there has to be more than light to this than winning awards and being number one and having the accolades and caring so much about it. Do I think those things are special?

00;34;17;06 - 00;34;57;29

Mary Grothe

Yes. Do I think that the hard work and the achievements are fun and an amazing life and accomplishments? 100%. But is that my identity? No. And is that what people are going to remember me for when I'm no longer here? And the answer is no. And I'm so pleased that in my mid can I still say that I'm 37 but in my mid thirties you're in marketing, you can position things any way you want mid-thirties then that I've had an opportunity to have a reset button pushed in my life with against my will, and to acknowledge that those things are great and they are fun working for.

00;34;58;01 - 00;35;24;05

Mary Grothe

But something far greater in the best accomplishment that I'm starting to learn is that I can actually bring forth the light and the love to other human beings. And my team now has a commitment from me that I will express to them at the core of how much they are loved, cared for and valued as human beings, not just for the work that they do, but as humans.

00;35;24;05 - 00;35;45;17

Mary Grothe

And that well, I have them because I'm not a fool. And I know they will find other amazing things in their career in lifetime. But. Well, I have them. I understand the great responsibility that has been given to me of coaching, mentoring, developing and genuinely caring about their ability to then take that love and light and spread it further and to be great.

00;35;45;19 - 00;36;11;22

Mary Grothe

Additionally, within my family, my commitment as a mother and as a wife, I am now feeling richer, wealthier more fulfilled, full of joy. This is the greatest accomplishment I've ever had. Getting my flippin head on straight. Come to find out. You still win awards. The company still thrives. You still get amazing metrics. Your team members succeed, your family will succeed.

00;36;11;24 - 00;36;32;15

Mary Grothe

But shifting from me, being in the spotlight to it being I told you in the very beginning of this conversation, the value of understanding production, the people on the stage for as many people are on the stage or just as many behind the scenes, if not always making them and supporting them and allowing them to shine. And it's truly switching into that role.

00;36;32;15 - 00;37;04;09

Mary Grothe

And that's my commitment now, and it's the greatest success I've ever achieved. That is such a lifting and inspiring answer. Mary and I can very much relate. There's a book I had the opportunity to read back in 2017 called Present Over Perfect by Shauna Nordquist, and the one quote that always sticks out in my mind from reading that book as a burned out working mom who is bringing home scraps into every broom that I walked into and not my best self was I wake up worthy every day.

00;37;04;11 - 00;37;29;12

Mary Grothe

I don't have to. It's not on the line. I don't have to earn it. I can't lose it. You wake up worthy just by being the spirit and the soul that you are. Amen, sister. So it's it's funny. The things that we should all know that we extend to everyone else, but we don't give to ourselves until we have to slow down and really reflect, right?

00;37;29;15 - 00;38;02;15

Lisa Thee

Yeah, that's exactly right. So in my experience in life, most of my best lessons that I've learned have come through failures, not necessarily successes. Do you mind sharing one of your failures with us and how you navigated through it? How I so many to choose? Oh, let's go on the business side. We already did the personal stuff and we all know that your child loves you and your husband loves you and they forgive you for being a bit distracted for a year on business.

00;38;02;18 - 00;38;34;01

Mary Grothe

I have failed team members and that hurts through a a rough onboarding or recruiting and onboarding process. One of my biggest failures early on was recruiting the wrong people and then not having an onboarding or training program and then putting myself in this person in the worst awful awkward position to have to let them go. Which, by the way, is the hardest thing in my opinion, personally to do as a business owner.

00;38;34;01 - 00;38;54;14

Mary Grothe

I hate separating with team members because I genuinely love and care about people and it is my fault. It is. I own it and I think it is. One of the biggest lessons that I've learned is recruit the right talent first and be slow to recruit. Do not recruit. Do not wait until you need the hire to have the hire.

00;38;54;17 - 00;39;15;08

Mary Grothe

And what will happen then is you'll put the needs of the business ahead of the right recruiting process. That's a bad strategy. And so I think the greatest failure are the team members that I brought on with that had all the love and heart and passion to be a part of this mission. They were not the right fit.

00;39;15;11 - 00;39;37;25

Mary Grothe

And it was absolutely heartbreaking to have to separate with them. So and then also just to not have the perfect client experience as a result. So in my heart I have a value prop up and a mission for the CEOs that we serve. And I wasn't bringing on the right talent to make that happen. And as I mentioned earlier, then, it was causing me to have to work way more hours and be way more involved than I needed to be.

00;39;37;27 - 00;40;04;23

Mary Grothe

And so that was I would consider a failure. I think I let those people down and I didn't do right by them in the recruiting process. So that's that's unfortunate. Another failure that I had where I got burned is not having good contracts. And for the first year and a half of operating, I was doing business with a lot of people in our immediate community that I already knew, other CEOs that I've been dancing around in circles with for years.

00;40;04;23 - 00;40;28;24

Mary Grothe

There was mutual respect and relationship already in place and I didn't need a big contract. I had a one page loosey goosey agreement. It was pretty much just taking a picture of a handshake and slapped it on there and not even had any words written on it. And then I had my first client who did some pretty damaging things to our company, and I didn't have any leg to stand on.

00;40;28;26 - 00;41;00;08

Mary Grothe

And I consider that to be a failure because it was extremely damaging emotionally, but also to the team, the company, the bottom line, and it was a very hard circumstance to navigate through and it ended up in a legal battle and it was scary, quite honestly. So navigating through that and using that as a launching pad to be smart and put the right contracts in place and learn how to have conversations around expectations and contracts and not be fearful that having that kind of a strict contract would actually hurt.

00;41;00;11 - 00;41;21;00

Mary Grothe

Earning business is the kind of that belief system or fear mentality that I had, or the easiest pathway for them to say yes is I need to do. And then I wasn't protected. And so unfortunately that was very damaging to us. But we made it through and survived that. And now we have really great contract. Yes, I'm sure the contracts have improved and that's where strategic hires can also come in, right.

00;41;21;00 - 00;41;54;07

Mary Grothe

Is bringing in somebody that does understand the nuts and bolts of how do you protect the company and structuring those. So a very good lesson for all. Don't go cheap on your legal staff. And also, you know, the roles of compassionate leadership. I really love Jeff Weener from LinkedIn's thoughts on this, this area of compassionate leadership and how managing someone through, a situation where the fit isn't right, can be really a challenge, but it's necessary for them to have their integrity intact as well, right?

00;41;54;09 - 00;42;12;24

Mary Grothe

Yes, very much so. And that's something I also had to learn. And and it's tough, but it's the right thing to do. I mean, so it's like the right. What's it like? The right things are usually the hardest thing or whatever. I know I'm terrible. I save cliches, I get them all wrong. But I think I know what they are.

00;42;12;24 - 00;42;35;15

Lisa Thee

I just I'm always ready. Last but not least, I'd love to hear what is your why? What is your mission that brings your best self to work on the days when you're maybe not feeling as motivated as you want to be Feeling to get through the day?  

00;42;35;23 - 00;42;52;27

Mary Grothe

Yeah, it's just super simple. I'm an openly faith based CEO and I know that this is my God given talent, God given purpose, and I'm fortunate to be aligned with that. It's the easiest thing in the world. I've never been more fulfilled. I've never had more joy in my life. We've never had better results. Our employees have never been happier. My family has never been happier. And that was me like resubmitting, surrendering and committing to the Lord when that was shut down happened and saying, Whatever God you are for me, this is it.

00;42;52;27 - 00;43;09;06

Mary Grothe

And I'm on this path and I'm dedicated to that and aligned with it. And I make my commitments every single morning and all day throughout the day to stay on that path and allow me to get out of my own. And with that, I just believe he opens the doors that are meant for us. And it is my why and my purpose.

00;43;09;06 - 00;43;40;05

Mary Grothe

And I'm here to serve. And when that's no longer what's meant to be on the path for me, then the change will be made. And I'm open to that. But I'm here for that purpose. And I think when I lay my head down on the pillow at night, the good days are the days when I can confidently say that someone else's life is better because I'm in it, because of how I serve them, of how I am to them through encouragement, the light, genuinely caring about them, helping the progress, whether it's an internal employee, external clients that's meaningful to me, that people need allies, they need support, they need people to believe in them, they

00;43;40;05 - 00;43;58;22

Mary Grothe

need encouragement, they need empowerment enough in this world. It's just knocking people down and dividing people. And I'm flipping over it, like just start being nice to people for goodness sakes, and allowing them to be their best selves. So those are the nights where I just know, like I did what I was put on this planet to do today, and I can feel it in my inner core and soul.

00;43;58;22 - 00;44;20;24

Lisa Thee

And that's why I get up in the morning and have the energy I do. That's fantastic I often say to my family, the mantra of kindness doesn't cost a cent, by the way, for, you know, now I give it away. So with that in mind, I think everyone who is listening to this is probably feeling lifted and inspired and recommitted to what they're doing. So do you mind sharing with people where they can find you and keep tabs on what you're working on and how they could potentially collaborate with you if they're in need of the services that you provide?

00;44;20;24 - 00;44;39;26

Mary Grothe

Yeah, of course. So, Mary Grothe tag find me on LinkedIn House of revenue dot com that's another easy place Everything on there you'll figure out where to go.

00;44;40;02 - 00;44;59;15

Lisa Thee

Thank you so much for your time today Mary. Thank you for having me. What a joy. Thanks for listening to the Navigating Forum podcast. We'd love to hear from you. At a crossroads of uncertainty and opportunity. How do you navigate forward? We'll see you next time.

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