September 5, 2025 • 30 mins
Denny Burda provides a comprehensive guide to Customer Success, sharing the importance of building strong relationships and delivering value to clients over time. Discover best practices and real-world examples that can help organizations achieve lasting success with their customers. This episode is a must-listen for CCOs and anyone committed to elevating the customer experience.
Listen on Podbean:
https://brainworkframework.podbean.com/
Connect with Denny Burda:
Company website: www.riverconsultancygroup.co.uk
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/dennyburda
Connect with Chris Troka:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-troka-3a093058/
Website: https://focused-biz.com/
Website: https://christroka.com/ #brainwork #framework #business #playbook #customer #practices #advisory #expert
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
What I think on the flip side of thatbelief though, is what got someone
else there won't get you there.
So it is figuring out that balance ofwhat got us here won't get us there.
But if you deviate too far from thatpath, you're also not gonna get there.
So for entrepreneurs, founders,startups, you have to be so much
more methodical than you think, andbrute force will get you this far.
(00:22):
And then strategy, that isthe Darwinian side of it.
You can be a very big animalfor a very short time.
Big fish in a little pond.
And then suddenly you jump into the nextbiggest pond and you're the littlest fish.
Brute force isn't gonna work anymore.
You are listening to Brainwork Framework,a Business and Marketing podcast,
brought to you by Focused-biz.com.
(00:42):
Welcome back to another episode.
With us today is Denny Burda, theCCO of River Consultancy Group.
At River, they've created abespoke executive advisory agency
that is like a business in a box.
They built out a team of expertswho can speak deeply into the
challenges and opportunities thattoday's executives are facing and
help them succeed with strategicprograms and customized consultancy.
Denny so excited to have you on.
(01:03):
How you doing today?
Hey, Chris.
Thanks for having me.
That was a nice lead in there.
The full content.
I appreciate the intro.
Of course.
Absolutely.
And so excited to have you on.
We always like to ask ourentrepreneurs and our guests,
tell us about your journey.
What were you doing before that kindaled you into what you're doing today?
I.
Yeah probably a long and strangejourney compared to maybe
some of your other guests.
(01:24):
So straight outta university.
I actually spent about the first10 years of my career working in
nonprofits, NGOs things like that.
Wrapping that up actually, afterabout a decade, I was a project
manager in the Church of England.
So all over the place doing all sortsof things and really loved working
directly with people, supporting people,encouraging people, and it was very
(01:45):
rewarding work, just not financially.
So, once I hit my thirties and realizedit'd be nice to move out of a studio
apartment and things like that, Ibegan my journey into the SaaS world.
And I still remember my very firstmanager when I kind of asked for feedback
and how the interview went I said,you know what, what got me the job?
And they said, well, when you describedyour past experience, you said you
(02:06):
were really good at herding cats.
And they said that really translatedwell to kind of the customer facing side
of technology because it's dealing withyou have to learn to speak developer,
you have to learn to speak webpagedesigner, you have to learn to speak
the customer on the other end who maybe a CIO but actually doesn't even know
how to turn on their microphone fora meeting and everything in between.
(02:27):
So if you can bring all thattogether, you'll do just fine here.
And so that was the start of my journey.
Like I said, it's beenabout a decade in sas.
I was the first customer successmanager at an event tech company
that basically at the time ran prettymuch every event Microsoft did.
So if you attended a Microsoftevent between about 2000 and oh,
(02:50):
I don't know, 2006 and onwardI was probably there somewhere.
And that was the start of the journey.
And after years kind of worked my wayup in the customer success community.
I was a, yeah, started as a CSM, becamea manager of cs, then a head of cs
then the international head of cs.
And now I sit as CCO at River Consultancywith my partner James, who was also
(03:11):
my former boss at our last company.
I had actually moved on to work for acompany called Atlassian who I still
work for now but I really wanted tostart by wanting to support my friend.
I really believed in James and what hewas building with River and it started by
just helping with some content creationand a project here and there, and then,
it grew into, Hey, would you takeon a little bit more and a little
(03:32):
bit more and a little bit more?
And so maybe that's for mostentrepreneurs, that's really the
way you get into it is someone elsekind of pulls you in to the spot.
That got me here.
And yeah, I've been CCO of Riverfor probably about 14 months now.
Something around that.
Nice.
That's some incredible experience.
Just having different industries,different positions that you've worked
your way up into but obviously they sawyour value, everything that you brought
(03:54):
to the table to be able to get thesehigher positions and then eventually lead
other business leaders on what they'redoing wrong, what they're doing right.
And give them that higherlevel of consultancy.
'cause I can tell you forbusiness owners, CEOs.
As much as we feel like we have itall together, secretly we're all lost.
Right.
We're all trying to figure it out.
And maybe it's our pridethat gets in the way.
So you're helping them witha much needed service here.
(04:15):
Are there certain industriesthat you'd like to work with?
Yeah, so our sweet spot I thinkcoming from the tech side of things
is obviously SaaS working with,we work with SaaS founders, SaaS
executives and things like that.
You actually bring up a greatpoint because I think it was a
challenge when we first got started.
We've really had to refine what wedo for a long time because saying
(04:35):
where executive advisory is kind ofthe business acumen term of shooting
yourself in the foot because how manyexecutives really wanna be advised?
Especially when, when they meet me andI'm 10, 15 years younger than them,
or when they meet me and they go,oh, you were a customer success guy.
I'm a CIO.
What could you possibly teach me?
Or, I'm a founder.
Have you ever founded anything?
(04:56):
And I came to the realization notthat long ago, I'd say probably in
the past six months I bet Phil Jacksonplayed Michael Jordan one-on-one in
basketball, hundreds of times, maybethousands across their career together.
I'm guessing he beat him zero times.
And that's because what I'velearned is to advise somebody, to
coach somebody, to help somebodyget the most out of themselves.
(05:20):
Doesn't mean you have to bebetter than them at a thing.
It means you have to have set kind ofcurriculum almost, or set courses that
you're going through and walking through.
And so that's kind of a bit of whatwe're building at River is not things
to say, Hey, come listen to us.
In this sage wizard, Gandalf sortof way as an advisor but it's
actually saying, Hey, we're focusedon the things that we believe will
(05:42):
support you or the things that willhelp you in an area, in a skillset
Not because we're better sometimes, causewe've done that exact journey before but
because we're doing things that we believeare kind of tied in, tested and true.
And the things that work.
To keep the coaching analogy going.
If you're coaching Michael
jordan, you're coaching him on howto accelerate, bring the most, keep
(06:03):
the foundational mechanics therebecause when he wants to flip a
switch, he does something else.
If you're coaching Shaquille O'Neal,you're not gonna waste your time teaching
him to shoot free throws because youknow, he is never gonna make 'em.
Right.
So it's about what works with thatexecutive and what works with that leader.
As you said, we've worked with a lotof founders or executives of that
in that startup scale up space andthey were really good at something
(06:24):
to get to the point that they couldafford a consultant basically.
But that doesn't mean theywere an expert at everything.
Some of the founders we dealwith, they built their thing,
they built their system.
Sometimes from a technologicaltech stack point, they, they
built that new AI program or theybuilt that new video conferencing
system, they're incredibly smart
technically, don't ask meto build an AI tool for you.
It's not gonna go well for anyone.
(06:46):
But ask me how to develop yourgo-to-market strategy to support that
AI tool or ask me how to help you bea better communicator to the teams
because you're used to communicatingwith devs all day, not salespeople.
So that's really where rivers evolvedinto over the past year and a half.
And it came from a lot of ustrying to figure out all these
(07:06):
ways to say, how can we help you?
And them saying, no, Idon't want your help.
And maybe because my partner and I arejust too stubborn to accept No thanks
and in a closed door we kind of keptrefining what we've done until we've
kind of reached basically what is avery set amount of packages we offer.
And I like to be pretty transparent,so I also admit those are basically
(07:27):
Trojan horses into a lot moreconsultancy work a lot of the times
because we end up showing all thesethings and they know that's great.
I have no idea how to do that.
And we say, well, us orone of our partners does.
But that's also a bit of theconsultancy game for anyone who's out
there thinking it is have two thingspeople want and 20 things they need.
Right.
Absolutely.
But it makes sense to me tobring in that experience because
(07:47):
oftentimes the leaders, the CEOs,the founders we have blind spots.
We've only seen what we've seen.
So to have an objective neutral thirdparty come in who has worked with
many other founders and businesses,they're bringing all that experience,
what worked, what didn't work.
And then they can advise you onwhat direction you should take.
So it's not like you need to goto the best basketball player
or the best founder out there.
(08:09):
You can learn a lot of those theskill sets from other people as well.
No.
I think that's absolutely true.
I'm a big fan.
And if you're on LinkedInthese days, you can't miss him.
I'm a big fan of AdamRobinson most of the time.
Who's the founder of RB2B in retention.com.
And the reason I'm a big fan is he'spretty good, bad and ugly and what he
shares about the journey and one ofthe things he constantly shares is he
(08:31):
speaks with other founders, other startupfounders and basically helps share the
misery that they go into because theyjust looked at what the next, not even
crazy out there but they're not tryingto emulate Bezos or Gates or Zuckerberg.
They say, well this company that'sa competitor of ours or like ours or
maybe just a few steps down the roaddid X. So we do X, will be successful.
(08:55):
But I can watch a pro athlete dosomething as many times as I want.
Doesn't mean I'm gonna achieve that level
because I didn't know everythingthat it took to get there.
And so the biggest mistake, I thinka lot of startup founders, people
entering entrepreneurialship can makeis going, well, I read X book or I
read x website blog post, X TED talk.
(09:16):
And now I'm gonna go and copy it because
most of those very successful people,unless they're selling that specific book,
Ted Talk, will actually say, the firstpiece of advice is don't do what I did.
Do what you need to do.
That's like what I did, whichwas figure it out for yourself.
And so again, that's where havingconsultants, having people who are just
there to ask those type of questionscan be really beneficial to a business.
(09:38):
And something I alwayslike to say with River.
Very early on we're fightingover, not fighting ourselves
on what our vision statement orour mission statement would be.
And we kept trying to say, river will bethe greatest consult and five pages long.
And you realize no one wants to readthat and we actually just red penned
through all of it and said our mission,our vision statement is Let River help.
(09:58):
Which is something that we will alwayshave to aspire to do, always aim to do.
And so it's actually completely common.
I meet with a lot of
founders, hopeful founders,hopeful entrepreneurs.
And I say, look, I'm not gonna giveyou a statement of work or an RFP
till I think I can actually help youat a level that you can afford it.
So I'm gonna have as many free consultswith you till I feel like we're there.
(10:20):
So I'm actually helping thisreally awesome guy who's
got a very cool AI powered.
I don't wanna say notetaker.
It's almost more of ainsights gathering tool.
Basically, what it does is it takesrecordings like this one that CSMs or
sales reps or account managers or productmanagers have and it pulls that all and
it puts it into a really nice summarywith actual insights and it tracks over
(10:43):
time but soon cool product really sharp.
But right now his company'shim and two other people and
they're all working for free.
So they can't afford my rate forour specific programs or ongoing
actively working with them thing.
So, you know what?
We meet about once a month and hebuys me lunch and it gets us there.
And the reason I believe inthat is because I think someday
(11:04):
that could be the next big tool.
The next Salesforce gainsight type of add-on plugin
parallel tool, the next gong.
And I wanna see 'em succeed beforeI wanna see them write me checks.
And so that's a big part of who weare at River and what we're about.
Doesn't mean we can do itall the time for everyone.
If I helped everybody who said, Hey,can you help us figure out our company?
I wouldn't get any work doneand I'd be poor very quickly.
(11:26):
But we try to do that as muchas we can for a starting point.
I love that.
And I think it's importantwhen building relationships.
It's almost like you'reassuming the risk a little bit.
Like, Hey, I'm gonna go to bat for you
as long as you're showing potential,I believe in what you have here
because further down the line,yes, six months, 12 months from
now, they could really hit it big.
Maybe they get a big buyout or you'rehelping to get them to that point.
(11:46):
And similarly, I was curious moreabout like that go to market strategy
'cause there's a lot of people who arebuilding small apps today or solving
problems out there and it's kindof within like a SaaS model, right?
Or they're just solving problems.
What should their goto market strategy be?
How do they even start that process?
They have a thing, but theyneed to tell people about it.
Do they need to figureout who wants that thing?
Or what does that process look likewhen you're working with people?
(12:10):
Yeah, I was about tosay short answer, yes.
But I think that again, we're ofteninteracting with people and it's crazy.
You can think you have the best go tomarket strategy when you're sitting like
this and you're in your own tunnel vision.
'cause you know your product,you know how great it is.
You might have three customers,30 customers, or 3000 customers
and you know that tunnel so well.
(12:31):
But you don't know how longit is or what's around it.
The core of our go to market strategyis, I would say maybe a philosophy.
I wanted to call it a training but Irealized it was much more about oh, now
I sound like a hippie consultant guru,but, but a state of mind about how you
approach what you're doing and at thecore of it, we call it build the Cat.
We're hopefully in the next monthor two, relaunching it as a program
we call the CRO Strategy Lab 'causewe're finding, we're working more
(12:54):
with CROs and it's about gettingthe teams to align up to that.
They don't necessarily want to hearhow we're telling them to align down.
So if we work up and then answer theirneeds, it's working better for us.
But in the core of that and the reasonI call it the CRO strategy lab is,
this is definitely true for SaaS.
I think it's probably truefor most technology business.
Also, if you're looking at AIas a service most business,
(13:16):
honestly, I think you could be
selling cars on a used car lot and thephilosophy applies, most businesses
built their entire foundation on sales.
And the problem with salesis, she's a very fickle lady.
She is with you one minute andshe's completely gone the next.
And that's because the factorsare external with sales.
(13:37):
When you have a sales mindset, it's howdo I sell something to Chris right now?
How do I get money from you right now?
And this is a position thatcame out of the SaaS world
about 20 years ago with revenue.
It's the idea of how doI keep you coming back?
Especially as things sell in subscriptionbasis and so that doesn't matter if you're
AWS selling year long multi-year dealsfor cloud hosting or if you're open AI
(14:00):
selling month to month or Netflix tryingto keep you from switching to Apple tv.
You're asking that question, howdo I retain and recur this revenue?
And the biggest difference inthat shift is people are realizing
sales tactics don't work.
And marketing tactics for that don'twork because they cost a lot of money.
So it's the old spendmoney to make money Adage.
(14:21):
When you start thinking in a revenuemindset you realize that the best source
of revenue is the one you already have.
And so you can grow a business.
If I'm a baker selling bread and I have10 loyal customers and I want to grow.
I'm not gonna do the mostfinancially sound thing.
(14:41):
If I say, great, I have 10 customers.
I sell 10 loaves of bread today, I'm gonnajust start making 20 loaves and I'm gonna
tell people I've got 10 extra loaves.
Right?
That's built on this idea thatyou're hoping 10 new people come in.
But if I start talking to the 10customers I have and say, Hey,
what breads would you like to see?
Are you come in once a week,is my bread going stale?
And I start really building out of this.
(15:03):
And this is nothing new havingcustomer driven growth, product-led
growth, things like that.
But it's a real shift in mindset tosay, that's what I'm building off
of versus that's what I hope to be.
And you foundationally build thatand then you say, Hey, by the way,
I'd really like to sell a 20 loavesof bread a day instead of my 10.
Do you know anyone else who needs bread?
And you get that referral led growth andyou start building that, and then you
(15:24):
build a system and you go, okay, I needto hire somebody else who's really good
at selling the bread so I can focus onmaking it or I really need to get somebody
who's really good at describing my breadbecause I just call it bread and they call
it a honey choat loaf with a, you know,balsamic drizzle or something like that.
That's really what we're about and whatwe build from a go-to market strategy.
So when when we consult and when wedo this, we say, in this new package,
(15:48):
Hey, CRO, what matters to you?
And within our package, we'veidentified really what we think are
the 12 most important or at least mostcommon metrics that align up to CROs.
And so they're things like ARR NRR.
They wanna know churn rate, they wannaknow pipeline, all those sort of things.
But what's amazing is.
(16:08):
And I'm not trying to bash anyCROs out here but a lot of these
CROs came from either they were aVP of sales or a VP of marketing.
We're starting to see more come outta thecustomer success world but they know their
tunnel and so they go, okay, I'm a CRO.
I need to increase revenue.
I'm gonna increase sales.
And then they might have the twicethe pipeline of their predecessor,
(16:31):
but the cost is also twice as high.
And then the conversion rates are nothitting what the projections hit or
they're realizing that the, the quality ofpipeline is not what they were in there.
So then they chase and theychase the marketing person.
They go help me figure this out.
Or they chase the customer successteam and they say, what's working?
But usually by the time a leader's inthat position that they're chasing down.
(16:53):
They're about to need to startpolishing their resume because whether
they're reporting into a CEO or afounder or a board at that window for
what brings in value is very short.
I think the last stats I saw in thisis the average lifetime of a CRO
(17:15):
at a company is around 18 months.
It is a broad spectrum obviously, thatcould be from a startup that opens and
closes in 18 months to going into someof the largest companies in the world.
And you worked your way up, like I said,from VP of something to that chief.
Usually a first or second chiefposition and you usually see a lot
of people go from like CRO to maybea COO to A CEO or things like that.
(17:37):
But they're jumping from VPof to that position and it's
just a different ball game.
And they need to be able toremove the tunnel and say,
okay, revenue is all of this.
And so go to market strategy for usis really building out that internal
alignment up and saying, Hey, churnis not a a customer success problem.
Churn is a company problem becausechurn means money's leaving the door.
(18:01):
Churn can also be a good thingif it teaches you something.
Hey, the number of qualified leadsor the amount of money spent on
marketing is not a marketing problem.
It is a company problem or a companysolution because if you say we
wanna expand, if you're in the USand you want business in Canada.
You think the solve for that is, okay,I'm gonna hire some Canadian reps and
(18:23):
run some marketing events in Canada.
Tough news for you.
It's probably not gonna work or if itworks, the actual revenue gain from
that in the first year or two againstthe spend is gonna be minuscule.
But if you say, Hey, we have 14 customersin Canada already, I'm gonna go talk
to the team that's working directlywith them, whether that's customer
(18:43):
success or support or maybe you happento have two A's who speak Canadian and
they give the insights to marketing.
And marketing says, oh, we were attemptingto come in and talk about this but
from what we understand, the clientbase in Canada is all about this or if
it's a new industry is all about this.
That can completely change your marketingstrategy and sometimes way for the better.
(19:06):
An example of that is I recentlyhelped a founder who was basically,
it was me talking to the founderand their newly hired CMO and they
just said, Hey, will you reviewour marketing side of go to market?
And I reviewed it, I said.
This looks really fun.
It looks really exciting.
It's gonna cost you a lot of money and putyou outta business in about six months.
And the marketing person wasn'thappy with me at first but they
(19:27):
said, what are you talking about?
I haven't heard a reference toa single existing customer once.
And they're a medium sized company.
I think around 75 customersor something like that.
I don't see anything in here that tellsme you know anything about your existing
base, so how are you gonna get a new one?
And I said, go back.
Ask these set of questions to the peopleworking with your existing customers,
to the support team solving theproblems of these existing customers.
(19:50):
And I said, come back and justshare with me what's changed.
And I said, I'll give you twoweeks and I'll check back in.
Two weeks later.
Completely different marketing plan.
And I said, what changed?
And they went everything because wedecided to build off of what we had
into our new markets then into our newmarkets off of what we think we had.
And that's kind of goto market at its basis.
It's not magic.
(20:11):
It's also not rocket science.
It's just habit and practicein a bit of common sense.
Absolutely.
I love that strategy, and especiallythe analogy when it comes to
the baker with baking the bread.
It's ask your current customers,what are they looking for?
Maybe you don't have the bread thatthey're looking for, the upsells
that they may be interested in.
And unfortunately, it is kind of acrazy thing to say is ask your customers
(20:31):
and do exactly what they want becauseunfortunately, in the world of big
business right now, it feels like they'reremoving features and benefits and
raising the prices and doing the exactopposite of what the customers are asking.
But I think that's an opportunityfor the smaller and medium
sized businesses as well.
Yeah, and I mean, that's a part of scale.
That's the challenge I mentionedearlier, I also work for Atlassian.
(20:52):
And the reason I still do is andapologies forewarning, trigger warning,
I'm about to swear on your show.
They have five core values and theone that made me take the job there
was their first core value, which isdon't fuck the customer and I loved it.
I literally took the Atlassian offerover two higher paying, higher title
jobs because I went, yes, this.
(21:14):
And what I love about it is, not that itsounds cool but it does the reason I took
it is because it's impossible at scale.
It's absolutely impossible but it'sa hundred percent aspirational.
And the Atlassians, the salesforces, the Google's, they can't
make one decision for the good of onecustomer without it hurting another.
Like you eventually at scale you willhit that and we all complain that
(21:36):
Netflix has is putting in ads andraised your subscription to $2 a month.
There's probably reasons behind that.
It's probably not Scrooge McDuck tryingto dive into a deeper gold pit sometimes.
It's not always evil corporations.
Sometimes it is, frankly, but it'snot usually, especially in that medium
to growing scale, they're making thedecisions to say, how do we invest in R&D?
(21:58):
Or how do we do that?
Now, when you find out that theexecutive's golden parachuted when they
sold the company and made 10 figuresand are living on private island.
There's some of that.
But for most business owners, mostof the executives I talk to, they're
trying to make scale decisionsthat help their company grow.
But as you said, that'sthe real opportunity for
entrepreneurs right now is going.
(22:19):
You know what?
I can't beat Microsoft at their owngame, the sheer amount of RD there just
built the world's first quantum computer.
You're not gonna compete with that.
But what you can say is, I'm buildingthis tool that Microsoft also does, but
I know 10 customers that would happilypay me a fraction of the cost of what
they're paying for this with Microsoft.
(22:40):
And then you scale it to 20and then you scale it to 30.
And you do that in a way that makes sense.
I feel like he should be payingme for this 'cause I'm gonna
reference Adam Robinson again.
He won't be paying me for thisbut I feel like he should.
If you're listening, Adam, I'llsend you my link to my bank account.
But Adam, he's pretty honest.
Our B2B is about, I think a year and ahalf kind of publicly on the marketing
(23:02):
going and he scaled it to 5 million.
And in the world of SaaS.
I don't wanna say nothing.
It's still 5 millionbut it's not impressive.
If you tell me you have a$5 million SAAS company.
I say good.
You can almost afford my services.
Most of the time, how he's did it or howhe's done it is incredibly lean sales.
(23:24):
I think he has one salesrep for the whole company.
So that sales rep brought in 5million and granted they also do
really good funnel and flywheel andthe motions and things like that.
So it's not one sales person who sold5 million but they built a company that
brings in its own revenue and they grewthat model and then they brought in one
person to start pursuing bigger deals andthat person's crushing it and they post
(23:46):
everything they're doing on howthey're getting these deals in.
He invested smartly inthe tool stack he needs.
He didn't just shotgun strategyand buy every AI on the market.
He bought the ones that hetried and tested and new win.
And I forget how big they are, butI think they're a company of like
a dozen, maybe a bit more now.
And for 12 people to make 5million ARR and growing, is huge.
(24:10):
Now I'd love more time to actually speakto him and tell him how I think he's
knee capping himself a bit and why Idon't think B2B will make it much past 5
million at the same pace they're going.
I think they will over time but that'sbecause I think, they're a maturing,
evolving organization and they needto hit that scale level of customer
success now and not just lean sales,lean support and hope people keep buying.
(24:34):
But again, all of this is those littlethings that feed in the go to market.
So if you're a entrepreneur outthere, if you're a founder, you
know what if I said, Hey, do youwant to run a 5 million ARR company?
Most would probably say yes.
And if I said, Hey, do you wanna figurehow to do it with a dozen or less people?
It's a hell yes.
And some of 'em might be sayingthat same thing but they have
(24:55):
50 people on staff already.
And that's gonna mean, okay, do wescale down to grow or do we put a
plan in place to actually supportthese 50 people under our employment?
And those are also the questionsand the situations I like to insert
myself in 'cause I'd much rather
help a company figure out howquickly they can grow to support
the 50 people that they probablyshouldn't have hired yet.
(25:15):
Then miraculously patting ourselveson the back 'cause we helped five
guys become millionaires, five singlemillionaires each, things like that.
Right?
Absolutely.
And the strategy and the executionthat you put into place from where
you're growing from zero to a hundredto your first million, to 5 million.
There's different thingsthat take place in there.
So it's something you need to consider.
What got you to that 5 million willnot get you your next 5 million.
(25:36):
It's just gonna be totally different.
And these are all great tips andtricks for people to be following.
And again, I really should havecalled in some referral fees
before I took this interview, ifI'd known it was going this way.
Winning by design, I dunno if you'veheard it or not but Jacco is a fellow
dutchie and year and a half, two yearsago when I first saw the bow tie model
(25:56):
and I went, yes, this nerd has done allthe data to everything I've been trying
to put into process for people for years.
And I can tell people this.
And a lot of the first interactions, firstpeople we worked with were people who
were addicted to winning by design becausethe data's there and the number's there.
And if you're trying to grow fromthat a hundred to a thousand thousand,
winning by Design has the playbook.
(26:18):
Forgive me, Jacco I'm gonna say this.
You don't even need to buy his a hundreddollars book 'cause he's really good
about posting it all on LinkedIn.
And all of the WBD minion.
So you can literally just do a LinkedInsearch and get all the information you
need to start this if you're tryingto get your first million site and
can't afford a hundred dollars book.
But I love it because it's systematicand it's brilliant and it very much
speaks to that same thing like,
what got you here won't get you there.
(26:42):
What I think on the flip side of thatbelief though, is what got someone
else there won't get you there.
So it is figuring out that balance ofwhat got us here won't get us there.
But if you deviate too far from thatpath, you're also not gonna get there.
So for entrepreneurs, founders, startups.
You have to be so much more methodicalthan you think and brute force will
(27:03):
get you this far and then strategy,that is the Darwinian side of it.
You can be a very big animal for a veryshort time, big fish in a little pond
and then suddenly you jump into the nextbiggest pond and you're the littlest fish.
Brute force isn't gonna work anymore.
Again, this is the more chatty sideof what I help people with week in and
week out is these type of conversations.
(27:25):
And I love that because our audienceis based of many of people that you
help and those who are interestedin connecting with you online.
How do they find you andget connected with you?
Yeah, so super easy 'cause it's wherewe all live and breathe these days.
I'm on LinkedIn, ifyou search Denny Burda.
D-E-N-N-Y-B-U-R-D-A.
I think my LinkedIn is actuallyjust in slash, Denny Bura.
So easy enough there.
(27:45):
Always happy to connect.
You can also reach out tous, River Consultancy Group.
Super annoying long name.
I wanted RCG, but somebody beat me to it.
But Riverconsultancygroup.
com or.co.uk.
We will take you to our website.
You can fill out a form there andrequest just that pre first consult.
And like I said, I'm pretty happy tomeet and speak with people because you
(28:05):
never know who you get to help next.
And I'm not in this business to go helpMark Zuckerberg, but I'd love to help.
That's kind of what we aim to do.
So check us out there if yourbackground's customer success
or you're just really interestedin customer success and revenue.
We're also the strategic partners ofCS Connect which is a great community,
mostly based over here in Europe.
But, constantly growing and expanding.
And we put out a lot of greatfree content through them as well.
(28:28):
Nice.
That's wonderful.
And we'll have those links availabledown in the show notes and the
description for everybody here.
Denny, we have one more questionbefore we sign off here.
Wanted to ask, we're abouthalfway through 2025.
Do you have anything exciting ornew product launches or things that
you're looking forward to in 2025?
Are you just kind of sticking witheverything that's been working
for you consistently already?
(28:48):
Nope.
Completely change it.
I'll say that this way.
Evolving what we do.
As I spoke about earlier in the podcast,I started with Build the Cat, which
stands for Customer Account Team andhaving that methodology and we're
now evolving it, we're just aboutto launch our package called the CRO
strategy Lab, which is really moreabout helping that CRO strategy run
across all of your go-to market teams.
(29:08):
And the other product we're buildingout to launch hopefully before 2025
is up as long as I can pull some latenights and get the content built.
We we're also really designinga program specifically for
entrepreneurs for founders whoare looking to move those stages.
From maybe seed funding, angel fundingto series A, A to B. B to C and inversely
for PE firms, VC firms, investors whoare looking to know how good it is.
(29:33):
And we're actually gonna call it thefunding health check and I mentioned
we're part of a partnership group.
We work with about a half a dozen otheramazing consultants who specialize in
employee engagement and neurodiversityor executive coaching or program and
project management and service management.
And we work with that network ofconsultants to do what I would consider
a hypochondriac level health tech ofyour business, which is looking at all
(29:56):
these aspects and really giving them.
A fair rating and how we think that'llaffect your ability to grow as a business.
So that's also gonna be hopefullylaunching before end of 2025
for our different customers anddifferent groups we work with.
That is very exciting.
It's a smart pivot.
You're meeting the customers wherethey are and just kind of figuring out
what services and proposals are gonnabest fit them and serve their needs.
(30:16):
So I love that.
Very excited for you with 2025 here.
Congratulations on everything you've done.
We appreciate you sharingyour tips and tricks.
And make sure for all thosewho are interested, check out
the links below so you can getconnected with Denny Burda here.
Awesome.
Thank you so much for having me, Chris.
This was an absolute pleasure.
Hey, same here.
Thank you so much.
We appreciate it.
All right, thanks.
We'll talk soon.
What I think on the flip side of thatbelief though, is what got someone
else there won't get you there.
So it is figuring out that balance ofwhat got us here won't get us there.
But if you deviate too far from thatpath, you're also not gonna get there.
So for entrepreneurs, founders,startups, you have to be so much
more methodical than you think, andbrute force will get you this far.
(00:22):
And then strategy, that isthe Darwinian side of it.
You can be a very big animalfor a very short time.
Big fish in a little pond.
And then suddenly you jump into the nextbiggest pond and you're the littlest fish.
Brute force isn't gonna work anymore.
You are listening to Brainwork Framework,a Business and Marketing podcast,
brought to you by Focused-biz.com.
(00:42):
Welcome back to another episode.
With us today is Denny Burda, theCCO of River Consultancy Group.
At River, they've created abespoke executive advisory agency
that is like a business in a box.
They built out a team of expertswho can speak deeply into the
challenges and opportunities thattoday's executives are facing and
help them succeed with strategicprograms and customized consultancy.
Denny so excited to have you on.
(01:03):
How you doing today?
Hey, Chris.
Thanks for having me.
That was a nice lead in there.
The full content.
I appreciate the intro.
Of course.
Absolutely.
And so excited to have you on.
We always like to ask ourentrepreneurs and our guests,
tell us about your journey.
What were you doing before that kindaled you into what you're doing today?
I.
Yeah probably a long and strangejourney compared to maybe
some of your other guests.
(01:24):
So straight outta university.
I actually spent about the first10 years of my career working in
nonprofits, NGOs things like that.
Wrapping that up actually, afterabout a decade, I was a project
manager in the Church of England.
So all over the place doing all sortsof things and really loved working
directly with people, supporting people,encouraging people, and it was very
(01:45):
rewarding work, just not financially.
So, once I hit my thirties and realizedit'd be nice to move out of a studio
apartment and things like that, Ibegan my journey into the SaaS world.
And I still remember my very firstmanager when I kind of asked for feedback
and how the interview went I said,you know what, what got me the job?
And they said, well, when you describedyour past experience, you said you
(02:06):
were really good at herding cats.
And they said that really translatedwell to kind of the customer facing side
of technology because it's dealing withyou have to learn to speak developer,
you have to learn to speak webpagedesigner, you have to learn to speak
the customer on the other end who maybe a CIO but actually doesn't even know
how to turn on their microphone fora meeting and everything in between.
(02:27):
So if you can bring all thattogether, you'll do just fine here.
And so that was the start of my journey.
Like I said, it's beenabout a decade in sas.
I was the first customer successmanager at an event tech company
that basically at the time ran prettymuch every event Microsoft did.
So if you attended a Microsoftevent between about 2000 and oh,
(02:50):
I don't know, 2006 and onwardI was probably there somewhere.
And that was the start of the journey.
And after years kind of worked my wayup in the customer success community.
I was a, yeah, started as a CSM, becamea manager of cs, then a head of cs
then the international head of cs.
And now I sit as CCO at River Consultancywith my partner James, who was also
(03:11):
my former boss at our last company.
I had actually moved on to work for acompany called Atlassian who I still
work for now but I really wanted tostart by wanting to support my friend.
I really believed in James and what hewas building with River and it started by
just helping with some content creationand a project here and there, and then,
it grew into, Hey, would you takeon a little bit more and a little
(03:32):
bit more and a little bit more?
And so maybe that's for mostentrepreneurs, that's really the
way you get into it is someone elsekind of pulls you in to the spot.
That got me here.
And yeah, I've been CCO of Riverfor probably about 14 months now.
Something around that.
Nice.
That's some incredible experience.
Just having different industries,different positions that you've worked
your way up into but obviously they sawyour value, everything that you brought
(03:54):
to the table to be able to get thesehigher positions and then eventually lead
other business leaders on what they'redoing wrong, what they're doing right.
And give them that higherlevel of consultancy.
'cause I can tell you forbusiness owners, CEOs.
As much as we feel like we have itall together, secretly we're all lost.
Right.
We're all trying to figure it out.
And maybe it's our pridethat gets in the way.
So you're helping them witha much needed service here.
(04:15):
Are there certain industriesthat you'd like to work with?
Yeah, so our sweet spot I thinkcoming from the tech side of things
is obviously SaaS working with,we work with SaaS founders, SaaS
executives and things like that.
You actually bring up a greatpoint because I think it was a
challenge when we first got started.
We've really had to refine what wedo for a long time because saying
(04:35):
where executive advisory is kind ofthe business acumen term of shooting
yourself in the foot because how manyexecutives really wanna be advised?
Especially when, when they meet me andI'm 10, 15 years younger than them,
or when they meet me and they go,oh, you were a customer success guy.
I'm a CIO.
What could you possibly teach me?
Or, I'm a founder.
Have you ever founded anything?
(04:56):
And I came to the realization notthat long ago, I'd say probably in
the past six months I bet Phil Jacksonplayed Michael Jordan one-on-one in
basketball, hundreds of times, maybethousands across their career together.
I'm guessing he beat him zero times.
And that's because what I'velearned is to advise somebody, to
coach somebody, to help somebodyget the most out of themselves.
(05:20):
Doesn't mean you have to bebetter than them at a thing.
It means you have to have set kind ofcurriculum almost, or set courses that
you're going through and walking through.
And so that's kind of a bit of whatwe're building at River is not things
to say, Hey, come listen to us.
In this sage wizard, Gandalf sortof way as an advisor but it's
actually saying, Hey, we're focusedon the things that we believe will
(05:42):
support you or the things that willhelp you in an area, in a skillset
Not because we're better sometimes, causewe've done that exact journey before but
because we're doing things that we believeare kind of tied in, tested and true.
And the things that work.
To keep the coaching analogy going.
If you're coaching Michael
jordan, you're coaching him on howto accelerate, bring the most, keep
(06:03):
the foundational mechanics therebecause when he wants to flip a
switch, he does something else.
If you're coaching Shaquille O'Neal,you're not gonna waste your time teaching
him to shoot free throws because youknow, he is never gonna make 'em.
Right.
So it's about what works with thatexecutive and what works with that leader.
As you said, we've worked with a lotof founders or executives of that
in that startup scale up space andthey were really good at something
(06:24):
to get to the point that they couldafford a consultant basically.
But that doesn't mean theywere an expert at everything.
Some of the founders we dealwith, they built their thing,
they built their system.
Sometimes from a technologicaltech stack point, they, they
built that new AI program or theybuilt that new video conferencing
system, they're incredibly smart
technically, don't ask meto build an AI tool for you.
It's not gonna go well for anyone.
(06:46):
But ask me how to develop yourgo-to-market strategy to support that
AI tool or ask me how to help you bea better communicator to the teams
because you're used to communicatingwith devs all day, not salespeople.
So that's really where rivers evolvedinto over the past year and a half.
And it came from a lot of ustrying to figure out all these
(07:06):
ways to say, how can we help you?
And them saying, no, Idon't want your help.
And maybe because my partner and I arejust too stubborn to accept No thanks
and in a closed door we kind of keptrefining what we've done until we've
kind of reached basically what is avery set amount of packages we offer.
And I like to be pretty transparent,so I also admit those are basically
(07:27):
Trojan horses into a lot moreconsultancy work a lot of the times
because we end up showing all thesethings and they know that's great.
I have no idea how to do that.
And we say, well, us orone of our partners does.
But that's also a bit of theconsultancy game for anyone who's out
there thinking it is have two thingspeople want and 20 things they need.
Right.
Absolutely.
But it makes sense to me tobring in that experience because
(07:47):
oftentimes the leaders, the CEOs,the founders we have blind spots.
We've only seen what we've seen.
So to have an objective neutral thirdparty come in who has worked with
many other founders and businesses,they're bringing all that experience,
what worked, what didn't work.
And then they can advise you onwhat direction you should take.
So it's not like you need to goto the best basketball player
or the best founder out there.
(08:09):
You can learn a lot of those theskill sets from other people as well.
No.
I think that's absolutely true.
I'm a big fan.
And if you're on LinkedInthese days, you can't miss him.
I'm a big fan of AdamRobinson most of the time.
Who's the founder of RB2B in retention.com.
And the reason I'm a big fan is he'spretty good, bad and ugly and what he
shares about the journey and one ofthe things he constantly shares is he
(08:31):
speaks with other founders, other startupfounders and basically helps share the
misery that they go into because theyjust looked at what the next, not even
crazy out there but they're not tryingto emulate Bezos or Gates or Zuckerberg.
They say, well this company that'sa competitor of ours or like ours or
maybe just a few steps down the roaddid X. So we do X, will be successful.
(08:55):
But I can watch a pro athlete dosomething as many times as I want.
Doesn't mean I'm gonna achieve that level
because I didn't know everythingthat it took to get there.
And so the biggest mistake, I thinka lot of startup founders, people
entering entrepreneurialship can makeis going, well, I read X book or I
read x website blog post, X TED talk.
(09:16):
And now I'm gonna go and copy it because
most of those very successful people,unless they're selling that specific book,
Ted Talk, will actually say, the firstpiece of advice is don't do what I did.
Do what you need to do.
That's like what I did, whichwas figure it out for yourself.
And so again, that's where havingconsultants, having people who are just
there to ask those type of questionscan be really beneficial to a business.
(09:38):
And something I alwayslike to say with River.
Very early on we're fightingover, not fighting ourselves
on what our vision statement orour mission statement would be.
And we kept trying to say, river will bethe greatest consult and five pages long.
And you realize no one wants to readthat and we actually just red penned
through all of it and said our mission,our vision statement is Let River help.
(09:58):
Which is something that we will alwayshave to aspire to do, always aim to do.
And so it's actually completely common.
I meet with a lot of
founders, hopeful founders,hopeful entrepreneurs.
And I say, look, I'm not gonna giveyou a statement of work or an RFP
till I think I can actually help youat a level that you can afford it.
So I'm gonna have as many free consultswith you till I feel like we're there.
(10:20):
So I'm actually helping thisreally awesome guy who's
got a very cool AI powered.
I don't wanna say notetaker.
It's almost more of ainsights gathering tool.
Basically, what it does is it takesrecordings like this one that CSMs or
sales reps or account managers or productmanagers have and it pulls that all and
it puts it into a really nice summarywith actual insights and it tracks over
(10:43):
time but soon cool product really sharp.
But right now his company'shim and two other people and
they're all working for free.
So they can't afford my rate forour specific programs or ongoing
actively working with them thing.
So, you know what?
We meet about once a month and hebuys me lunch and it gets us there.
And the reason I believe inthat is because I think someday
(11:04):
that could be the next big tool.
The next Salesforce gainsight type of add-on plugin
parallel tool, the next gong.
And I wanna see 'em succeed beforeI wanna see them write me checks.
And so that's a big part of who weare at River and what we're about.
Doesn't mean we can do itall the time for everyone.
If I helped everybody who said, Hey,can you help us figure out our company?
I wouldn't get any work doneand I'd be poor very quickly.
(11:26):
But we try to do that as muchas we can for a starting point.
I love that.
And I think it's importantwhen building relationships.
It's almost like you'reassuming the risk a little bit.
Like, Hey, I'm gonna go to bat for you
as long as you're showing potential,I believe in what you have here
because further down the line,yes, six months, 12 months from
now, they could really hit it big.
Maybe they get a big buyout or you'rehelping to get them to that point.
(11:46):
And similarly, I was curious moreabout like that go to market strategy
'cause there's a lot of people who arebuilding small apps today or solving
problems out there and it's kindof within like a SaaS model, right?
Or they're just solving problems.
What should their goto market strategy be?
How do they even start that process?
They have a thing, but theyneed to tell people about it.
Do they need to figureout who wants that thing?
Or what does that process look likewhen you're working with people?
(12:10):
Yeah, I was about tosay short answer, yes.
But I think that again, we're ofteninteracting with people and it's crazy.
You can think you have the best go tomarket strategy when you're sitting like
this and you're in your own tunnel vision.
'cause you know your product,you know how great it is.
You might have three customers,30 customers, or 3000 customers
and you know that tunnel so well.
(12:31):
But you don't know how longit is or what's around it.
The core of our go to market strategyis, I would say maybe a philosophy.
I wanted to call it a training but Irealized it was much more about oh, now
I sound like a hippie consultant guru,but, but a state of mind about how you
approach what you're doing and at thecore of it, we call it build the Cat.
We're hopefully in the next monthor two, relaunching it as a program
we call the CRO Strategy Lab 'causewe're finding, we're working more
(12:54):
with CROs and it's about gettingthe teams to align up to that.
They don't necessarily want to hearhow we're telling them to align down.
So if we work up and then answer theirneeds, it's working better for us.
But in the core of that and the reasonI call it the CRO strategy lab is,
this is definitely true for SaaS.
I think it's probably truefor most technology business.
Also, if you're looking at AIas a service most business,
(13:16):
honestly, I think you could be
selling cars on a used car lot and thephilosophy applies, most businesses
built their entire foundation on sales.
And the problem with salesis, she's a very fickle lady.
She is with you one minute andshe's completely gone the next.
And that's because the factorsare external with sales.
(13:37):
When you have a sales mindset, it's howdo I sell something to Chris right now?
How do I get money from you right now?
And this is a position thatcame out of the SaaS world
about 20 years ago with revenue.
It's the idea of how doI keep you coming back?
Especially as things sell in subscriptionbasis and so that doesn't matter if you're
AWS selling year long multi-year dealsfor cloud hosting or if you're open AI
(14:00):
selling month to month or Netflix tryingto keep you from switching to Apple tv.
You're asking that question, howdo I retain and recur this revenue?
And the biggest difference inthat shift is people are realizing
sales tactics don't work.
And marketing tactics for that don'twork because they cost a lot of money.
So it's the old spendmoney to make money Adage.
(14:21):
When you start thinking in a revenuemindset you realize that the best source
of revenue is the one you already have.
And so you can grow a business.
If I'm a baker selling bread and I have10 loyal customers and I want to grow.
I'm not gonna do the mostfinancially sound thing.
(14:41):
If I say, great, I have 10 customers.
I sell 10 loaves of bread today, I'm gonnajust start making 20 loaves and I'm gonna
tell people I've got 10 extra loaves.
Right?
That's built on this idea thatyou're hoping 10 new people come in.
But if I start talking to the 10customers I have and say, Hey,
what breads would you like to see?
Are you come in once a week,is my bread going stale?
And I start really building out of this.
(15:03):
And this is nothing new havingcustomer driven growth, product-led
growth, things like that.
But it's a real shift in mindset tosay, that's what I'm building off
of versus that's what I hope to be.
And you foundationally build thatand then you say, Hey, by the way,
I'd really like to sell a 20 loavesof bread a day instead of my 10.
Do you know anyone else who needs bread?
And you get that referral led growth andyou start building that, and then you
(15:24):
build a system and you go, okay, I needto hire somebody else who's really good
at selling the bread so I can focus onmaking it or I really need to get somebody
who's really good at describing my breadbecause I just call it bread and they call
it a honey choat loaf with a, you know,balsamic drizzle or something like that.
That's really what we're about and whatwe build from a go-to market strategy.
So when when we consult and when wedo this, we say, in this new package,
(15:48):
Hey, CRO, what matters to you?
And within our package, we'veidentified really what we think are
the 12 most important or at least mostcommon metrics that align up to CROs.
And so they're things like ARR NRR.
They wanna know churn rate, they wannaknow pipeline, all those sort of things.
But what's amazing is.
(16:08):
And I'm not trying to bash anyCROs out here but a lot of these
CROs came from either they were aVP of sales or a VP of marketing.
We're starting to see more come outta thecustomer success world but they know their
tunnel and so they go, okay, I'm a CRO.
I need to increase revenue.
I'm gonna increase sales.
And then they might have the twicethe pipeline of their predecessor,
(16:31):
but the cost is also twice as high.
And then the conversion rates are nothitting what the projections hit or
they're realizing that the, the quality ofpipeline is not what they were in there.
So then they chase and theychase the marketing person.
They go help me figure this out.
Or they chase the customer successteam and they say, what's working?
But usually by the time a leader's inthat position that they're chasing down.
(16:53):
They're about to need to startpolishing their resume because whether
they're reporting into a CEO or afounder or a board at that window for
what brings in value is very short.
I think the last stats I saw in thisis the average lifetime of a CRO
(17:15):
at a company is around 18 months.
It is a broad spectrum obviously, thatcould be from a startup that opens and
closes in 18 months to going into someof the largest companies in the world.
And you worked your way up, like I said,from VP of something to that chief.
Usually a first or second chiefposition and you usually see a lot
of people go from like CRO to maybea COO to A CEO or things like that.
(17:37):
But they're jumping from VPof to that position and it's
just a different ball game.
And they need to be able toremove the tunnel and say,
okay, revenue is all of this.
And so go to market strategy for usis really building out that internal
alignment up and saying, Hey, churnis not a a customer success problem.
Churn is a company problem becausechurn means money's leaving the door.
(18:01):
Churn can also be a good thingif it teaches you something.
Hey, the number of qualified leadsor the amount of money spent on
marketing is not a marketing problem.
It is a company problem or a companysolution because if you say we
wanna expand, if you're in the USand you want business in Canada.
You think the solve for that is, okay,I'm gonna hire some Canadian reps and
(18:23):
run some marketing events in Canada.
Tough news for you.
It's probably not gonna work or if itworks, the actual revenue gain from
that in the first year or two againstthe spend is gonna be minuscule.
But if you say, Hey, we have 14 customersin Canada already, I'm gonna go talk
to the team that's working directlywith them, whether that's customer
(18:43):
success or support or maybe you happento have two A's who speak Canadian and
they give the insights to marketing.
And marketing says, oh, we were attemptingto come in and talk about this but
from what we understand, the clientbase in Canada is all about this or if
it's a new industry is all about this.
That can completely change your marketingstrategy and sometimes way for the better.
(19:06):
An example of that is I recentlyhelped a founder who was basically,
it was me talking to the founderand their newly hired CMO and they
just said, Hey, will you reviewour marketing side of go to market?
And I reviewed it, I said.
This looks really fun.
It looks really exciting.
It's gonna cost you a lot of money and putyou outta business in about six months.
And the marketing person wasn'thappy with me at first but they
(19:27):
said, what are you talking about?
I haven't heard a reference toa single existing customer once.
And they're a medium sized company.
I think around 75 customersor something like that.
I don't see anything in here that tellsme you know anything about your existing
base, so how are you gonna get a new one?
And I said, go back.
Ask these set of questions to the peopleworking with your existing customers,
to the support team solving theproblems of these existing customers.
(19:50):
And I said, come back and justshare with me what's changed.
And I said, I'll give you twoweeks and I'll check back in.
Two weeks later.
Completely different marketing plan.
And I said, what changed?
And they went everything because wedecided to build off of what we had
into our new markets then into our newmarkets off of what we think we had.
And that's kind of goto market at its basis.
It's not magic.
(20:11):
It's also not rocket science.
It's just habit and practicein a bit of common sense.
Absolutely.
I love that strategy, and especiallythe analogy when it comes to
the baker with baking the bread.
It's ask your current customers,what are they looking for?
Maybe you don't have the bread thatthey're looking for, the upsells
that they may be interested in.
And unfortunately, it is kind of acrazy thing to say is ask your customers
(20:31):
and do exactly what they want becauseunfortunately, in the world of big
business right now, it feels like they'reremoving features and benefits and
raising the prices and doing the exactopposite of what the customers are asking.
But I think that's an opportunityfor the smaller and medium
sized businesses as well.
Yeah, and I mean, that's a part of scale.
That's the challenge I mentionedearlier, I also work for Atlassian.
(20:52):
And the reason I still do is andapologies forewarning, trigger warning,
I'm about to swear on your show.
They have five core values and theone that made me take the job there
was their first core value, which isdon't fuck the customer and I loved it.
I literally took the Atlassian offerover two higher paying, higher title
jobs because I went, yes, this.
(21:14):
And what I love about it is, not that itsounds cool but it does the reason I took
it is because it's impossible at scale.
It's absolutely impossible but it'sa hundred percent aspirational.
And the Atlassians, the salesforces, the Google's, they can't
make one decision for the good of onecustomer without it hurting another.
Like you eventually at scale you willhit that and we all complain that
(21:36):
Netflix has is putting in ads andraised your subscription to $2 a month.
There's probably reasons behind that.
It's probably not Scrooge McDuck tryingto dive into a deeper gold pit sometimes.
It's not always evil corporations.
Sometimes it is, frankly, but it'snot usually, especially in that medium
to growing scale, they're making thedecisions to say, how do we invest in R&D?
(21:58):
Or how do we do that?
Now, when you find out that theexecutive's golden parachuted when they
sold the company and made 10 figuresand are living on private island.
There's some of that.
But for most business owners, mostof the executives I talk to, they're
trying to make scale decisionsthat help their company grow.
But as you said, that'sthe real opportunity for
entrepreneurs right now is going.
(22:19):
You know what?
I can't beat Microsoft at their owngame, the sheer amount of RD there just
built the world's first quantum computer.
You're not gonna compete with that.
But what you can say is, I'm buildingthis tool that Microsoft also does, but
I know 10 customers that would happilypay me a fraction of the cost of what
they're paying for this with Microsoft.
(22:40):
And then you scale it to 20and then you scale it to 30.
And you do that in a way that makes sense.
I feel like he should be payingme for this 'cause I'm gonna
reference Adam Robinson again.
He won't be paying me for thisbut I feel like he should.
If you're listening, Adam, I'llsend you my link to my bank account.
But Adam, he's pretty honest.
Our B2B is about, I think a year and ahalf kind of publicly on the marketing
(23:02):
going and he scaled it to 5 million.
And in the world of SaaS.
I don't wanna say nothing.
It's still 5 millionbut it's not impressive.
If you tell me you have a$5 million SAAS company.
I say good.
You can almost afford my services.
Most of the time, how he's did it or howhe's done it is incredibly lean sales.
(23:24):
I think he has one salesrep for the whole company.
So that sales rep brought in 5million and granted they also do
really good funnel and flywheel andthe motions and things like that.
So it's not one sales person who sold5 million but they built a company that
brings in its own revenue and they grewthat model and then they brought in one
person to start pursuing bigger deals andthat person's crushing it and they post
(23:46):
everything they're doing on howthey're getting these deals in.
He invested smartly inthe tool stack he needs.
He didn't just shotgun strategyand buy every AI on the market.
He bought the ones that hetried and tested and new win.
And I forget how big they are, butI think they're a company of like
a dozen, maybe a bit more now.
And for 12 people to make 5million ARR and growing, is huge.
(24:10):
Now I'd love more time to actually speakto him and tell him how I think he's
knee capping himself a bit and why Idon't think B2B will make it much past 5
million at the same pace they're going.
I think they will over time but that'sbecause I think, they're a maturing,
evolving organization and they needto hit that scale level of customer
success now and not just lean sales,lean support and hope people keep buying.
(24:34):
But again, all of this is those littlethings that feed in the go to market.
So if you're a entrepreneur outthere, if you're a founder, you
know what if I said, Hey, do youwant to run a 5 million ARR company?
Most would probably say yes.
And if I said, Hey, do you wanna figurehow to do it with a dozen or less people?
It's a hell yes.
And some of 'em might be sayingthat same thing but they have
(24:55):
50 people on staff already.
And that's gonna mean, okay, do wescale down to grow or do we put a
plan in place to actually supportthese 50 people under our employment?
And those are also the questionsand the situations I like to insert
myself in 'cause I'd much rather
help a company figure out howquickly they can grow to support
the 50 people that they probablyshouldn't have hired yet.
(25:15):
Then miraculously patting ourselveson the back 'cause we helped five
guys become millionaires, five singlemillionaires each, things like that.
Right?
Absolutely.
And the strategy and the executionthat you put into place from where
you're growing from zero to a hundredto your first million, to 5 million.
There's different thingsthat take place in there.
So it's something you need to consider.
What got you to that 5 million willnot get you your next 5 million.
(25:36):
It's just gonna be totally different.
And these are all great tips andtricks for people to be following.
And again, I really should havecalled in some referral fees
before I took this interview, ifI'd known it was going this way.
Winning by design, I dunno if you'veheard it or not but Jacco is a fellow
dutchie and year and a half, two yearsago when I first saw the bow tie model
(25:56):
and I went, yes, this nerd has done allthe data to everything I've been trying
to put into process for people for years.
And I can tell people this.
And a lot of the first interactions, firstpeople we worked with were people who
were addicted to winning by design becausethe data's there and the number's there.
And if you're trying to grow fromthat a hundred to a thousand thousand,
winning by Design has the playbook.
(26:18):
Forgive me, Jacco I'm gonna say this.
You don't even need to buy his a hundreddollars book 'cause he's really good
about posting it all on LinkedIn.
And all of the WBD minion.
So you can literally just do a LinkedInsearch and get all the information you
need to start this if you're tryingto get your first million site and
can't afford a hundred dollars book.
But I love it because it's systematicand it's brilliant and it very much
speaks to that same thing like,
what got you here won't get you there.
(26:42):
What I think on the flip side of thatbelief though, is what got someone
else there won't get you there.
So it is figuring out that balance ofwhat got us here won't get us there.
But if you deviate too far from thatpath, you're also not gonna get there.
So for entrepreneurs, founders, startups.
You have to be so much more methodicalthan you think and brute force will
(27:03):
get you this far and then strategy,that is the Darwinian side of it.
You can be a very big animal for a veryshort time, big fish in a little pond
and then suddenly you jump into the nextbiggest pond and you're the littlest fish.
Brute force isn't gonna work anymore.
Again, this is the more chatty sideof what I help people with week in and
week out is these type of conversations.
(27:25):
And I love that because our audienceis based of many of people that you
help and those who are interestedin connecting with you online.
How do they find you andget connected with you?
Yeah, so super easy 'cause it's wherewe all live and breathe these days.
I'm on LinkedIn, ifyou search Denny Burda.
D-E-N-N-Y-B-U-R-D-A.
I think my LinkedIn is actuallyjust in slash, Denny Bura.
So easy enough there.
(27:45):
Always happy to connect.
You can also reach out tous, River Consultancy Group.
Super annoying long name.
I wanted RCG, but somebody beat me to it.
But Riverconsultancygroup.
com or.co.uk.
We will take you to our website.
You can fill out a form there andrequest just that pre first consult.
And like I said, I'm pretty happy tomeet and speak with people because you
(28:05):
never know who you get to help next.
And I'm not in this business to go helpMark Zuckerberg, but I'd love to help.
That's kind of what we aim to do.
So check us out there if yourbackground's customer success
or you're just really interestedin customer success and revenue.
We're also the strategic partners ofCS Connect which is a great community,
mostly based over here in Europe.
But, constantly growing and expanding.
And we put out a lot of greatfree content through them as well.
(28:28):
Nice.
That's wonderful.
And we'll have those links availabledown in the show notes and the
description for everybody here.
Denny, we have one more questionbefore we sign off here.
Wanted to ask, we're abouthalfway through 2025.
Do you have anything exciting ornew product launches or things that
you're looking forward to in 2025?
Are you just kind of sticking witheverything that's been working
for you consistently already?
(28:48):
Nope.
Completely change it.
I'll say that this way.
Evolving what we do.
As I spoke about earlier in the podcast,I started with Build the Cat, which
stands for Customer Account Team andhaving that methodology and we're
now evolving it, we're just aboutto launch our package called the CRO
strategy Lab, which is really moreabout helping that CRO strategy run
across all of your go-to market teams.
(29:08):
And the other product we're buildingout to launch hopefully before 2025
is up as long as I can pull some latenights and get the content built.
We we're also really designinga program specifically for
entrepreneurs for founders whoare looking to move those stages.
From maybe seed funding, angel fundingto series A, A to B. B to C and inversely
for PE firms, VC firms, investors whoare looking to know how good it is.
(29:33):
And we're actually gonna call it thefunding health check and I mentioned
we're part of a partnership group.
We work with about a half a dozen otheramazing consultants who specialize in
employee engagement and neurodiversityor executive coaching or program and
project management and service management.
And we work with that network ofconsultants to do what I would consider
a hypochondriac level health tech ofyour business, which is looking at all
(29:56):
these aspects and really giving them.
A fair rating and how we think that'llaffect your ability to grow as a business.
So that's also gonna be hopefullylaunching before end of 2025
for our different customers anddifferent groups we work with.
That is very exciting.
It's a smart pivot.
You're meeting the customers wherethey are and just kind of figuring out
what services and proposals are gonnabest fit them and serve their needs.
(30:16):
So I love that.
Very excited for you with 2025 here.
Congratulations on everything you've done.
We appreciate you sharingyour tips and tricks.
And make sure for all thosewho are interested, check out
the links below so you can getconnected with Denny Burda here.
Awesome.
Thank you so much for having me, Chris.
This was an absolute pleasure.
Hey, same here.
Thank you so much.
We appreciate it.
All right, thanks.
We'll talk soon.
Popular Podcasts
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com