Sharon Love - CEO of Cordance

Sharon Love, CEO of Cordance, sits down with Ryan to walk through her career, discuss her companies approach to growing businesses, and to talk about her thoughts on hiring and being hired.

Connect with Sharon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharonlove/

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
[MUSIC]

(00:02):
Welcome to the GoodFit Careers podcast,
where we explore perspectives on work that fits.
I'm Ryan Dickerson, your host.
Today's guest is Sharon Love.
Sharon is the CEO of Coronance,
a software company that acquires high potential business
to business software as a service companies
and enables their growth.
Sharon started her career as a developer.

(00:24):
She moved into product management and then
turned on to P&L management for companies like Dell, FedEx,
Lenovo, and NCR.
Sharon has been the chief executive officer
of three separate companies.
The first was a boutique software firm,
innovative software that she led through the .com bubble.
The second was a privately held roll-up of 70 separate

(00:47):
software as a service companies.
And now she serves as the chief executive of Coronance.
Sharon, thank you for being here.
Yeah, it's great to be here today.
So Sharon, to get us started,
would you tell us a little bit about
what your work is today?
Yeah, so I run a company that acquires
high potential smaller B2B-SAS software companies.

(01:10):
So my work on a daily basis kind of rotates
between working with our M&A team
to see who they're talking to and who might be coming
to join us and then turning to working
with the leaders who are helping the companies
who've already joined us continue on
and ideally accelerate their growth journey.

(01:32):
So if you think about the life cycle of a company,
that's kind of the life cycle of my day.
Who's gonna be joining us?
Where are we at in terms of making sure
that we're really effectively building out
their good market capabilities?
How are we doing serving our existing customers?
And what do we need to do next?

(01:54):
So that is almost exactly the structure of my day.
And now that you say that,
that's how my day gets scheduled.
I end my day with what's gonna come up next.
And we'll get back to your specific role in a little bit
when you're thinking through your early life,
going back to the beginning.
Would you share with us a little bit about
what you were like as a kid
and what you wanted to be when you grew up?

(02:16):
(laughs)
I wanted to be a ballerina or a business lady.
And that's the great idea.
Interesting, long tails, either one.
Oh yeah, one or the other.
And the choice actually came down to,
I kept growing and getting taller and taller and taller.
And I reached a point and I was at this

(02:37):
professional ballet school.
And my teachers just would look at me.
And I know that look, I'm too tall.
So I decided that I was gonna be really practical.
And I would go to college instead of turning professional.
Big, big decision.
And there is a part of my heart that is always there

(02:58):
because I love the physical activity
and the discipline and the intensity of it.
But now that's my hobby and my work is my work.
Not dance, now.
I do other, I run instead.
A lot of similarities, both hurt really bad.
So not going poor out in terms of being a ballerina

(03:19):
and then heading towards business.
Would you walk us through what your training and education
was like on the business path?
Sure, when I went into college,
I actually started as a computer science major.
I was absolutely sure that that's what I was going to do.
But my university was really in flux
in its computer science program.
It was in a lot of turmoil.

(03:39):
I joined the debate team.
So I'm like just tripling down on my nerdiness.
And my computer science classes
for Monday, Wednesday, Friday,
this is how people make decisions about life.
And I was gone for debate tournaments most Fridays
and not back until very late Sunday
or sometimes not until Monday.
So I switched my majors to organizational communication.

(04:03):
And that brought me into a graduate program
where the shorthand way to describe it
is I got to study systems theory,
which is the general theory
of how large complex systems work.
Businesses are large complex systems.
You got to get a bunch of people together
and get them to do things.

(04:24):
And humans are not good at that naturally.
That's why we look at a lot of things.
And like, why are they doing that?
That's really silly.
When no one's trying to do anything silly,
that's just what happens
when you put a lot of human things together
and try and get them to go do something silly things happen.
So from there, I went on to my very first job

(04:45):
as actually working,
it was the Center for Interactive Management.
And what they did is they brought in
the business executives and organizational executives
in to try and solve really complicated problems.
And my job was to sit in the room
during these structured conversations
and type in every single thing they said

(05:08):
and be able to turn it around like by seven o'clock that evening.
So I sat in a corner and typed as fast as I could
and got to hear really senior people
talk about all sorts of fascinating areas,
which was wonderful exposure that early on in my life.
- All right, Beth.
So you finished your education.
You got a first role that sounds like it was,

(05:29):
it was a beautiful opportunity to be a fly on the wall
for conversations that were, you know,
many levels above where most entry level people would be.
Did you have any favorite early stories
or any of those rooms that you were in,
the stories that they were telling,
the problems that they were trying to solve
that you found particularly interesting?
- So the one that resonates with me most
is it was a set of government procurement officials

(05:52):
for the federal government.
And they were trying to figure out how to not just
let everything naturally go to the really big vendors,
a lot of government procurement as technology and IT
and how do you create more space for emerging vendors?
Many of those are diverse vendors

(06:13):
and not just let the big guys win all the time.
And they had all sorts of well-intentioned policies
in place and where we got over this period,
I wanna say it was three or four days of work on this
is they were trying to figure out
why those policies weren't working

(06:34):
and where they got at the end of the day
is it just took too long.
So I might submit a proposal as a small company.
I might be the most qualified company
with a great low cost solution,
but it could be 18, 24, 36 months
before a selection was made.

(06:55):
And because of that, by all that time,
a company might have changed,
I no longer have the capacity.
Maybe I went out of business
because I invested so much in responding to that proposal
that I knew I could win,
but then they came and came looking for me
and it was basically too late.

(07:15):
So that came about and it put them on a track
to start working towards expedited paths
for the smaller businesses
and they had the right ideals in place,
they just needed to move faster.
Great big complex problem, a simplicity of solution.
- Interesting.
And when you're thinking through what you carried with you

(07:37):
from those early experiences,
often our first jobs can be delightful.
They can also be terrible and scarring.
Is there anything that you carried with you
from that first job into your work today?
- Yes, culture.
There were two leaders of that organization,
both fine people, very intelligent.
This was an academic research center.
And of the two leaders,

(07:58):
one was much more oriented towards command and control.
And the other one was,
"I'd probably describe him as quite socratic."
So if he went to him with an issue, he didn't solve it.
He would just ask a lot of questions.
And the part of that center that reported
into the one who was really good at asking questions

(08:21):
was really thriving and happy.
The part that was command and control,
people very much appreciated the experience,
but it was a different pulse and a different execution.
- How interesting.
And it's amazing how the contrast
in those leadership styles can both shape
those people's experiences as well as the people
that they're leading.
That's fascinating.

(08:42):
There have been a few pretty extraordinary jobs
that you've held.
And I'd love to spend a moment thinking about
your own inflection point here.
Was there a moment when you figured out
that leading companies and serving as a chief executive
was really the right kind of work for you?
- No, not really.
I kind of fell into it.
I had started a small consulting practice

(09:05):
around an area that I had worked in
and we had some clients.
And then we figured out something
that was a pretty innovative product
and seemed like a pretty good idea.
And the reason I ended up being the person out in front
with it because the team I was working with
was so much smarter than me is because I was,

(09:29):
and I'm an introvert, but I was the most extroverted
of our group of introverts.
And somebody's gotta go talk to customers.
I guess it's gonna be me.
And that's literally how I went down that path.
And it was a great first experience.
There are almost every single day.

(09:52):
I hear things.
I had an amazing CTO, amazing head of development.
Man, if any of them hear about it,
you guys are the best to this day.
And they would say the best things to me.
And they're still in my brain.
So guys, if you're out there,
like I'm in a meeting yesterday

(10:12):
and I am hearing Dave Hellsman in my head
and I repeat the phrase on.
So that was expand.
That was just profound.
- As you became the most extroverted introvert
among your peers and were kind of thrust into the CEO role,
was there anything that you had to learn
or work through mastery to become proficient in that role?

(10:35):
- Gazillions of things, infinite.
You know, I think that it's pretty natural
when people fall into that role
that you're trying to get it right.
You wanna be in the room all the time
and the job itself brings a different perspective

(10:56):
that you want to be able to be brought into each of the decisions
the company is making.
But that is also impossible
unless you wanna construct your company to be pretty small.
So learning to choose which things were worth it
and mattered if I was participating in versus which things

(11:19):
I should just let the team go do.
And also learning the things where I thought
I might have perspective and I totally don't.
They're closer to the problem.
So it is that sense of trustful delegation
to be able to give to people.
The team was wonderful and I learned it the first time
in kind of a funny way.

(11:39):
I ended up, it was two weeks before our first
really big deployment.
And this was a really big deal for our customer.
It was the 100th anniversary of the customer.
And this was at the centerpiece of their next 100 years celebration
of here all this advanced technology we're bringing to bear.
And it's two weeks before we're still coding.

(12:00):
It was Microsoft's fault.
There were some bugs we had to wait for patches on.
I sort of, and I get appendicitis.
I'm like, this is appendicitis, this is full bore.
I gotta go to the hospital and get my appendix out.
So I'm in there and the only thing I could get
is I could get a Sharpie in paper towels.

(12:21):
And I am just like writing all these notes,
trying to dump everything in my brain
before they take me for surgery.
And if you imagine someone saying, no, not yet, not yet,
I'm still right and you wouldn't be completely wrong.
I was so stupid.
Got someone to take it over to the office
and take all these notes over.
And they sent these notes back to me.

(12:43):
And this, I'm telling it a little apocryphal,
but basically they sent all this notes back to me
and said, we've got this.
I'm like, yeah, yeah, they do.
They've got this.
And I need to tell them and show them that they've got this.
And I let it go.
And that meant I could actually recover

(13:05):
from getting my appendix out
and show up much more effectively
when it came time for me to be my extroverted introvert.
- Well, what a wild ride that must have been.
And appendicitis is not one of those
that you can just muscle your way through.
And that's a unpleasant experience.
- It was not fun.
- One of the other guests that I had on

(13:26):
described the same challenge of trying to maintain
that healthy amount of space.
And as he progressed in his career,
he found that the more that he would get involved
with the minutiae, the things that he perhaps shouldn't be
deeply involved with, people get very nervous.
They're like, oh, why are you here?
Why are you breathing down my neck on this problem?
And it's finding that balance of trusting the team,

(13:50):
making sure that you can actually gracefully let them
do their thing and then be there when you need to be there.
But otherwise, be gone.
That's a tough balance.
- Yeah, yeah.
And for anyone thinking about this or working on it,
there'll be times where you get it wrong.
And that's okay because that experience of getting it wrong

(14:10):
where the team might maybe you should have been in the room
or maybe the decision isn't quite where it needed to be.
That makes your team develop, your team becomes stronger.
And that is, if you think really about the core
of what growth requires, it requires that we can work
collectively as a group and not all be always

(14:31):
be dependent on one person.
And letting that go is vital to the success of an organization.
- Beautifully said, before we dive into your job
and what actually goes into it, would you share with us
a little bit about what your work as a chief executive
really means to you?
- That's a really good question.
I'll answer it indirectly.

(14:52):
I think that it is easy for us to get identity wrapped up
into our job, to become our jobs.
And my personal experience with that is when I wrap my identity
in my job, I lose perspective and my effectiveness
immediately goes down.
So what does my job mean to me personally?

(15:15):
I care deeply about it.
And I really want to do right by the companies
that have joined coordinates.
And I take that responsibility really seriously.
I also work with intention not to make my job
part of my identity.
It is just a job.
And that gives me distance and perspective

(15:39):
that I think lets me come into it
because once your personal emotions are wrapped up
into your job, then a situation occurs at work.
And that's spitting up your personal emotions,
whatever it is.
We always talk about 90% of your reaction
to a current situation is based on your past.

(16:00):
Well, if you emotionally load it,
it's based on your emotional past.
And what we really want to be is there intellectually
and logically for these business decisions.
And when we are bringing,
'cause emotions are part of the job,
we want to be supporting our people,
not experiencing our own emotions

(16:21):
around the particularly in a senior leadership position.
So that's why I'm a big advocate of my internal mantra
of it's just a job.
That's it.
And I am not special.
(laughs)
It really, really helps.
And by the way, my friends would still be my friends
if I had a different job and surrounding myself.

(16:44):
- You were still a ballerina.
- If I was still a very,
(laughs)
they would still be my friends.
And I am really lucky to be surrounded by people like that
who don't give a darn about how fancy my title
might or might not be.
So that's that separation side of it.
There's another side of it that I also view my job,

(17:08):
the seriousness of which I view my job
is I really view myself as having a duty to serve.
When we bring these companies into accordance,
we are making commitments to them.
We are making commitments to their customers.
We need to keep and carry through on those commitments
because they have trusted us.
And that trust is important.

(17:30):
And I believe in karma
and things do come back around
and we need to be doing the right thing.
And that is really center to
but how I think about my job at a personal level.
So it is a duty to serve.
That is, there's a lot of privilege that comes with this job.

(17:51):
That privilege comes with that duty.
- Lovely. It makes a ton of sense.
Transition to accordance as a business
and your role therein.
Would you educate me a little bit on how big the business is,
what your teams and divisions look like,
help kind of a lay person have an understanding
of the lay of the land,
then we'll talk about your role as chief executive.

(18:13):
- Sure.
So coordinates is a bit of a unique beast.
What we do is we acquire really high potential B2B
SaaS software companies.
Typically they're on the smaller side.
They're anywhere between maybe one
and $10 million in annual revenue.
And they're looking to grow.
They have great products

(18:34):
and you can see it in the way their customers talk about it.
Their customer loyalty.
You can see it in the demos of these products
of just how good they are.
These are products that,
what makes them different is these products
are really tailored into fitting specific industry challenges.
So they're not trying to be a broad horizontal platform.

(18:56):
They're not trying to be CRM for everybody.
They're trying to be CRM for industrial manufacturers.
They're not trying to be warehousing and pricing
for every retailer.
They're really focused around the thrift
and the reseller experience,
which makes them great at what they do.

(19:17):
They have deep, deep functionality.
And most of these companies are led by amazing people
with such deep industry knowledge.
And they've reached a point where they know
that they can keep growing,
but they know that the next stage of the company
is a little bit is, not even a little bit,
it's substantially different
than the current stage of the company.

(19:38):
And those are the companies that we look for
because there is my mental images up and over.
Like if you've ever boosted someone over a wall
and you hear, "Stand on my hands," and, "Whoop!"
And you can't get over on your own,
but you can get over if you've got a partner
helping you go up and over.
And that's our job is to help them go up and over
and to take that $5 million company,

(20:01):
reach more of their customers, deliver,
or potential customers, deliver true value
and help them become a $15 million company,
a $25 million company with the support
to smooth out all of those transitions.
Because when you go from that $5 million to 10 to 15,
that starts to become the point

(20:22):
where no matter how little you sleep,
you cannot always be the person in the room.
So that journey is what these leaders are going through
and we're here to support them.
And also to give them the opportunity.
And it's a bit of a luxury if you're
a early stage software company

(20:44):
and you don't have additional backing,
often you have to take the customers
that are available to you, the customers that come.
We give them the ability to say, "This customer,
it's a great customer, but we can't really solve
the problem that they have."
So this isn't the right customer for us.
So they're building this really solid foundation

(21:05):
as they go through this birth transition.
Because we give them the financial backing,
the stability, if it's a, quote, bad quarter
because they decided not to take a customer
that they couldn't fully support,
that's not going to affect their ability
to take care of their people and their existing customers.

(21:25):
Fascinating, what a cool company.
In the most simple of terms, it sounds as though
Corden's looks for relatively small businesses
that serve other businesses B2B.
They provide a software as a service
for a very specific niche.
And they're at that inflection point

(21:45):
where they've built something great.
It's very useful for a very specific customer.
And they're right in between those growth phases
where the founder, the zero to one has happened,
but then the going from 5 million to 10 or 15 or 100 million
is a whole set of new muscles.
And you, Corden, the business tries to help them
get through that growth phase

(22:06):
and then see through to a more beautiful future.
Is that about right?
- Oh, you said that so much better than I did.
Can I have that snip so I can do it that way next time?
- I'm flattered.
Okay, good.
I'm glad I at least have a baseline understanding.
When you think about the size of the business and your team,
you're the chief executive.

(22:27):
Can you give me a sense of how many employees you have?
I know there's smaller businesses within
and what is your own leadership team?
What are your direct reports look like?
- Yeah, we're around 400 people.
We've acquired 16 companies
and eight of those have been within about the last year.
So we acquired a pretty rapid pace.
So then what my executive team looks like

(22:49):
is a reflection of what our priorities are.
So we have a team that is entirely focused around
go to market capability.
I have an amazing chief marketing officer,
chief revenue officer and chief operating officer.
And they are focused around the core tenets of growth.
Find your customers, sell them well

(23:12):
and then make sure that you deliver on your promises
and keep them and grow them as your customer.
So that's the core, those core operational roles.
And then we support them with,
I'm really like, I have a fantastic CFO
who understands the nuances of what these growth stages
look like.
A general counsel who is the most commercial GC

(23:37):
you will ever meet, she understands that we're here
to get really fair terms with our customers
and can explain to them when we won't do something
that they're asking for that there's a really good reason.
And that's such a great approach to have
because they're not adversarial conversations
we're negotiating terms.
They're business conversations in the legal context.

(24:01):
I'm really lucky to have her.
And then our chief technology officer
has created a set of capabilities
that really are exceptionally powerful.
So we're one of the most critical things that we do.
There's management by anecdote, the set of anecdotes,

(24:21):
the things that I have the ability to observe.
And then there's making decisions that are driven by data.
And our CTO alongside a really amazing technical team
has put together a data platform that goes faster
than you would believe possible.
We get data flowing in just a matter.

(24:43):
It starts in the first week
and we within a matter of a few weeks
can deliver back to the leaders of these business units
insights about their operations
that help them see what that evolution is
that you just described.
So that is our core.
Now I've disrupted a leave.
I have to make sure I didn't leave anybody out.

(25:05):
I think I get.
- Revening this technology. - Oh, okay.
- My head of M&A.
Man, he's gonna give me heck.
We also have, and this is another thing
that really sets up a side,
the team that works on identifying these companies
that we want to acquire works side by side

(25:25):
with these operators with a very tight feedback loop.
So we kind of have a mantra,
if there are some problems,
we're really good at solving some growth challenges.
We just got this nailed.
So having the team that is talking to companies
that might want to join Corden's sitting right next to
the team that is then working with these companies

(25:47):
means that we can really, really hone this process.
And the other thing that I really value
about our M&A process is that we're very transparent
with the companies we're talking to.
We explain to them how we value them.
And if they want to be able to sell themselves
for a higher number, we'll tell them how.

(26:09):
Like these are the steps.
This is what it would look like.
And sometimes they go work on it
and then they come back to us and we're like,
yes, this is great.
We can do exactly the thing that we want to do.
That theme through all of this is just being real
with the companies that we're talking to,
being transparent, being really honest,

(26:30):
making sure to very best of our ability every time
that what we say to them is what we mean
and how it's going to be and not telling,
you can tell a great story and maybe get a company
to get excited and then come join us.
But if that story is not real,

(26:50):
they're gonna know it in pretty short order.
And we wanna make sure that it's real.
So we're patient and we're willing to be real,
to bring in and have the companies that fit us
really well join us and have them understand really well
what their experience is going to be
and the things we're good at
and the things that we're maybe not as good at.

(27:10):
- The business has roughly 400 employees.
You are the chief executive.
Sounds like you have just about seven C-suite team members
across operations, finance, revenue, technology,
M&A and the legal side of things.
And then you've acquired 16 businesses
across the history of the business.
And it sounds like you're acquiring quickly.

(27:33):
When you're thinking through what you are looking for
and what starts to differentiate the businesses
that you might pursue from the thousands
of other potential businesses
that you might be interested in helping,
what do you look for?
What are some of the clues that like,
"Oh, this business is one that we're really excited about?"
- There are certainly financial metrics.

(27:56):
But once you go past that,
we look for companies that you can see
their depth of insight and understanding
into what their solutions do.
They deeply care about their customers.
You can see that they speak about their customers
with respect and they value them.

(28:16):
They care about their people
and they're often, we really like it
when they're talking about,
"I want to understand the journey
that my people will have after joining coordinates.
That matters to me."
Because that tells us that, you know,
the numbers, all the numbers are lagging indicators.
The culture is the leading indicator.
And when you value the customer,

(28:37):
when you value your people,
when you're thinking about the picture beyond just yourself,
that's an innately higher quality company.
- Beautiful. It makes a ton of sense.
We'll get back to the conversation shortly,
but I wanted to tell you about how I can help you find your fit.
I offer one-on-one career coaching services

(29:00):
for experienced professionals
who are preparing to find and land their next role.
If you're a director, vice president, or C-suite executive
and you're ready to explore new opportunities,
please go to GoodFitCareers.com
to apply for a free consultation.
I also occasionally send a newsletter
which includes stories from professionals
who have found their fit,
strategies and insights that might be helpful

(29:21):
in your job search and content
that I found particularly useful or interesting.
If you'd like to learn more,
check out GoodFitCareers.com and follow me on LinkedIn.
Now, back to the conversation.
Let's transition over into sharing some lessons here
for the audience.
And we talked through a little bit about,

(29:42):
how do we begin to impart some value
on folks out there who might want to become a CEO?
And something that we discussed earlier
was thinking through,
how do you choose the right kind of company to pursue
if you are on that CEO track?
And so let's say that I'm someone who aspires to be a CEO
at what has been a CEO in the past
and I'm ready for a change.

(30:02):
I'm looking for something new.
What sort of advice would you give me
or what sort of guidance would you give me
as I start to narrow down the known universe of possibilities
on companies that I might be able to lead?
- I think the first thing is to really understand
what it is, why you want to be a CEO.
It's a fantastic job and I am very lucky to have it.

(30:22):
It is also a hard job and that duty to serve carries through.
So I think like PTO and taking real PTO
is incredibly important.
But if you're someone who like you really want to just be able
to go on plug for three weeks,
you probably won't like this job
because there is not a lot of unplugging.

(30:43):
So I think it's really important
if you're thinking about going down this path
that when you think about work, work is kind of fun.
I think about it, you know, like we play all these little games
on our phones, on computers, on gaming consoles.
And we're like working really hard.
Maybe it's an adventure game
and I gotta go get 60 diamonds to be able to unlock.

(31:05):
I'm just so geeky out to be able to unlock the door
to go battle the dragon.
If you're looking at work
and you're kind of thinking about it the same way,
this job might be right for you.
Because if it's a negative every time there's an interruption
or someone needs to check in with you
or you've got to take care of business,

(31:26):
you might not be very happy.
And then it's what type, what are you good at doing?
So I have a passion for growth.
I absolutely love growth.
So I probably am not a CEO of a steady state company
where they're primarily looking to do business as usual
and just keep the trains running on time.

(31:48):
Someone else would be amazing at it.
That's not a job for me.
So that's the first thing is,
what is the mission of that company?
Is it a growth company?
Is it a, it's arrived at its place?
We wanna keep the engine going as it is.
Is it looking for transformation?
And then what kind of transformation is it looking for?

(32:09):
Does it need a new strategy?
Does it need to change how it's engaging its customers?
What are the problems that as CEO
you're going to be solving for that?
And then think really thoroughly around,
is that a problem that brings you happiness and solving?
Is it that, oh, I'm gonna go find another diamond

(32:30):
and go get the dragon?
Or is it a, oh, no, I don't wanna do that thing today
because you're gonna be doing it every day and day in and day out.
So that's a really important way to look at it.
I think also you need really good alignment
around cultural values with your board
and with your company.

(32:52):
You can tell, I really, really value culture.
I think it's essential.
I am not saying that that is the only right way to do it.
There are different management and leadership styles,
but you wanna make sure that your management style
is one that fits into that company
so that when you have to make hard decisions
that are driven by your philosophy of leadership and culture,

(33:16):
your board understands and your team understands.
Some businesses, like some, their thesis,
and you'll have investors in your business no matter what.
That's not gonna change.
You and your investors have to be lined up.
Is it a patient's play?
Is that I need fast results?

(33:37):
Neither of those are right or wrong,
but they need to be right or wrong for you.
So I would line that up.
Also think about the size of the company.
Different size companies have different things.
I really love, I love the mid-stage.
I left Big Corporate America because you just got farther
and farther removed from customers and from people

(34:00):
and it became a much more abstract job.
And that's not what gets me super excited
with absolute respect for people who love those jobs
and want to go do that.
That makes sense.
That's great.
But in a mid-sized company, there is kind of this hybrid
of you're not doing everything,

(34:22):
but you kind of want to know how to do most things.
And so it's a really good fit
if someone has a broad, basic experience.
If you're going into a very small company,
you got to be ready to do everything.
And that's like, I strongly advise really good
presentation editing skills if you're gonna go see
EO, a very small early stage company.
And someday, I'm not gonna be the one who just edits

(34:45):
does every like blind edit of the PowerPoint,
but I'm obsessive about that.
That's what you learn.
If you ever work at Dell, you learn how to do
the perfect presentation.
And I can't allow any of the bullets to wrap a line
to this day, but back to the plot, small companies.
You're gonna be like having a different job every day.
And one of those jobs might be janitor

(35:06):
'cause you got a bunch of coders
and they gotta get the release out and you can't code.
So what are you gonna do?
You're gonna order a pizza and take out the trash.
That's your job today.
(laughing)
So like getting your hands around the what you wanna be doing
in terms of the size of the company,
then they're very different investment models.
There are venture capital models where,

(35:28):
and these are gross generalizations,
they're all sorts of very nuanced models,
but venture capital is generally looking for the home run.
You gotta be ready to swing for the fences and okay,
because most of the time the swing for the fences doesn't work.
So you wanna think about what that win would look like
if you're going into a venture capital back business.

(35:50):
Private equity tends to be much more oriented
around cost effectiveness,
really driving up the profitability.
That is a really good play for a lot of companies,
but is that the play that you like to make?
Growth equity, we're much more modeled
around a growth equity model
where we're thinking about that up and over process.

(36:11):
Growth equity focuses on boosting somebody up and over the wall.
And then you've got a myriad of other things,
but you wanna look at each of those.
You've gotta be aligned with the thesis, the culture,
the stage of the business,
and really get into your head what your day in
and day out's gonna be.
'Cause your days are gonna be long,
you don't just get to put it down.

(36:32):
It's kinda like being a parent,
there's nobody to give the baby to.
This is your baby.
Right.
In this very complex formula,
let's say that I've found a healthy balance
of the skills, experiences, drivers and trades.
I'm solving the right kind of problems
that I'm excited about that are something
that I wanna continue to play through.

(36:54):
I'm in a domain or an industry that aligns with my interests.
I have a board, a leadership team, an investment team
who I really agree with,
and I feel like I'm a good fit with,
when we're growing and the business,
our baby is making it through and becoming bigger and bigger.
Something that I find fascinating when I work
with other chief executives is,

(37:16):
how do we begin to know where our sweet spot is?
Some chief executives are outstanding
at getting it from a concept
to that first million dollars through the door.
Some are outstanding at managing a 10 billion dollar
portfolio or a 100 billion dollar business.
Do you have any advice or guidance or clues
that we might be able to use if we're one of those executives

(37:38):
and we're starting to grow past
or the business is growing past our capabilities?
One is be real about it
because there's always gonna be something
that you're not good at.
The guaranteed path for your business
to be growing past your abilities sooner rather than later
is trying to basically hide that.

(37:59):
It's okay not to know everything.
That's what your team is for.
I do not know everything about marketing
or about sales or about customer success.
My team knows so much more than me.
So give yourself that freedom
and that's also modeling to your team
what you want your team to do

(38:21):
that they are also recognizing they aren't good at everything
and they are hearing from their team,
from their peers, from their colleagues,
from the broader organization.
Make the organization as a whole smarter
and that starts with what you do as CEO
to acknowledge those gaps
and then decide if this is a gap you need to fill

(38:42):
or yourself or if it's a gap that you fill
but through the company and stay true to that.
I think the biggest thing you have to do
on that growth journey is to be willing to let more
and more things go.
So what that means is anchoring on the things
and knowing these are the three things that really matter

(39:04):
and I got to keep my eye on that.
These are the things that maybe don't
and I can let those go to my really good team I've built
and let them run with it and check in.
What do I check in on once a week, once a month,
once a quarter, once a year?
And getting that cadence.
You've got to make decisions though
and I think you've got to have an intentional structure
and evaluation around it.

(39:25):
And it also what I'm hearing is that there is an enormous value
in the upward feedback.
It sounds like we are not necessarily capable
of having enough self-awareness to see all those gaps
but if we're able to build a village around us
who can tell us, hey, here's where you need some help
or here's where we need to back off

(39:46):
or here's where we need to supplement.
It sounds like that can also be one of the superpowers
of leadership per se.
- Yeah, yeah.
And it's, once you're sitting in the seat,
you quickly find out that your voice has
an inwardly power, power that perhaps you don't really want
because you might be saying something off hand
to try and spur a conversation

(40:07):
and suddenly that becomes a decision.
And you didn't actually know what you were talking about.
So, it's funny from a female perspective,
we learn not to do an uplift in our voice
at the end of the sentence
because we want to speak in a competent
and authoritative manner.
I violate that role all the time
because I want people to know with intention like,

(40:28):
hey, like, does it kind of look like this?
Is this what you're thinking about?
Or I don't quite follow that
and create a lot of space to get that information flowing back
because the greatest gift you can give your senior leadership
is to speak frankly to them.
And understand sometimes they might be like,

(40:49):
oh, and that's just human frustration.
But there is nothing as good as being like,
I see what you're saying,
but I'm worried about this.
Can you understand like how we're gonna address,
let's talk about how we're gonna address this
'cause I don't know if you can see
that this is going to happen.
Those are amazing conversations.

(41:11):
- Beautiful advice, thank you.
Let's say that I'm that CEO.
I've landed in a company that is a good fit all around
for all the dimensions that we've shared.
Would you teach us a little bit
about how you think about shaping a company
once you've arrived as the leader?
- Listen a lot.
My head is a constant soundtrack of like movie
and quotes and half of them are musicals.

(41:33):
So the song from Hamilton,
talk less, listen more,
which I talk a lot, so I work on it.
It is very true.
You've got to see where that company is
and how they are working.
And you can have all the ideals in the world,
but change is a process.
And if you're a remit in coming in as CEO is change,

(41:54):
you have to go first understand
where their app change starts from
where an organization is at.
I think the second thing, especially,
and I'll probably speak more in that context of change,
is change has to make sense to the broader organization.
And that takes more work than you would expect.

(42:17):
It's a lot of communication
and not once, not twice, five times,
seven times, 10 times,
where it feels like you're just repeating
the same things all the time.
And I want to say, by the way,
that if Gordon's folks are watching,
and I want to say that I always get that right,
'cause especially if you're moving fast,
there are times now as we've been working

(42:37):
as a leadership team,
where it's like, you know what?
We should have talked about that more.
But that's also okay,
because that's part of how your organization knows
that it's okay to tell you what's working
and what's not.
And I'm gonna come back to that idea in just a second.
But I think where they're at,
listening, explaining what the outcomes are,

(43:01):
and then giving people an opportunity
to pursue those outcomes,
which will always be a little bit slower
if it's a transformational CEO job than your board wants.
But it's gonna bring into clarity
why it is that the things that need to happen
might not have been happening before,
because you start to see how the system is working
and how the system is at play.

(43:23):
And that's going to help you make
the better decisions over the long term.
The point I wanted to come back to is,
I think it becomes very easy also in this job,
just to focus on the things that aren't working.
And as CEO, there's also a job to keep pointing back
to people to the things that are working
so that they understand that their hard work

(43:44):
has a lot of return.
We are still, we have big aspirations
to make sure that this is a great company.
And so we can dial in to all of these things,
like we want this to be better,
and we want this to be better.
But what we also know is that we have made
so many things really impactful and really different.

(44:06):
We've got to celebrate that too,
'cause that makes it worth doing the next thing.
- So I would love to go back in time just a little bit
and see if we could reflect on your first time as CEO,
being the most extroverted introvert of the group.
It was, if I recall, just around the dot com bubble,
and I would love to just, in a very brief way,

(44:28):
go back and think about what was it actually like
to go through the process of raising capital,
how it seemed like the whole technology world was crumbling.
And if you could share just one or two very brief pieces
of advice or lessons that you learned on a huge success
when it seemed like the whole industry
was crumbling around you.
- Bring snacks.
(both laughing)

(44:49):
- Okay, tell me more.
- Tell me where we bring snacks.
So we were in Central Ohio, Columbus, Ohio,
which at the time had C-capital,
it had no Series A capital, or very, very little.
We had actually soft-circle, meaning that we had our series
they lined up, 9/11 happened.

(45:10):
We were selling to manufacturing and transportation.
You know exactly what happened from there.
The thing that also happened is I saw how great the team was
and how much they cared about their mission,
which is why you treat people right,
'cause you can't control the outside world.
You can, and when this stuff happens,
everything that you've done is now gonna come to fruition.

(45:33):
So what we had to do is get the pitch really, really right.
And we had to get the numbers really, really right.
And know them, know them at a really, really intimate level.
And then just keep having that.
And it was like every single person

(45:55):
we could try and get on deck with,
we went after like every single one.
We didn't like, if you could,
if you give us 15 minutes,
we're gonna give you the pitch
and explain why you should invest in us.
And it is just, that's where it is just an endurance sport.
And there is nothing, there is no perfect answer
other than making sure that you are in that process,

(46:18):
taking enough care of yourself
that you don't drive yourself down into the ground.
And that you've got a really good team
to like there's all sorts of funny stories.
The bring snacks is we're like racing up and down Silicon Valley.
We're up and down one-on-one trying to get all to these meetings.
We do not have time to get food,
but I spilled my Cheetos on the floor of the rental car
and I did eat the Cheetos.

(46:38):
And then there is a Kleiner Perkins who did not invest in us,
a saint at the time of a office manager there.
We're sitting there, we're pitching,
all the Kleiner people are eating,
we are starving to death.
And we finish our pitch,
you get hustled out really fast and she's like,

(47:00):
I made you a to go bag.
That is the greatest thing on the planet.
- Oh, that really made the day. - So very smart.
- It's really, really important.
But the serious side of it is know your stuff
because you've got to be really, really deep.
The finance side, the other like,
there's so many really compelling memories

(47:22):
that are like I could go on for an hour on this.
But the other thing that was really helpful
when we landed money was we were pitching in Austin,
how I ended up here.
And then we were gonna go pitch,
their co-investment partner is in Dallas.
And we ended the Austin meeting with,
what if you change your revenue model to this?

(47:43):
Then we went to the airport, they were flying with us
and I'm sitting next to the lead investor.
And if you ever flown between Austin and Dallas,
the plane goes like that.
It is like, you got 30 minutes in the air
where you can turn your laptop on.
And I had 30 minutes to answer the question,
but the guy's sitting next to me.
And being able to know your numbers

(48:06):
and know your financial model and understand
the deep mechanics of that,
we were able to flip it around and walk into the next room
and say, if you wanted us to switch to that,
this is what our revenue model would look like.
And I think that made a material difference
because what they're investing in is in part the idea,
it's a big part of the people.

(48:27):
And they wanna know that you really know.
You're not just that the headline
or the studio front stage people,
like you can get down into the plumbing
and you know how this business is gonna behave.
- Great advice and good war stories.

(48:48):
Let's quickly go through some perceptions and misconceptions
and then we'll talk about hiring and being hired.
How do you believe the world sees your job as CEO?
- Oh, I think they see it in a lot of different ways.
And it probably is just kind of what your experience
is of seeing your prior CEOs.

(49:10):
I think they probably wonder what I do,
some of them probably wonder what I do all day.
That's okay, 'cause each day is a little bit different.
How I hope that they see it and how I see it
is tending to making sure that all systems are go,
all the parts are working together,
data is flowing, relationships are flowing,

(49:33):
information is flowing, that we know where we're going
and we know how we're going to get there
and then we're course correcting as we go.
Like that's kind of how I think about my job description.
I don't know how people view it.
That's a good question.
I think I wanna ask more people that in my company.
- As we think about how you approach hiring

(49:56):
and also how you've been hired,
would you walk me through your philosophy
on hiring for your own team?
- I think it's important to understand
how the pieces mesh together.
So you could have an exceptionally talented person,
but either they're three of the job
or maybe their work style doesn't mesh with your culture

(50:18):
or their colleagues.
And no matter how great they are,
they're not gonna be the right fit into the role.
That is also something really good
to be remembering on the other side.
That is like you get a lot more nose and yeses,
that's the definition of a job hunt.
Those nose are not about you.
Those nose are about the environment

(50:39):
into which you would be going.
I also think it's important to create as much as possible
a really positive experience for candidates
so that if you have a candidate coming in
and they're not a fit to the best of your ability,
give them an understanding of where you see their strengths
and where not.
Now, the people that we did hire,

(50:59):
we were looking for the short tag line is,
we're a bunch of work courses, not show ponies,
like we really get excited.
Like, if we were working as auto mechanics,
we'd be like covered in grease all day.
And that's super fun.
So I wanted a bunch of people

(51:19):
who wanted to be covered in grease all day,
but also could step back and think systemically.
I wanted a group of people who value people
and value customers and can really speak
to that sense of durable growth.
I wanted people who wanted to see

(51:41):
if we could build something great here.
Like, there's a mission here
because if we can, and we are,
as we take these companies that have such good products
and get them worn to the hands of more people,
one of our companies does this really profoundly good thing.

(52:01):
It helps investigational pharmacies
who are doing, they're taking drugs that are in human trials
and administering the human trials,
giving those drugs to real life people at the other end.
And their solution helps them keep track in great detail
of how the protocol should be administered,

(52:23):
make sure that everything is available
to execute on the protocol
and gets out of what used to be these big binders of paper
and to a much less labor intensive system
that's also more accurate.
And not every drug trial is life or death,
but some of these trials,

(52:43):
there's a kid at the other end
with a life-threatening disease
and this is their last chance.
And if the protocol isn't done right,
that kid could get kicked out of the trial,
that adult, that human might have their life changed by that.
We wanna get, if we can get that
into the hands of more of these pharmaceutical trials,

(53:06):
that's going to decrease the number of times
that that happens and this software works.
And then just reflecting on that a little more
and then I knew I was at the right place
as I was talking to, I went and I got to go visit
with one of the customers using this
and they described how they use it
and they explained to me why this means so much.

(53:27):
And I sat down and then I was having breakfast
with one of our board members.
And I was using it, I was explaining that story
and I wanted to tell him about it
so that he would understand why for the,
this company will always have people
that pick up the phone for support.
They'll never go to a call tree
because there could be someone's dad sitting in that chair

(53:49):
and they need an answer now.
I got halfway through the story
and my board member said,
"Oh, you need to make sure that there's always
"a really well-trained person picking up the phone."
Like, yes, yes, that is.
And I'm sorry, that's not an answer to your question
but like, how do you know you're at the right place?
You know you're at the right place
and that's the response.

(54:11):
Like, I wanted a team of people who look at that
and realize we get that product
into the hands of more people, good things happen.
Same thing, we get these distribution,
we do a lot of work with industrial distributors
around helping them sell and manage their inventory
more effectively.
Those are really powerful economic drivers

(54:33):
for the communities they're in.
We've got great tools around education,
giving a first-generation college student
a really good on-campus experience,
helping them integrate into it,
which if they have that experience,
it's more likely that they're going to stay, that matters.
Great solutions in K-12,
the commerce solution that does the work for thrift stores,

(54:57):
that keeps stuff out of landfills.
And so you wake up, I live in Austin,
it's ridiculously hot and you know what?
We're getting some stuff out of landfills.
We're not going to solve the problem,
but we're going to put a little drop
in the bucket of the solution.
I wanted people who got really excited about that.
And I've left out, I can't give you 16 stories,

(55:19):
well, I could give you 16 stories,
but then you're going to cut me off.
I think the ethos of that comes through loud and clear.
Something that I really admire about you, Sharon,
I've been on the side of hiring you,
I've been on the side of helping you hire.
You've been through the process of hiring people
in big and small roles and every sort of function

(55:39):
you could imagine.
Can you share with us a little bit of your wisdom
on what sort of process actually works?
What sort of workflow or series of interviews
or however you like to structure things
to actually hire people in a way
that gives you a good signal and good read on those people?
Hiring is hard, it really is.
And you, you know, I think just kind of leaning

(56:03):
into that and knowing, never fall in love.
With a candidate, you've got to, I think,
really be honest, because when you're hiring that person,
you're taking them out of the track that they were on
and putting them into a new track.
And so there's a duty there too,
is this the right person, is this the right fit?
So you've got to be willing to talk about

(56:25):
what are the limitations of that person?
We all have them.
I think having them, and it can be painful,
but at an executive level,
you've got to have them go through a lot of interviews
and a lot of conversations and try and create those
in different environments so that you can,
that probably are quite similar to what they're going

(56:45):
to experience at work,
so that you get a sense of how they're going to operate
and how they're going to engage.
I think it's really important to be frank about the job
so that they're equipped to make a good decision too.
Tell them the challenges, tell them the hard parts.
When a company like ours that will have many different

(57:07):
business units, you kind of have to have a mindset
that you're really comfortable context switching all day long.
You're talking to a business that does one thing
and then a business that does another
and being able to do that and feel good about it.
I really have to make sure my executive team
or the candidates get a flavor of it.

(57:32):
Down to the level of we do monthly business reviews
which is our check in with the business leaders
to keep us all on the same page
and make sure that we're working effectively
as a team of teams.
And that's 16, 30 minute meetings in one week
that require a lot of focus and then soon it's going to be 17

(57:52):
and then it's going to be 24 and it's got to keep going.
They've got to know that and I ask them to imagine themselves
in that situation.
'Cause it can be tiring.
I'll tell you full on.
Like I do three or four of those in the morning
and I pop up and I go just like walk around my block
a few minutes to clear my brain
so I can sit down and do it again.

(58:14):
So tell them, tell them the words.
Let them choose you as well.
Don't sell them on your company.
- Yeah, beautifully said.
The job market today is a complicated place.
People out there are in many instances struggling
to just have someone take a chance in them.
And these are capable people who may be shifting industries
or trying to shift functions

(58:34):
or they've just now figured out that this is the path
they want to follow and this is what's a good fit for them.
Is there anything that would lead you to take a chance
on a candidate that might not be just that prototypical
perfect fit based on their profile?
- Yes, first of all, I think you've got a limited number
of take chance candidates.

(58:54):
So you've got to choose those things
and accept that they're not going to be perfect.
If you're a leader thinking about this,
they're going to have a learning curve.
Do you have the time and space and the criticality
that is appropriate for that learning curve?
And then do you have an organization
that can bring them along on that learning curve?
So that's the organizational readiness for it.

(59:17):
Then what would make me do that with a candidate?
In some ways we do that all the time.
So as our business units are coming in to us,
these are companies that are because they're typically,
they don't have a lot of outside capital.
So they have been really good at growing people

(59:37):
and developing people and they'll have one person
who's figured out how to do four different jobs.
And then they get bigger and that one person
probably needs to do one job instead of four
so that they have depth and focus.
So we take those bets all the time.
I think it is, so what did we look for?
We just took a bet, oh man, she's so good.

(59:58):
We just promoted someone in a business unit
to become their COO.
And first of all, she wanted to do it
and she really had a good understanding
of the work involved and was willing to work side by side
with the person who was working with that organization

(01:00:18):
to get into it.
So be willing to do the work around it.
Second, she is very aligned around kind of our philosophy.
So like, is that candidate thinking in a way
that's going to mesh with the rest of the team?
You don't want group think it's more of like

(01:00:38):
she thinks in terms of data.
She thinks in terms of prioritization and process.
She's got like the mindset is the same.
If you've got a really well aligned mindset
and someone who's got strong critical thinking skills
and is willing to go invest and understand the data,
that person can do a whole bunch of different things.

(01:00:59):
They don't have to have great depth
as long as you've got the space and time to give them the depth.
So if you're that person and you're looking for a job,
network, network, network, and you know,
you would be, everybody says this,
but you would be surprised how few people do that.
Reach out to people on LinkedIn,

(01:01:19):
give them a short, kithy email.
I would like to learn more about this role.
I think I would be effective in this role because of this.
Is there someone in your organization
who would have the time to speak to me about it?
Something that simple, short, kithy,
value oriented, not a hidden sales message.

(01:01:41):
You know, go do that.
Talk to people, talk to,
hit up friends of friends
and have a lot of conversations
and get the language of the job you want to go do.
Then you'll be able to talk to people on the other end
with an understanding of what words they're using
and how all that fits.

(01:02:02):
- As we bring the conversation to a close,
I'd like to talk a little bit about the future.
And it can be a future for you, future for the business.
What are you excited about for the future?
- I am really excited about the next year for this company.
We recently completed our executive team.
They fit with that values alignment

(01:02:24):
that is so important to us and that execution ability.
And so as we go through this,
it's kind of the next iteration of this company.
We've done really conscious assessment
of what works really well,
what could work so much better.

(01:02:44):
And we're bringing next week,
well, it'll already have happened in the past
when this is posted,
but we're bringing together the leaders of these 16 companies
to help us really craft this next pass
at further refining and evolving and accelerating

(01:03:05):
how we support and help our companies grow.
And I am so excited to be at this place
where they can bring us all of their wisdom
from their experience combined with this really strong team
and turn that into our roadmap for the next six months
of where we focus on further building ourselves up.

(01:03:25):
Our intention is that we keep going.
We are 16 now, we're gonna keep going
until we come to a place that we can see
that the model is no longer as effective as what we want it to be.
We think that is years and years away.
We think this is a very, very scalable model,
but we're also not in love with ourselves.
We keep testing it.

(01:03:46):
And so like going now to the second passive refinement,
how do we make it even better?
And then a year from now,
we're gonna go do this third path of refinement.
How do we make it even better?
That's exciting.
- Absolutely.
What do you think software is gonna be like in 2030?
- I think it will be very few big monolithic systems

(01:04:08):
or there'll be fewer big monolithic systems
and much more focus around data.
And then what we think of now as software is giving us
the ability to present and act on that data.
So there was a long time where it was extremely hard
to integrate software.
And so you had these really big broad platforms

(01:04:31):
where you had to buy into something
and then kind of go single vendor.
We've advanced far enough now
that we can bring data together from many different sources
and really have a lot of very specialized software
that is the pinpoint exact solution
that you need for your company.
So we're getting into last slide,

(01:04:54):
just these onerous things and more of like,
oh, I'm gonna jump into this tool and do this.
It's, I think software on our laptops
is gonna look a lot more like software on our phones
where we've got a whole bunch of very focused
task oriented apps.
And then gaming is gonna be amazing.
- You would generate of AI, it's gonna be wild.

(01:05:15):
Sharon, you've been so very generous
with your time, your perspective and your wisdom.
Is there anything that you'd like to promote anything,
perhaps that we skimmed over
or anything that you'd like to revisit
or advice for the audience before we go?
- Take all of my advice with a grain of salt.
I'm just a person.
Let's get advice from a lot of different people

(01:05:38):
and evaluate it and figure out what makes sense
and what works for you.
That would be my biggest piece of advice.
The other big piece of advice is 90% of all of this,
90% of life is just showing up and just kind of have out.
And so if you're sitting in a place

(01:05:58):
where you're frustrated or discouraged
or kind of wondering where your life is gonna go,
this is a moment of time.
And as long as you kind of keep that forward motion,
maybe it's in my head, just keeps winning.
It all kind of comes together.
So keep, that is, that's really what underlies all of this.

(01:06:21):
Just keep trying and keep trying to do the right thing
and stuff happens.
And then life feels, whatever stuff happens,
life feels pretty good when you go at it that way.
Just keep swimming, wonderful words to close on.
Sharon, thank you so much for joining me
and sharing your perspective.
- This was a pleasure.
I really enjoyed it.
You gave me a lot to think about,

(01:06:41):
particularly as we go into this meeting next week.
I am gonna go ask them what they think I do.
- Perfect.
Well, thank you for coming on.
- Thanks, have a good one.
- Our next episode is with Mike Smith,
consulting manager at Ernst & Young.
- Many things in life are pipeline problems.
In any scenario where you're trying to change your life,

(01:07:03):
increasing the number of opportunities you're chasing.
The larger your pipeline is,
the better your odds are of getting what you want.
- If you enjoyed this episode,
make sure to subscribe for new episodes,
leave a review and tell a friend.
GoodFit Careers is hosted by me, Ryan Dickerson,
and is produced and edited by Melo Vox Productions.
Marketing is by Story Angled,

(01:07:25):
and our theme music is by Surf Tronica,
with additional music from Andrew Esperon-Sena.
I'd like to express my gratitude to all of our guests
for sharing their time, stories, and perspectives with us.
And finally, thank you to all of our listeners.
If you have any recommendations on future guests,
questions, or comments, please send us an email
at [e-mail].

(01:07:47):
(upbeat music)
(dramatic music)
( Shai