Think Like an Owner

Ep.215: Alex (@aebridgeman) is joined by Ayman Al-Abdullah (@aymanalabdul).

My guest today is Ayman Al-Abdullah, former CEO of Appsumo and now executive coach to other ambitious CEOs looking to scale 7 and 8-figure businesses past $100m, Ayman's specialty. I love learning from CEOs who've made that journey and can share key lessons and takeaways, and Ayman fits that to a "T." He's also a Durham native, which is where my wife and I will be moving to this summer so we had some fun talking about his move from Austin.

Ayman and I talk about chokepoints in a company's growth, habits that made him successful at Appsumo, why he stepped down as CEO, and how other ambitious CEOs can be more effective in their leadership roles.

Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn.

Learn more about Alex and Think Like an Owner at https://tlaopodcast.com/

I want to tell you about the audience survey we are currently running. These surveys help us create the best content for listeners and better understand your needs and interests. Thank you in advance for sharing your feedback, we greatly appreciate it.

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Links:

Ayman on X

Ayman's website

How to Make a Few Billion Dollars by Brad Jacobs

The Accountant Trailer

Topics:

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:04:20) - Leaving AppSumo to pursue coaching

(00:12:28) - What was the most informative experience for you in the CEO role?

(00:14:27) - What gets companies over the $7m hurdle?

(00:18:26) - What culture questions do you enjoy asking?

(00:24:03) - Improving the Sales role

(00:25:50) - Who was the best salesperson you ever hired?

(00:27:38) - Skills you need vs. what can be taught in sales

(00:31:34) - Have you reflected on whether you were born to be a CEO?

(00:34:44) - What have you found that helps CEOs succeed in the role?

(00:37:29) - Weekly journaling and exercise rituals

(00:42:30) - Ayman's 25-year vision

(00:50:57) - Do you study other CEOs?

(00:53:25) - The hero's journey

(01:02:41) - What's something you're passionate about?

Ep.214: Alex (@aebridgeman) is joined by Dennis Dresser (@DennisDresser).

My guest today is Dennis Dresser. Dennis was a sales leader at IBM and Oracle and became CRO at Anaplan and Dialpad before taking on an advisory role with companies looking to develop best-in-class sales organizations. Throughout his career, he's developed a playbook for creating these high-performing sales teams and has thought deeply about talent management, performance management, and implementing better processes.

This episode dives into some of that playbook along with characteristics to look for in hiring great sales leaders, scaling sales orgs, sales qualification methodologies, and so much more.

Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn.

Learn more about Alex and Think Like an Owner at https://tlaopodcast.com/

I want to tell you about the audience survey we are currently running. These surveys help us create the best content for listeners and better understand your needs and interests. Thank you in advance for sharing your feedback, we greatly appreciate it.

Take the survey here: https://bit.ly/3QLBB1N

Links:

JMI Equity

Dennis on LinkedIn

Topics:

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:03:17) - Career lessons learned

(00:06:27) - Evolving a Sales Team

(00:08:14) - Churn impacts

(00:10:10) - The high-performance sales framework

(00:14:28) - Characteristics of successful Salespeople

(00:15:58) - Hiring in Sales

(00:18:29) - Is there one skill or quality you've been able to coach up?

(00:21:17) - The Sales Qualification Methodology

(00:23:50) - What are some effective ways to involve those outside of Sales in the process?

(00:25:43) - Where do you see Sales Teams most often get stuck?

(00:29:15) - Characteristics of a high-performing prospecting function?

(00:32:14) - The future of content marketing

(00:35:04) - Advice to CEOs and heads of Sales teams

Ep.213: Alex (@aebridgeman) is joined by Armon Petrossian (@ArmonPetrossian).

My guest today is Armon Petrossian, co-founder and CEO of data transformation company Coalesce, built on Snowflake's ecosystem. Armon and I kick off talking about his time in China and learning Mandarin in undergrad, and move through topics like building within Snowflake's, nuances in selling to enterprises, hiring in sales, opportunities in data, and navigating challenging topics with a co-founder.

Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn.

Learn more about Alex and Think Like an Owner at https://tlaopodcast.com/

I want to tell you about the audience survey we are currently running. These surveys help us create the best content for listeners and better understand your needs and interests. Thank you in advance for sharing your feedback, we greatly appreciate it.

Take the survey here: https://bit.ly/3QLBB1N

Links:

Coalesce

Armon on X

Topics:

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:03:54) - Experiences living in China

(00:09:59) - Founding Coalesce

(0012:14) - How does Data Transformation work?

(00:13:46) - Choosing to build around SnowFlake

(00:20:01) - What other opportunities arise as data becomes more abundant?

(00:22:41) - Where are you investing capital right now?

(00:23:49) - What evolution does your sales team need to make right now?

(00:27:39) - What's a typical sales cycle for you?

(00:29:54) - What have you learned about selling to enterprises that people often struggle with?

(00:31:36) - Navigating political dynamics or relationships

(00:33:02) - What do you look for in new sales hires?

(00:35:11) - What have you become passionate about within building the company?

(00:38:32) - How do you handle disagreements with your co-founder?

(00:42:00) - What works for retaining engineers?

(0044:54) - What companies do you admire?

(00:45:30)- Advice to other data founders

Ep.212: Alex Bridgeman (@aebridgeman) is joined by Sieva Kozinsky (@sievakozinsky).

My guest on this episode is Sieva Kozinsky, co-founder of Enduring Ventures, a holding company founded in 2019 with 17 acquisitions to date. Sieva and I met at a dinner following the Berkshire Hathaway meeting in Omaha, his first time attending the meeting. A theme from our first conversations in Omaha that continues through this episode is long-term thinking being a huge advantage, and that compounding happens everywhere. Reputation, lessons, and learning - well beyond capital alone.

Given that our guest last week, Eric Jorgenson, is the CEO of one of Enduring's companies, I thought this would be a timely episode to bring back to the top of the feed

We talk about Sieva's background as a founder and how it impacts his role at Enduring Ventures, how he discovered he is a better buyer than a builder, great companies and founders he's studied and taken lessons from, and much more. Enjoy!

Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn.

Learn more about Alex and Think Like an Owner at https://tlaopodcast.com/

I want to tell you about the audience survey we are currently running. These surveys help us create the best content for listeners and better understand your needs and interests. Thank you in advance for sharing your feedback, we greatly appreciate it.

Take the survey here: https://bit.ly/3QLBB1N

Links:

Sieva on LinkedIn

Sieva on Twitter

Enduring Ventures

Founders Podcast

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow

The Gambler: How Penniless Kirk Kerkorian Became the Greatest Deal Maker in Capitalist History by William Rempel

Topics:

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:04:27) Belief Documents

(00:09:13) Long-termism trends

(00:11:57) Takeaways from the Berkshire Event

(00:20:36) Helping employees & executives think and behave like an owner

(00:26:17) Being a Buyer vs. Builder

(00:33:08) Culture Index

(00:35:55) The importance of having experience as a founder/operator to succeed at Enduring

(00:44:50) Perretto Prinicples

(00:54:17) Habits, tactics, and learnings from biographies on great founders and companies

(01:08:46) What strongly held belief have you changed your mind on?

(01:10:06) What's the best business you've ever seen?

Ep.211: Alex (@aebridgeman) is joined by Eric Jorgenson (@EricJorgenson).

My guest on this episode is Eric Jorgenson. Eric became a close friend while my wife and I lived in Omaha. I love the energy and enthusiasm he brings to whatever he's doing, whether it's investing in tech startups, writing books like The Almanack of Naval Ravikant and The Anthology of Balaji, hosting his Smart Friends podcast, or telling you about the latest innovations in sandwich making. And as of last summer he is the CEO of Scribe Media, a book publisher where the author retains full creative control and financial upside from their creations, and in my opinion, is the perfect business for Eric to run.

In this episode, we talk about the publishing business, the power of books over other creative mediums, his new role as CEO of Scribe, and what he's learned as an author himself.

Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn.

Learn more about Alex and Think Like an Owner at https://tlaopodcast.com/

I want to tell you about the audience survey we are currently running. These surveys help us create the best content for listeners and better understand your needs and interests. Thank you in advance for sharing your feedback, we greatly appreciate it.

Take the survey here: https://bit.ly/3QLBB1N

Links:

Eric's books

Scribe

Smart Friends Podcast

Topics:

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:04:18) - The power of writing

(00:06:27) - The business side of being an author

(00:12:44) - Is there a 'right' time in someone's career to write a book?

(00:18:46) - The business of Scribe

(00:27:06) - Podcasts vs. books

(00:31:22) - The story of Enduring Ventures stepping in to buy Scribe and making Eric the CEO

(00:38:59) - Learning how to be a CEO

(00:44:51) - What are some publisher benchmarks to compare Scribe to?

(00:50:22) - Do you see large publishers trying to replicate your model?

(00:55:22) - Who would you be excited to write a book about?

(00:57:18) - What are some of the biggest lessons you've learned in your time as CEO?

This week, we are running the episode I did with Chris Powers on the Fort podcast where I was a guest on that show, and in this episode, we talked all about my background, my interest in data, the podcast, and all kinds of other things that kinds of weird theories I have about restaurants too near the end!

This is a good episode showcasing not only the origin of this podcast, but also a good friend of mine, Chris Powers, his podcast, which I think is awesome, especially if you're into real estate. But it's also helpful if you're not, he's got episodes covering all kinds of areas of business and life and he's a really close friend of mine and a podcast that I really enjoy listening to.

Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn.

Learn more about Alex and Think Like an Owner at https://tlaopodcast.com/

I want to tell you about the audience survey we are currently running. These surveys help us create the best content for listeners and better understand your needs and interests. Thank you in advance for sharing your feedback, we greatly appreciate it.

Take the survey here: https://bit.ly/3QLBB1N

Links:

The Fort Podcast

Chris on X

Topics:

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:06:29) "If you want to buy a business, don't start a search fund, start a podcast."

(00:13:13) The impact of Think Like an Owner

(00:17:13) The Chief of Staff role

(00:29:24) The content customer acquisition flywheel

(00:33:47) What are the structures of data companies?

(00:38:17) Are we living in a world where everything we do is creating data for someone else?

(00:41:59) Does AI impact the data world?

(00:43:34) What would it look like to buy a data business?

(00:48:10) Would you implement a content flywheel if you owned a data company?

(00:50:08) How would you grow a data business?

(00:51:47) What fascinates you about the sales side of data business?

(00:56:20) Alex's Chicken Theory

My guest on this episode is Roland Lessard, former Co-CEO of Morningside with his partner Tom Klein, a language translation services business that served over 4,000 clients in 55 countries. A core piece of their thesis revolved around M&A, and Tom and Roland through that experience acquired deep domain expertise in creating value through a methodological M&A and, more importantly, integration process.

This episode is all about M&A and corporate development, both for companies doing occasional M&A and those with more programmatic strategies, which is where Roland is spending most of his town now as an advisor to CEOs.

Today Roland and I talk about the "why" of M&A, how M&A most often destroys value and how to avoid this, getting the team right prior to beginning M&A, assembling and leading an integration team, planning for integration and pitfalls to avoid, and the role of debt.

Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn.

Learn more about Alex and Think Like an Owner at https://tlaopodcast.com/

I want to tell you about the audience survey we are currently running. These surveys help us create the best content for listeners and better understand your needs and interests. Thank you in advance for sharing your feedback, we greatly appreciate it.

Take the survey here: https://bit.ly/3QLBB1N

Links:

Roland on LinkedIn

Morningside

Topics:

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:04:34) - Catching up

(00:06:45) - Categorizing M&A

(00:09:45) - Why should someone consider pursuing M&A?

(00:16:22) - Horizontal deals

(00:21:48) - Building Integration Teams

(00:33:44) - Having a 12-month outlook, maximum

(00:41:03) - Creating a dealbook

(00:47:31) - Benchmarks for processes and projects

(00:55:07) - Categories of integrations

(00:59:56) - Metrics to track in order to make sure you're staying on goal

(01:04:23) - The role of debt

(01:08:31) - Key Takeaways

My guest on this episode is Richard Reese. Richard took over as CEO of Iron Mountain, a physical records management business, in 1981. He ran the business as CEO through going public in 1996 before retiring from the role in 2013. Revenue over that period grew from around $3 million in 1981 to $3 billion in 2013.

Our discussion focuses on incentivizing teams with cash and stock, something Richard has thought deeply about over many decades, developing compensation plans, working with private and public investors, and a few stories from the early years of running Iron Mountain.

Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn.

Learn more about Alex and Think Like an Owner at https://tlaopodcast.com/

I want to tell you about the audience survey we are currently running. These surveys help us create the best content for listeners and better understand your needs and interests. Thank you in advance for sharing your feedback, we greatly appreciate it.

Take the survey here: https://bit.ly/3QLBB1N

Links:

Richard on LinkedIn

Iron Mountain

Topics:

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:05:17) - Richard's background, career, and time as CEO for Iron Mountain

(00:15:18) - What became easier when you went public? What became harder?

(00:18:44) - What did your management team look like when you stepped in and how did you look to evolve it?

(00:25:43) - When you started thinking about incentivizing the management team, what were some ways you got them to buy in?

(00:39:49) - What kind of challenges did you run into with equity compensations?

Ep.207: Alex (@aebridgeman) is joined by Savneet Singh (@SavneetS).

My guest today is Savneet Signh, CEO of PAR Technology, a billion-dollar market cap publicly traded point of sale software business serving the restaurant industry. I've been following Savneet's career since college when he went on Invest Like the Best talking about acquiring software businesses through his holding company Tera. Through that work he connected with PAR, joining the board and eventually replacing the CEO. Since then he's turned the business around and is finding more success.

Savneet and I talk about turning around teams, management techniques he's developed, his role as a teacher and chief communicator at PAR, and his views on software businesses from an investor perspective.

Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn.

Learn more about Alex and Think Like an Owner at https://tlaopodcast.com/

I want to tell you about the audience survey we are currently running. These surveys help us create the best content for listeners and better understand your needs and interests. Thank you in advance for sharing your feedback, we greatly appreciate it.

Take the survey here: https://bit.ly/3QLBB1N

Links:

PAR

An Excellent Puzzle by Will Larson

Topics:

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:04:02) - Joining the board of Par, becoming CEO, and saving the company from bankruptcy

(00:14:08) - Retaining speed over time

(00:16:22) - Stages of structural changes

(00:18:48) - Nurturing healthy tension

(00:20:32) - Incentive models

(00:25:29) - What have you learned about your role in making hard decisions?

(00:29:08) - Communication styles

(00:32:34) - What does a typical week look like for you?

(00:34:23) - How has your view of M&A changed?

(00:36:45) - What distinguishes a great product?

(00:38:01) - Is being the all-in-one solution becoming the trend in SaaS?

(00:40:01) - What stands out as a trend in software right now?

(00:42:24) - Takeaways from running and growing product teams

(00:43:59) - Communication between sales or product and customers

(00:45:11) - Advice to listeners

Ep.206: Alex (@aebridgeman) is joined by Tim Strickland (@Tim-Strickland).

My guest today is Tim Strickland, former Chief Revenue Officer of ZoomInfo and now an advisory partner at Summit Partners. Tim led during a massive growth period for ZoomInfo and had to learn how to rapidly scale sales teams both within ZoomInfo and incorporate go-to-market teams from acquired companies. I've loved my own sales experience through data at Altos Research and wanted to hear what sales look like in hugely successful data companies just like ZoomInfo.

Tim and I talk about the characteristics of high-performing sales teams, where companies get stuck and common challenges, key points in a company's growth cycle for sales teams, and what he looks for in new sales hires.

Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn.

Learn more about Alex and Think Like an Owner at https://tlaopodcast.com/

I want to tell you about the audience survey we are currently running. These surveys help us create the best content for listeners and better understand your needs and interests. Thank you in advance for sharing your feedback, we greatly appreciate it.

Take the survey here: https://bit.ly/3QLBB1N

Links:

Summit Advisory

Tim on LinkedIn

Topics:

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:03:37) - Tim's Sales career and the impact on the CRO role

(00:08:02) - Focuses for a sales team

(00:15:07) - Key reorgs within the sales team at Zoominfo

(00:17:39) - Defining the CRO Role

(00:20:51) - What to look for when hiring

(00:26:28) - What makes a good SDR into a great SDR

(00:29:07) - Where do you see the sales team get stuck most often?

(00:33:50) - Hard lessons learned