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30-Year Sales Leader Reveals the Truth About Startup Growth · Speak In Flow

• 0:02
  Melinda Lee: Welcome, dear listeners, to the Speak and Flow podcast, the special Legacy Growth Series. In our last episode, we talked all about alignment, and what true alignment means. And often, even when teams are aligned, execution breaks down.
• 0:20
  Melinda Lee: And then this is where accountability comes in.
• 0:24
  Melinda Lee: So, today we have an expert, he's a fractional CRO, he's the head of sales, so he's been a sales leader for many decades. He's seen it when companies
• 0:35
  Melinda Lee: work and when companies fail. He's developed a lot of these go-to-market strategies for many of the companies, technology companies, to either get acquired or, or go public.
• 0:48
  Melinda Lee: And so, I'm so happy to introduce Chris Sturvance. Hello, Chris!
• 0:55
  Chris Sterbenc: Hey there, thanks for having me on.
• 0:56
  Melinda Lee: Yes, it's so good to connect again. I'm excited to dive into our conversation around accountability, and… and what does… so, before we dive in.
• 1:06
  Melinda Lee: There's a busy leader out there, CEO, and he or she, or this person has stopped to listen to this episode. If they take into consideration everything that we've talked about, or at least one thing, what do you hope could change in their lives?
• 1:21
  Chris Sterbenc: Well, hopefully it'll clarify a little bit about their day-to-day behavior. Like, that people get stuck in habits and things that they don't realize that they're actually doing sometimes.
• 1:30
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 1:31
  Chris Sterbenc: just the easiest path, or they're just overly busy, which is probably the number one cause of issues in this area today. And if there's just a couple, like, simple techniques or tricks that they can use on a regular basis to help clarify some of those things, it'll definitely help them.
• 1:45
  Melinda Lee: Yeah, isn't that so true? We're so busy, and then so just to talk to even think about accountability, what that means can be huge, and so, before we dive into that, can you share for the audience? I'm so excited to get into the meat of it, but then it's like, let's give the audience what… what do you do, and what excites you most about what you do?
• 2:06
  Chris Sterbenc: Great, so, yeah, so after 30-odd years of being a sales leader in startup companies, VP of sales, CRO kind of thing, built a bunch of companies from sub-$1 million to double-digit millions.
• 2:19
  Chris Sterbenc: So I've gone through multiple, growth stages. The biggest team I ever led was about 120 folks, with two levels of management, so… you know, all those little stops along the way, right?
• 2:31
  Chris Sterbenc: But the, I've basically gone to my second career, kind of transitioning in a fractional CRO practice, and so what I do today is I basically am coaching first-time founder CEOs, and so…
• 2:43
  Chris Sterbenc: I currently have 7 clients, 6 of them. We do standing weekly 1-hour coaching sessions where they get to bring the biggest problems, challenges, burning questions to the table every week, and…
• 2:55
  Chris Sterbenc: get another set of eyes on those, and then we're at the same time, we're kind of slowly, gradually installing the foundational sales and go-to-market processes so they can start to scale later. And so, I do that with 6 today, and then I've got one true fractional CRO client where I am a head of sales, and I'm managing 3 salespeople for them.
• 3:14
  Melinda Lee: How lucky are they to have your wealth of knowledge on their eyes if they're.
• 3:19
  Chris Sterbenc: Well, I think they're really lucky, you know.
• 3:20
  Melinda Lee: Yeah, no, I agree, because it's important to install these systems before it starts to get unwieldy.
• 3:28
  Melinda Lee: And same thing with communication, so that's what we're going to dive into today. So, let's think about accountability. You've seen companies that have made it, and companies that have broken down, and when it comes to accountability, why is it a struggle sometimes for leaders that are even seasoned and experienced?
• 3:46
  Chris Sterbenc: I think the number one culprit is, again, the overly busyness thing, right? Especially for startup companies and CEOs that are first-time founders, in that they're doing a little bit of everything, they're learning.
• 3:59
  Chris Sterbenc: as they go, they've never seen the movie, right? And so a lot of mistakes get made, and sometimes they're really avoidable.
• 4:07
  Chris Sterbenc: And… but they bump into some real challenges later when it's… they start to expand, and like, okay, the business is bigger than I can handle by myself, I need to bring in some new people.
• 4:17
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 4:17
  Chris Sterbenc: Who do you hire? How do you transfer those responsibilities to the new people that you've hired?
• 4:23
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 4:24
  Chris Sterbenc: Right? And I try to describe it to the founders, CEOs as, like, in the beginning, you're the all, but you start to kind of carve off pieces of your world into people that are specialists, that are better at marketing than you, or better at building than you, or whatever. But where are those lines?
• 4:40
  Chris Sterbenc: you know, begin and end, what are their responsibilities, what is their scope? What is their capacity to make decisions and things in terms of spending and hiring and firing? And when do they need to bring those things back to the CEO founder for approval? Yes. And what you don't want is to micromanage their every action, so the key is to…
• 5:00
  Chris Sterbenc: Give them that clarity of vision. This is what your mission is. These are the resources that you have available. These are kind of like the boundaries we're going to put around it. And other than that, go crazy and we'll check in periodically. Run… come to me if you have a problem, right?
• 5:14
  Melinda Lee: Right, right, right. So you think that they don't define them from the get-go is because they're just busy. They're really busy. They're frequently, yeah. Right.
• 5:22
  Chris Sterbenc: You still define, like, and this happens a lot with the first sales hire, right? They'll be like, well, I don't have the capacity to be the only salesperson and still run the company. I'm gonna hire my first salesperson.
• 5:33
  Chris Sterbenc: And they might be anywhere from a junior SDR all the way up through, like, a CRO senior person, but then they're still, like, dipping in, and their hands are in stuff, and it's like, well…
• 5:43
  Chris Sterbenc: If we clearly define, you know, what your scope is and who's gonna own what, then we.
• 5:48
  Melinda Lee: Yes.
• 5:49
  Chris Sterbenc: accountable to each other. Right. You know, we can always ask each other for help, but as long as we're within our lanes and getting our stuff done, and just checking in regularly, there shouldn't be any meddling or anything, right?
• 6:01
  Melinda Lee: Right.
• 6:01
  Chris Sterbenc: That's, that's one of the big challenges that I find founders in particular, with their first companies, is to kind of gradually get their hands out, is a challenge.
• 6:10
  Melinda Lee: Or they're not even in it too much, because they're doing so many things.
• 6:15
  Chris Sterbenc: Yeah.
• 6:15
  Melinda Lee: So it's both, right? And, how do you know when the… when it starts to get unwieldy, when it starts to become a pattern that people are not holding each other accountable, people don't know what they're doing? Like, what are… what are some of the patterns that you see before it gets too late?
• 6:31
  Chris Sterbenc: Well, the first indicator usually is the company starts missing its numbers, right? And it's not necessarily a sales failure, but it's a team effort to go get those new clients and everything.
• 6:41
  Chris Sterbenc: And that's when you start to see some potential, either finger-pointing or blaming, potentially, like, oh, marketing's not giving us any good leads, or… Right. And, you know, Joe didn't do a good job, and this one opportunity that we gave him was so tremendous, and all these kinds of things. So, again, absolutely clear expectation setting.
• 7:01
  Chris Sterbenc: And a regular cadence for check-in. And I find that a quarterly kind of reset on all the bigger goals and objectives and what the measurements are going to be is a good idea, because at startups in particular evolve so quickly that they just… they're radically different companies 90 days later every time.
• 7:19
  Chris Sterbenc: It's really a series of experiments, and you sprint for 3 months, and then you kind of figure out, okay, this worked, this didn't work, we'll make these adjustments, what's a realistic set of targets for the coming quarter, and what changes are we going to make to the things that didn't work last quarter, right?
• 7:34
  Melinda Lee: do you find, and how does the communication play a part of it? Do you find that sometimes a leader avoids the tough conversations?
• 7:44
  Chris Sterbenc: Yeah, you do see that, and I think it's human nature. You know, people generally want to be nice and friendly to each other, even when there's a problem or someone is failing. And, you know, as a senior leader, you're trying to be supportive, but you also need to bring structure and discipline to the same relationship, and if they do start to fail.
• 8:03
  Chris Sterbenc: It's our job to make sure that they understand, this was our expectation, this is what you're delivering today, there's a gap here, what can we do together to get you back on track?
• 8:13
  Chris Sterbenc: And, you know, it starts out with conversations, and if you hold those on a pretty regular basis and you don't see improvement, usually at some point, you're either going to change their role, or change that person out, or, you know, put them on some sort of a written performance plan so that it's black and white, and they can't not understand it any further.
• 8:33
  Chris Sterbenc: But a lot of it comes back, again, to clarity of expectations, and then.
• 8:36
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 8:37
  Chris Sterbenc: And then regularly checking in and kind of keeping score on what's being delivered, right?
• 8:41
  Melinda Lee: And when you, like, talk about clarity of expectations, like you said, it's so huge, because a lot of times, when the CEO or executives are busy, it becomes more challenging, especially in a small… because everybody's doing everything.
• 8:57
  Chris Sterbenc: Yeah, exactly.
• 8:58
  Melinda Lee: Yeah, and then so, like, to have it clarified, and then also, somewhat flexible too, because things are changing.
• 9:08
  Melinda Lee: Right? So, how do you… yeah, that's… that's a part of it.
• 9:11
  Chris Sterbenc: So the roles that I've primarily been involved in have been either, running the sales org, or running, kind of, all the go-to-market, so sales, marketing, and customer success.
• 9:20
  Chris Sterbenc: And in each of those, it's important to have an actual written plan that's got measurable objectives by period.
• 9:28
  Chris Sterbenc: And we agree to those as an executive team, and sometimes that team is just like the CEO and me, and maybe a fractional CFO who's keeping score with the money. But we build a business plan out, and then we have to execute over the course of the year and hit the numbers.
• 9:41
  Chris Sterbenc: And so each of the functions has got its own set of requirements and measurements that they have to hit. So on the sales side.
• 9:47
  Chris Sterbenc: it's one of the easier ones to measure, it's more black and white, because at the end of the day, how much revenue did we book? It's very, very… they could do a lot of activity, but sales is kind of more a results measurement. But there are certain pipeline metrics and things like that that you can look at as well, around activity.
• 10:05
  Chris Sterbenc: But on the marketing side, it's a little fuzzier, but again, you can get very concrete, like, your…
• 10:11
  Chris Sterbenc: Mission as a marketing person or team is to, refresh the website this quarter, and…
• 10:17
  Chris Sterbenc: deliver 50 qualified leads based on the criteria we've jointly agreed to. Things like that. And so, again, during the course of the quarter, how are we doing versus plan? Are we on track to get the website up by the end of the quarter?
• 10:31
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 10:32
  Chris Sterbenc: Those kinds of things, so, yeah.
• 10:33
  Melinda Lee: How much is it that… well, do you talk to them about the… have the accountability before even the numbers? Because by that time, okay, you're already seeing the numbers have dropped. Is that too late to have the accountability discussion? Like, what happens?
• 10:49
  Chris Sterbenc: Really, so accountability, yeah, comes up in the beginning in the planning process, when you're agreeing to what is the plan, and what… because in startup land, it's our nature to be extremely ambitious with the targets.
• 11:02
  Chris Sterbenc: You know, the BHAGs, the stretch goals, and it never goes for the easy number, right? And sometimes they're not realistic, right? So you've got to have that conversation before the period about what is realistic, given where we are at this moment, with the resources that we have available, and people.
• 11:21
  Chris Sterbenc: what can we achieve realistically within 90 days? And you have kind of, like, a low, mid, and high range of expectations.
• 11:27
  Chris Sterbenc: And you want to build your business plan on the spend side to the low, and you want to put your expectations for goal setting on the high, and hope you land somewhere in the between, and so you don't run out of money, and you're growing the business. But that's usually,
• 11:42
  Chris Sterbenc: Well, it's always a mutual conversation between CEO, the exec team, whatever size that is, and then their board, typically, to make sure that everyone agrees to that. And so, accountability really kind of begins during that dialogue.
• 11:59
  Chris Sterbenc: And once it's documented, everyone has to agree to the plan.
• 12:03
  Chris Sterbenc: There's your kind of like, okay, you are now accountable for exactly these things, and then again, you have this dialogue every week or a month throughout the quarter. But again, what we'll find sometimes is that when someone is failing, the CEO won't want to address that because it's uncomfortable.
• 12:19
  Chris Sterbenc: Right? It's easier to kind of let it go and hope it'll fix itself, which occasionally works.
• 12:24
  Melinda Lee: say certain things that are just kind of, sim… like, at the top, like, you know, not so really the core of the issue. They're just, yeah, brushing over it, like, oh, I told them, but it's brushing over it.
• 12:37
  Chris Sterbenc: Yeah, yeah, so, there was a book that you and I actually discussed, I think, last time we were on Call Traction, and one of the elements of that is when they talk about the problem-solving methodology, and so, they recommend that on a weekly basis, the management team gets together
• 12:54
  Chris Sterbenc: exclusively to discuss and solve problems, and they first list out all the big problems, and then they put them in order of priority, and they get as far as they can in one hour, and they can't leave one until they've put a solution in place with an owner for each part of the solution, right? So, that's another version of, I think, really…
• 13:11
  Chris Sterbenc: Kind of really crisp and structured, accountability that you don't see in too many companies.
• 13:17
  Melinda Lee: Right, right, yeah, where all the minds come together to problem solve, and you go through one at a time, and so you're doing it together, and so it's like everybody is a part of it. Exactly. And part of the problem, part of the solution.
• 13:31
  Melinda Lee: And so, and I love that. And so what about…
• 13:35
  Melinda Lee: Does it work when you start to instill fear in people if they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing? How do we… does that work?
• 13:43
  Chris Sterbenc: That's a good question. I've actually worked for a few CEOs that.
• 13:47
  Chris Sterbenc: That, so they say that the whole motivation of a leader is a carrot and stick.
• 13:51
  Melinda Lee: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 13:52
  Chris Sterbenc: Some people tend to be heavier with the stick than they are with the carrot.
• 13:57
  Melinda Lee: Japanese!
• 13:58
  Chris Sterbenc: Yeah, it's not a great culture. People start to get kind of numb to the stick after a while, and they just think, wow, this person's really kind of a jerk, and they start to tune them out, right? Everything is stick all the time, then after a while, it just is not effective, right?
• 14:14
  Chris Sterbenc: You know, culture of fear, the other thing that happens is you find that people spend more time
• 14:18
  Chris Sterbenc: Worrying about what's going on than actually doing their jobs, by… so that it defocuses them off the task.
• 14:26
  Chris Sterbenc: And they start freaking out about when the next time the big stick's gonna come out, versus, like, what they could do to sell more stuff, or get their stuff done, right?
• 14:33
  Melinda Lee: Yeah, I mean, yeah, how productive is that, when you're constantly worried about when is the next
• 14:39
  Melinda Lee: gonna come, and… and then, am I going to mess this up? And then they second-guess themselves.
• 14:45
  Melinda Lee: So… that doesn't work.
• 14:47
  Chris Sterbenc: Yeah.
• 14:48
  Melinda Lee: I've been in companies where people actually stay, and… but I don't know. They don't look very happy, put it that way.
• 14:55
  Chris Sterbenc: Yeah, well, you actually… you'll find that people are burning a lot of mental and emotional energy.
• 14:59
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 15:00
  Chris Sterbenc: Just to handle the negativity, and even if nothing ever actually happened, that uncertainty leads to, you know, a lower performance level, because their brain is off in these negative thoughts, right?
• 15:13
  Melinda Lee: Yeah, and I think that goes back to, like, as a leader, we have to ask ourselves what kind of culture we want to bring into the company. What is that culture? Yeah, if that's the culture that you want, then
• 15:24
  Melinda Lee: you know, that's something that works for some people, and some… if that's not the culture that you want, we have to really think about that. When someone is not performing, or not doing what they're supposed to be doing, how can we… so how can we steal the accountability for themselves without the fear? What do you think? Are there some tips that you can… you talked about the problem-solving as a team, which is great.
• 15:45
  Chris Sterbenc: Yeah, and it's true with the first-line manager and their doers as well. It's… at the beginning of the period, you've got to get buy-in from all parties that what they're being asked to do is achievable, right? If you set a target and everybody in the room's like, pfft, there's no way we're gonna hit that.
• 15:59
  Melinda Lee: Right.
• 16:00
  Chris Sterbenc: you know, then you're already lost, right? Good luck. So, there needs to be buy-in. The individuals that you're tasking with specific things, if they need help, support, or tools that they don't have today, you gotta… you ask them, like, do you have the things you need to be successful?
• 16:16
  Chris Sterbenc: And if not, let's talk about what they are, and if we can, we're going to provide those, and if we can't, maybe we need to adjust the target, right? But at the end of the day, the person that has to go execute has to believe that they can achieve it, and that they have the resources that they need and support to go hit those targets, right?
• 16:33
  Melinda Lee: yeah. I mean, yeah, just so… giving them all the systems and the structure to help motivate them, to help them to achieve their goals.
• 16:42
  Melinda Lee: Provides that accountability for themselves and for you to also say, hey, I've given you everything that we've talked about, the structures, the systems, and then having those honest conversations at that point.
• 16:55
  Chris Sterbenc: One of the other things that I found, really is helpful is, I like to do weekly check-ins with all the folks that are my direct reports, and one of the things that we'll do is we'll go through kind of a status update, and we'll talk about any big hairy issues, or wins, or just the good stuff and the bad stuff. But at the end of it, I always ask, ask at the end, what can I do to help you?
• 17:15
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 17:16
  Chris Sterbenc: what can I do? Can I take something off you? Something I can do for you? Something I could do with you?
• 17:21
  Melinda Lee: Right.
• 17:21
  Chris Sterbenc: And I tell them, come armed to the meeting with your requests there. There's no… I don't need any help, and I continue to fail is not a good combination, because you can't win. So, if you're having a problem, make sure that you ask for help on that specific issue. You may not know the solution.
• 17:38
  Chris Sterbenc: But ask for, you know, me to help you, and we'll figure out what we can do.
• 17:42
  Melinda Lee: Right, right, right. Especially if this is something that has to do with your goals, your incentives, and your pay, yeah.
• 17:50
  Melinda Lee: They want to remove all the obstacles and be honest and have those conversations.
• 17:54
  Chris Sterbenc: Yep, exactly.
• 17:55
  Melinda Lee: And yeah, not be afraid to look dumb or look like you don't know. Yeah.
• 18:00
  Chris Sterbenc: Yeah, that's one of the other benefits of asking the question, even if they don't necessarily have a specific proposal or anything, is they feel like they're being heard, right? Which is a big deal for people.
• 18:09
  Melinda Lee: Yes, I love what you're saying, because you said, hey, bring it, bring it to me, bring the questions.
• 18:14
  Chris Sterbenc: Yeah.
• 18:14
  Melinda Lee: Open up that dialogue and open up that channel, it's a big thing, so people can feel heard.
• 18:20
  Chris Sterbenc: Yep, exactly, and then when they ask you for something and you agree to help them with that, now you're accountable to go execute and deliver on that, right?
• 18:26
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 18:27
  Chris Sterbenc: Again, that's that mutual.
• 18:28
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 18:28
  Chris Sterbenc: thing.
• 18:29
  Melinda Lee: Right, right.
• 18:30
  Chris Sterbenc: There's a thing that's similar, but it's, in terms of structure, which is delegation of tasks, right? It's a little… it's a lot like that, and that's like reverse delegation back to a man.
• 18:42
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 18:43
  Chris Sterbenc: You're my rep and you want me to help you, but anytime you've asked, or someone else has agreed they're going to execute something for you.
• 18:51
  Chris Sterbenc: Make sure both of you know exactly what it is that's gonna get done, and on what time frame, and by who, right? And that's the way you have to clearly delegate. Sometimes folks, especially in startup land, they're running so hard, like, oh, Bob can do this. Hey, Bob, take care of the thing, would you? Yeah, okay, I'll take care of the thing.
• 19:08
  Melinda Lee: Yes.
• 19:09
  Chris Sterbenc: That's as specific as they get.
• 19:11
  Melinda Lee: Yes.
• 19:11
  Chris Sterbenc: And Bob does a bunch of stuff, but when he comes back, it's not what the CEO was looking for or expecting. Oh, Bob, you totally screwed this up. What happened to the thing? Oh, I did the thing! And that's where you get your big issues, so…
• 19:23
  Chris Sterbenc: Real clarity of expectations and specifics.
• 19:27
  Chris Sterbenc: Timing, who, what, when.
• 19:30
  Melinda Lee: And so, would you say for a CEO out there who wants to improve, building accountability within the firm, accountability as a culture, what would that one shift be?
• 19:43
  Melinda Lee: B.
• 19:44
  Chris Sterbenc: I think the big shift is to slow down long enough to make sure that both parties on either end of these kind of conversations are on the same page. So it may… you may have to spend some time documenting stuff, which seems like a waste of time sometimes. We already talked about it, why would I write it down? The good news is today, with all these AI bots and things, you can record all your conversations and have it spit the notes out, and you can just review that and be done, so that's like a…
• 20:08
  Chris Sterbenc: two-minute exercise, here were the action items, right? Oh, hey, we never put a date on this one, or it wasn't clear who owned this one. That's really some of the key things that you can do. Take the time, make sure both people are exactly on the same page.
• 20:22
  Melinda Lee: Yeah, that's, that's the… you said the right, the, the right…
• 20:25
  Melinda Lee: like, no, hit it on the nose, like, slow down. Take the time, because it's easier said than done, because you're saying, that if we want to have this culture of accountability, sometimes we don't slow down. We could just say, hey, let's document things, or… but we don't… we document it and we forget, but, like, to build a culture actually takes a time to establish the habit, and so, as the CEO, you've got to do it yourself.
• 20:50
  Melinda Lee: multiple times. Someone told me one time, CEO is also CRO, Chief Reminding Officer.
• 20:57
  Chris Sterbenc: Haha, yeah.
• 20:57
  Melinda Lee: So you're constantly reminding and practicing and putting into practice what you want the company
• 21:05
  Melinda Lee: to behave, and how to behave. Yeah. So I think, again, like you said, accountability is being very clear with the expectations, what do we want, being specific, putting a time frame to it, but then also repeating it again and again, because we get sidetracked. There's a lot of changes, a lot of things happening, and so I think slowing down to have that be instilled.
• 21:28
  Melinda Lee: It's so important.
• 21:30
  Chris Sterbenc: Yep, absolutely.
• 21:31
  Melinda Lee: Yeah, and so, when… this is my last question. When companies
• 21:39
  Melinda Lee: treat communication as systems. Like, there's standards for communicating, standards for holding people accountable, standards for the outcomes that we want. What is possible?
• 21:51
  Chris Sterbenc: That's a great question. So, in early-stage companies, it's always a fine balance between over-engineering too soon… Yeah.
• 21:58
  Melinda Lee: Ugh.
• 21:59
  Chris Sterbenc: Not having enough process.
• 22:01
  Melinda Lee: Yeah, exactly.
• 22:02
  Chris Sterbenc: It's a very fine line, right?
• 22:04
  Melinda Lee: A very fine line.
• 22:05
  Chris Sterbenc: So…
• 22:06
  Chris Sterbenc: I would say that, you know, what's possible is, a lot like… going back to, again, that book, Traction, where the concept is they have built…
• 22:15
  Chris Sterbenc: what they called an entrepreneurial operating system, which is an actual process for each part of the business, and it had, like, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual, and three-year cadences to it, right? And there were certain expectations and activities that were planned for, measured, and executed on in each of those periods.
• 22:33
  Chris Sterbenc: You can take the fear out of it. When someone is failing at something, they'll know that they're failing, but they'll be mid-cycle, and they can come to their manager, or their team, and go, hey, I'm failing at this, and this is what I'm seeing, this is what we expected to happen, and this is where we're at today, and those kinds of things, and it's more of.
• 22:52
  Chris Sterbenc: collaborate with me so that we can win, versus, like, I'm gonna hide this mistake from everybody so I don't look bad, which is…
• 22:59
  Chris Sterbenc: a pretty common behavior, especially in a heavy-stick culture environment, right? People make a mistake, they're just hoping no one else notices, and they can recover and get in front of it before they get in trouble, or get yelled at, or whatever.
• 23:10
  Chris Sterbenc: So, what's possible, again, is more kind of a… I also refer to it as a frictionless environment, where, you know, there's always going to be some friction between people, but you minimize that as much as possible in terms of the things you can't control, which is business process, and ownership, and accountability, and those kinds of things.
• 23:29
  Melinda Lee: I love that, you're right. So, with the accountability, with the process, when we can have those in place, you're gonna minimize… because there's friction everywhere, so you're going to minimize the friction with the people.
• 23:40
  Chris Sterbenc: Yep, exactly.
• 23:41
  Melinda Lee: I love that, I love that. That's a great way to look at it.
• 23:44
  Melinda Lee: Yes, because that's going to be so much easier to move forward and become successful when you have the people with less friction.
• 23:55
  Chris Sterbenc: Exactly.
• 23:55
  Melinda Lee: Right, Chris, and so if there's… when there's, an organization, a company, a startup right now who's looking for some go-to-market strategies or CRO support, how can they reach you?
• 24:07
  Chris Sterbenc: Okay, very good. So I can be reached at chris at scaleupacceleratorgroup.com, so just, like, no hyphens or anything, just the word scaleuppaccelerator.com. That's my specialty, is to take people from startup to scale up.
• 24:23
  Melinda Lee: Love it, love it. And reach out to Chris, he's got… he knows so much, and we've connected multiple times, and not only does he have all the strategies, but he also is a great person to just build your team, build with the people, talk to the people, and so thank you so much, Chris, for your time.
• 24:39
  Chris Sterbenc: Thanks for having me on, it was fun to chat again.
• 24:42
  Melinda Lee: It was very fun. And thank you, listeners, for being here. Until next time, even though we have alignment, accountability, sometimes the CEO is still
• 24:54
  Melinda Lee: there. It was still the bottleneck. And so that's gonna be our next series. Part of the series is where the cost of founder dependency within a company, and so hope to see you on the next episode. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye, Chris.
• 25:10
  Chris Sterbenc: Bye now.
• 25:13
  Chris Sterbenc: That's a great next topic, Giga.