--- title: "The Churn Nobody Tracks: Why Your Best People Leave Before They Quit" episode: 109 podcast: "The LeanScale Podcast" publisher: "LeanScale" guest: "Luke Hoffmeister" guest_title: "Revenue Operations & Sales Training" date_published: 2026-09-02 date_modified: 2026-09-03 duration: 00:49:39 word_count: 9226 topics: ["sales-leadership", "revenue-operations", "ai-in-gtm", "sales-enablement"] canonical_url: https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/luke-hoffmeister-churn-nobody-tracks/ source: "LeanScale Knowledge Hub — https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge" license: "Free to quote and cite with attribution to The LeanScale Podcast." --- # The Churn Nobody Tracks: Why Your Best People Leave Before They Quit _Luke Hoffmeister on internal attrition, why 20% is life-changing to them and a rounding error to you, and culture as follow-through rather than snacks_ **Episode 109 · The LeanScale Podcast** Luke Hoffmeister, Revenue Operations & Sales Training (HALOS Body Cameras) · Hosted by Anthony Enrico Published September 2, 2026 · Updated September 3, 2026 · 00:49:39 Canonical: https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/luke-hoffmeister-churn-nobody-tracks/ **Topics:** Sales Leadership · Revenue Operations · AI in GTM · Sales Enablement ## Executive summary Luke Hoffmeister first saw the churn nobody tracks in a regional account-management role where he was recruiter, manager and trainer at once. Clients wanted a competitive rate, so pay stayed where it was — and the moment a client appeared who would pay more, someone unavailable for two years was gone that week. The amounts were not large. But a company that believed it had loyalty and culture would suddenly lose a lead tech, a supervisor or a regional manager, and with them the institutional knowledge and the ripple: why is that person leaving, should I be thinking about leaving too. His test for the earlier signal is unglamorous. Listen, and let people vent. Leadership builds a team around itself for good reasons, and that same team insulates you — not that you need informants, which carry their own poison, but you do need people who will tell you how it is. Sometimes that means hearing you are a bad boss. More often it is that the product is failing somewhere, or sales keeps selling in a way that hurts delivery. Those are easy to treat as noise you want quieted, and they matter most. When someone feels there is no place for them, they are already gone. The money conversation is the one nobody wants to have. Offering somebody 20% more is a rounding error at company level and finance will still argue about it, but on a $40,000 or $60,000 salary it is life-changing. His sharper point is structure: someone two or three years in with no structure around raises or bonuses is already churn. In a down market that is easy to ignore, and then the market turns and you pay more anyway. Anthony's example is In-N-Out and Chick-fil-A: pay above market and the difference is visible the moment you walk in. Luke adds Buc-ee's — $22 an hour to clean a bathroom, and the clean bathrooms are why people come back. On culture, his position is that it is follow-through and nothing else. He has worked at a company with free lunch and snacks all day, well below market pay, that he hated — and at a now-dissolved tech company whose people all still miss it two years on. If you do not care about culture, say so and put the cards on the table — the uncertainty combined with not keeping your word is what eats at people. The all-hands is where this shows: not a disciplinary session when things go badly, and not a fake pep rally either. One company he admired had a saying for it — call the baby ugly. The go-to-market thread ties into RevOps. Luke's through-line across field work, customer success, sales engineering and sales training is curiosity — asking what the problem is, where it lives, who owns it, and how to affect the outcome, without asking permission. He puts eight figures of ARR against working that way, and notes some companies hate it. RevOps became home because it is broad enough for it, and because most of what looks like a sales problem is not: reps without notes at month end is a data-entry and infrastructure problem. His AI stack is Cursor, ChatGPT and Superhuman, and with Cursor he has built alone in under a year what took a team of twenty three years ago. But he is emphatic that this argues for more people, not fewer: keeping agents in line is a full-time job, and he would rather hire the person who knows all that than build QC agents to QC the QC agents. ## Key takeaways 1. **The most dangerous churn is internal and untracked** — Luke's first encounter was in field services: pay held down to stay competitive on client rates, and the moment a client would pay more, someone unavailable for two years moved within a week. The amounts were not large. _Why it matters:_ You lose the open seat, the capacity, and the institutional knowledge at once — plus a ripple as everyone else asks whether the grass is greener. Anthony's point is that one departure is usually the tip of an iceberg of underlying systemic issues. _For:_ Revenue Executives, Founders, Sales Leaders 2. **Someone who feels there is no place for them is already gone** — The resignation is a lagging indicator. Luke describes recognising the moment in himself — the value is done, it is time to move on — and staying for a long time afterwards, because opportunities only come when they come. _Why it matters:_ You are not measuring exits, you are measuring the gap between when someone leaves internally and when they leave formally. Everything useful happens in that window. _For:_ Revenue Executives, Sales Leaders, Founders 3. **Listen, and let people vent** — Leadership builds a team around itself and that team also insulates it. Luke is explicit that this is not about informants, which carry their own poison, but about promoting people who will tell you how it is — including that you are a bad boss. _Why it matters:_ The signal usually arrives disguised as noise: the product is failing over here, sales keeps selling in a way that adds work to my team. Those are the things it is hardest to prioritise and the things that matter most long-term. _For:_ Revenue Executives, Founders, Sales Leaders 4. **20% is a rounding error to you and life-changing to them** — On a $40,000 or $60,000 salary, 20% is not much in the grand business scheme — and finance will still argue every dollar and cent — but it changes that person's life. _Why it matters:_ The asymmetry is the whole argument. Against it you weigh institutional knowledge, customer relationships, and the customer churn that follows employee churn. _For:_ Revenue Executives, Founders, Finance Leaders 5. **No structure around raises is itself churn** — Someone two or three years in with no structure whatsoever around raises, bonuses, or what meeting expectations means financially is already looking. It is only a matter of time and opportunity. _Why it matters:_ The absence of a compensation structure is not neutral. It communicates something, and people act on it long before they say anything. _For:_ Revenue Executives, Founders, Sales Leaders 6. **In-N-Out, Chick-fil-A and $22 to clean a bathroom** — Anthony's example is that above-market pay in fast food is visible the moment you walk in — people smiling, better trained, more engaged, longer tenured. Luke adds Buc-ee's, where the clean bathrooms are why people come back from all walks of life. _Why it matters:_ Constantly recruiting, training and reinvigorating new people has real cost. Luke's inverse observation: when you see that nobody cares, you stop wanting to come back — and that cycles straight into attrition. _For:_ Revenue Executives, Founders 7. **A down market makes this easy to ignore, and the market always turns** — When people are clamouring for the job you can tell yourself nobody is doing this and you do not have to worry. Then it turns and you pay more anyway. _Why it matters:_ You can pay more later to strangers, or keep the people you already have along with their institutional knowledge and customer relationships — which affects revenue and customer churn too. _For:_ Revenue Executives, Founders 8. **Culture is follow-through — and if you don't care, put the cards on the table** — Luke worked somewhere with free lunch every week and snacks all day, well below market pay, and hated it. He also worked at a tech company, since dissolved, whose engineers, support, product, CS and ops people all still miss it two years after the doors closed. His view is that a company saying openly it is about the bottom line is more workable than one promoting engagement it does not deliver. _Why it matters:_ Most companies talk about having a culture and even mean it; the failure is priority, not intent. It is the uncertainty combined with not keeping your word that does the damage, and people can always tell whether you are genuine — a canned response for everything communicates the opposite of what it intends. _For:_ Founders, Revenue Executives, Sales Leaders 9. **The all-hands: not a disciplinary session, not a fake pep rally** — The rally and the money and outdoing yourselves are givens nobody is questioning. Where it goes wrong is when a bad quarter turns the all-hands into a slap-your-hand session — or, equally, into a pep rally deodorising a real problem. _Why it matters:_ The version Luke admired had a saying — call the baby ugly — for killing the thing you built when it is bad for the market or morale or just does not work. Anthony's parallel is codified values you point to before making decisions. _For:_ Revenue Executives, Founders, Sales Leaders 10. **Don't send the blank Christmas card** — Luke would rather have $20 that his family can actually spend than a ham and a package. If you are going to send something, mean it. If you are only sending cards because it is about culture, and finance sees $3,000 spent on cards, you are missing it entirely. _Why it matters:_ A gesture that is clearly performative costs more than sending nothing, because it confirms the thing people already suspect. _For:_ Revenue Executives, Founders 11. **Self-awareness: know when you should not be the one speaking** — Luke's example is a leader who genuinely believes people are lucky to have a job. You can hold that belief, he says, and still be self-aware enough to know it is not what should be said at the all-hands — vent it to your leadership team, your spouse, your AI or your therapist instead. _Why it matters:_ The pragmatist question is whether it works and whether it helps the bottom line. Luke applies the same honesty to himself: his failure mode is staying in damaging business relationships too long. _For:_ Founders, Revenue Executives 12. **A licence to fix anything, and some companies hate it** — Luke's through-line is a service mindset and curiosity: what is the problem, where does it live, who owns it, how do we affect the outcome. He never said any of that — he went to the head of support, to the person handling the ticket, and asked for photographs from the field. _Why it matters:_ He puts eight figures of ARR against working that way. RevOps became home because it is broad enough to allow it, which is part of why the function attracts people who refuse to stay in a lane. _For:_ RevOps Leaders, Revenue Executives 13. **Hire personality and potential over pedigree** — When Luke has runway he hires personality, because that person will admit they have not done this before, will probably get some of it wrong, and will see and do more. He cites someone he calls the most engineer-like non-engineer he has met, kept in support because he lacked an engineering degree. _Why it matters:_ Culture has to promote that. The boss still makes the calls and everyone has to know it — but curiosity and working outside the zone have to be actively rewarded, not tolerated. _For:_ Revenue Executives, Founders, RevOps Leaders 14. **Hunters not hunting is a data-entry problem** — If you get to month end asking why there are no notes, Luke's read is that you have a data entry, operations and infrastructure problem rather than a salesperson problem. The point of the reports is not more graphs and subsets — it is what the data tells the business. _Why it matters:_ He is equally firm on not adopting AI to demonstrate that you are forward-thinking. Be clear what you want it for, find the best solution, build in-house or use what exists, and get the balance right. _For:_ RevOps Leaders, Sales Leaders, Revenue Executives 15. **AI means more people, not fewer** — With Cursor, Luke built alone in under a year what took a team of twenty three years ago. He also sees his own mistakes and inefficiency clearly, and says he cannot wait to be able to hire. Letting agents loose has never worked well for him without building a whole other program to keep them in line — and then QC agents, and QC agents for those. _Why it matters:_ Keeping the AI in line is a full-time job, plus it is training him how to talk to it. Anthony's version: the more productivity AI layers into your team, the more people you need to keep up with it. _For:_ RevOps Leaders, Revenue Executives, Founders ## Frameworks ### The Churn Nobody Tracks (01:32) **Definition:** Internal, silent attrition — the gap between when a person disengages and when they resign. It appears on no dashboard, and by the time it does the institutional knowledge is already leaving. Luke's field-services example: pay held down to stay competitive on client rates, and a slightly better offer moving someone who had been unavailable for two years within a week. ### Culture Is Follow-Through (07:17) **Definition:** Culture is keeping your word and communicating honestly, not perks, parties or snacks. A company that openly says it is about the bottom line is more workable than one promoting engagement it does not deliver. Free lunch every week and below-market pay produced a company Luke hated working for. A dissolved startup with genuine follow-through is still missed by everyone who worked there. ### The Honest All-Hands (22:43) **Definition:** Neither a disciplinary session when results are bad nor a pep rally deodorising a real problem — an honest account of what worked in the field, what worked at leadership level, and what did not. The rally, the money and outdoing yourselves are givens nobody questions. The credibility comes from being willing to call the baby ugly and drop sunk costs. ### Mean It or Don't Send It (24:59) **Definition:** A gesture that is obviously performative is worse than no gesture. Send something people can actually use, or send nothing. Luke would take $20 spendable over a ham and a package. A blank card, multiplied into $3,000 of card spend finance can see, confirms exactly what employees already suspect. ### A Licence to Fix Anything (32:13) **Definition:** Treating any role as permission to ask what the problem is, where it lives, who owns it, and how to affect the outcome — across departments, without asking first. Luke did not announce this, he just did it: going to the head of support, to whoever held the ticket, asking for field photographs. He credits eight figures of ARR to it, and notes some companies hate it. ## Quotes _Speakers inferred from an undiarized transcript — verify before attributing._ > "At the end of the day, what kind of a company do you want to be, and if it's all about making money, well, Wall Street's full of those, like just go be one of those." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (00:00) > "You have to follow through, do what you say" > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (00:23) > "then at least have cards on the table that people know what they're dealing with. I think it's the uncertainty." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (00:29) > "And a company that thought, "Oh, we have loyalty, we have culture, we have these things going for us," would suddenly lose a very valuable lead employee" > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (02:33) > "And the moment that we offered them something a little bit better financially, they were gone." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (02:46) > "The risk of sounding Pollyanna, it's not rocket science." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (03:57) > "It's good communication, it's following through." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (04:02) > "But you have to know that that also insulates you." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (04:53) > "But you do need people that are going to tell you like it is." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (05:05) > "So you have to let people vent." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (05:10) > "And when they start to feel like there's no place for them at the company anymore, look, they're already gone. It's just a matter of time." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (06:08) > "They cared a lot about service. They cared a lot about their customers. But they didn't care so much about their people." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (06:38) > "I offer somebody 20% more to work for me. That's not that much in the grand scheme." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (08:00) > "But to that person, it's life changing." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (08:17) > "To the person who's been working their two, three years and there's no structure whatsoever around raises or bonuses or what meeting expectations means for them financially, that's already churn." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (08:19) > "They're already looking." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (08:31) > "Or you could keep people that you have, keep your institutional knowledge, keep your customers happy" > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (08:55) > "The people are smiling, they're well trained, they're more engaged." > > — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (09:44) > "hey, let's pay above market rate, it's a pretty simple fix." > > — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (10:10) > "But not at the cost of forgetting why we're doing this in the first place." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (11:38) > "Small business churn is huge." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (12:04) > "I mean, the company doesn't get past more than 30 people, and all of a sudden they're a bureaucracy, right?" > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (14:15) > "And I think you really should write it down." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (14:35) > "But bathrooms are clean. Twenty-two bucks an hour to clean a bathroom. Try that at McDonald's." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (18:43) > "And that nobody cares cycles right back to that attrition we talked about." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (19:50) > "And I think it ends up turning into a doom loop for the organization." > > — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (19:56) > "I don't think family is the right metaphor, but I do think, like, a professional sports team, like, your business should operate like a professional sports team." > > — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (20:31) > "Some things that tend to reinforce it are, I call them sacred rituals." > > — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (20:56) > "But they also sort of fell into, when things were going bad, now the All Hands turn into a little more of a, like a slap your hand, you naughty employee, sort of a session." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (22:33) > "Versus, let's come at this with honesty." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (22:43) > "It was like, call the baby ugly, right?" > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (22:52) > "I worked at companies where they had lunch every single week." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (23:18) > "And I hated working there." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (23:23) > "You know what I'd rather have than the ham and the whole package at Christmas time? Send me a $20 gift card." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (24:40) > "If you're going to send something, mean it." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (24:59) > "Don't send a card that's blank." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (25:02) > "Hey, don't turn it into a disciplinary session," > > — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (27:23) > "They'd already tried all the ways that a business typically does, and then they hired a personality." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (30:49) > "I hire that way, I hire people that I trust, and I hire a personality because I want to know the potential somebody has." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (30:56) > "taking any role as a license to fix anything in the business," > > — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (33:43) > "Some companies hate it, by the way." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (33:49) > "Let's not jump on the AI bandwagon for the sake of we have AI and we have data." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (37:16) > "I have a different problem. I don't have a sales problem." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (37:48) > "I have a data entry and operations and an infrastructure problem." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (37:51) > "But I have built with them in less than a year what took an engineering team of 20 to do three years ago, right?" > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (40:00) > "I'd say it's really like working with an actual engineer, but it's just an AI, right?" > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (40:16) > "There's different languaging. Mine talks like a tech bro, and she hates it." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (40:53) > "But I'm telling you, those guys save me hours every single week on email." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (42:06) > "However, I see so many mistakes that I make and I see so much less efficiency that I have." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (44:30) > "And my time is so much more valuable spent on what I'm good at versus trying to do someone else's role." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (45:03) > "So engineering never really accepted him into there because he didn't have an engineering degree." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (46:09) > "Well, I've never been able to let agents loose and it worked that well," > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (46:48) > "Like keeping the AI in line is a full freaking time job." > > — Luke Hoffmeister, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (47:17) > "I do think AI is going to open up opportunities for people in a lot of cases," > > — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 109 (47:24) ## Practical advice by role ### Revenue Executives - Actively promote the people who will tell you how it is, and treat what sounds like noise as the signal it usually is. - Put structure around raises, bonuses and what meeting expectations means financially — its absence is already churn. - Weigh a 20% raise against institutional knowledge, customer relationships and the customer churn that follows employee churn. - Run the all-hands honestly: what worked in the field, what worked at leadership, what did not. - Know when you should not be the one speaking, and have someone who can carry the message better. ### Founders - Write down why the company exists early, put it somewhere you will see it, and point back to it in every memo. - If you do not care about culture, say so plainly rather than promoting engagement you will not deliver. - Send something people can use or send nothing — a blank card confirms what they already suspect. - Expect complexity to fight you: past thirty people the bureaucracy arrives on its own. - Hire personality and potential where you have runway; hire experience where you genuinely cannot afford a learning curve. ### RevOps Leaders - Treat reps without notes at month end as an infrastructure problem before you treat it as a performance problem. - Ask what the reports are telling the business, not how many views and subsets you can produce. - Be explicit about what you want AI for before adopting it, then decide build versus buy against that. - Use the breadth of the role as a licence to cross departments when something affects revenue or the customer. ### Sales Leaders - Watch for disengagement rather than resignations — by the time someone gives notice, the decision is months old. - Remember that pay held down to protect a client rate is a decision your best people will read accurately. - Do not let a bad quarter turn the team meeting into a disciplinary session. ## AI takeaways **Thesis:** Most of this conversation is about people rather than systems, and the AI section lands on the same point from the other side. Luke has built alone, with Cursor, what a team of twenty would have built three years ago — and his conclusion is that he cannot wait to hire, because he sees his own mistakes clearly and because keeping agents in line is itself a full-time job. The retention argument and the AI argument converge: capability went up, the need for good people did not go down. - **** — - **** — - **** — - **** — - **** — - **** — - **** — **Agent & automation ideas** - Dictation-to-memo capture so a leader's thinking becomes referenceable documents that point back to the company's stated purpose. - Meeting intelligence that separates customer accounts from internal ones and routes learnings to sales, CS, product and support. - Automating the data entry that keeps sellers from selling, rather than managing the sellers harder. - A supervisory layer that keeps agents in line, with explicit QC — the work Luke says is a full-time job in itself. ## Operations takeaways ### Revenue operations - **.** - **.** - **.** - **.** - **.** ### Pipeline & marketing ops - **.** - **.** - **.** ### Customer operations - **.** - **.** - **.** ## Metrics mentioned | Value | Metric | Context | | --- | --- | --- | | 20% | The raise that changes a life | On a $40,000 or $60,000 salary — a rounding error at company level that finance will still argue about. | | $22/hour | Buc-ee's bathroom pay | Luke's example of paying above market for the role everyone else treats as unskilled. | | ~30 people | Where bureaucracy arrives | Luke's rough threshold beyond which maintaining an intentional culture becomes materially harder. | | $3,000 | Card spend finance can see | The cost of blank Christmas cards, offered as the clearest illustration of performative culture. | | 8 digits (conservatively) | ARR from working across departments | Luke's own estimate of what came from asking what the problem is, where it lives and who owns it — without being asked to. | | A team of 20, three years ago | What one person plus Cursor replaced | Built in under a year, while bootstrapping out of his own pocket. | | Past three years: close to nil | Small business survival | Anthony's recollection of the odds he looked up when starting LeanScale in 2021. | ## Entities mentioned - **HALOS Body Cameras** (company) — Where Luke runs revenue operations and sales training. The title undersells the range — he came up through the field and customer success and was a director of sales engineering before owning RevOps. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/halos/ - **In-N-Out Burger** (company) — Anthony's first example of paying well above market for the role, with the difference visible in the store — staff who are smiling, better trained, more engaged and longer tenured. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/in-n-out/ - **Chick-fil-A** (company) — The paired example. Luke notes the scripted 'Chick-fil-A way' can feel drilled into people, but argues they and In-N-Out do the best anyone does at making a hard job suck the least. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/chick-fil-a/ - **Buc-ee's** (company) — Luke's third example: $22 an hour to clean a bathroom, and the clean bathrooms are why people come back from all walks of life. On a rare bad day you assume Buc-ee's is having a bad day rather than that nobody cares. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/buc-ees/ - **LeanScale** (company) — Anthony describes the firm as architects and engineers managing client engagements, where losing someone costs the seat, the capacity and the institutional knowledge — and shares the monthly all-hands as a sacred ritual for restating mission, vision and what is and is not working. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/leanscale/ - **Luke Hoffmeister** (person, guest) — · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/guest/luke-hoffmeister/ - **Anthony Enrico** (person, host) — Co-founder of LeanScale and host of The LeanScale Podcast. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/guest/anthony-enrico/ - **Cursor** (tool, AI Dev Tool) — Introduced to Luke by a friend, and now what he builds with. He says he has built alone in under a year what took an engineering team of twenty three years ago — while making plenty of mistakes, because it is like working with an actual engineer who needs specifics. - **ChatGPT** (tool, AI Assistant) — His first AI tool and the one that holds all his context — used to dictate his thinking and turn it into referenceable memos. He warns it blows smoke and adapts to you: his talks like a tech bro and his wife's does not. - **Superhuman** (tool, Email / Productivity) — The email client he promotes everywhere and budgets for wherever he works, crediting it with saving hours a week. He once applied to work there and was turned down. - **Update AI** (tool, Conversation Intelligence) — The conversation intelligence product he budgeted for at every company: it took the video meeting, produced the transcript, then did the work on the data for sales, CS, product and support, and distinguished customer accounts from internal ones. Since acquired and gone. - **Lovable** (tool, AI App Builder) — Part of the stack Luke used alongside ChatGPT before he discovered Cursor and realised the technology existed to build what he is building now. - **Claude Code** (tool, AI Dev Tool) — Anthony's counterpart: LeanScale has gone heavy on it for building their own workflows, agents and agentified applications. ## FAQ **Q: What is the churn nobody tracks?** A: Internal, silent attrition — the gap between when someone disengages and when they resign. Luke Hoffmeister first saw it in field services, where pay was held down to keep client rates competitive. The moment a client appeared who would pay more, someone who had not been available for a year or two years moved within a week, and the amounts involved were not large. A company that believed it had loyalty and culture would lose a lead tech, a supervisor or a regional manager, along with their institutional knowledge — and everyone remaining would start asking whether the grass was greener. **Q: How do you spot someone who has already checked out?** A: By listening, and by letting people vent. Luke's point is that leadership builds a team around itself for good reasons and that same team insulates it. You do not want informants — that has its own poison — but you do need people who will tell you how it is, and you have to promote that actively. Sometimes what comes back is that you are a bad boss. More often it arrives as the product failing somewhere, or sales selling in a way that adds work downstream. Those are the things easiest to treat as noise and the things that matter most, because when someone feels there is no place for them at the company, they are already gone. **Q: Is a 20% raise worth it?** A: Luke's framing is about asymmetry. On a $40,000 or $60,000 salary, 20% is not much in the grand business scheme — finance will still argue every dollar and cent — but to that person it is life-changing. His sharper point is that structure matters as much as the number: someone two or three years in with no structure at all around raises, bonuses or what meeting expectations means financially is already churn, already looking. In a down market that is easy to ignore because people are clamouring for the job. Then the market turns and you pay more anyway, to strangers, having lost the institutional knowledge you already had. **Q: What do In-N-Out and Chick-fil-A get right?** A: They pay well above market for the role, and Anthony's argument is that the difference is apparent the moment you walk in: people smiling, better trained, more engaged, and likely to have been there longer. Against that you set the real cost of constantly recruiting, training and reinvigorating new people. Luke adds Buc-ee's, where $22 an hour to clean a bathroom is why the bathrooms are clean and why people come back from all walks of life. His inverse observation is the important one — when you see that nobody cares, you stop wanting to come back, and that cycles straight into attrition. **Q: What is culture, if it isn't perks?** A: Follow-through. Luke worked somewhere with free lunch every week and snacks all day, well below market pay, and hated it — the company argued it was competitive and nice and number one at things, and it still sucked to work there. He also worked at a tech company, dissolved more than two years ago, whose engineers, support, product, CS and operations people all still miss it. His conclusion is that most companies talk about culture and even mean it, and the failure is priority rather than intent. And if you genuinely do not care about culture, say so — the uncertainty combined with not keeping your word is what does the damage. **Q: How do you run an all-hands that works?** A: Do not turn it into a disciplinary session when results are bad, and do not turn it into a fake pep rally either. Luke's point is that the rally, the money and wanting to outdo yourselves are givens nobody is questioning — nobody arrives at work worried the company has become a charity. What has credibility is honesty about what worked in the field, what worked at leadership level, and what did not. A company he admired had a saying for it: call the baby ugly. If the thing you built is bad for the market or bad for morale or simply does not work, say so and drop the sunk cost. **Q: Does hiring for personality actually work?** A: Luke hires for personality and potential whenever he has runway, on the basis that such a person will admit they have not done this before, will get some of it wrong, and will see and do more. He points to someone he calls the most engineer-like non-engineer he has met — good at code, understood the tech and support sides, would have made an ideal layer between engineering and support — who was kept in support because he had no engineering degree. He is also clear that culture has to promote this: the boss still makes the calls and everyone has to know it, but curiosity and working outside your zone have to be actively rewarded. **Q: Why is 'hunters not hunting' usually not a sales problem?** A: Because of what you find when you look. Luke's version: if you reach the end of the month asking why there are no notes, you have a data entry, operations and infrastructure problem, not a salesperson problem. The two bleed into each other, but the fix is different. He is equally firm about what the reporting is for — not building a better spreadsheet with twenty-five subsets and every graph, but answering what the data tells the business. And he warns against adopting AI to demonstrate that you are forward-thinking: be clear about what you want it for, then find the best solution or build in-house. **Q: Does AI mean you need fewer people?** A: Luke's answer is the opposite, and he holds it while being the person with the most impressive solo build story in the conversation: with Cursor he has built alone, in under a year, what took an engineering team of twenty three years ago. He also sees his own mistakes and inefficiency clearly, says his time is far better spent on what he is good at, and cannot wait to be able to hire. Letting agents loose has never worked well for him without building a whole other program to keep them in line — and then QC agents, and QC agents for those. Keeping the AI in line, he says, is a full-time job. ## Timeline - **00:00** — Cold open + intro - **02:04** — The churn nobody tracks: internal, silent attrition - **03:42** — Losing a critical role: the ripple and the institutional knowledge - **04:45** — How to keep a finger on the pulse: listen, let people vent - **06:52** — "They're already gone": when someone checks out before they quit - **09:11** — The money conversation: 20% is life-changing - **10:05** — You get what you pay for: In-N-Out and Chick-fil-A - **11:04** — What culture actually is (and isn't) - **15:34** — Companies that model culture - **20:47** — The doom loop and the professional-sports-team model - **22:29** — The honest all-hands: don't discipline, don't fake the pep rally - **24:53** — Don't send the blank Christmas card: mean it or don't - **27:20** — Self-awareness and needing a cushion as a leader - **28:37** — The eclectic GTM background: the through-line - **34:32** — A license to fix anything: not staying in your lane - **37:40** — Why RevOps is the home: a data-entry problem, not a sales problem - **40:03** — The AI stack: Cursor, ChatGPT, Update AI, Superhuman - **45:08** — Why AI needs more people, not fewer ## Related episodes - **Ep. 95: Why AI Means More RevOps Hires, Not Fewer** (Jimmy O'Halloran (New Relic)) — The same conclusion Luke reaches from a solo builder's perspective: capability grew, the need for people did not shrink. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/jimmy-ohalloran-new-relic-revops-consumption-revenue/ - **Ep. 106: How She Runs All of RevOps From the Terminal** (Sarah Madden (FERMÀT)) — The working counterpoint on supervising agents — skills, context discipline and connection monitoring as the answer to keeping AI in line. - **Ep. 86: Why the Best CROs Don't Come From Sales** (Jerry Brooner) — The value of an eclectic go-to-market background and hiring for breadth rather than pedigree. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/jerry-brooner-best-cros-dont-come-from-sales/ - **Ep. 85: Why AI + GTM Engineers Can't Replace RevOps** (Tessa Whittaker) — The scope and identity of the function that Luke says finally fit him. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/tessa-whittaker-ai-gtm-engineers-revops/ - **Ep. 107: Why Circle's Co-Founder Ran 1,500 Sales Demos Before Hiring a Single Rep** (Andy Guttormsen (Circle)) — The unfair-advantage hire and hiring for lived experience, from the founder's side of the same question. - **Ep. 100: AI Ops: How We Run RevOps for 30 SaaS Companies at Once** (Jake Toepel (LeanScale)) — What supervising a fleet of agents actually takes at scale — the job Luke describes as full-time. ## Full transcript _Machine-transcribed and not diarized; speaker attribution is inferred._ _Transcript only, as a separate file: https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/luke-hoffmeister-churn-nobody-tracks/transcript.md_ ### 00:00 — Cold open + intro **[0:00]** At the end of the day, what kind of a company do you want to be, and if it's all about making money, well, Wall Street's full of those, like just go be one of those. **[0:07]** But if you're really about customer service and you're really about filling a need and you really want to have that method, then you have to be that. **[0:16]** My guest today is Luke Hofmeister who runs revenue operations at Halo's body cameras. **[0:23]** You have to follow through, do what you say, and if you're a company that says, "Hey, we don't care about culture, it's about this, this is our bottom line," **[0:29]** then at least have cards on the table that people know what they're dealing with. I think it's the uncertainty. **[0:33]** I want to get into a little bit of your eclectic go-to-market background. **[0:39]** Your path has zigzagged a little bit across customer success, sales engineering, RevOps, sales training. **[0:46]** You've kind of done a little bit of everything on the go-to-market side. **[0:50]** What feels like the through line that felt consistent across any of those roles you were in? **[0:57]** I think it's been a customer mindset and a curiosity. **[1:02]** On the one hand, it's sort of a service mentality. **[1:06]** How do we reach the customer? **[1:17]** Luke, you've said the biggest problem in most businesses is a kind of churn. **[1:21]** Nobody is tracking the internal, silent kind. **[1:24]** When did you first see that play out in a way that convinced you it mattered more than the stuff we usually measure? **[1:32]** I think the first time I saw that was when I moved from a lot of field work, **[1:37]** which included a lot of install service and a little bit of sales into an account management type of role. **[1:44]** It was like this regional management, such account manager sales, **[1:49]** and I was responsible for hiring a bunch of people. **[1:51]** It's a recruiter on the one hand, a manager on the other, a trainer was another piece of that. **[1:56]** It's kind of a multifaceted role. **[2:00]** It played directly on some strengths that I had. **[2:02]** I was coming from the field, I knew the product, I knew how to train these guys. ### 02:04 — The churn nobody tracks: internal, silent attrition **[2:07]** We would have clients come to us that they want a very competitive rate. **[2:13]** And the moment that we found a client who was willing to pay more, that person who had not been available for a year or two years, **[2:22]** suddenly they're like, "Yeah, I'm going to move right now." **[2:25]** And it wasn't that much. This is field work, it's skilled trade. **[2:30]** So they were moving. **[2:33]** And a company that thought, "Oh, we have loyalty, we have culture, we have these things going for us," **[2:37]** would suddenly lose a very valuable lead employee, could be supervisor, could be tech, **[2:42]** could be regional manager, anything that our clients needed we would hire for. **[2:46]** And the moment that we offered them something a little bit better financially, they were gone. **[2:50]** And that's kind of the easy one, the finance one, but it's a big one. **[2:54]** Yeah, and these are critical roles. **[2:56]** I know here at LeanScale, anyone, we're comprised of architects and engineers, **[3:01]** or managing engagements for clients. **[3:03]** When we lose someone, it's pretty critical. **[3:06]** It's not just the open spot that they held and the capacity that they managed, **[3:11]** but it's also their institutional knowledge. **[3:14]** It's the ripple effect of, "Oh, why is that person leaving? **[3:18]** Oh, should I be thinking about leaving? Is the grass greener on the other side?" **[3:23]** So I think there's a lot of cases where, hey, somebody leaving, **[3:29]** that's just the tip of the iceberg of the effects that it can have, **[3:33]** and probably just the beginning of some underlying systemic issues too. **[3:37]** Yeah, yeah, I see the same thing. ### 03:42 — Losing a critical role: the ripple and the institutional knowledge **[3:42]** So something like this, I think, is pretty difficult to track. **[3:47]** In your opinion, what's the best way to keep your finger on the pulse **[3:51]** of how the talent is doing and identify any early signs of attrition? **[3:57]** The risk of sounding Pollyanna, it's not rocket science. **[4:02]** It's good communication, it's following through. **[4:06]** And what we mean by that is most companies that I've ever worked for, **[4:12]** that I've ever been a part of, talk about having a culture. **[4:17]** And they want one, and maybe even mean to. **[4:21]** But you have to follow through. **[4:23]** There's a lot to do, and it's really tough. **[4:25]** So it's not a, "They're not doing a good job" thing as much as it's, **[4:30]** "What do you have to pay attention to?" **[4:32]** What is supposed to be, or would be helpful to be, a very high priority. **[4:39]** And that is, you've got to listen to your team. **[4:42]** You've got to know what's going on. **[4:44]** One of the challenges of owning a company and the more leadership-oriented you get, ### 04:45 — How to keep a finger on the pulse: listen, let people vent **[4:49]** you have these defenses, and you sort of have to build your team around you. **[4:53]** But you have to know that that also insulates you. **[4:56]** And it's not that you need snitches from your workforce, **[5:01]** because that has its own sort of, like, poison or cancer-right effect. **[5:05]** But you do need people that are going to tell you like it is. **[5:08]** And you have to promote that. **[5:10]** So you have to let people vent. **[5:12]** You have to let them be a little bit unconventional. **[5:14]** And you have to see the value in that. **[5:16]** I mean, sometimes they're going to say, "You're an ass of a boss," right? **[5:19]** And you're like, "Well, that's not HR approved." **[5:21]** But they're telling you something, right? **[5:23]** So it's listening. **[5:26]** And then they're going to tell you, when it's safe to do so, **[5:28]** they're going to tell you about, "Hey, I think our product is failing over here." **[5:31]** Or, "Hey, sales keep selling in this way, and it's hurting us." **[5:34]** Or, "That's adding more work on my team." **[5:38]** Again, it's hard as an executive, or even as a mid-manager, **[5:44]** to prioritize those things, because they seem to just get in the way. **[5:49]** And you want to just quiet the noise and go about your business. **[5:52]** But those are the things that matter much more long-term. **[5:57]** Because those are your people, and they're the biggest piece of the business. **[6:01]** And they're the ones talking to your customers, right? **[6:04]** Your support team's talking to your clients all the time. **[6:06]** Your sales team is talking to your clients all the time. **[6:08]** And when they start to feel like there's no place for them at the company anymore, **[6:13]** look, they're already gone. It's just a matter of time. **[6:16]** And I've seen that happen with myself, right? **[6:19]** Where multiple times, I'm like, "Okay, the value's done. It's time to move on." **[6:24]** I might still be there for quite a while, right? **[6:27]** Opportunities only come when they come. **[6:29]** But it's absolutely the same for the people that I've worked with, too. **[6:32]** And the sales reps that we had, we couldn't offer them much. **[6:35]** I was over at a security company. Great little company. **[6:38]** They cared a lot about service. They cared a lot about their customers. **[6:41]** But they didn't care so much about their people. **[6:44]** And they also promoted a big, "Yeah, let's have culture. Let's have fun. Let's have engagement." **[6:49]** And it came off as awkward, right? **[6:51]** So people know I'm awkward on podcasts for the first time. ### 06:52 — "They're already gone": when someone checks out before they quit **[6:56]** I'm awkward on interviews. **[6:58]** But people know if I'm genuine or not. **[7:01]** So if I have a canned response for everything, **[7:04]** that's not going to promote that level of, right? **[7:07]** So it's all of these things kind of against the middle. **[7:11]** They can show up on reports, if you want to look at it that way. **[7:15]** But I think it's engagement, right? **[7:17]** You have to follow through, do what you say. **[7:19]** And if you're a company that says, "Hey, we don't care about culture. **[7:22]** It's about this. This is our bottom line." **[7:24]** Then at least have cards on the table, let people know what they're dealing with. **[7:27]** I think it's the uncertainty mixed with, **[7:30]** "We're not communicating properly to our teams. **[7:33]** And we're not keeping our word that eats at things most." **[7:36]** And then there's a big one. **[7:37]** "We don't want to talk about money." **[7:39]** But the truth is, large part of the workforce is lower to middle class. **[7:46]** That's our workforce. Those are our people. **[7:48]** And then you have higher and higher right and engineers paid more and more. **[7:51]** But even then, they're still really middle class. **[7:54]** And ultimately, what drives that? **[7:56]** If you offer me, let's take it outside of ourselves, **[8:00]** I offer somebody 20% more to work for me. **[8:03]** That's not that much in the grand scheme. **[8:05]** Especially, say, they make 40 a year, 60 a year. **[8:08]** That's not all that much. **[8:10]** Now, finance is going to argue because every dollar in cent from the finance team is like, **[8:14]** "But in the grand business scheme, what does that matter in the market?" **[8:17]** But to that person, it's life changing. **[8:19]** To the person who's been working their two, three years **[8:22]** and there's no structure whatsoever around raises or bonuses **[8:26]** or what meeting expectations means for them financially, **[8:29]** that's already churn. **[8:31]** They're already looking. **[8:33]** And it's just a matter of time and opportunity. **[8:36]** And I think it's easy in sort of a down market **[8:39]** where it's sort of the employer market to ignore those things. **[8:43]** Because you're like, "No one's doing this. We don't have to worry. **[8:46]** We have tons of people in the workforce. People are clamoring for this job." **[8:49]** Well, the markets always turn around and then you see it more. **[8:52]** And then suddenly you have to pay more and you do. **[8:55]** Or you could keep people that you have, keep your institutional knowledge, **[8:59]** keep your customers happy, which by the way affects your revenue **[9:02]** and affects your churn on your customers. **[9:05]** That's the way I look at it. **[9:07]** It's a very connected sort of a mindset, but it's tough to do. **[9:10]** You have to be people minded. ### 09:11 — The money conversation: 20% is life-changing **[9:13]** Yeah, a couple of things to break down. One, I want to start on the pay. **[9:18]** One of the examples that you might look at, **[9:22]** one that maybe people can relate to, fast food restaurants, **[9:26]** In-N-Out and Chick-fil-A. **[9:29]** They're two that pay well above market rate for the rolls **[9:34]** and well above everybody else. **[9:37]** And I think it's pretty apparent when you walk into one of those stores, **[9:42]** the difference. **[9:44]** The people are smiling, they're well trained, they're more engaged. **[9:48]** They've probably been working there for a longer time. **[9:52]** And in the long run, not needing to constantly recruit new people, **[9:56]** constantly train new people, **[9:59]** reinvigorating a whole new person on the organization. **[10:03]** I mean, those have real costs. ### 10:05 — You get what you pay for: In-N-Out and Chick-fil-A **[10:06]** So if you can kind of maintain some of that with just, **[10:10]** hey, let's pay above market rate, it's a pretty simple fix. **[10:14]** I want to spend a little bit of time. **[10:18]** What does culture mean to you and how do you build it? **[10:22]** Yeah, God, that's tough. **[10:25]** It's a really good question. **[10:31]** I think there's a bit of self-awareness. **[10:34]** My self-awareness is, I talk too damn much. **[10:37]** I go on a diet drive. **[10:41]** But I'm aware of it. I'm working on it. **[10:45]** You know, I think if somebody's aware of what they want to build, **[10:49]** and I think the earlier you institute some sort of boundaries for yourself. **[10:54]** The company that I'm building right now, **[10:58]** it's going to take off in the market because there's just this big push. ### 11:04 — What culture actually is (and isn't) **[11:04]** It's sort of hard to explain. **[11:07]** People need it. There's a big gap. No one's doing it. **[11:11]** It's so weird to talk about that in a market, **[11:14]** especially finance or self-help or whatever you're getting into. **[11:19]** Everything seems so saturated. **[11:22]** But the reason that I'm getting into it is to fill the need. **[11:28]** Yes, I'm there to feed my family. **[11:30]** Yes, I'm there to do well financially. **[11:32]** And yes, if we're successful, let's make all the big money. **[11:35]** Let's make that crazy money, right? Sure, of course. **[11:38]** But not at the cost of forgetting why we're doing this in the first place. **[11:42]** And I think that's easy to miss real fast, right? **[11:46]** If it's a small business, you're self-funded, **[11:49]** you have this one to three year mark where you've got to survive. **[11:53]** Like, are we going to be able to pay the bills next month? **[11:55]** Is the business going to close the stores? **[11:57]** Are we going to be one of the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of businesses **[12:01]** that close their doors all the time? **[12:03]** Happens all the time, right? **[12:04]** Small business churn is huge. **[12:07]** Or ending, not churn, you know what I mean? **[12:11]** Yeah, yeah. **[12:12]** No, no, the stats are really going against you. **[12:14]** I remember when I started Lean Scale in 2021, I was like, **[12:17]** "Hey, what's the odds that businesses make it past three years?" **[12:20]** And it's pretty much no one. **[12:22]** It's nil. **[12:23]** Yeah, exactly. **[12:24]** So I have to constantly... **[12:26]** It's humbling to remember that while it's been so fun **[12:29]** to be able to do what I'm able to do, it might end tomorrow, right? **[12:33]** We could run out of the money that we have for this. **[12:35]** We could have a family emergency. **[12:36]** Those things, the real things that affect a small business. **[12:39]** But if we survive and if we get through this **[12:42]** and we get to go to market and we get to have profitability **[12:45]** and we get to really get to our customers, **[12:47]** what was the whole point of what we built? **[12:49]** That starts the culture. **[12:51]** And then it's communicating that. **[12:53]** And for me, I'm a talker, but I'm a poor communicator. **[12:57]** Something my wife constantly reminds me of. **[12:59]** Everyone should have a wife. **[13:01]** Whatever that looks like for somebody. **[13:03]** You gotta have somebody that keeps you in check, right? **[13:05]** And she's amazing, by the way. **[13:07]** My wife is wonderful, but she likes to call me out on my shit. **[13:10]** And it's good. **[13:12]** And so for me, I write that down. **[13:14]** So I'll dictate a ton to AI, chat and GBT, or similar. **[13:18]** And then I'll go put this into something that I can reference **[13:22]** and read because when somebody asks me for something, **[13:25]** I can't give them a story, I can't give them a diatribe. **[13:28]** It has to be some kind of a memo, **[13:30]** but it has to point back to what we're about, right? **[13:33]** We're not a charity, we're not funded by outside, right? **[13:36]** There does have to be a money-making portion. **[13:38]** There is a sales and marketing portion. **[13:40]** There's a real finance portion. **[13:42]** But I go into this with what I need. **[13:47]** And I don't need a lot. **[13:49]** I need more than I have now, right? **[13:51]** I've got growing kids, I've got family, right? **[13:53]** It has those things, and I have once. **[13:55]** I'm not gonna lie, I love the shiny things. **[13:57]** I do, right? **[13:59]** But it's what I need. **[14:02]** And so if I keep that mindset and I put that into my documents **[14:05]** to remind me, I've at least got a shot. **[14:08]** The more people I bring on board, the more the team grows, **[14:11]** the more complex it becomes. **[14:13]** The harder it is to maintain that, and it happens with every business. **[14:15]** I mean, the company doesn't get past more than 30 people, **[14:18]** and all of a sudden they're a bureaucracy, right? **[14:20]** It happens, and then you get your massive grocery chains of the world, **[14:23]** you know what I'm talking about. **[14:25]** And you can't even imagine what it was like when the founder was alive, right? **[14:29]** It's so far removed from what it was. **[14:31]** So I think it's just something that's very intentional, and it's tough. **[14:35]** And I think you really should write it down. **[14:37]** I know it's cliche, but you should put it on the walls. **[14:40]** Put it on a tattoo if you have to. **[14:42]** Do you have any companies that you think emulate **[14:45]** building and maintaining a strong culture really well? **[14:49]** That you think others should maybe model off of or take notes of? **[14:54]** I mean, you mentioned a couple. **[14:56]** So Chick-fil-A is kind of funny **[14:59]** because they have all the words that they say, **[15:01]** and it's kind of like, "Oh, the Chick-fil-A way," right? **[15:04]** And somebody who's been there three months almost has, like, PTSD from the Chick-fil-A way. **[15:08]** My pleasure. **[15:10]** Exactly, exactly. **[15:12]** Even though I know it's a thing, somebody being nice to me and smiling, **[15:15]** even if they're putting on a show, because they've got their own problems. **[15:18]** And let's be--you know, I worked fast food. **[15:21]** It sucks. **[15:23]** It's not a great job. **[15:25]** I think Chick-fil-A in and out and others probably do the best they can **[15:30]** at making it suck the least, right? **[15:32]** You've got to deal with people all day who are hungry. ### 15:34 — Companies that model culture **[15:34]** That means they're already assholes. **[15:37]** I don't know if I can say that on your show. **[15:38]** They're already jerks, right? **[15:40]** If I'm hungry, I'm probably not being my best self. **[15:43]** I don't mean to be, but I'm hungry. **[15:45]** And I just waited in line because your food's so good **[15:48]** and your service is so consistently right for a reasonable price **[15:53]** that I'm coming back and I'm waiting through the line. **[15:56]** That's tough to deal with by itself. **[15:58]** Don't even get started on the job itself. **[16:00]** All the things you have to do. **[16:02]** I think they do a good job. **[16:04]** I'll mention another company, though, outside the fast food. **[16:06]** It's a little more relatable. **[16:07]** I worked for a tech company called Series. **[16:09]** And long story short, it didn't work out. **[16:12]** The market had a direction, the market had a different direction. **[16:15]** They tried yet again to go back and do it differently. **[16:17]** The company ended up being dissolved. **[16:20]** I got a ton of respect for them. **[16:22]** But something they did well, and I still go, **[16:24]** "Man, do I know how they did it?" **[16:27]** Their culture there was so good. **[16:29]** Everyone I talked to from that company, **[16:31]** they closed their doors at Series over two years ago. **[16:36]** And everyone was laid off except for the core **[16:39]** of three or four founding member team. **[16:42]** Everyone misses it. **[16:44]** Everyone I talked to, the head engineer, **[16:46]** the support people, the product people, **[16:49]** the customer success people, operations, they all miss it. **[16:53]** There was just something there that created, **[16:57]** as close to a family as you can get in business, **[16:59]** I don't like the family word because it's kind of cliche **[17:02]** and it's like, "Let's be real. **[17:03]** We're here for the money. **[17:04]** Let's be honest." **[17:05]** But how do we make that as good as possible? **[17:07]** How do we be as kind as possible **[17:10]** and as honest as possible at the same time? **[17:13]** And I'll throw one more out there that is a good guideline. **[17:16]** I think Gary Vaynerchuk has a lot of good stuff on this. **[17:18]** I know he's a controversial figure. **[17:20]** I know he's a multimillionaire guy. **[17:21]** He's a big personality type. **[17:23]** It's kind of a great story. **[17:25]** I love his story. **[17:27]** I love where he comes from. **[17:28]** And I think that the stuff that he does, **[17:32]** somebody who's experienced enough to know that, **[17:34]** his sort of side hustles that he talks about all the time, **[17:37]** that's just for fun. **[17:38]** He's not about, "You need to do this NFT thing. **[17:41]** You need to do this other stuff." **[17:42]** That's his fun. **[17:43]** And he'll say it if you listen to him long enough. **[17:45]** But he talks over and over about how he invests in people. **[17:48]** And he's like, "People make fun of me for this, **[17:50]** but it's worked for me." **[17:52]** And I built this sort of tight-knit organization **[17:54]** and he's not perfect. **[17:55]** And he'll say some of his stories that he fired somebody **[17:58]** probably when he should have been a little more attentive to their needs **[18:01]** or he let somebody go for too long **[18:03]** and kind of walked all over him. **[18:04]** Everyone's going to go through that. **[18:06]** But they've built something that has lasted. **[18:10]** And they're this multi-mega advertising company. **[18:15]** So I look to people like that. **[18:18]** I look to Chick-fil-A. **[18:20]** I'll mention another one that's super common to everyone. **[18:22]** Bucky's. **[18:23]** My wife hates it because there's always so many people. **[18:26]** But I'm like, "Dude, I will put up with a few things that I don't like." **[18:30]** Honestly, I don't know why they make them yell about the meat they have on the board. **[18:34]** It's the most annoying thing ever. **[18:35]** And I can't imagine being an employee. **[18:36]** They're yelling about meat all day. **[18:38]** Every five or ten minutes, there's meat on the board. **[18:40]** Like, "What the heck, man?" **[18:43]** But bathrooms are clean. **[18:46]** Twenty-two bucks an hour to clean a bathroom. **[18:49]** Try that at McDonald's. **[18:51]** And McDonald's, I didn't know this. **[18:54]** Learning more about the history of McDonald's in its earlier days, **[18:57]** they used to be known for their clean bathrooms. **[19:01]** And the old saying, "As with the bathroom goes the kitchen," right? **[19:05]** That we just sort of naturally get. **[19:06]** We don't really say that anymore. **[19:08]** But we kind of understand it. **[19:10]** The more you see that people don't care, then you're like, **[19:12]** "Yeah, do I really want to come here anymore?" **[19:14]** "Oh, yeah, right. I can afford McDonald's, so I guess I'm going to go to McDonald's." **[19:17]** I get that. **[19:19]** I get that a lot. **[19:21]** But Bucky says people coming back who, from all over, **[19:25]** all walks of life, all different industries, all backgrounds, **[19:28]** because they have the infrastructure to support it, which takes a lot. **[19:32]** They have a ton of coordination. **[19:34]** And then, you know, when they have their down days, you walk in, **[19:36]** you're like, "Oh, my God, there's toilet paper on the floor. **[19:38]** What's going on with their workers?" **[19:40]** And it's a rare event. **[19:42]** You're like, "Bucky's must be having a bad day." **[19:44]** Whereas other restaurants, I'm like, "Oh, yeah, **[19:46]** I hate going to the bathroom anywhere but home." **[19:48]** And I try and hold it because nobody cares. **[19:50]** And that nobody cares cycles right back to that attrition we talked about. **[19:54]** Right, right. **[19:56]** And I think it ends up turning into a doom loop for the organization. **[20:00]** So I think one thing, and people, this is a little bit more common now, **[20:05]** but I think there was a time where it was like, **[20:07]** "Oh, culture meant the holiday parties. **[20:10]** Culture meant the snacks in the office. **[20:12]** Culture meant, like, kind of perks and stuff." **[20:14]** And I think the way you framed it in the beginning is, **[20:17]** "Hey, find out what that core is. **[20:20]** What's the why behind the company existing in the first place? **[20:24]** What's the purpose? **[20:26]** And do we take it seriously?" **[20:28]** And I also don't like family. **[20:31]** I don't think family is the right metaphor, **[20:33]** but I do think, like, a professional sports team, **[20:36]** like, your business should operate like a professional sports team. **[20:39]** Hey, we have standards. **[20:41]** And yes, we have a high level of trust, **[20:44]** and we're on the same team. **[20:46]** Like, I'm not out to get you. ### 20:47 — The doom loop and the professional-sports-team model **[20:48]** I'm not out to make you look bad out on the field. **[20:50]** I'm out to go beat the market. **[20:52]** I'm out to go beat the other team. **[20:54]** And if you're here to help me, great. **[20:56]** Some things that tend to reinforce it are, **[20:58]** I call them sacred rituals. **[21:00]** So, like, at Lean Scale, we have a few things. **[21:03]** We have a monthly company, All Hands. **[21:05]** Lots of stuff happens there. **[21:07]** It's where we just remind ourselves of who we are. **[21:10]** We go over the mission and the vision again. **[21:12]** We go over, like, what's working, what's not working. **[21:14]** Honest conversations in front of the team that exhibit our values. **[21:18]** And those rituals can really, really help. **[21:22]** So, yeah, I think in terms of culture, **[21:25]** there's a lot to invest in that can help retain your team. **[21:30]** But a lot of it just comes with taking what you do seriously. **[21:33]** It does. **[21:34]** And I'll flip that script just a little bit, **[21:36]** because I've lived the other side of that, **[21:38]** where, like you said, I think the difference is getting it. **[21:42]** And that sounds a little weird, right? **[21:44]** How do we explain that? **[21:45]** Well, the difference is, say the purpose of the All Hands, **[21:49]** you're like, hey, I want to go in, **[21:51]** and yes, I want to rally my team. **[21:53]** And yes, we want to make money. **[21:55]** And yes, we want to outdo ourselves, right? **[21:57]** But those are a given. **[21:58]** Nobody's actually questioning those things. **[22:00]** If I go to work, I'm not actually going, **[22:03]** oh man, I think we're becoming a charity that doesn't give, **[22:06]** that doesn't care about my work, and I don't have to perform. **[22:09]** Not even close, man. **[22:11]** Anyone, you sort of have these basic things **[22:14]** you don't have to do. **[22:16]** I've lived where companies use the get-togethers, **[22:20]** and they use the All Hands, and they use, **[22:23]** and actually, you know, Siri's, **[22:25]** I'm not going to harsh on them too much, right? **[22:27]** I loved them to death, right? **[22:28]** They taught me so much about what a company could be. ### 22:29 — The honest all-hands: don't discipline, don't fake the pep rally **[22:31]** And then other decisions sort of affected them. **[22:33]** But they also sort of fell into, when things were going bad, **[22:37]** now the All Hands turn into a little more of a, **[22:40]** like a slap your hand, you naughty employee, sort of a session. **[22:43]** Versus, let's come at this with honesty. **[22:45]** Let's say what we did well in the field, **[22:47]** what we did well at leadership, and what didn't work. **[22:50]** They had a favorite saying that they liked. **[22:52]** It was like, call the baby ugly, right? **[22:54]** And you think about that, and you go, **[22:56]** who calls babies ugly? **[22:57]** That's so horrible. **[22:58]** But it's like, oh, my precious little thing that I built. **[23:01]** Well, if it's super bad for the market, **[23:03]** or really bad for morale, or just plain doesn't work, **[23:07]** call the baby ugly. **[23:09]** Like, let's get rid of sunk costs. **[23:10]** And they did that really well. **[23:12]** But I think the All Hands, again, have to be intentional. **[23:16]** And the companies that emulate that, **[23:18]** I worked at companies where they had lunch every single week. **[23:21]** There were snacks in the business the whole time. **[23:23]** And I hated working there. **[23:25]** I hated working for the owner. **[23:27]** I hated working for that company. **[23:28]** I'll leave them nameless because I'm being, you know, **[23:30]** kind of vehement about it. **[23:33]** But it really, the culture sucked. **[23:36]** The pay was super below the market, right? **[23:38]** And there were always arguments about, oh, we're very competitive. **[23:42]** We're very nice. **[23:43]** We're number one in this or that. **[23:45]** And it's like, yeah, but it really sucks working here. **[23:49]** You know, and then you want people to do more with less. **[23:53]** It's like, you can't have your cake and eat it too. **[23:57]** And I think leaders have to give the most. **[23:59]** It doesn't mean they have to have, like, **[24:01]** a really crappy salary or a bad lifestyle. **[24:04]** I think anyone who's kind of reasonable goes, **[24:06]** yeah, I'd expect the owner to, you know, say you're into nice cars. **[24:09]** Okay. **[24:10]** I know a guy in an industry that I supported. **[24:13]** His whole thing is collecting cars. **[24:15]** And I think it's the coolest thing ever. **[24:17]** Am I jealous of him? **[24:18]** A little bit. **[24:19]** But for the most part, I just think it's freaking cool that he owns two fire trucks. **[24:22]** I mean, who owns two fire trucks? **[24:24]** That's cool as shit, right? **[24:26]** But if there's nothing there for the employee, **[24:31]** but, hey, we do lunch for you every week, you should be grateful. **[24:33]** Oh, we do a crawfish boil every quarter or once a year, **[24:36]** or we do these company parties. **[24:38]** Nobody cares. **[24:40]** You know what I'd rather have than the ham and the whole package at Christmas time? **[24:44]** Send me a $20 gift card. **[24:46]** Like, if you're going to send me a card, **[24:48]** you know what my family could use at Christmas time? **[24:50]** A little more cash, just straight up. ### 24:53 — Don't send the blank Christmas card: mean it or don't **[24:53]** I don't care if it's Amazon. **[24:54]** I don't care if it's a thing to a restaurant, **[24:56]** though anything that's more cash and more spendable is a little easier. **[24:59]** If you're going to send something, mean it. **[25:02]** Don't send a card that's blank. **[25:04]** We don't care about the company Christmas feelings, right? **[25:09]** We have our own family, our own feelings, **[25:11]** and if you're a genuine person, then I want you in my life, **[25:14]** whether I work with you or not. **[25:15]** But if you're just trying to send out cards because it's all about culture, **[25:18]** and then all finance can see is what we spent $3,000 just on cards alone, **[25:23]** like, you're missing it. **[25:24]** You're straight missing it. **[25:25]** Don't send the cards. **[25:26]** Don't even pretend like you care about Christmas **[25:28]** or some holiday or some sort of thing **[25:30]** that you're trying to promote with your employees. **[25:31]** Because you don't. **[25:32]** I think, so wrapping all that back up, you have to be that. **[25:37]** You have to live that. **[25:39]** And if you're not that, like, I'm not a great speaker, **[25:43]** well, then I have to own it, and I have to keep practicing that, right? **[25:49]** Okay, I'm not good with employees because back in my day, **[25:53]** you were lucky you had a job. **[25:55]** Okay, I have to own that, and then I need somebody to be my cushion. **[25:59]** If I get up and speak at all of our all hands, **[26:02]** then our employees, because I'm the top guy, **[26:05]** are only going to hear, "This company does not care about you. **[26:09]** Get your ass to work. You better be lucky you have a job." **[26:12]** So a little bit of self-awareness, just a little bit of humility that goes, **[26:15]** "I don't have to change me. I can still believe that. **[26:17]** I can still believe you have to be lucky you even have a job here. **[26:20]** You're lucky I even hired you." **[26:22]** I can believe that, but I better be self-aware enough for my company's sake **[26:27]** and my team's sake to know that's probably not the person I want to speak in the meetings. **[26:31]** I'm going to vent to my leadership team, or I'm going to vent to my wife, **[26:34]** or I'm going to vent to my AI, or my therapist, or whoever, **[26:37]** and have all those beliefs, but it doesn't work well in a company. **[26:40]** So there's a pragmatist side to it as well. **[26:42]** Does it work well? Does it promote things? **[26:44]** Does it help increase the bottom line, or does it not? **[26:47]** So it works for a variety of people. **[26:49]** I tend to live those things. I tend to believe them. **[26:53]** But I also tend to stay in a damaging sort of a business relationship too long. **[26:58]** So I'm the other way. **[27:00]** I got to learn better boundaries. **[27:03]** Yeah, it's definitely a delicate thing to manage. **[27:06]** You want to have authenticity in the way you approach culture, **[27:10]** that way you're bringing people along an authentic mission that you're all going towards, **[27:16]** and then making sure you're reinforcing it. **[27:19]** But yeah, we use the all hands as an example. ### 27:20 — Self-awareness and needing a cushion as a leader **[27:23]** Hey, don't turn it into a disciplinary session, **[27:31]** or don't turn it into a fake pep rally when things aren't going well **[27:35]** and you're trying to put deodorant over something. **[27:38]** Living in the middle of that is tough, but that's the goal. **[27:42]** Well, and also in all the little ways in every meeting, **[27:45]** having values, codifier values, when you're making decisions, point to the values before you make a decision, things like that. **[27:50]** I think that's how you can help maintain culture. **[27:54]** I want to get into a little bit of your eclectic go-to-market background. **[28:00]** So your path has zigzagged a little bit across customer success, sales engineering, rev-ups, sales training. **[28:07]** You've kind of done a little bit of everything on the go-to-market side. **[28:12]** What feels like the through line that felt consistent across any of those roles you were in? **[28:19]** Man, it's always a tough answer, and it makes interviews tough too. **[28:26]** But I think it's been a customer mindset and a curiosity. **[28:35]** On the one hand, it's sort of a service mentality. ### 28:37 — The eclectic GTM background: the through-line **[28:39]** How do we reach the customer? But that can go too far as well, right? **[28:42]** The customer is always right on the one hand, and on the other hand, that could be entirely wrong. **[28:48]** If we give this way or build this feature that way, or change our model, and we drop our prices just because we want to be better for us, **[28:56]** that can really hurt us in a variety of ways. **[28:59]** So I don't mean over the edge, but it's sort of knowing where the limits are and everything. **[29:08]** And then I am curious. I'm curious what makes a company tick. **[29:11]** I'm curious why leaders make their decisions that they make. **[29:14]** I'm curious why I make the decisions that I make that are usually invisible to me. **[29:18]** And I also want to know how things work, right? **[29:22]** I want to know why an engineer thinks the way that they do, right? **[29:26]** Now that I'm having to do that job in my own company, I'm like, "Oh my God, I get why they do." **[29:33]** And I've become, in my speech, much more engineer-coded, I think, than I've ever been before. **[29:40]** And my wife goes, "You talk like an engineer all the time. Stop." **[29:44]** But it's because you live that life, right? And it makes sense. **[29:47]** And so what I've lived in there, bringing it back to practical, I've had good opportunities. **[29:55]** Even at the companies that I didn't like, there were people there that I really did. **[30:02]** And my mind always goes back to the people. **[30:05]** So there were people that were sideways in me, people that reported in me, people that were way the heck above me, **[30:10]** that were really good people. **[30:12]** And I think, I'm going to answer sort of a previous question you maybe didn't ask. **[30:17]** That's honestly what saves a lot of these organizations. **[30:20]** They did at least a good enough job at hiring enough good people that sort of all the bad is counterbalanced **[30:28]** because you have people that genuinely care in spite of the lack of support for them being a genuine business person. **[30:38]** And so for me, being able to work with those people and be able to work across departments, it was what was needed. **[30:45]** We'd already tried the standard support way, right? **[30:47]** They'd already tried the sales way. **[30:49]** They'd already tried all the ways that a business typically does, and then they hired a personality. **[30:56]** I hire that way, I hire people that I trust, and I hire a personality because I want to know the potential somebody has. **[31:03]** If they've already done it and I just can't help it, I have to have somebody who's done it before, **[31:08]** then yeah, I'm going to have to have the experience more than probably anything. **[31:12]** But I'm going to try and balance it out. **[31:14]** But if I can at all have a little bit of runway, I hire a personality because the personality is going to say, **[31:21]** "Okay, I may not have done this before, and so I'm probably going to do it wrong based on the role, but I see more. **[31:28]** I'm open-minded to more and I do more." **[31:31]** And back to culture, culture has to be promoting that, right? **[31:37]** The boss has to make the decision, right? **[31:39]** You can't say, "Oh, yeah, we're going to do it your way because you said so because I love culture." **[31:42]** No, the boss has to make the calls. **[31:44]** Everybody has to know that. **[31:45]** But you have to keep promoting people being curious, people working outside their zones, **[31:52]** because the bottom line that affected why I did what I did for years was many -- let's see. **[32:01]** I'll try and be conservative with the number. **[32:03]** Eight digits in ARR. **[32:05]** Let's just put it that way. **[32:06]** I think it was actually a lot more, but let's be conservative, right? **[32:09]** Eight digits in ARR is what I brought in. **[32:13]** And then there was potential for that much more because I said, "What's the problem? **[32:18]** Where does it live? **[32:19]** Who owns it? **[32:20]** How do we affect this outcome?" **[32:21]** But I didn't say those things. **[32:23]** I just did them. **[32:24]** So I went to the head of support, "Hey, what's wrong with this over here?" **[32:27]** I went to this guy who was handling the ticket. **[32:29]** I asked for pictures from the field when it was some kind of a field problem. **[32:32]** I was curious enough to go, "What are we missing? **[32:37]** How do we figure this out?" **[32:38]** So there's sort of a strategic mindset, I guess, if you want to break down there. **[32:42]** I'm a very strategic person. **[32:44]** I suck at chess. **[32:45]** I kind of like it, but I do suck it. **[32:48]** It's not like a cookie cutter thing. **[32:50]** But in business, I'm very curious. **[32:53]** I know that I have a lot right. **[32:55]** I know that I have a lot wrong, right? **[32:58]** There's something like living it. **[33:00]** There's nothing like living it, is what I mean. **[33:02]** To find out, "Oh, that's why they did what they did when I was at that one company." **[33:07]** It makes sense. **[33:08]** But I also have enough then, having lived it to know, **[33:11]** "Oh, yeah, but I would still not do it that way." **[33:13]** Because people matter, because principals matter, because you go to market matters, **[33:17]** and at the end of the day, what kind of a company do you want to be? **[33:21]** If it's all about making money, well, Wall Street's full of those. **[33:23]** Just go be one of those. **[33:25]** But if you're really about customer service, and you're really about filling a need, **[33:28]** and you really want to have that method, then you have to be that. **[33:34]** Sorry, circling back around there. **[33:36]** No, makes sense, and I think the way you phrased it earlier is really just **[33:43]** taking any role as a license to fix anything in the business, **[33:46]** and not just being stuck in your role. **[33:48]** A little bit. **[33:49]** Some companies hate it, by the way. **[33:52]** Right. **[33:53]** That does lend itself, though, to kind of building that eclectic background. **[33:57]** It's like, "Hey, no matter where I'm in, I'm not just staying in my lane." **[34:01]** And a lot of people end up in RevOps, I think are attracted to it, **[34:06]** because you get to dabble in quite a few different areas, **[34:11]** and if anything's impacting the customer, if anything's impacting revenue, **[34:15]** you do have that license to go fix whatever the problem is. **[34:19]** So I think kind of how you've exhibited that throughout your career. **[34:24]** RevOps is a good home for that. **[34:26]** It really is, and I didn't know that. **[34:29]** So customer success is still a relatively new term. ### 34:32 — A license to fix anything: not staying in your lane **[34:32]** It's very popular on the West Coast and very popular with startups **[34:35]** and smaller companies, but a lot of your really big enterprise companies **[34:39]** are just barely sort of toying with the idea of customer success. **[34:42]** It's not because they don't need it. **[34:44]** It's because the role by itself is so broadly defined. **[34:50]** And so when I started there, for me, it was, **[34:54]** "Hey, we have these accounts that are failing. **[34:57]** We have revenue that's not being maintained. **[34:59]** We have customers that are threatening us, and they're big customers, **[35:02]** and they're big accounts, and they're big projects, **[35:04]** and they need somebody who's both technical and customer-oriented **[35:08]** and broad-minded and can see the whole picture **[35:10]** and doesn't mind both getting in and getting their hands dirty **[35:13]** and also can present to the executives." **[35:17]** That was me. I didn't know that was me. **[35:20]** But I had a friend of mine in business that, honestly, **[35:23]** we didn't know each other all that much. **[35:25]** He was Matt, and I'll be forever grateful to him because he got-- **[35:29]** he saw sort of an opportunity for me. **[35:32]** And it might have been nothing to him, **[35:34]** and he might have listed 10 other people. **[35:36]** I don't know. I'll ask him one day. **[35:38]** But he asked me, I got the role, and I learned sort of what I was **[35:43]** and what I was capable of doing. **[35:46]** And that evolved. **[35:48]** Some companies go, "Well, that sounds like you're a sales engineer **[35:50]** and we really need a technical guy." **[35:52]** Or, "It sounds like you're RevOps or it sounds like you're head of support." **[35:56]** Well, that's a very different role, and I've lived that life, **[35:59]** and I'm telling you that's not what I am. **[36:01]** I can do it. I can do it, right? **[36:03]** It sort of fits, but that's all about like tickets and management **[36:08]** and handling, right? **[36:10]** It's a different mindset than being able to be a little more broad, right? **[36:13]** Support is not that broad. **[36:15]** So, yeah, RevOps ends up being a fit that I didn't know I was. **[36:21]** If you do RevOps or just straight business operations, **[36:25]** they both tend to have a lot of overlap. **[36:28]** Different companies see them different ways, right? **[36:30]** Some companies go, "Oh, that is--" **[36:32]** RevOps is basically head of sales. **[36:34]** That's not me, and I'm not going to pretend that I am. **[36:36]** I've done it regionally. **[36:38]** I've never been bigger than like a regional head of sales. **[36:41]** But it's not really what I do, and it's not-- **[36:45]** And I've been a sales rep, too, right, just to be clear. **[36:47]** It wasn't like somebody brought me in and said, **[36:49]** "I'm a head of sales." That wouldn't make any sense either, right? **[36:52]** Going back to you got to be qualified for the role. **[36:54]** But, no, mine is very much-- **[36:57]** You see the issues that are affecting revenue, right? **[37:00]** It's sales training. It's technical knowledge. **[37:02]** It's selling too heavy on features when we really should be selling outcomes. **[37:06]** But it's also what's taking away their time. **[37:09]** They're spending way too much time doing data entry. **[37:12]** We got to fix that. Like, this is 2026. **[37:14]** We have AI. We have automation. **[37:16]** Let's not jump on the AI bandwagon for the sake of we have AI and we have data. **[37:21]** We're a forward-thinking company. **[37:23]** It has to solve the problem that we have. **[37:26]** So we got to be really clear with ourselves what we want it for, **[37:29]** find the best solution, build in-house, or use what's already there, right? **[37:33]** Get our balance right. **[37:35]** And then make that better because, ultimately, why do we set up to do this? **[37:38]** Well, our hunters need to hunt. ### 37:40 — Why RevOps is the home: a data-entry problem, not a sales problem **[37:40]** We need to have them focused on that new business. **[37:42]** And if they're focused on, at the end of the month, why I'm going, **[37:45]** "Well, how come you don't have notes?" **[37:48]** I have a different problem. I don't have a sales problem. **[37:51]** I have a data entry and operations and an infrastructure problem. **[37:57]** Not a salesperson problem. Not necessarily, right? They bleed over. **[38:02]** That's the kind of stuff that RevOps gets into, right? **[38:05]** And when we uncover that and we make reports and we dig into reports **[38:08]** and we ask for reports, all those things that are people like, **[38:11]** "Oh, God, the spreadsheets, this sucks." Right? **[38:14]** But if you know what to do with that data, what's the point? **[38:17]** The point is not to build a better spreadsheet and be super technical **[38:20]** and show you that it can do these five different things **[38:22]** and show all these graphs and have 25 different subsets of pages. **[38:25]** No, the point is what does that do for us as a business? **[38:28]** And for somebody to be broad enough to go, "Look, we already have hundreds of reports. **[38:32]** We already have tons in our CRM. We have tons over here. **[38:35]** We have tons in our phone system, tons in support. What's it telling us?" **[38:40]** Which is what all these AI companies are trying to set up to do, right? **[38:43]** What's it telling us? How do we clean it? How do we keep it operational? **[38:47]** How do we scale beyond where we are now? **[38:50]** That's the kind of stuff that just sort of naturally fit **[38:52]** and that's what I've gotten into over the years. **[38:55]** What type of AI applications are you running **[39:00]** where you're finding real, tangible business value? **[39:03]** What are some specific ways you're leveraging **[39:05]** that has really unlocked you and the team? **[39:08]** I'll say a few. One, a good friend of mine, his name is Jamie. **[39:13]** He introduced me to Cursor and he is one of those guys that he's very technical to. **[39:17]** He's actually in a different role. He's not an engineer at all, right? **[39:21]** He's got a very different role, but he loves doing things on the side as well. **[39:25]** And I think as you go along, you meet these like-minded people **[39:29]** and you're like, "Man, this is just a good dude. **[39:31]** This is just a good person, a good woman, a good friend, a good whatever." **[39:35]** And you sort of meet them and you kind of keep them in your mind. **[39:37]** And he was one of those that goes, "Oh, you're working on this project. **[39:40]** Have you ever tried this?" **[39:41]** I was using chat GPT and then using like another stack with lovable **[39:46]** and all these things, right? I started what I didn't know. **[39:49]** I didn't know the technology exists that I could do what I'm doing now. **[39:53]** And then I learned about Cursor. So plug to them. **[39:56]** I don't know them. They don't know me. I pay them. **[39:58]** That's what happens. **[40:00]** But I have built with them in less than a year ### 40:03 — The AI stack: Cursor, ChatGPT, Update AI, Superhuman **[40:05]** what took an engineering team of 20 to do three years ago, right? **[40:10]** So it's huge. It's huge. **[40:13]** I have made a ton of mistakes. **[40:16]** I'd say it's really like working with an actual engineer, but it's just an AI, right? **[40:20]** You've got to be specific. You've got to understand. **[40:24]** And at some point at night, I never understood the engineers that coded late at night, **[40:28]** but I do now. I'm like, "Yeah, but it's when you're getting in your flow, it's all quiet." **[40:32]** But also my body's going, "I'm shutting down and my brain power is halved." **[40:35]** So it's this fun. I'm learning all the things. So that's one, right? **[40:39]** There's Cursor. **[40:41]** Chat GPT, obviously. I'll probably always have it. **[40:44]** The thing to watch out for Chat GPT is, I know it likes to blow smoke. **[40:48]** It adapts so much to me. My Chat GPT is different from my wife's Chat GPT, right? **[40:53]** There's different languaging. Mine talks like a tech bro, and she hates it. **[40:57]** And I'm like, "Yeah, it does have this sort of cadence that it gets into." **[41:01]** And I don't know how to stop it, right? It's like, "Too late for me. Save yourself. **[41:04]** I have to start a new account if I want any different." **[41:06]** But it has all my context. Chat GPT was my very first AI anything, right? **[41:11]** That was sort of publicly known AI. **[41:14]** It's like the assistant to me that's always there. **[41:17]** Maybe Gemini will be better than it soon. Maybe not. I don't know. **[41:20]** I haven't really tried that. But I'll give one more. **[41:23]** And this one's kind of crazy, but it's one that I, when I run a business, **[41:27]** this is something I budget for everywhere. Used to be Update AI. **[41:31]** And shout out to Josh and his team. I mean that because they built a great product. **[41:34]** They're no longer a thing. Their company's gone because they got acquired. **[41:37]** Good for them, yay. But I'm also sad because they're meeting, you know, **[41:43]** we would like take the video meeting. It would get the transcript, yes. **[41:46]** But then it would just do this amazing stuff with the data for the sales team **[41:49]** and the CS team and product and support and everyone. **[41:52]** And you could learn directly from your accounts, right? **[41:54]** And it knew customer account versus internal account. **[41:57]** That was a great AI product. **[41:59]** But the last one is superhuman. Superhuman email. **[42:03]** I didn't even know for years that they did a bunch of other stuff. **[42:06]** But I'm telling you, those guys save me hours every single week on email. **[42:11]** And I know that's kind of their slogan. So I'll try not to be too much of like a plug. **[42:15]** And again, these are just companies I pay money to. **[42:18]** Like Josh's company knew me and I sort of knew them a little bit. **[42:21]** Good people, but I don't know anybody that's superhuman. **[42:26]** I even applied for work there years ago because I was like, I love what you do. **[42:29]** And they were like, we're not looking for you. **[42:34]** So, you know, it's not always a fit, right? **[42:37]** But they're great. And anytime I go in, I'm like, OK, if I'm building, it's cursor. **[42:42]** If I have engineers that want to use it or if they have their own thing, **[42:45]** have some sort of AI that really promotes you, frees up your time, **[42:48]** makes you more efficient as an engineer. **[42:50]** If it's support, then you got to have like chat GPT or something. **[42:53]** You know, sometimes I'm not good with customers. **[42:56]** Well, I need to make this a little nicer, right? **[42:58]** So the customer is OK with what I'm saying to them. **[43:00]** Or I'm drawing a blank today. I need something to help me out. **[43:04]** And then superhuman, I promote it everywhere. **[43:07]** When the inbox gets filling up, it just seriously, it's such a time save. **[43:11]** I hate being without it because I get so used to the little keyboard shortcuts. **[43:15]** So that's me. Yeah. **[43:17]** No, there's an explosion of tools. I think we've gotten heavy on cloud code **[43:23]** and building a lot of our own workflows, agents and agentified applications as well. **[43:29]** So I think there's a lot you can do. **[43:32]** And of course, you can't even forecast out a week or two into what's coming out. **[43:38]** So I think we'll see quite a bit of impressive things coming out in the near future. **[43:44]** Yeah. Yeah, I think so, too. And it'll be interesting to see what companies are still around **[43:50]** by the time it all really sort of settles. **[43:53]** Yeah, it's definitely taking away the moat of your software application. **[43:58]** So a lot of these things can now be built within a few prompts. **[44:03]** There's things to take it to production grade level. **[44:05]** But but yes, people will definitely have to step up their game, **[44:09]** their capabilities to stay relevant in this new world. **[44:12]** I will say that sort of a piece of that because it always scares. **[44:16]** It scares me. This is a side tangent, but it's something that I've lived. **[44:19]** And so in my experience, I can do on the one hand, I can do what a team of people, **[44:26]** what took a team of people to do just basic functionality. **[44:30]** However, I see so many mistakes that I make and I see so much less efficiency that I have. **[44:39]** So I cannot wait to be able to hire. **[44:43]** Thankfully, I've got a list of people that I know and it'll be a conversation of, **[44:46]** hey, what's it going to take for you to work for me? **[44:49]** And I hope that I can afford them, right? **[44:50]** You can never afford the best people. That's always the sucky part, right? **[44:53]** But I want them to do it because they're an engineer. **[44:57]** And I have lived the life of, yes, I can make it myself, but I make so many mistakes. **[45:03]** And my time is so much more valuable spent on what I'm good at versus trying to do someone else's role. ### 45:08 — Why AI needs more people, not fewer **[45:08]** So for me, there's definitely a piece of, yeah, in my mind, **[45:15]** I always hire for someone who can do the role anyway, and I don't care as much about their pedigree. **[45:20]** I care about if I can legally hire them and that sort of thing, right? **[45:23]** And do they have a record and things that I have to care about, of course. **[45:27]** But I know a guy who's whip smart and he's one of those guys that's on my list, the good list. **[45:33]** Like, hey, I want to work with you again. **[45:35]** I haven't talked to him in years, right? Really good guy. **[45:38]** He's not an engineer, but he was like the most engineer, non-engineer you ever met. **[45:44]** He was good at code. He understood it. He knew the tech side. He knew the support side. **[45:48]** He was a great all-arounder guy, and I was like, man, he would be such a good layer, **[45:53]** either if he's really good at building the code or if you just need somebody as like that tech engineer **[45:59]** who knows the code, can really work with it, can work across the org, **[46:03]** but can be this sort of layer in between support. **[46:06]** And that's what they ended up putting him as, but they sort of kept him on support. **[46:09]** So engineering never really accepted him into there because he didn't have an engineering degree. **[46:13]** And I'm like, I couldn't care less. I couldn't care less. **[46:16]** So for me, that kind of person who's really good at it, I'd be like, oh, my God, please take the code. **[46:21]** I will talk to you about what we want to do, and I'll say all the stuff that I really think you should do, **[46:27]** but you do it. And even if you're the one who's using Cursor or Clod or Gemini or all of the above, **[46:32]** helping you code, you're so much better at it than me. **[46:35]** So that comes back to the conversation of, yes, people have to stay relevant, **[46:40]** but I don't think it's actually that hard to stay relevant. **[46:43]** And I think that the big AI, oh, it'll just do everything for you. **[46:48]** Well, I've never been able to let agents loose and it worked that well, **[46:53]** not without building a whole other brand new program to keep all the agents in line **[47:00]** and then QC those agents and then QC those QC agents. **[47:03]** And I'm like, or I could just hire a person who knows all that stuff **[47:08]** and then they have a few people that also know all that stuff. **[47:11]** And we keep the AI in line to do a lot of the heavy lifting to build, **[47:15]** but we know what it's supposed to be in the end. **[47:17]** Like keeping the AI in line is a full freaking time job. **[47:20]** Plus it's training me how to talk to it. So there's that too. **[47:24]** I do think AI is going to open up opportunities for people in a lot of cases, **[47:30]** the more AI you have and the more productivity it can layer into your team, **[47:35]** the more people you're going to need in order to keep up with the productivity that you have. **[47:39]** So, Luke, I just want to thank you for everything that you share today, **[47:42]** everything on culture, **[47:44]** the issue that a lot of companies are really not paying close enough attention to, **[47:49]** that internal team attrition and how much that can impact your organization. **[47:53]** And then of course, **[47:55]** going through all the things that have made you successful in your RevOps role today **[47:59]** with that deep empathy for all of the roles on the go-to-market side of the house. **[48:04]** So, Luke, thank you for being on the podcast **[48:06]** and can't wait to see what you do with your new business and what you do next. **[48:10]** Well, you got it, man. Stay tuned. **[48:12]** I'll probably tell you before I tell a lot of other people. **[48:15]** So we'll see where it goes, but thanks for having me. **[48:18]** I hope it was of some value to you and to your listeners. **[48:23]** ♪♪♪ **[48:54]** ♪♪♪ **[49:24]** ♪♪♪ --- _LeanScale Knowledge Hub. Free to quote and cite with attribution to The LeanScale Podcast (https://www.leanscale.team)._