Why RevOps Is Having a Moment (with Jen Igartua) | Belkins Podcast Episode #20

Host: The future of sales is kind of having a revenue team.

Jen Igartua: I do think it's the golden age for revenue operations. I think that we have a lot of inner workings and a lot of trends working in our favor. So I think there's for sure AI being catalyst, uh, for all of this. I think we have really high expectations from customers, I think we have really high expectations from executives. And what I say is that there's internal, for lack of a better term that gets in the way of the customer experience. And that's what uh, revenue operations is supposed to do. We're supposed to work across these silos, we're supposed to protect that customer experience and we're supposed to be maximizing revenue. At the end of the day, I don't believe in outsourcing your revops team. We don't do the revops as a service type, uh, of scenario. I do think this is a function that you should build internally because a really great revenue operator has insight into the business. They're on your all hands, they understand the strategy, they're sitting in office if you have one. They're getting really close relationships with the go to market leaders. They're very well trusted and sure that person can use an agency to create kind of more agility and more flexibility. But I don't believe in fully outsourcing it. If you sit on LinkedIn, you're going to feel left behind. You're going to think that all these companies have it figured out and they have built so many agentic workflows that they now don't have to work a day in their life and that they were able to fire the whole marketing team and you know, everything's just running

Host: like get those groups, get those communities, you know, get those people, kind of follow them. What they write about, like engage, comment, build the audience or like build your brand with that. Like then start creating your own point of view. And then through that sort of like we, the marketing, um, I remember I've been, you know, for like dozens of

Jen Igartua: different conferences and tell me, how many women were there?

Host: Uh, I don't know, not many.

Jen Igartua: Sorry, I have a, I have an issue with founder events. There are female founders, I promise you. Uh, and every time I step into one of those events, I'm like three out of a hundred.

Host: Like I have a problem with Clay personally.

Jen Igartua: Okay, hit me.

Narrator: Jen Igartua is the CEO and co founder of Go Nimblee Ah. A revenue operations consultancy that's helped some of the fastest growing SaaS. Companies like Twilio Airtable and Superhuman unlock millions in untapped revenue by breaking down silos between sales, marketing and customer success. Since launching go nimbly in 2013, Gen has scaled the company into one of the top RevOps consultancies in North America, driving measurable impact for over 100 fast growth SaaS companies and helping clients achieve revenue growth through operational alignment. Jen is a recognized RevOps thought leader and keynote speaker. Frequently featured at uh, Saster Pavilion and Women in Revenue events. She's also an active advocate for women in leadership and tech, known for her candid, data driven insights on scaling teams, building customer centric operations and, and turning complexity into clarity.

Host: What brought you to RevOps?

Jen Igartua: Oh, good question. Um, you know, not to get like super meta, um, but I always knew I wanted to go into consulting. My mom worked at McKinsey for almost 40 years and so it was kind of something that I always wanted to do. This idea of coming into a company looking at a big hairy problem, uh, and being a person who solves it has always been something that's really interested me. Revop specifically, I got my first job at a company called Blue Wolf and they were Salesforce's biggest partner. So the entire company, hundreds of employees, were very focused on sales and Salesforce and the sales experience. And I got hired for their marketing automation team and so very much top of Funnel. What was a super frustrating experience because I felt like I was like shouting from the rooftops for anyone to pay attention to, uh, marketing automation and lead scoring and lead handoff and anything like that turned out to be a gift because it taught me what it means to work across silos. Uh, that anything that I did top of Funnel didn't matter if I didn't have the sales team along for the ride, if I wasn't thinking about unifying the tech stack, if I wasn't thinking about uh, data silos, people silos, technology silos, whatever it might be. And I got very obsessed with this kind of idea of sales and marketing alignment. Why are these two teams that seem so aligned, right, they both want revenue, they both want more meetings. Why is it that they have the most friction? Like shouldn't we all be mad at finance? Like why are we mad at each other? And that became an obsession, uh, for me for, for a while. And it's how I started Go Nimbly. It was kind of that passion for kind of moments wherever you see the word handoff, really trying to understand why there's friction there and it's probably causing you money and it's probably Causing you a bad customer experience and a bad internal experience. And fast forward a few years. I started Go Nimbly and you know, we had the tagline unify the business stack because the word revops wasn't around.

Host: Is. Would that be the uh, best definition of revops as it is today, in 2025? Or you can expand that uh, and edit more things?

Jen Igartua: Yeah, I mean for me the whole reason why Revenue operations, the team, right, like why it needs to exist is because people are very good at organizing themselves vertically and really bad at organizing themselves horizontally. Like there's not usually misalignment between you and your boss, uh, because you're going to frankly fall in line. Uh, but there's usually misalignment across teams because there's misalign incentives or because there's sort of like maybe a culture of team uh, mentality where it's like my team or because we have a nomenclature issue across the board. Like there's all these reasons. And what I say is that there's internal bullshit, for lack of a better term, that gets in the way of the customer experience. And that's what ah, Revenue Operations is supposed to do. We're supposed to work across these silos. We're supposed to protect that customer experience and we're supposed to be, you know, maximizing revenue at the end of the day. Um, but the reason why RevOps came to be is because uh, the premise is we don't want siloed operations teams. We don't want sales having sales ops and marketing having marketing ops and CS having CSOPs all rolling up to different leaders and not having that one view of the customer.

Host: Um, in my view, um, revops was a lot about kind of automation, but I think I'm mistaken. It's more than auto, just automation. Right?

Jen Igartua: I mean automation is the outcome. It's a tool, uh, to do all this. But I think that there's many, uh, layers. I've seen it cut up in a bunch of different ways. Like there's definitely the technology automation piece, there's the insights piece. So like, how do you make sure that everybody's looking at the same, uh, numbers and the same insights and then there's enablement. So how do we make sure that the field is enabled and then all the processes that we come out with? And then there's the strategy bucket. How do we make sure that, you know, ideally the CRO is looking to revops to say, hey y', all, what are our biggest gaps? What are the bets that we have to make? And they're doing that together.

Host: Folks, if you're enjoying the interview so far, I would appreciate if you spend a second, like comment or subscribe to Belkin's podcast on the platform where you're watching this. I'm trying to get my show listed in the best podcast and a couple of seconds of your time would really help me a lot to do that. Thank you so much. And let's get back to the interview. I don't remember who I talked to, but, um, I still get this kind of, um, echoing in my brain that uh, the future of sales is kind of having a revenue team run by CRO and then there is no kind of sales and marketing kind of pulling in different, you know, different directions. But having one team run by the CRO, would you think it's a kind of a fair, nice future for. Or it's, it's not a, you know, it's not a, um, application across the board for many companies.

Jen Igartua: I'm a little torn on this, um, because I think that a typical CRO is going to have primarily a sales background. And that's great. I think that that's important. It's important to know, uh, how to sell products in order to be the chief revenue officer. Um, but they're not typically marketers. There are a few, there's a few, uh, if you look at, um, uh, Philippe lacour, he's a CRO of personio. He's a very interesting profile that has both been an FP and, and in sales and in marketing. And then I think you start to create the CRO that cares equally about all of it, uh, and can probably play that role. But that person is typically quite operational. And I wouldn't say that they're the same person that can rebrand a company. And that is typically the one that is, you know, identifying, I don't know, a new category and going after it. And so I don't know if there's a world where, I don't know, maybe there is a CRO and then there's also a CMO, uh, maybe CMOs roll up to CROs. I don't know. I think it depends on the executive. I wouldn't want to take away a C level title and authority from marketing. I, uh, do believe that, um, they're imperative for, you know, ongoing demand. I think a CRO, uh, likely can take a company that already has a great brand and maximize it. Uh, but I don't think they're the ones that are creating that category.

Host: What are the, you know, the New areas that are added to under the rev ops and you know, due to the recent kind of developments of the technology probably like with now with kind of an AI and where the APIs have bad integrations, like more products are talking to each other. It's a kind of high time for you guys, right?

Jen Igartua: You're just kind of.

Host: Let's go.

Jen Igartua: I do think it's the golden age for revenue operations. I think that we have a lot of inner workings and uh, a lot of trends working in our favor. So I think there's for sure AI being honestly I don't know if it's a trend as much as a catalyst uh, for all of this. I think we have really high expectations from customers. I have, think we have really high expectations from executives. We have the pressure of profitability. We have a uh, brand new tech stack for sure. There's also a pressure for sellers to have more time. I think there's, there's a, an impatience for manual work now that I think AI has been the catalyst for and for sure, I think we're primed for that. I do see a couple of things. I mean it's happening in real time so I don't, I don't know what to predict. For me, uh, revenue operations should have AI as a focus and a skill set and a capability and be able to roll out the AI workflows to the go to market team. At the same time I am seeing companies who will have a specific AI ops team and I don't know, you can look at Canva for example. OpenAI has one as well as you can imagine and their role is to roll out AI processes and automations and workflows to the organization internally. And what's interesting about that is revenue operations is always very much focused on go to market teams, right? So they're not focused on the entire organization or you could argue AIOps is focused at ah, the entire organization. I don't see revenue operations for example figuring out a rollout strategy for the engineering team to use cursor like I just don't see that as a place where we'll spike because we don't understand that user. So you know I think that there's a little bit of development about. I think every division is going to have AI as like a, essentially a tool in their toolbox and they should figure out how to roll that out for the company out wide. But I do think that within revenue operations there needs to be an emphasis on building and that's another big thing that we're seeing is operators are back to building when we were buying every tool under the sun for years. And so now there's, there's a capability that I think any RevOps team needs to have which is AI operations. I don't know uh, if it's, I don't know how it's going to work well with AIOps at the kind of company level at the same time because I do think that's also necessary.

Host: Kind um, of a dumb question but uh, um, what are the signals that organizations should start kind of building up the RevOps function? Um, is there any threshold in terms of the revenue, the client size? Right, because you've mentioned kind of an OpenAI. Obviously it's kind of just the volume. Where are they at? Right. But when a business operates in the 10 to 20 million or 20 to 50 million area with like you know, AC, would you say mid market? Like what, what other threshold signals?

Jen Igartua: I get asked this a lot and I don't have a. All right, answer yes to these questions and you need rev ops. But I can tell you a little bit about um, what we're seeing now. Now keep in mind we work primarily with mid market to enterprise level companies and they all need it. And so there's definitely a threshold. I would say 20 million and above. It's kind of a no brainer. Uh, but there is that early stage where um, frankly you know, when we talk, when we start talking about this rev ops is necessary to break down silos. If you have an organization that's five people, you're not breaking a lot of silos. Uh, you don't need to have this sort of rev ops mindset that's, that's more ah, crafted and, and more deliberate. You probably should be breaking shit. Like a lot of times when, when early stage companies come to us, I'll say no because I'm like we're going to build you to scale for something that you don't have scale. And my team is trained not to build stuff in production, not to break things, not to you know, to be more deliberate. And that's not what you need. And so there is a uh, stage where I think it's too early. That said, uh, uh, VC companies are recommending RevOps earlier and earlier and that person looks a little different at early stage. They're typically somebody who is midway through their career. They've been a technologist. They're, they're pretty good, they're, they're good technologists and they want to move to a more strategic role. They're showing promise there and they are sort of this, you know, people call them a unicorn. I think they exist. They just only want to be in that role for a couple of years where they're building and they're also kind of stepping up in that strategic space. That person does really well in a startup, um, where they are sort of, you know, able to play the, the build and strategy role for a business. Um, that said, this might be a hot take because I am an agency. I don't believe in outsourcing your RevOps team. Like we don't do the RevOps as a service, uh, type of scenario because we want you to build it in house. I do think this is a function that you should build internally because a really great revenue operator has insight into the business. They're on your all hands, they understand the strategy, they're sitting in office if you have one. They're getting really close relationships with the go to market leaders. They're very well trusted and sure that person can use an agency to create kind of more agility and more flexibility, but I don't believe in fully outsourcing it.

Host: So within this kind of um, internal function of RevOps, um, how large this function should be to successfully operate and implement. Right? Because when you tell me like, oh, you know, um, build the function in house, like all right, do I have just one RevOps, uh, Ops and that's it or do I need to have a team and what are the roles as well as like what kind of budget should I give them? Like with sales and marketing it's more obvious. You know, you sort of like it's acquisition budget, you know how to split it. You probably can go 50, 50, 70, 30. You just play around with it, see where it lands. Right. But when you have this kind of new function that coming in, um, I think like a lot of folks understand the value and I kind of understand the value although I don't have it within my business. But I'm trying to understand where I place it in the universe of my business. And then what kind of commitment should I from this function to be actually successful? Not just one person that works functionally and trying to pull the strings from all directions. And at the end of the day can you measure is there an um impact? Are they moving quickly enough? So what you can tell me kind of to just educate me, I'm gonna

Jen Igartua: dodge the question really hard uh, because the size of your team depends on your roadmap. So I need to know where you're at, what's Your inflection point. Um, what's the roadmap? What are the things that you're going to do? If you're telling me that you're coming in and you guys launching brand new pricing and opening up a new segment and implementing CPQ and you have a, uh, everybody's been working on spreadsheets so we're implementing a CRM. Like I'm going to give you a much beefier team for that than if you told me, hey, we're doing really well. We have a sales team that's starting to sell. We just want to streamline what we've got and make sure that we have the right tooling and that it's all integrated. Those are two vastly different teams. And so I don't think it's a reflection of, hey, you have a hundred sellers, therefore you have a three person team. It has to uh, it depends on what you want to get done and the inflection points that you were up against. That being said, you know, typically what you're going to find early is that you're going to hire a business minded person internally. That person that can create relationships, that is strategic, that is, you know, able to define that roadmap at least with support and then you're going to find some outsourcing of the executional work. Um, the only reason to hire internally for something that's executional is because you think you've got a career path and it's kind of worth nurturing that person to continue to grow your team. If you're just going to have them, you know, nonstop executing, it's probably not the right path.

Host: Gotcha. Uh, uh, uh, what's one major thing that is happening in Rebel space right now that people are not talking about that much that they should be talking about more?

Jen Igartua: Oh man, I feel like everybody's talking. Um, okay, a couple of, I think fun things that I'm looking, uh, forward to and a little bit scared. I uh, think right now you've got really like fun players. Obviously Clay's making a huge splash with their go to market engineering and, and building. You also have players that have been in the space for a while like your workados and your zapiers and you've got folks that are excited about building agents whether it's within Slack or obviously Agent Kit, you know, has just come out and so there's this propensity to build right now. But what we don't have is the operational gu or safeguards to figure out where that automation's happening. So it's, it's something that I'm starting to feel, but I predict will be really bad is this idea of workflow automation, uh, like Sprawl, uh, and you're going to go into Salesforce and you're going to see a field change. You're going to be like, why did account status change? And I'm going to have no idea where it came from. It might be a clay table, it might be a Slack, you know, automation, it might be, you know, workato or Zapier or whatever it is. And it's very cool. We democratized, you know, an ability to build automation and build agents. But I've talked to a lot of folks that are like, oh yeah, we have like 400 agents that you know, are live and GPTs and whatever and you're not using most of them. And now we don't know what's updating what.

Host: Yeah, we have a, um, you know, because HubSpot for me personally is a, is like a, like my hub, like my kind of bible in a way. Like I need to make sure that everything there is like very top notch. We are like enterprise users. We have like lots of things happening there. Right. Um, I have um, a marketing ops whose job is to make sure that kind of. Actually her title is rebops.

Jen Igartua: Great.

Host: Yeah, so her job is literally just making sure that as you said yourself, each uh, contact, uh, property is changed only when there's a need for each change and no one else is just playing around with whatever is happening there. And because of that you just have a much cleaner process. Right. But I guess that not many organizations are that mature. Right? Like they just allow. Yeah. Now like you mentioned Clay, like I have a problem with clay personally and you know what kind of problem I have? Um, the problem I have is that it's a very compelling offer. Like, hey, you have this use case which will help you to generate leads and then you build this workflow that will help you to find and reach da da da da da da. And then people start looking at that use case like, oh, this is great, I want to do that. And then they start thinking that the implementation of the problem that I have with my marketing will be replaced by several use cases that will be implemented. So instead of looking into solving um, a more fundamental problem like my positioning, my messaging, do I actually understand my ICP that I tested? They're trying to, to bring in lots of different use cases because it gives you an immediate effect. Like, you know, I'm in a appointment settings space and Like Clave was the first one who the disrupted appointment settings space when they come in and say, hey, you can build these workflows that could generate you leads while you sleep. And I was like, yeah, right. And now you have this. Lots of different agencies that are implementing the use cases that customers are using, but no one is doing anything about their marketing. And then over time, in 6:12 months they stay with the use cases, with the broken marketing, with the very kind of leaking funnel and then they're like, okay, what's to do next? You know, you see the point kind of Clay is the catalyst of all of that just because of the hype that it created around it.

Jen Igartua: You know, I hear you on that. I um, think that it's no different than the disruption marketing automation had uh, you know, 15 years ago where yeah, you can deploy bad marketing. The number of like nurture campaigns that went live with like no offers. Uh, you know, after the third email, nobody opened an email and still people just kind of continued to build these like kind of out of the box nurture campaigns. So I, I fully see that. Obviously if you tell a human that there's a really easy out, they're just going to go try to do that easy out and they're not going to do the hard work of positioning, et cetera if used correctly. And I don't work at clay, so whatever, uh, used correctly. I think the power of a tool like that is that you're giving almost a growth marketing mindset to operators and the idea should be that you now have an easier time testing multiple messaging. And it is a little bit what they're, they're. I don't know that I love this name but they have this concept to go to market alpha which is like you have to always be testing and changing because anything that has been working will stop working. We know that if you used to email me 10 years ago and you were like Jen, I saw you went to unc, I'd be like, wow, they really know me. If you do that now, I'm immediately deleting. Uh, if you mentioned where I went to school, it's too easy. And so for sure we have to be pushing the boundaries. Um, that being said, I do think, um, this concept of automation, workflow, automation, uh, there's a big enrichment use case as well, a normalization use case and ability to deploy AI agents in, in a much easier way that's here to stay how you do it and, and how you architect it. I think the companies that are allowing it to be Just sort of open to everybody are going to have that workflow automation sprawl I talked about. They're going to deal with issues like multiple agents talking to your customers that don't, you know, that aren't integrated with each other, that have different voices and different messaging, maybe even say opposite things. And so uh, I don't know to you to. I just recently made a video about this so it's fresh in my mind. But Intercom, for example, their product fin, which is a support AI agent, they're now moving up funnel and they're going to go do AISTR type of workflow which to me is a no brainer because it's like, okay, you are already using them for support, they already understand your company and knowledge, et cetera. How different is it to apply top of funnel, someone messaging and saying can your product do xyz? Uh, you know, what is your pricing? I would rather it be one platform that is like talking and I can build all the workflows than two different ones that are probably talking to the same customer and they don't even know it. And so I think there's going to be a consolidation that happens here as well.

Host: Yeah. So just to your point, I think when the bigger companies like HubSpot and Salesforce and Intercom, they kind of realized that they were missing that kind of uh, uh, you know, building more bridges and sort of like opening up to AI. And now probably they're going to be doing more and more of that, which is. Where would that leave Clay with. With Solilo being like a, like a zapier that no one needs because everyone will be doing a direct integration.

Jen Igartua: Yeah, you know, I think um, one of the. Actually, can you give me one second Michael? I've got someone at the door, so it's distracting. Yeah, thank you. Never mind. Um, by the way, so what's that?

Host: We're not going to cut this by the way.

Jen Igartua: Great. We'll just leave it. Everybody can hang out with us. I, I don't have a crystal ball. I don't know what's going to happen in this space.

Host: Yeah. What do you think?

Jen Igartua: I do see like a few trends. I definitely see the trend of consolidation. Look at tools like gong, right? GONG used to need outreach and Gong and Clary. Now GONG is probably winning out of those three. Uh, and folks are choosing a platform because they don't want multiple ones. I think that's going to happen in a workflow automation space. I do think that Clay, uh, has created a little bit of a moat around them and I, I would still bet on them because they've managed to do a really great job with data consolidation and I don't think these other tools are going to touch that. It's just like a really difficult business to get into. It's a low margin business. It's complex, it's a, I don't know, uh, it's um, a nightmare in terms of legal. So I don't know. I think they've created a little bit of a moat because they're fearless on that front. And I also think that they're, they've created a really, I mean this is a category creation, uh, tactic. Formalizing this role of a go to market engineer and creating this like massive amount of people that really love your product and you've got raving fans and you know, are uh, learning to build on and are doing really cool, interesting things will create a bit of a moat for you especially in the like SMB to mid market space. Once you get into enterprise there's a lot more stability that needs to happen. There's a lot more like we'll just pick one and build on it. You'll find all these old school companies that only build on Salesforce.

Host: Right.

Jen Igartua: Like we don't even want to, we don't want anything new. We'll just build out. And so yeah, these older uh, industries will probably just, it's good enough if there is something that does it close to. Even if clay innovates a lot and they are, I will say there's another thing that's really interesting. So they went out with intent signals. I'd be scared if I was an intent company. So now you've got that you can now email from the platform. Uh, they now have audiences so you can do segmentation from Clay. And it starts to make me think, okay, where's marketing automation then? If you're building all these, imagine that they also create forms to capture. A lot of people use HubSpot to just capture somebody's email, put them into a shitty nurture like I mentioned and send to Salesforce. Well if we're starting to create an ability to capture from a form which I did validate with clay that like is that coming? And I got, I didn't get a hard yes, but I got a maybe you're onto something. Uh, if they're, if they capture you know, leads and they've got email capabilities, I don't know if I would do nurture campaigns from Clay. But they probably integrate. I do think for marketers why wouldn't I have my events in Luma, my webinars in SQL, my newsletter in substack. Uh, and then just have some sort of integration tool to send to Salesforce. I feel like marketing automation hasn't changed that much in 15 years and I wonder if that's a bit of the disruption that will happen.

Host: But that's. Is it not too many of the everything. Like so you were telling me this and I was like, yeah, but clay is still like a spreadsheet.

Jen Igartua: Yeah.

Host: You know, so I guess there's no like a um, fundamental thing street. You know it's like with the HubSpot is like this is CRM. So at the end of the day it's like whatever HubSpot is doing with their like the fancy things like Breezes and others, it's like a CRM. So now you have a CRM and then you add more things on top of the CRM. Right. Um, and I was like, but what is like clay? Is it essence, just an automation revops or like a just GTM tool?

Jen Igartua: But yeah, it's an orchestration tool. Yeah, for sure.

Host: Orchestration, right? Yeah, yeah, but you need to orchestrate it literally like a lot of.

Jen Igartua: Yeah, yeah, it's, it's uh, you know, it's the flexibility that is both its power and the way that they lose people. Uh, you can do whatever you want in there. And it definitely competes with Zapier. Zapier is not going after um, they're not going after data, I don't think. And so there's a little bit of, you know, there's a huge overlap. If I venn diagrammed all these tools, there's a huge, huge amount of overlap in the middle and then things that they're each good at and for sure as an operator you got to pick your tech stack and I would rather have a tech stack that's a bit limiting that I'm maximizing than a bunch of tools that I'm half using. So I think that's like that is one of the roles of a great, you know, technologist is to figure out the architecture and the tools and the must haves and then kind of figure out what to play. That said, you know, to your point about HubSpot is a CRM and you can build within it. I agree with you. I just also feel like marketers don't live and love marketing automation. Um, there is, it's like it feels not as modern and not in a bit limiting and I'm finding, I don't know if you're finding this. But like most events are now run on Luma. They used to run on like here's a landing page and I submit to HubSpot and HubSpot sends the follow up email and whatever. And whatever. And we're like, you know what? I don't want to create 18 programs that send a follow up email and have to customize it every time when I can go in Luma and very easily do text and email blasts and folks have an integration with their calendar and it's all out of the box. And so I am finding that, that folks are wanting that modern, you know, customer experience and that's pulling them away from marketing automation.

Host: Yeah. All right, I, I can debate on this topic for a long time, but I, I don't want everyone listening. Please just get bored of these guys. Can you move on?

Jen Igartua: I think this is really fun.

Host: It is fun. It is honestly very fun. And uh, I think also like the space is changing. Like I've been around for 10 years and I am, um, you know, I'm priding myself that we're using top notch tools and we are very advanced in them. So we're not like, oh, we just have the tool and it's working. We're trying to maximize our impact of it and uh, being very good at it. Yes. And uh, because of that, uh, I'm like sometimes when there's some guys like Clay come in and it's, it is, it's just a amazing use case and everyone's like, oh, we love that. And there's so much hype that. Am I very suspicious about this? All right. Because they talk to like, you know, they talk to the biggest market. Like 70 of the market are smaller companies, like 1 to 10, like 0 to 10. They're making like 150, $500,000. So they are maybe the customers. But when I'm going to a mature one, like for example, I have a mature company with like tens of millions of dollars, with a professional sales team, marketing team with like all this process being built with Rev Ops, Clay cannot offer me anything. Literally they come in and they're like, we're going to do lead enrichments. Like we already have lead enrichments. Right. Like we can do AI personalization. We have that we can do. And you're like, yeah, we already, the tools are talking. Oh, everything is integrated, everything is scored, measured, qualified, what you can do.

Jen Igartua: And they're like, yeah, um, uh, I respectfully disagree that large companies have it figured out. Uh, I make a lot of money with Companies trying to figure this out and clay is killing it at Enterprise. So they're doing some. Something is resonating. And I think part of it is because, uh, AI is the promise of AI is only built on clean data and clean architecture and take clay out of it. But there is a huge emphasis that executives are coming in being like, great, I need my data cleaned and I need it at a much higher fidelity. And so I think, you know, whether it's clay or something else, folks are saying, hey, just having one data provider isn't cutting it. I need to have multiple data providers. I need to figure out normalization programs. And you can. We've built it all inside of Salesforce before. We've built a bunch of flows and a bunch of data dictionaries. We've built it with Zoom Info is the core piece. We've built it with clay and so the tooling pros and cons throughout all of it. But senior, I mean enterprise companies are saying, oh, uh, uh, you know, my data integrity can either be a, uh, competitive advantage or it's going to, you know, screw us and keep us from becoming modern. So there's just a lot of eyes on that.

Host: Oh, that's fair. That's fair. 100% like, um, uh, you know, I've uh, 50% of uh, the new customers we work with, they are in more kind of uh, traditional non digital industries like manufacturing, constructions, financial services, like larger companies. And all their data sucks, right? Like literally like they have a very, like they always come in and say, oh, we've got this list that we've purchased that is great list. And we look at those and like, it's terrible. It's terrible. It's not even like we can't do anything with it. And they're like, well, but we paid so much on that, right? And then they're like, well we are also trying to reach you with the mean phone. You're like, yeah, zoom in for maybe it's not the best fullest data right now. Right? Yeah, exactly. So you can do like. So they just. I agree with you. They're looking names like, oh, I have Apollo or I have Zoom Info and I'm just buying those and I'm plugging in, I'm trying to clean it up. So I think like, you're right. Like we are looking at this more with, with more agility in a way. So we're like, yeah, it's. That's not how it works. We're going to do this and this and this and this and this. So probably Clay comes in and try to, uh, package that in a way that's even simpler for people that have that much, that experience. All right, so, um, anything, any topic that gets too much attention, uh, in your opinion, that is not worth talking about in the rev up space that you personally just forget about it. Guys.

Jen Igartua: Such a good question. Um, I'll take it a different way and just say that if you sit on LinkedIn, you're going to feel left behind. You're going to think that all these companies have it figured out and they have built so many agentic workflows that they now don't have to work a day in their life and that they were able to fire the whole marketing team and, you know, everything's just running. And I think that, um, those examples are probably very tiny companies and they've automated one or two use cases. But that's not what we're seeing. And it's not that we're not seeing cool AI use cases working. We are, uh, supports one of those areas. Um, marketing is the biggest adopter of AI. Sales is right after. And you know, we have seen outbound AI SDR processes that work. All of these use cases are working. But it is not one of those things where we've now created this agentic workflow and it's good to go and it's done and nobody's looking at it. I think there's still a lot of work to go from specific use cases which you can build. You can build an agentic workflow on top of whatever tooling that you want that does a specific action and you can get it to work really well. The, uh, moment that you're trying to do an entire job, it's failing and oh gosh, I'm going to forget. Maybe I'll send it to you after. Michael, I'm terrible with names, but, um, an economist spoke at the GONG conference that I thought was really riveting. Uh, and he talked about how the places where they know that AI is actually making an impact. They're recommending that you take a job and you break down all the tasks and then you figure out the tasks and you decide whether or not they're actually options to have AI do that task and, and breaking it down like that. And that you'll find that a big percentage is not, you know, prime for AI. And you can think about when folks say that the SDR role is dead or the AE role is dead and sales is changing for sure, updating CRM and, and research and prep for calls and follow up and all this kind and like creating the first draft of a, of a deck or a pitch or a quote. Yes, absolutely. Those are prime for AI. Uh, but you can't replace. And I think business development is going to be more senior. You can't replace the advisory part of a sales cycle. And so breaking that down I think is, is something that maybe will get people a little more excited because I think that the promise of like I'm just going to kill this entire role. Uh, I don't think that's the, I don't think that's the trophy.

Host: That's not, you know. Like were you telling me this? I was like, um, um, my marketing team, you know we use a lot of AI but we're not using it in a traditional way where we wanted to replace my content team with like an AI copywriting that the AI will be creating more content. And that's why I'm gonna trick the SEO game and organic and by the way just um, to put it out there. Um, I spoke about this already on my LinkedIn is um, we're killing it in the LLM space. So we are right now as the company in lead generation, we're like here and all our competitors are like here and we're like just growing. Uh, and we have every month more and more LLM traffic. And really the secret of that is um, great content. We create, we create thought. We create a very deep analytical full of IP content that we spend a lot of time. I read every article we post as a subject matter expert and I say like okay, this is out of this five this tool. It's not the way how it works. We need to replace with this one go deeper and I sort of like and cycling through that content, you post it continuously. Then like AI is like oh hell yeah, I do that. And a few examples that what my team is doing is like with AI they you uh, know we, we use Fireflies and then we are analyzing all the sales scripts uh, from each industry and sub industry and then all the pain points and, and, and the way we talk about the customer and then, and my marketing team writes our landing pages based on a content that the prospects are talking about with the sales team instead of like before, you know, like when you have a writer you need to create a new landing page or new industry page. They need to just research and then think about themselves and then write some kind of average content. Now you can personalize it really deeply based on all the conversation that the team had and then Also, so they're creating my avatars. So literally they're feeding AI all my, uh, uh, audio that I send me a list of 50 questions and I'm spending an hour answering those in the audio. And then within a year or two years, they have a library of my audio messages, my scripts, my blogs, all of that. And then they're creating drafts through that or sort of refining that and we're posting that. So it's kind of a, uh, as you pointed out, you break your job into different parts and then you say like, okay, well, we're great at this, but we are spending so much time to validate this or research this, or just go back to the sales team and send them a questionnaire all the time. Can we automate all of that? So we are collecting that in real time, but then we are still writing it. So we are operating within our data. Right. Um, and I think, like, you're right. I think that's kind of the future because at the end of the day, AI should be our tool and not our replacement. That's why when you mention like, AI sdr, sometimes I'm like, yeah, I don't

Jen Igartua: know, I think that's a marketing positioning, you know, exercise. But I do worry about, um, the fact that companies are not investing in an SDR role or frankly, a lot of entry level roles. We are going to have an issue with anybody that graduated after 2019. They dealt with, you know, their first few years of COVID completely remote. They never got that, like, quick, you know, crash course in business. I am a big remote, like our company's remote. I am not preaching go back to work. Uh, but I will say that if I had a kid that I was mentoring, I would 100% say go in office. Because the way that I learned was that I was sitting next to my boss and he would get up and be like, come with me, we're going to a meeting. Take notes. And I got through osmosis to learn really quickly. And you can't do that, you know, fully, virtually. And so I, I worry about that. And specifically for SDRs, uh, you know, SDR was never a role that we expected people to stay in for a long time. Although I do know some folks that are doing are, uh, like forever SDRs. And I, I love the SDR jobs. I think that's like, very cool. I think you can be a very senior SDR, but typically it's an 18 month graduation program into an AE. So if we're getting rid of that, how are we creating AES. And you know, I think AES are about to make a bunch more money and about to do really well because we're not nurturing any junior folks. I was speaking to Sean Kilpack at GONG and he was saying, look, there's not real ROI in our SDR team at gong. It's not like they make us a bunch of money, but they are the best AES. You know, there's a, the, the success rate of, you know, higher brand new AE versus you elevate an SDR is much higher. And so I do wonder, you know, I think the big companies are going to continue to nurture SDR just the same way like GE has a rotational program at a school that creates their executives. Same sort of thing. I think the big ones are going to, but young companies are not going to be able to. We're going to see a lot of poaching. We're going to see that role have huge salaries. So uh, we'll see. It's one to watch.

Host: You know, I, I look at SDRs and my S Y art because it's kind of my business as more marketers.

Jen Igartua: Totally.

Host: I don't want them to be salver sellers, but I want them to be marketers. Like I want SDRS to move from a kind of a sales function where they think about uh, how many dials I make and how, what's the best my script and how do I use the negotiations, whatever solution selling. But rather like how do I use marketing to build touch points, to nurture and to sort of like identify the buying intent and just kind of. So in a way like how do I build audience, how do I package my offering, how do I integrate into marketing, how do I, I do something with webinars, with you know, case studies, with benchmark reports, with kind of ads, how do I sort of like do uh, you know, more full funnel type of smarter campaigns and how do I. Using kind of AI and using my marketing, I can do it myself. So in a way like um. Yeah, so SDRs could be, you know, could be writers, they could be kind of maybe designers sometimes using all of that, they can also kind of create a more sophisticated projects with marketing. Right. So they know how to. So that's kind of where I am at with SDRs. I like them more in that direction because I've uh, I've um, you know, I've trained a lot of my SDRs and BDRs and as soon as they start thinking as a sales, uh, executives in terms of the quotas and Appointments and like, they start rushing through the market and just start dialing in, you know, like just grasping for the conversion, like, oh, we just need to dial, like trade know 20 meetings this month and I don't care, um, you know, like this, uh, the whole kind of, um, predictable revenue, kind of top of the funnel building type of motion. And I was trying to build my business around this entire motion. But then what I've seen that over the years you're really chasing the top of the funnel numbers, but they don't have a lot of buying intent. So your conversions are low. So that's why I probably kind of justify the conversion. But as soon as I moved, um, to marketing and as soon as I kind of say, okay guys, let's talk about the nurturing, let's talk about sort of like building the audience and uh, signals, uh, then they make sense. And by the way, it works even for outsourced sdr, to be honest with you, when you kind of deploy them, obviously you need to have marketing. So I think like marketing, what I was missing over the years is I was working with the customers that don't have that marketing function very well developed. And now we work with customers that invest a lot in their marketing. So SDRs come in as an additional powerhouse, you know, for the marketing team. Just to. So now marketing team, like, oh, I'm throwing the webinar and people showing up for the webinar, they're follow up because you have someone who can actually, you know, get on the inbox, invite people, bring them in, sort of like extend invites, follow up, making sure that they kind of attendant and then they can look for the other webinars that they guys went to and then bring them in as well. So they are more active, which marketing couldn't do that, right?

Jen Igartua: So, yeah, yeah, I mean we saw a big, uh, hype around having SDRs roll up to marketing for a while. I think that like, it just keeps kind of pendulum swinging, uh, you know, at companies. But I do think that a tight alignment with marketing at a minimum, so that you know, what events are coming up, what the positioning is, how to talk to customers, how to not rush them, you know, through the cycle, how to meet them where they are. I think that's really important. That being said, uh, I do think the things that you're explaining about something having full funnel context and being a good writer and essentially having a point of view on what's going on is again a more senior skill set than someone right out of school. And so your SDRS I think. And, uh, I consider myself an sdr. A lot of the work that I do for my business, I love the top of funnel work. I love inviting people to events and dinners and talking about their problems. And that discovery piece, that's where I thrive. And so I consider myself, uh, an sdr. And I do think it's much easier when you're senior and when you have a senior title. And if you think about business development the way that it was 20 years ago, you've sent your executives. I'm a services company, but a service company would send their partners to events to go schmooze and start conversation and create business. And then we made that a junior role. Um, and. And that only worked when, you know, you didn't have access to all the information about a company. But because users are going in and doing all of the research, there's not an s. Nothing an SDR can do to help me in my business. Not, Not a junior kid out of school. It can. He can help me schedule a meeting within ae, basically. So I think that that very tactical role, uh, is gone. And I will say, uh, if you are hiring SDRs, and the way that you're describing them, them, I think people are sleeping on comedians. I think, uh, I think that is an str haven. Uh, they're very good writers. They're, you know, good marketers. They understand social media, they understand social selling. Um, they've been booking, um, they've been booking shows, they've been like, booking slots. They understand how to do that. Uh, and they don't make a lot of money and they need it. So I don't know.

Host: Would they want to hit a phone and do some kind of dials every day?

Jen Igartua: I think, uh, if they need money, they will take a job. Uh, if they have flexibility that they can go and still pursue comedy in other ways. Um, I think, uh, there's an overlap. Not everybody, not everybody's going to want to hit the phones, but I think a good portion of them.

Host: Yeah, listen, I agree with you with regards to SDRs and account executives and the fact that we're not going to have enough account executives because there's no SDRs for sure. I think when I'm thinking about, as you are out of college, I would definitely place them with a sales team for basic communication and sales skills, for sure. And then I'll put them on the inbound traffic and more working with qualifying and just kind of making sure that, um, the opportunity is valid there. But then I would try to move Them more into not be better at closing and the product and get on that phone, but rather think about where those people that we sell to, where they hang out. Sure. Like get those groups, get those communities, you know, get those people kind of follow them. What they write about, like engage, comment, build the audience or like build your brand with that. Like then start creating your own point of view and then through that sort of like bring the marketing. So you know, I would probably move them that because I think like over time they will just have a more healthier pipeline than just kind of rolling through that kind of sequence all the time, you know, and then not going to have anything thing in the next few months if they're not calling, you know.

Jen Igartua: Yeah. You mentioned knowing Morgan Ingram. He's a buddy of mine, but it's kind of what he's building a part of his company on. Um, he's doing, I think he's launched it already, but he's basically doing social selling cohorts and he'll do like a company wide training on it. But he also does these cohorts where it's like give me six of your SDRs that are committed that want to do this, that want to learn how to be better sellers online. And he'll teach them and I don't know the, the exact content, but it'll teach them the skills that you're talking about. It's like, you know, how do you add value, how do you form an opinion, uh, how do you engage? Not just like send, you know, 500 automated, uh, you know, pitch slaps via DMS. And he's built a healthy business on that. So I think folks are seeing that um, that is a thing that ah. Oh man. I just, I just so quickly delete any dm, any connection of anybody that like slightly sounds like they're about to sell to me. And we have our spidey sense on it is so good. Like I never failed to identify someone that's about to just send me a generic message, uh, asking me for a meeting, asking me for time. And I think sellers need to be trained up on um, like that's not working. Speaking of tactics that you can automate that don't work. That's one of them.

Host: But then, right, if you have someone engaging with you in the comment section and write 2, 3, 4 very good comments with a nice opinion and you engage with them, you remember those guys. So if someone will hit the inbox with a nice message, you're probably going to respond and say, hey, for sure I'm Interested. Not interested. Right. But as long as they not just go and straight pitch you in their DMs without being there.

Jen Igartua: Yeah. And they've done the research and they know why. And if they've engaged with my post, they probably know what I'm thinking about. They can probably reference that in a. In a good way. Do I also see them, you know, flip to. To a pitch, and if I'm not interested, do I say no? For sure. But I'm way more likely to answer.

Host: Yeah. Um, talk to me about the RevFast 2025. Um, yeah. First. Was it successful, in your opinion?

Jen Igartua: Super. Yeah. We're doing it again next year. Yeah.

Host: Um, what's the most difficult, uh, what was the most difficult in kind of lifting the event like this off the ground?

Jen Igartua: Well, I think it's deciding to do it. Uh, I think it's taking a big bet. Uh, I think I had moments of doubt, like, who the hell do I think I am that I think I can bring hundreds of people together for an event? I definitely had imposter syndrome about something like this. And I think the other thing, um, the thing that got me through that is having a really strong point of you, uh, like, why you. Why this event? Why would people want to join? Uh, do you have something to say? Do you have the right, you know, people, the right connections? And all of that was feeling like a yes. And, you know, I think it. The funny thing is we're starting to plan 2026. I spent all of last year planning for Refest, which happened in June. Of. Of this year, just completely scared the entire time. Like, I was having night sweats. I was, like, freaking out. Every, like, few months. I'd be like, I'm just, uh, why. Why am I doing this? I should quit. Like, who the hell do I think I am? The. This is going to fail. I would just have, like, really big panics. And I had enough people in my life and enough coaches that were like, all right, like, let's kind of get through it. Uh, and it was incredible. And now I'm coming to RevFest 2026 with, like, the knowledge that I can do it. And I'm, like, very excited. I'm excited. I can take bigger bets. But that first one, you know, you have to take a big bet on yourself that you could do something, you know, worth going to.

Narrator: To.

Host: What are the major learnings for the next year from. From this one that you kind of really hits with you.

Jen Igartua: Yeah. Uh, big things we did is practitioners on stage. I'll do that again. So we put people on stage that have done the job, that are basically mid market to enterprise level revenue operators that have something to share, that are doing something compelling, that have solved a big problem or are, are solving a big problem and want to talk about it, have strong opinions and, and I think we nailed that. That people, um, left inspired by the content. The other thing that we did, which we're going to do again, is we put the conference in a very unique space. We did it at a gay nightclub in New York City called House of Yes. And I think what that did is it created a juxtaposition. Right. It's like a space you don't typically. I mean almost everybody was coming in being like, I've never been sober at House of Yes. So it was like definitely like, you know, people let their guard down. It was fun. We leaned into it, it. But that only works if you nail the content. Like if, if the juxtaposition of fun and silly and wild is met with really incredible people that are teaching you something and that, you know, it's still a work conference. So I think we really nailed that. Um, and there were logistical things like we got really good scores, like a 4.95 from our attendees for out of five for coming back again next year and feedback. And the feedback we mainly got not was that it was a bit crowded, that we ran out of coffee. Like stuff that, you know, we're just new to the event space. In my defense, I did tell them, please don't run out of coffee. But they, they, they said to us they were like, we're not used to business conferences. You guys guzzled coffee. And I was like, yeah, uh, so you know, the space just wasn't, wasn't set up for it. But we're gonna fix that next year. We're going to a bigger nightclub. We are going to have plenty of coffee stations. And you know, we just didn't expect the turnout. We had, um, over, let me do the math. Over 90% showed up.

Host: Yeah. So what, that like several hundred people?

Jen Igartua: Yeah, a couple hundred. Yeah. So we uh, we, we were maxing it out. I was told by Everybody that about 25%, 20 to 25% of people won't show up. And so I was expecting like 50, 40 less people than showed up. So it's definitely time height. But you know what, we got through it.

Host: You want to double next year or triple next year?

Jen Igartua: Uh, not quite. I think we're going to go 350. 300 to 350. Um, so a little less than you

Host: still wanted to kind of keep adding the attendees, like, make sure that only kind of decision makers are through the doors. You don't have lots of sellers.

Jen Igartua: And totally. This is a thing that really sucks about running an event. We turned. We, like, declined like a hundred people from going last year. And they're not happy when you do that. People were not happy with me. I tried to DM everybody and apologize, but ultimately the reason why I think the event did really well is because people were with their peers and you have the same kind of problems and, and you're speaking the same language. And if I have a bunch of sellers and a bunch of fractional, you know, folks, and, and people at small companies, it, you know, you just don't. That's not who you're wanting to network with at the time. And so we're going to be ruthless about it again. Uh, and it's gonna suck again. I got some m. Very, not very nice DMs from people being upset that, you know, I'm, I'm. And they're trying to spend good money. They're trying to give me 500 bucks to come. And I'm saying, no, thank you. And so it is a very awkward thing, but it's also like, a really important part of it, having value for the folks that are there.

Host: Yeah, I think that's. That's right. Playbook. Like, um, I remember I've. I've been, you know, for like, dozen of different conferences. And Nathan latkes, uh, founder 500 in Austin, was the best one because it was kind of behind the closed door.

Jen Igartua: How many women were there?

Host: Uh, I don't know. Not many. Yeah. But, you know, I'm. I'm kind of blind in terms of, like, I just don't. I. I don't see it.

Jen Igartua: I have an issue with founder events. There are female founders, I promise you. Uh, and every time I step into one of those events, I'm like three out of a hundred. Um, yeah, but, yeah, it's curated. It's the same sort of idea if you are this Persona M, and we'll do it again and we'll see how mad people get. And, you know, eventually you can have a giant conference where you have tracks and maybe there's like a, you know, small track and a large business track. But, I mean, I'm not altruistic here.

Host: Yeah.

Jen Igartua: Uh, these are the people I sell to.

Host: Right.

Jen Igartua: That I want in the room.

Host: Yeah. Um, did you do Lush in Finland? Have you, have you been to Lush splash. Oh, you should check it out.

Jen Igartua: Yeah, tell me about it.

Host: Um, they have one of the best. It's the most entertaining conference I've been to the. Of the major ones, because what they do is they're the only one that closed the venue and everyone hanging out in the venue. So they don't change the venues, uh, after party. Right. They the same venue, and they do, like, a lot of, like, crazy karaokes and, um, treasure hunt and. And, you know, you kind of. You had people kind of taking meetings, and then now you have, like, 200 people singing some kind of, um, you know, you have like, uh, Indians singing Indians. And then you have like, um, American during, like. Like this one, and then Italians and then just kind of all together. It's really fun. It's like, just.

Jen Igartua: Yeah, it's a similar vibe of what we're going for. Uh, we're gonna do, I think. Don't quote me on this, because we haven't figured it out yet. But I want to do live band karaoke, because I find that so fun. Fun. And I also, uh. Last year we had comedians on stage. We had like, an mc, uh, Kevin White, who. Who was incredible, who did the whole, um, you know, kind of. It made it feel like a show instead of a conference, which I really love. And we're gonna keep that.

Host: Yeah.

Jen Igartua: But, um, we're thinking about maybe doing a game show. Uh, I really love games, so I make board games. And it's a passion of mine. And that's something I've also learned is like, do the stuff you love.

Host: Yes.

Jen Igartua: You know how to do that? Like, I'm not gonna do. I don't know, like, I don't love sports, so I'm not gonna have a sports thing because I don't even know how to do that. I don't know how to make that fun. But I love board games. I love, uh, game shows. I've been obsessed with it my whole life. And so how do I bring the stuff that I'm passionate about? It'll show through.

Host: Yeah, board games are great. I think they're just a, uh, collaboration aspect of it. Just getting people talking and hanging out and just opening up. I think it's great.

Narrator: Right?

Host: Yeah. You know, like, honestly, like, the two things that are. For me personally, I hate in. In conferences, especially the major ones. I don't like panels. I hate panels.

Jen Igartua: Did you reading my mind. So we ban, like, four people.

Host: Four people on this stage from different background talking about, like, talking about the AI. And you're like, oh, my God, won't you blow my head off? Right? It's just so. And then no one's talking anything concrete. You. You start 10 minutes opening up, and then 10 minutes, like someone tell you, like, this is the watch. Right, Right. Yeah, agreed. Yeah. And then also when, uh, you know, you don't have any, um, you know, like the booth and stand thing. Yeah, I think it's. It's old playbook. Like, people don't want to come into the booth as that much in a way, but they have some. They need to have another environment when they can hang out and talk and I don't know, like speed dating. Um, again, also. So I like how you wrote that you had, like, curated meetings things. Yeah, I think it's smart. I think, like, you can spend some time and, um, you know, people can get a profile on people, what they want to discuss, you know, what the other things, and try to match them somewhere somehow more intrusively in a way. But people will tell. Thank you. After that.

Jen Igartua: So, yeah, we tried to do intros, and then we have no booths. Our sponsors have to, like, build an activation so you can have a section where you're doing headshots. Awesome. We had folks. I mean, next year we want to do a whole, like, beauty bar, uh, kind of area and just sort of play with. Again. I have a background in games, and we do a lot of game conferences, and game conferences are really fun. And it's all adults. It's not kids. So how do you take the magic of that where people are excited to go to booths? Again, it's games and you want to buy stuff. Uh, and buying stuff is good, but it's like you go in because you're, like, excited and the people at those booths are excited. They're not. Again, not a on SDRs. But I hate how people will spend $50,000 at a conference and then send their two junior SDRs who are eating sandwiches and on their phone. And so it's like, how do we make sure that, like, no. Create an activation and jersey match. I want to see directors of Revops from my sponsors at the event because they're going to talk, uh, and they're going to, uh. And I would love to talk to the head of Revops at companies that I want to buy. Um, not necessarily an sdr.

Host: Yeah, um, I've done conferences where I was like, doing demo and presenting and talking and. And I love kind of just going there and then speaking with my personal kind of entrepreneurship experience to folks. But what I usually ended up doing is having like, 10 students or 10, like, startuppers explaining this to them. Right. And you're like, oh, my God, you just spent educating the youth. Right. So, um, um, awesome. Well, listen, uh, congratulations. I'm happy for you.

Jen Igartua: It's a big jump.

Host: It's like, I understand how concerning is that, especially the company that's not as large as yourself. Right. Like, it's one thing if Clay is doing that. Right. It's just. Yeah, but kind of doing that and checking. But, yeah, your event definitely standing out.

Jen Igartua: Thank you.

Host: Um, I think you're doing great and I love the fact that you're approaching it from the more creative standpoint and not doing the what the other. You know what it's usually people are doing it.

Jen Igartua: So more fun that way.

Host: It is more fun. Yeah. All right. Um, I wanted to spend the rest of the time, um, tapping into you as the fellow agency peer. So you built Go Nimble by yourself. You have other partners?

Jen Igartua: I have a business partner. His name's Troy.

Host: But then I've noticed that Go Nimble is from 2013 and you joined in 2015. Was the company like, two years before you joined?

Jen Igartua: Kind of. It was a little glorified contracting, uh, for a while. So me and Troy met back at Blue Wolf, uh, and Blue Wolf, again was a big agency, hundreds of people. And so Troy, uh, left first and he was doing actually totally different. He was doing basically app exchange products and really building. He's an engineer. And then I followed suit and quit. I actually, uh, I don't put it on there, but I started a company called Divided sky, uh, and that is a fish reference for the band Phish that, if anybody knows it. And I started doing the same thing. I was just contracting for. For, uh, a little bit. And then we decided to merge together and create Go Nimble.

Host: So did you kind of decided from 2015 to take it seriously as kind of a business and start growing?

Jen Igartua: Yeah, at that point, it was like employees and. And contracts and. And, you know, not just us doing the work. So it really had a turning point there of saying, okay, let's build an agency. Because I actually, for a while. And this is something anybody that's starting out is going to have to decide. And you don't have to know right away. It might even even be decided for you. But there'll be a crossroads where you have to say, okay, am I building a large company here or do I want to keep this at like 10 to 20 people, where we just, like, you know, we. We maximize on. On what we can do. And that's it. I'm not trying to build a huge headcount company. We kept going back and forth for a few years on. On what avenue to take, and then just fully committed. I'd say around 20, 21, 22 maybe. We were like, no, let's just like, build a real agency or agency here. And we got obsessed with what does it mean to run a professional services firm? Because a lot of it is nerdy. I read a book called Managing a Professional Services Firm, which is as dry as it sounds. Do you have it?

Host: I have it. I actually this one of the books that I advise. Uh, it's like a law firm, right? Like how to write. Yeah, yeah, for sure. You open, you'll read like 10 pages, 100 pages. You're like, oh, it's like they just exactly tell you what I love.

Jen Igartua: Uh, it was, uh, very eye opening for me. I also read the Boutique and a few others, and there's a lot of literature about how to build an agency. And we had to make a choice that we were going to build a big team. And that is a lot more operational than it sounds. It's staffing and assignment and bill rates and contracts. And, you know, how to build, uh, a consultative selling function, because especially in services, it's really hard to sell because customers are very skeptical when they come. Yeah, I can't demo you exactly what I'll do. And so, uh, at that point, we really pivoted. 2022 was a rough year. It was like Covid. We lost a bunch of customers. Great resignation. And then 23, we, like, kicked it up a notch and started to do really well. 24 was killer. This year's killer. And we're about to hire 100th person next week.

Host: Oh, nice. Congratulations.

Jen Igartua: Thank you.

Host: Uh, that's big for the agency.

Narrator: Yeah.

Host: Um, so you said, like, the only rough time for you was like, 2022.

Jen Igartua: I mean, the beginning, of course. Right. Like, I remember crying because I couldn't figure out quarterly taxes and, you know, incorporating and S Corp, C Corp, whatever. But we're past that stage. Those were like.

Host: Right.

Narrator: Just.

Jen Igartua: Just like rough years of learning. Of learning a lot. And also, every time a customer's mad, you don't know how to deal with it. It feels very personal. Uh, you're doing the work and trying to sell the work. It's like feast or famine. That's sort of the early years. And then in 2020, our biggest customer was Caesar's Entertainment, the casino. And they called, called us like On a. I don't know, on a Tuesday. And they were like, hey, we gotta pull the team. And we're like, what? And like, yeah, we're closing our doors on Monday. And, you know, we had an early indication that Covet was bad because I was like, if the casino is closing its doors, you got a problem? Uh, and they were basically, you know, said, uh, we're not gonna pay, and you can take us to court. It's like, well, I'm not gonna go. Go nimbly versus Caesars. And so, yeah, I just kind of had to be like, all right, like, got it. Let's pivot and move past this. And we started off. Don't quote me on these numbers, because I don't remember exactly. But pre Covid, I think we were in the, like, high 30s, 40s. We were sort of, like, kind of, like, stagnating there, which is a typical place for an agency to kind of stagnate. I think it's like a team that one executive can manage, and then beyond that, you really have to scale out. Uh, and so we were hitting that. We ended kind of post Covid in, like, the 20s. So we really downsized, and then. Great. Resignation was not good to us. Tech, uh, was poaching from our team like crazy. These insane salaries. They have since normalized, but for a while, people were making insane money. Uh, and, yeah, it took until a year later to, you know, see the work of going back to basics come to fruition and really work for us.

Host: Yeah. So your co founder, he has an engineering background. Have you. Did you think about pivoting to a product and just doing the product line? You're in SaaS all the time. I just wondering, why did you stay at the professional services? Uh, it's one of the toughest businesses to be at, especially in the marketing web ops. Like, you're the first one to go. Right. Everyone is very skeptical. There's lots of competition, very volatility out there. Right. Just people are changing their minds and the budgets are cut all the time. So.

Narrator: Sure.

Jen Igartua: Um, yes, we have tried to build product, and we've built some internal automations, for sure. Um, but funny enough, uh, me and Troy made a commitment that it was like, we actually love running an agency. We have a passion for professional services. It is a type of business that has been alive and well for hundreds of years. And if done right, you can make incredible impact and you can have a really strong brand. And look at your McKinsey's and IBMs, and, you know, they've although they're, I uh, think IBM's struggling a little bit but they're you know, they're solid and I look up to those companies and I do want to create really incredible talent. Is it hard? It's a different kind of hard. Uh, for sure, sure. It's uh, but if done correctly like we do long term contracts with our customers, we have gone to the, you know, you've read the book but we've gone through the basics of figuring out what it is that we're great at and doing that work and making sure that we're not like when we're making a bet and when we're upskilling that we're really thoughtful about that. We're hiring the right talent, we're investing in it. And what we were doing in the early days was just taking anything that we could and frankly not doing great at it. And so, so we've gotten a passion for it in terms of the volatility for sure. Budgets get cut but actually Revops I think is in a pretty strong place because we're making, yeah we're making the go to market team more successful. You know, hire us instead of five more sellers and let's figure out how to increase carry capacity. And so I think we're positioned in a, in a good place right now. Not to say that I don't lose sleep over macroeconomic trends. It, it's uh, it's very scary time right now and, and I for sure worry about it. But uh, and I do want to go into other industries. I want to go into industries that look up to SaaS. Um, because I am, you know it's Econ 101 diversification. Like I'm definitely have a really big pillar in SaaS. Uh but I'm finding that insurance you know looks up to SaaS. We've got a pretty good space in fintech. Uh, we've done really well. The AI companies which I think are SaaS adjacent but AI companies, we've got a couple of them and so I need to figure out the places. I don't think it's manufacturing. I think that's like a little bit of a very different beast. But I think there's lookalike industries I need to go after.

Host: Yeah, you would want to work with manufacturing. They're great, they're just becoming to implement like CRMs, you know and the kind of automations and the volumes and stuff and just thinking about the nurturing and the marketing.

Jen Igartua: I would love to uh, win that space. I mean it's funny, I make games. So I like work in a lot of manufacturing. Like I work with those companies, they make our game. And so they are very old. Like I will send sometimes a Dropbox file and they're confused. And so for sure it's, it's an industry that we could disrupt. But I have such an easy time selling into SaaS because I can just flash up my logos and go, we know your industry. I would have to understand more about, you know, I don't know even as simple as managing your inventory. Uh, inventory management is a beast. And I would need to hire, I would need to hire a skill set to go into that.

Host: Right. Um, can we help me understand your volume? Like are you in the hundreds of customers or below 100 right now with your size?

Jen Igartua: Uh, more, but for a very specific reason. So we have our core um, business that is enterprise, mid market to enterprise and we do large scale projects, project say a big CPQ implementation or we have our fractional rev ops which is basically a monthly retainer but we're working to deploy change into your organization. And that is less than 100. Typically less than 50 is what we'll play in that space. And then I have a high velocity business with our GONG and Clay partnership or we're doing a lot of, I don't know, uh, call it one to three months implementation projects where it's very high volume and we'll do hundred. Like we've done 600 gong implementations in the last like year and a half and so on that front it's a lot but you know, we're talking 10k a pop. So it's not where our customers spend six figures like our core customers will spend six figures in a given year.

Host: Uh, have you been on a sort of like a crossroad about kind of choosing which route you're going to go in terms of your business model or in terms of how you're going to make money. Like you've mentioned like implementing GONG and other partners. I, it's, it's smart. I, I didn't do that by the way. I've uh, decided to go with a more service base.

Jen Igartua: Sure.

Host: And then at some time you're like oh shit, I should be more kind of building my offering on top of the solutions of the others. It just make more sense because you can then get all leads and the brand exposure and the pipeline and the commission and just getting all of that and not just do the heavy lifting yourself. Right. So, um, so what was the sort of like you, you so you, you went in the direction where you say like you do a project based work. Work more like a bigger project and then you do a, a one off sort of like implementation. So that's kind of the, the business, right?

Jen Igartua: Yeah. And then a retainer business, which is the retainer.

Host: Like the, the. Yeah, yeah, gotcha. Makes sense.

Jen Igartua: So, you know, were we at a crossroads? I definitely look for kind uh, of one plus one equals three, you know, spaces. Like the reason why we bet on GONG is because we think they're going to win and all of our core customers are essentially using gong. Am I turning down outreach and sales Loft and Clary work? No. Our customers have their tech stack. We're going to, you know, help them. But the partnership that I'm investing in is one where I think, you know, they're the, the winners. And uh, my hope is not that I do a bunch more GONG implementations is that those GONG customers that come to us and we implement gong, that we can convert them to our longer term, you know, customers. And we're starting to do that very hard actually because when they get introduced to go nimbly, an AE will be like, here's go nimbly. Uh, you know, they're your GONG implementation partner. And then we have to come in and go, yes, yes, yes, yes. And also we're a strategic rev ops partner. And that's hard. It's hard to change their mindset from like a tactical implementation partner to bigger. We have to put a lot of calories in to, you know, elevate that.

Host: Yeah, yeah. And then so in terms of acquisition, I saw you, you've done lots of dinners, you've organized your dinners. And then I think like that was successful. And then you say, okay, what can we do more than din. Do the conference? So that was kind of the strategic next step.

Jen Igartua: Right, that and round. We do a lot of private roundtables. I just don't post about it.

Host: Private roundtables, right.

Narrator: Yeah.

Host: So that's kind of the main acquisition strategy for you that is successful to get those upper mid market. Right.

Jen Igartua: Yeah. And then it's a lot of referrals. We're very lucky.

Host: How do you budget that? How much do you need to spend and what's the percentage in terms of the pipeline that you need to get to have a good benchmark Mark, have a number?

Jen Igartua: What a great question. I do not have the answer to. No, we're not sure enough for that. I'm uh, it's more, it's honestly more what we're capable of. Capable of doing. I'm capable of doing one to two dinners a month. Like, there's no amping that up to four. Uh, right now, because the way that we're doing Revop Supper Club is that it's a club. It's very personal. We do it in our homes. Uh, and so, you know, it's basically like, hey, I'm inviting you into my space. I'm getting a chef. It's very curious created. It's not like I can say, all right, and we're doing them all over the country because, uh. But Jen's not going to be there. You're going to be at somebody else's house. Like, it just doesn't. Um, not for the vision that we have for this particular thing. I'll do other dinners, but they're not branded as. As supper club.

Host: Yeah. And then so you. You sort of, like, organize, and then you have a certain, like, topic that you're going to be discussing or, like, at the end of the day, like, you. There should be still kind of business purpose to this. Right.

Jen Igartua: Like, it's definitely supposed to be a good hang. Uh, and we do care about that. The premise being, uh, I actually only invite people that I know or have been vouched for. So you have to have somebody, like, nominate you to come. And. And the guiding light is, of course, you're in Revops. And. And, you know, you. You're. You're good at your job. And also, if I put you in and sat you down with dinner, you're not the. Like, we've all been sat next to somebody where we've been like, oh, God, Uh, we're trying to avoid that at all costs. And I'm sorry if that's you. Uh, and so we've done a really good job of that. And the topic itself, I typically have something that I have in the back of my mind that I think is like, all right, there's a trend going on or something that I'm watching out for, and I keep that in my back pocket. But I let everybody introduce themselves and basically say what's top of mind for you? And if I hear the same thing a few times, I'll pivot and just. It put be like, sounds like we're all worried about X. So, like, let's talk about that. Who's got an. And I. And I moderate and I try to do one conversation. At, uh, dessert, I let everybody.

Host: Whatever.

Jen Igartua: You can talk to the person next to you, we can sort of, like, let it go.

Host: Well, that's why. Because you're great at board games so you kind of understand how to moderate because like the 50% of the hanging out in the board game is like the moderation. If the moderator is great, then you have so much fun. Right, Just so. Yeah, that's cool. Um, what else you are doing besides the kind of the dinners and party for your acquisition at the mid market enterprise for SaaS.

Jen Igartua: So uh, I'm tired because of it, but we're doing a ton of just going to events and so I'm getting on planes and I'm going to all the industry events and I'm schmoozing and showing up and speaking and doing all of that. And part of that is, you know, somebody's got to see you three, four times and then they'll go, oh, okay, hey, you know, I might have a project for you. So there's a lot of schmoozing there. And then another big tactic for us is just spending time on site with our customers, talking to our customers. Our customers will move on to other customers and they also have their network and just making sure that we're doing really, I mean doing incredible work is table stakes. Like you gotta have incredible people and do incredible work and that gets you on the map. And then on top of that it's basically the experience. So it's like, what's the like uh, can we make go nimbly something that when you're part of we open doors, that I introduce you to other people, that I help you make, you know, quicker decisions. I've interviewed my customers Revops teams before. I've done demos, you know, if they're in the rev tech space. I've, I've given my feedback and, and I've done LinkedIn posts for them. Uh, just as a, as a being part of, of our customers. It's like how do I also elevate the experience of, of working with go nimbly so that you're working not with just great consultants but with a brand that has your back back.

Host: Yeah, that's great. Um, you obviously are great at social content and social selling, but uh, um, any other content? Like I didn't see a lot of like blog research, use cases, all of that. Why not? Is that like not uh, your cup of tea? That's why it's kind of just doesn't make sense or.

Jen Igartua: No, it's not necessarily. I would, I would love for us to elevate our game on, on more kind of space and benchmarks and trends etc. I'm doing it through speaking Gigs, but I'm not digitizing it right now. And, and it's not. I mean, sometimes it's just you gotta make bets. And I'm betting on in person right now over content. Uh, and then the other thing is, I'm betting on social instead of like blogs. And, and I'll get a bit more of a flywheel going and, and um, make sure that we're creating better content. But part of it is I had a theory that right now people are much more into the, what would I call it, like the opinion economy. For a long time it was all benchmarks, all day. And I think we realized like, all right, a lot of these are made up, uh, a lot of them are survey based. And, and I think there was a little bit of like a pullback in, in our customers for that.

Host: Yeah.

Jen Igartua: And, you know, I'm really pushing on trends. What's going on? Again, I do these private round tables where we're bringing, you know, stories and ideas and things to our customers. I need to figure out how to move on to the next level. The one interesting thing that I deployed, this is not really a go to market thing, but I think it will fix some of this problem. I deployed an internal podcast. Um, my boyfriend made fun of me for this for sure. He is definitely a, um, bit of a curmudgeon when it comes to, uh, executives and CEOs. And, and it's funny that he's dating me, but he's uh, like, no one's gonna wanna listen to that. Like, what are you doing? Like, just patting yourself on the back. And I was like, no, stay with me. Doing an internal podcast where I'm talking about trends, talking about the history of the company. I'm interviewing consultants about their work. So I'm capturing customer stories. I'm, um, talking about strategic decisions that the company's making. And I'm deploying an episode a week. And do I expect everybody to listen to every episode? Absolutely not. I'll make playlists. I'll make like onboarding playlists. If you're gonna sell, I'll make you a customer. And I'm hoping things that we're going to then use to create like the beginnings of content. Because I'm so much better at just like talking at something and then this is like every executive ever. Uh, I'll just like, tell you about what I know and then we can turn that into content. And what I think we've been doing that has made it really like a slog, is we're starting with like all right, let's write this like, I don't know, one pager and, and put it in here and try. As opposed to talking stories and then figuring out out afterwards how they fit into some content. So 2026 will be a year where you'll see more of us there.

Host: Yeah. You know, like we're talking about kind of rev ops and especially in the course of the AI, like really kind of opening up more use cases and more client work. Makes sense. Like, I would love to see more kind of nitty gritty things and like, uh. But like really like reporting from the frontline type of thing. You know, not just kind of the copywriter doing the work, but actually kind of getting deeper into like why we're fixing this or that and how we're doing that and what the result of it and how it looks like just screenshot from CRM, whatever, you know, some of those things. Yeah, I think it's kind of important.

Jen Igartua: Yeah. I have a newsletter that I'm starting to write that. Is that supposed to be that like interview one person deeply? I'm calling it Revoops. Um, kind of the idea being like you gotta mess up a bunch of times before you figure it out. And it's a trial and error. It's trying to things. The hard part is like getting into a level of detail while it's still engaging. Um, but yeah, I really want to give, um, just like how did you do it? Answer that question. Like, how would I actually implement this? Not just you were able to do xyz, isn't that wonderful. But getting into the details.

Host: Um, I also have my newsletter, but um, it's my vent out thing. So I've um, literally talk about building the agency. Cool. And I'm like my. Each edition is like 20 minutes long. So I literally just. It's not even fitting in one email. Yeah, I'm just kind of blogging about it, you know, uh, but it, it takes commitment to write them like yourself all the time without help of kind of editor or an AI. You know, it's just kind of take a huge part. Do all of the. Yeah, um, right. Okay. Um. Awesome. Um, I think like the last, last question that I have and I'm gonna let you go, um, talk to me about your creative process. Like, uh, especially what part is that? Your own creativity versus you're just, you know, trying to get inspired by other people versus just getting inside your head and just kind of creating that versus your, your AI or team helping. Like any, any, you know, any insights, any fresh Perspective you can give me that could help my creative process would be great.

Jen Igartua: Right? Oh, man. I, uh, I know as a somebody who is innovating on technology, 0% AI. Uh, I actually banned AI art at go Nimble. I think we should use artists, and I think that we should, um, I don't know, really harness that in ourselves. It's such a. A beautiful. I'm not a religious person, but I do think creativity is. Is like part of spirituality, uh, and. And figuring out what you love to do and how you want to share it with the world. World. So I, I find it, um, you know, not to get too hippie. Dippy. I. I do. I do consider myself a hippie in a lot of ways. I. I think it's important to protect that, that process. The best advice that I got, and, and my boyfriend's a comedian. Um, the best. The best advice that I got is to follow the fun. Do, uh, the stuff that you love, uh, and amp that up. And so when I. I told you this a little bit, but when I, When I, uh, I tried to make my own podcast, I recorded 10 episodes and I just hated it. I was doing the formula, I was having you on and saying, hey, tell me about your career. Amazing. Where else did you go after that? So cool. What's a tool that you're really interested right now? And what's a book that you recommend to everybody? And it was like, the same thing that everybody else has done, and I listened to a few of them and I hated it. And I got advice from my boyfriend, Kevin. He was like, well, what do you. Who like? And, uh, I was like, well, I like John Stewart, and I like, you know, people that do news and have opinions and that it's fun to watch and that they push the boundaries and they play with that. And he's like, great, let's do that. And that's how this week in Sass came to be. And it's because I love it, uh, and it comes through. I really enjoy doing it. So I think that's part of it. And then in the, in the nitty gritty of, like, what is the process? Like, what does it take to make a video? It's pretty simple. I find a news article that is interesting to me. I keep up with it. So that isn't extra work. It's just like, something that came. Sometimes it's just scrolling on LinkedIn and being like, ooh, that's fun. Someone got acquired. Uh, someone put out a feature that I think is disruptive, whatever it is. And then I'll write the first draft and I'll probably spend an hour just sort of like saying what my opinion is, making sure I have a thesis to the whole thing. And I just sort of write it. I send it over. I. And my boyfriend's a comedian. He punches it up. He makes a bunch of jokes that I have to pull back on because he'll make, like, a bunch of blowjob jokes. And I have to be like, I can't say that on LinkedIn. And we pull it back, some of them slip through, and you'll know when. You'll know when it's Kevin. Uh, and then I, you know, we sort of tighten it up. I have a friend, his name's Tucker Brookshire, he comes over to my apartment and then we film for like an hour. He takes the SD card and then he does the edits. We'll do a round of feedback and we're good to go. Uh, and so that has become, like. It took, you know, three to four months of figuring out, but that's become. It's like, that's. This does not feel like a brand new creative process that has a vision. It's got a story, it's got a game, and it works.

Host: Yeah, but then obviously, you put that in your calendar. You dedicate time. Like, you have, like, half of the day for that or, like, whatever hours and just kind of.

Jen Igartua: And Michael, you're so much more, uh, efficient than me. No, this is. I'll, uh, text Tucker, hey, man, I got a story. When can you come over? And then he'll be like, I don't know, Friday. Awesome. Friday morning. Great. And then I have that. That's my deadline. And then probably the next night before, I'm like, all right, let's write it. And that's it. And, uh, for Rev Ops Rans, the other series I do, I write it on the way because I have it built at the Clay office. They let me build my desk there.

Host: Right.

Jen Igartua: I write it on the way in the subway. Uh, and the reason why it works is because it's like, it's visceral. Like, this is stuff I already care about. I've already been mulling over it in my brain forever.

Host: Yeah, that's so cool. Listen, I'm happy that you found your medium.

Jen Igartua: Thank you.

Host: Or your have out. I mean, podcast could be your medium. Like, you know, for me, personally, uh, I never ask the question that I'm not personally curious about. I don't give a. You know, I don't care about, like, If I don't ask the right question.

Jen Igartua: Yeah.

Host: So I. I spend, let's say, three hours and I literally go and then study everything you've done. Yeah, I. I watch probably like 10 of your interviews and, like, posts and all of that, and then I just start and just pulling. All right, what I wanted to talk about, what I'm like, fancy to talk about today specifically, you know, like, even today, what my mood is at, what I feel kind of I can get from you, what I'm curious personally. And then I just kind of build up the conversation, and then you see, like, okay, well, we can go there. We don't got to go there. And then at the end of the day, you hope that, you know, people listening to this would also have fun. And if not, then I enjoyed it. So I'm not making money from podcasts as well. I'm just kind of. I'm just spending money, but I'm doing that for my own enjoyment. You know what I mean?

Jen Igartua: Yeah, I think if I, uh. You know, it's that commitment. Uh, it's a lot of. I think you're doing it right, doing the deep research, but. But most people don't do that. And then you show up at a very surface level. Podcast conversation. So, like, congratulations. And you can tell that, hey, you knew me during this. I did feel like you had done the research and you set me up to have deeper conversations. I just not ready if I'm not sure I'm ready for that level of commitment.

Host: Yeah. Well, that's why I really appreciate you taking the time and take almost two hours out of your day. So, uh, yeah, it's. It's great to have you on, Jen. And, um, congratulations for all your success.

Jen Igartua: Thank you very much.

Host: Uh, you know, I would love to. To talk more and hang out and then do some other exciting things with you.

Jen Igartua: All right, amazing.

Host: Thanks for coming in.

Jen Igartua: Thank you,

Host: guys. Hope you enjoyed the interview. If you haven't, like, comment or subscribe to Belkin's podcast, I would appreciate if you do that. It's just going to help me a lot, lot to get even better, um, guests and interview them on your behalf. Thank you so much. And I'll see you all in the next, um, interview.