Thinking Beyond Playbooks: How to Stay Relevant in a Rapidly Changing World

Jesse Morris: Welcome to Revops Revolution where we focus on changing the game for driving revenue. In each episode, your host, Jesse Morris explores the different areas that affect change and drive revenue across your organization. If this is your first time joining us, please subscribe so you don't miss out on any future episode. Here's to the revolution.

Jesse Morris: Today we are lucky to have a well known and respected leader in the go to market space, Dave Boyce. Dave, super excited to have you. Thanks for joining.

Dave Boyce: Good to see you, Jesse.

Jesse Morris: You as well. So Dave has been a go to market executive now 20 plus years. You've led SaaS companies across product marketing, sales, customer success, and you've been a CEO and I think he's had like seven or eight exits, which is crazy. You're also the executive chairman at Winning by Design, which is probably where most people know you from. And you've also been teaching PLG for a number of years at BYU's School of Business, uh, as well. So. And then you just, I think published your first book, right, called Freemium recently.

Dave Boyce: Absolutely. You're making me sound old, Jesse.

Jesse Morris: I don't think that's the objective at all, but I think what's, what's cool, man. You've got just a such a unique and eclectic background, which is really exciting to have you on the show. Maybe tell us a little bit more about maybe what I didn't cover.

Dave Boyce: Oh, thank you, brother. Well, um, my favorite startup, I have indeed done a lot of startups and we've gotten to seven exits. Three, um, of those are as an investor advisor. So you know, do you count those? I don't know the other four, um, you know, active, kind of dug in, executive. Um, but my favorite startup is my family and I have uh, and that's a whole set of adventures also. You, you collect lots of battle scars in all startups and including your family. And I've got six kids, six beautiful kids and uh, two dogs. And you know, they're all kind of launching into the world and doing their own kind of venturing and uh, and that's been super fun in and of itself. I live in Utah, you live right down the road in Colorado. So we're both living the clean, uh, air mountain, uh, lifestyle.

Jesse Morris: Talk to me a little bit. You've been a part of these seven exit. Like you said. Three of those were still an investor but you still got to see that journey. When you think about those different experiences and what they taught you throughout it, like, what do you find yourself coming back to over and over?

Dave Boyce: Yeah, well, you Know, I. This is a personality thing, Jesse. You might, I might share it with you, but, you know, I want to put myself back in harm's way. I want to kind of get back on the front lines. I want, as soon as something is working and scaled and we've sold it, like, okay, you know, it's okay for a while, but now I want to go back to the coal, uh, face and figure it out. And so one of the things that, um. And by the way, as an industry, we're all being forced to do that right now because of AI. Like, we are being forced to figure out new game as newly defined. Literally, you know, as of the time of this recording. ChatGPT released three years ago. It's like, what, three years ago? That's not that long. And yet it seems like the entire world has changed. So now you think about what's going to be three years from now and what am I going to have to have learned and, you know, um, and begun applying and experimenting my way into. In terms of success. That's the one constant for me, Jesse, like, keep putting yourself back in a situation, uh, to learn, stay curious, um, and be insistent, to figure it out at a framework and first principles level so that you can then go scale it, uh, and repeat it. And, uh, anytime you can succeed at that, you're going to have a scalable, successful business.

Jesse Morris: I think that's interesting. And it is crazy to think that it's three years into this and, you know, the rate of change. Obviously Gemini coming out with their big update this last week and, uh, you know, there's a lot there when you think about kind of where we're headed and what you are. You know, you just mentioned like, kind of this ability to adapt. Like, what has been. What of the core things for you in, in keeping you kind of staying on the front lines, continuing to, I mean, again, seven exits. It would be easy to go. I'm just going to keep doing it the way I've always done it. Uh, I think that's human nature. Like, what, what have you done to kind of force yourself into continually adapting and changing along the way?

Dave Boyce: Well, I'll tell you a story and then you. We can tell as many stories as you want, but we sold a company to Oracle in 2005. Um, I did stay on. I had young kids. I was in the spot you're in now. Young kids, had a big job at Oracle, you know, that flew. It was a global role, flew around the world. You know, front of the bus, got picked up In a black car. It's the job that a lot of people work their whole careers to get. Um, okay, cool. And then I quit to go to a startup, like a five person startup. The company we sold to Oracle had an average ACV annual contract value of $1.2 million. It was a, uh, SaaS company. Even though we didn't really have the word SaaS. When we started that company we were hosting predictive analytics models on co located servers. So we called it a ASP Application Service provider, but it was the Predecessor for uh, SAS and we eventually moved that into uh, AWS, so. And it really was SAS. Okay, got it. We sold that to Oracle. Average ACV, $1.2 million. The company that I went and helped start, average ACV, $1.2,000. Okay, great. So you just left your amazing like, you know, big hot shot job and now you're like slumming it with four other guys in a, uh, in a little rented office space and you're selling for peanuts. All right, well guess what? We had to learn a bunch. Like we forced ourselves back to the beginning and this is when, um, this is when Zendesk and Basecamp and um, Shopify were defining what it meant to do a self service kind of B2B purchase in SaaS. And so I was taking lessons from all of them. Twilio was just getting started then. There is a way to get a $1.2K uh, purchase to happen on a self service basis and then actually be unit, economic, profitable. It's just not the way that I had done it at Oracle. The way that I had done it at Oracle was very, very hands on. The way that I was doing it fundly was very, very hands off. So great. I thrust myself into the beginning and we're, and like I say, we're all. If any of us think that the playbooks that got us to where we are in our vaunted current careers are going to get us forward and get our teams forward, we're wrong because the entire game has changed. So we all have to force ourselves back to the beginning, figure out what role AI is going to play, figure out how much of the stuff that we do now can be automated. And to the extent that we can stay ahead of our competitors will remain relevant. To the extent that we hold on to the old ways, we will go into programmed, um, decline.

Jesse Morris: So it's interesting, I didn't realize from our last conversation that you had done that. And I just did the similar thing. I just left, did the same thing or maybe the cushy global job and you know, now, now doing the garage grungy startup thing. And so my next question, you know, I'm partly biased because I started an AI company, but I'm curious. Like, you know, you hear a lot right now around AI and it's mixed. Like I had this, you'll get a kick. I might have told you this a couple weeks ago, but I had a prospect, uh, ping us back and you know, we were pretty far along in the process of discovery, demo and just getting into contract negotiations. And so we, you know, we did the typical follow up thing and they wrote back and they said, hey, we really think AI is cooling off right now. Let's just revisit this in six months. And uh, you know, it was, it was one of the more funny and it was the same day that you saw the earnings reports come out from all these massive companies and essentially adjusting down their earnings estimates because they're investing so much more in AI. So it was a fascinating parallel. And so I think you still got though, weirdly enough, you've got these big companies and I would say those of us who've kind of seen what's possible with AI, and then you've got a lot of other people that just don't fully understand kind of what's there. When you think about that subset of people and those that are listening today that are maybe a little bit more skeptical, again, they're used to doing things a certain way. Like, what would you say to them? I think to like help understand the ramifications and just the perspective of change that we are at in the reality we're at today.

Dave Boyce: Yeah. Well, Jesse, it really sucks to miss a train. The only thing that sucks worse is to miss a fast train. Like, and this train is moving fast. We've already invested more as a global economy in AI than we invested in space exploration, cancer research, um, the, the entire kind of previous version of the Internet. Like we're, we are all in on AI. So if you say, hey, let me set this out and you think about what's happened in the last three years and you say, well, uh, let me just sit on the sidelines for six months. Okay, great. Guess how far this train is going to have traveled in six months. And it's your choice and it's fine and I respect it, but I'm on the train. So you're going to be back on the platform, be on the train. We're going to be in different worlds. I'm not going to try to talk you into it. Like it's not really actually worth the time. I'm going to talk with people who are sitting next to me on the train and we're figuring stuff out and by the time you kind of stand up from the bench and decide to catch the train, I don't know if you're even going to be able to see it anymore.

Jesse Morris: I love that, that analogy and I think picture and image. And I think you're right. Like, I mean, ultimately, you know, at the end of the day, you know, people are going to do what people are going to do. Um, you know, one of the things that you've, you've built to some degree a career around is, and you hinted at it for that company is all around this PLG motion M& those of you don't know, this product led growth and it's really like the ability to buy without necessarily the interaction of a sales rep or maybe not as much of an interaction as, as, as others. Just in simplistic terms. When you see the ramifications now of AI, um, and you start. Actually I've seen a lot of articles in the last few weeks. I feel like not actually using the word plg, but talking about PLG and how like essentially people can now buy through even, you know, the agent themselves, the interface itself. How do you see that continuing to evolve within the space?

Dave Boyce: Yeah, well, you know, we talked about, um, continuous learning. And one of the aspects of continuous learning is first principles. So we can ask what's going to change? And I think that's an interesting conversation. We can also ask what's going to stay the same? And one of the things that stays the same, Jesse, is we're running a recurring revenue business and recurring revenue is a function of recurring impact. So if I want the next check from you in between now and then, you need to have achieved impact with my product or service. Okay, cool, great. And if I want the next check, there needs to be impact again. And then next check, then there needs to be impact again. Okay, great. So that's just a fundamental principle. Another fundamental principle of recurring revenue is that, um, customers, you know, experience their interaction with me as a company, as a journey. And then that can be mapped out and that has stages like, you know, we've got to traditional sales and marketing funnel that's wide at the top and narrow at the bottom. Awareness, interest, education, selection, purchase. Got it. Many of us who are of a certain age, I'll, uh, include myself and probably not. You used to think that that was the End of the journey, right, like purchase done. I called and hit my bookings number. Now we'll go restart the quarter and we'll start working on that funnel again. Guess what? The beginning of the journey for a recurring revenue customer, beginning of the journey because now they've got to implement onboard engage, um, retain and expand. So if we take that kind of funnel and turn it on its side and then we have it from the point of purchase, we have it expand again. It can look like a bow tie. Now that's like a customer journey. That's a fundamental set of principles. I can delineate that journey, I can measure how people move through that journey. I can measure drop off rates, conversion rates, um, and then I can optimize based on that. So now you think about, all right, what's the difference between human LED growth, product LED growth, AI LED growth? So far nothing's changed. They're still working their way through that. I can still measure their progression. Um, it's a matter of who's having the conversation, who's advancing the uh, prospect, who's helping with the onboarding. Is it a robot or a human? But if we've defined it and we've written it out and we know what the stages are and we know what the steps are, and we know what the success criteria are, then I can outsource that to a human or a robot at my discretion and I'll do it in the way that makes the most sense for the customer. So if the customer would rather interact with a robot, cool. Have a hands on. If customer just wants to get their hands on the product, cool. If the customer wants to talk to me because they actually want to talk to a human and figure out the risks and uh, and kind of use cases, um, and maybe common customers or light customers and they just need to get some courage from another human. Okay, cool. But I can't give them that choice if I'm not running a system. Um, so I want a delineated system, I want to find processes and then I want to be able to optimize and iterate my way into the very best thing for the customer. Sometimes, Jesse, I am a little bit constrained. If I got a $1.2K sale, I can't really invest humans in that sale. So I do have to automate more. If I have a $1.2 million sale, there's probably a lot of complexity in there. I do have to take a lot of, kind of fear of messing up out. And that's a human to human interaction. So I'm going to be steered towards one or the other, but it's all going to run on the same rails. And then when we look at AI, the AI native companies, all these, you know, lovable, replit, cursor, mistral, all these things that they're, you know, in 12 quarters they're hitting half a billion dollars. Um, like, are they doing that based on centering a human on every, uh, purchase interaction? They are not. They wouldn't be able to run that fast. You'd be way backed up between hiring, onboarding, training, managing and coaching. You'd be, you'd be all about trying to scale your team. And meanwhile the demand is trying to scale way faster than you can scale your team. So they actually set up PLG like systems to your point. They don't necessarily call them plg, but they're PLG rails to just when you, when you buy one of those products, when you first get started, you're literally just creating your account and you're getting started and you're beginning to succeed with it and you're expanding to a certain point. At a certain point a human might insert into that process and say, how can I help you? But it's not until you're x percent of the way down the road and they do not slow you down. They let you go as fast as you, as you want to.

Jesse Morris: So it's interesting you triggered something and something I've been seeing a lot recently and I don't remember what. I think it was Gong that talked about this. So, you know, the, the traditional model has always been this like, discovery, then demo, then contract. Like, that's kind of your traditional flow. Right? And, uh, I think one of the things that they were talking about with Gong or a similar company, and so if I get it wrong, I apologize, but was the fact that essentially they kind of didn't, they didn't wait to demo. Like, and the demo was even really a demo. It was actually like, let's build something for you in real time. And I think, like, that's one of the interesting things that I'm starting to see a lot even as I'm building my own software is like, the question we're asking a lot right now is like, how do we just get people in using it? And so it's not this, like, let me just show you this cool Fibashi demo. And Jazz hands it like, no, let's like build something back to your point around value. Like, let's build something of value, uh, you know, within it. On day One like, right, right when we're on that call, like, let's actually solve real problems. And that, that little shift, interesting enough in process too, I think, is really going to change this industry a lot as well.

Dave Boyce: Are you doing that now? You get right into the product on a. On a call with a prospect. It feels so different, right? It feels, it feels almost generous. It feels almost like empathetic. It's like, wait a minute, I thought you were going to be across the table from me. You're on the same side of the table as me, and we're solving this together. That feels different. But that is indeed how we want to purchase, right?

Jesse Morris: So it's interesting. I've been looking at some. I'm building out this outbound engine thing and we've been playing around a lot with voice, uh, uh, uh, cloning. So cloning reps, voices and doing some cool stuff with video. And there's a great company called 11 Labs. Um, but you know what's interesting, 11 Labs is like, you have to go through the whole buying process to even use it. So yesterday I had something pop up with a client around this, and they were really kind of frustrated at some of the pricing stuff with 11 labs. And so what I ended up doing is I just went and looked at, you know, I went to Claude and was like, hey, what are the competitors of 11 labs? And I. So I found. I found four competitors and I went to every one of their websites and two of the four were like, try now. And there was no sign up, There was no gatekeeping. And, you know, it's fascinating. And we uncovered like one, like one's called Hume. And literally Hume, like, gets you right into the product. You can train the voice on it and then it'll play back how well it learned the voice right then and there versus like 11 labs. We had to set up, we had to read a 30 minute. It's just an interesting user experience when

Dave Boyce: you think about it.

Jesse Morris: And, and now we're like actually thinking like, maybe we actually start looking at this Hume tool. And it's all because the friction was essentially removed, the barriers removed. We saw right away value. We were able to compare value. It's just. It's blows my mind, I think, when you think through the ramifications of even that small change within the industry, I guarantee.

Dave Boyce: So I really hope everyone's listening right now because I guarantee that the people who are listening are empathizing with you. Jesse. They're like, yeah, of course I would choose him. Of course. I don't want to be. I don't want to schedule a demo or schedule a discovery call. Of course I want to. If, If I can train it right now and listen to it, of course I would do that. Yeah, we all would, because we're all humans, and that's a better experience. But then when we, when. Somehow when we shift our hat from buyer to seller, we think it's logical to schedule a demo call. We think it's logical to hold the demo hostage to a discovery. We think it's logical to hide the price until we've been able to get access to power. Those are the old Playbooks. Those are the old Playbooks. Unlearn that stuff because your competitor is not doing that. And if you're in this scenario, I don't. Sorry, 11 labs. But if. If you're in this scenario, 11 labs, and you've got a. In your market, guess what? Everyone's going to be a Jesse, and they're going to end up on the other side of the ledger. So you got to catch up.

Jesse Morris: It's. It's. You know, I think when you, when you look at a lot of this stuff, it. It's these little changes that make a big impact. And I think, uh, that's the thing. When I, When I, When I hear the, hey, we'll check back in six months, I think it's cooling off. You know, it's interesting because again, don't get me wrong, it's still hard. Like, agentic is still very hard. You know, we spend a lot of time building it, which I think is why there's value in what we're doing. And I know the same for you guys. I know you've built actually a fair amount out yourselves. And if you look at it, you know, a lot of companies haven't done that. In fact, I got asked to be a keynote speaker in, uh, a couple months, and all they want me to talk about is just simply how to use, you know, uh, club, essentially, like, how do I do prompting? How can I use? And I talked about. And they didn't even know about projects, so I introduced them to cloud projects, which is one of my favorite things, by the way, about LLMs is projects. But it's interesting because you've still got a lot of these companies, I call it Deer in the headlights right behind it. But I think, like, one of the big keys, and this is where I really want to shift this to a little bit. And you hit him at this is the important that process plays in all of this, because I think it's very easy to get caught up in shiny objects and possibilities. But the reality is, to your point, it all starts with this centralized process and then to your point, understanding where you go. So when you think about process and you know, you guys have been building out some AI solutions as well, what do you think some of the keys are for these companies to really establish a solid foundation and then be able to build off of that?

Dave Boyce: Yeah. So data model is first. Like every great PLG company that I studied in, in 1.0 and every great AI native company now, you know, in whatever number we are now infinity point zero, um, uh, has a data model like so, and they have instrumentation in the product. So you can actually track where somebody is in their journey, where a customer is in their journey. I need that, I have to have that. If it's manually reported. Okay, but at least I have a data model. But I can't not have a data model. If I don't know the efficiency with which somebody moves from awareness to interest to select education to selection, then I can't fine tune that. I can't run new experiments to see if I can get better at it. And if I don't know how often a customer gets to a successful first impact within the window of their attention span, then I can't improve that onboarding process. I can't run experiments. So I need a data model. That's the number one thing. It sounds painful. If you haven't built it, you're like, oh, I've got CRM, then I've got a data model. Right. Maybe, maybe you probably have some version of a data model on the left hand side of the bow tie, meaning everything from kind of, you know, awareness to first. Close. Got it. What about the right hand side of the boat? Do you have that? All right, so let's. You don't. Okay, let's stitch that together, let's get it all visible now. I can run experiments now. Well, the first thing I would want to do, you brought processes that I wanted to find a process that runs on top of that data model. So first thing, data model, second thing, I'm going to build a GTM process and then once I have that, I can those that process. Think of that as a set of instructions. Okay, cool. Who are you going to give those instructions to? Your choice. You know, give it to an sdr, give it to an ae, give it to a csm, give it to a CSM robot, give it to an AE robot, give it to an SDR robot, give it to A robot that's going to help the CSM run faster and harder and prioritize her work. It's your choice because you know what the steps are now. And, and then you can just experiment with whether it's better in the hands of a human or better in the hands of a robot. And that has been all of 20, 25 for winning by design, Jesse. Just with customers, with ourselves, with our customers, figuring out what we can get to work. And by the way, I would say less than half of it works even when you have a data model and even when you have a process. It's not true that the thing that you think about, that you think is going to be wonderfully automated is going to work on the first try. The good news is though, so let's say that, and I'll pick a really dramatic number. Let's say one in ten experiments works. That sounds horrible, right?

Jesse Morris: Um, 10% of the time.

Dave Boyce: 10% of the time, like that's horrible. Like that's a failing grade. So therefore we're gonna sit on the sidelines for the next six months and let this thing cool off. Guess what? That one out of 10, that one out of 10 is now automated. It's now in your DNA, it's in your system. You don't have to think about it. You can go work and find the next one out of ten and then that one is going to stack. And then you go find the next one out of ten, that one's going to stack. Pretty soon you have a big piece of your machine that's just working day and night for you instead of you working for it like you're, you're systematically automating your way into a high growth machine. And if you wait around six months and you have six months fewer experiments, then you have six months fewer discoveries of those automatable pieces and you're just less automated than your competitors. That's, that's just, that's just the outcome. That, that's what, that's what being on the sidelines means.

Jesse Morris: It's interesting because ultimately, you know, the idea of 10%, you know, if you go to a company, right? So I think about my last role. If I went to the CEO of a company and I, I've had to pitch, you know, million plus dollar projects multiple times. And you know, in those projects you're, you know, when I'm pitching, at least I'm running, you know, ESS analysis to figure out the value add and try to justify the cost. And if I go to them and I said, hey, we're going to get one out of ten, right? I uh, don't think it would go over very well. But it's an interesting point because you're right. Ultimately, you know, again I think the, the thing that we talk about the industry completely shifting, the one thing that I, I keep just coming back to that just every day I think about again, it's these companies that you think about. The traditional hundred million dollar SaaS companies, it takes 400 to 500 employees generally to get to 100 million. Yeah, these companies today, the lovables, the cursors, the replits, they're 20 to 40 people. So that's, let's just say it's 40. Let's just be super generous. So 400 versus 40, that is 10% of what the other company and what normal SaaS is going to do. So what are the ramifications and trickle down effects of that? I always think about, you know, a, that's going to put a lot of pressure on the margin. Like ultimately that's the only, you know, m, you got to bring pricing down because if one company can literally offer 90% less on the pricing side, that's a big one. And then to your point, then to scale like so let's say that both businesses, you know, do this. One company is used to running in a certain lean, mean, automated way and the other one is used to headcount. Headcount is the solution to growth.

Dave Boyce: Right.

Jesse Morris: It's like, ah, how do we grow more? Well, let's put more bodies in it. And I'm not an advocate by the way of for like eliminating people completely from the process, but it's all about the augmentation. And so like in your experience and you, I know automation is one of your big passions, you know, for companies that like right now they hear the 10% and they're like, I cannot take a 10% risk. I think you and I would probably both agree with like you can't afford not to not take that risk weirdly enough because ultimately, you know, you're talking about competing now with companies that can do things potentially 90% less than you can. You know, where do they start? Like where is something to start where you can maybe mitigate some of the risk but still acknowledge to your point that this is completely iterable. Like you've got to continue to change and try things ultimately.

Dave Boyce: It's such a great question. Uh, I'm going to answer it on two levels. One is don't, don't bet the farm like, don't, don't take. This is not a student body left problem. Like, hey, stop. Everybody stop what you're doing. We're going to go, we're going to be an AI company. We've seen some of those mistakes out in the market and you know, we've had to retract like that. That's not the moment we're in. I like to think about the McKinsey, uh, three investment horizon model. I'm going to spend 70% of my time and effort and energy and management attention on the current business. Don't let go of that like, that's, that's paying your bills. I'm, um, going to spend 20% of my time and effort and energy and management attention on improving the current business. So that's incremental improvements. Right. And then I'm going to spend 10% of my time and energy investment and management attention on the moonshots, on the things that could change my business forever. So we can argue whether AI should fit in the 20 or the 10. Let's just assume it's just in the 10. Great. Just carve it out. It's 10%. Carve it out. But when you do make that investment and you are going for that moonshot, invest best and brightest resources. Because I guarantee that your competitor, the Humes of the world, have their very smartest people working every single day to take your cheese away from you. And if you say, okay, cool, I'll fight them with my JV team, ain't going to happen. So you do. Even though it's only 10% of the total count, it's an, it's a concentration of best and brightest to go future proof your business and go figure this out to now within that 10, you can run really fast and you can make mistakes. And as long as you're willing to call the balls and strikes and leave those mistakes in the rearview mirror and go on to the next one, go on the next one and automate in your wake for the ones that work. You will make progress even with a small team, five or six people in that 10% allocation, you'll make real progress. Now the question is, well, where do I aim them? I think that's the second thing. Where do I aim them? In an existing business, my advice is always, um, aim them somewhere close to home. Like, don't say, hey, you know what, we're a world champion soccer team, but the future is all cricket. So we're going to take 10% of our best and brightest and we're going to learn how to play cricket. No, uh, don't do that, don't do that. Like, do, do something like indoor soccer, like super related. You just have to learn how to play off the walls. You know, you got, it's a higher speed game. It's, it's a. But it's a related game. The skills that you have, the market that you have, the brand that you have, the motion, the product that you have is all going to work for you. So do a close to home game. And if I were doing it and I were really thinking about automation, Jesse, um, and I, and this is from my PLG background, I'd want to automate something that I can get really quick benefit out of. And a really easy thing to think about is renewals. So now maybe you're already automating your renewals, but if you have something, if you don't have click to accept terms on renewals and you're actually inserting a human to have a conversation to literally just extend the contract, the terms of which are already in place, the configuration of which is already in place, the pricing of which is already in place, and you're spending a human conversation there. See if you can automate that. Well, hang on a second. The CRO wants to talk to every renewal because every renewal is a potential expansion. I got it. But really everyone, not just 20% of them and the other 80%, can go on their own. Not just the big ones and the small ones can go on their own. Oh, that's a good point. So just see if you can do renewals. Ah. Or see if you can do expansions, which is just a, you know, an amped up version of renewal. I'm adding seats, adding locations, adding servers, whatever. There's some really close to home home games where you can get feet under you on this. Um, and then you'll get addicted and then you'll be looking for everywhere that you can automate across your entire bow tie.

Jesse Morris: I love the way you, you structure that, Dave, in the sense of, hey, you don't have to go all in on this. It's, let's carve a portion out and it's really best practices. I'm actually really curious. You work with a lot of companies and I can, you know, I can speak from my experience working in SaaS and how little like it's, it's funny, I think you think that even the big companies you think are going to have perfect systems and all these, you know, processes dialed in and AI, they're all doing AI and What I'm finding is, you know, actually still very few are doing it. I'd be curious, you know, when you think about the McKinsey model and even that 10% out of the companies you guys see on a regular basis, what percent would you even say are putting 10% towards the innovation side? Not to your point. It could be, I think it's probably, it should be 30% at this point. But that's, it's because zero point even to make it better. Renewals would be one of those things as well, right?

Jesse Morris: Yeah.

Jesse Morris: I'd be curious on your end, what does that look like?

Dave Boyce: It's, it's wild. Uh, my, I don't think my experience is different than yours. You know the story you told about, you know, we think it's cooling off, we're going to sit it out for six months. I don't hear it in that stark of terms. But our, our ideal customer profile starts at 50 million and ARR goes up to 2 billion. Okay, cool. So those are, those are legit established scaling companies, many of them. Rule of 40, rule of 50, rule of 60. We've even worked with some rules of 70. Plus it is very easy when you're in that spot to say now we got it, we got it. We own our space. We're the biggest brand, we're the biggest company. We got a rule of 70. We're owned by a PE firm. Like we got it. Yeah, you got it till you ain't got it. Um, and then you say, and then, and then, you know, I'll talk to them about this, you know, 70, uh, 2010 model and let's, let's at least invest 10% and they'll be like, like you are. Yes, let's do that. Absolutely. But then the law of diminishing kind of commitment kind of kicks in and they just, and they few of them get to it. To be honest. There are some very aggressive pen owners that are forcing, kind of forcing teams and some very forward looking CEOs that are forcing teams into the future. And I have a ton of respect for that because they're on the fast train, but most of them are just not getting around to it because they're sitting on a rule of 60 company. They think everything's great. And one of the justifications that we give ourselves and I can tell you this because I've given it to myself in the past and it is, is fraught is oh yeah, I know there's a competitor that's doing it differently and they're automated but They've got a tiny little solution. It's kind of a toy. It's not nearly as big as ours. And by the way, if they end up getting big enough, we'll purchase them. Because I'm, because I'm the 800 pound gorilla. You will not purchase them. One more fundraise and they're going to be worth more than you. Literally one more fundraise. Because they're selling hopes and dreams. You're selling true metrics. They're getting a billion dollar valuation. You have a billion dollar valuation. Wait a second, they're so much smaller than me. Yeah, but that's just how it works. And you can't trade your stock for their stock anymore. So now you're completely shut out. Not only did you not innovate yourself, but you can't buy innovation. You do not want to end up in that spot. You got to animate yourself.

Jesse Morris: One of the things you said I think is really, really important in this, so I'm just going to double click on it, is all around this idea of like in action. Because I think a lot of people sit back and go, I'm just, you know, to your point, I'm just going to wait, I'm going to wait this thing out. I'm going to see how it plays out. Uh, I talked to a really multi, um, billion dollar company the other day and I'm super thankful they took the meeting with me. You know, we're small fish, you know, to them and I was really trying to get a sense of like what, how, how close are we to playing in big enterprise? And you know, it was interesting because I, I said to him, you know, how many develop, what's your size, your development team? So I have a, I have a development team of four right now. Right. So I've developed him before. He said, I have 2,000 full time developers and 2,000 contract developers. So 4,000 developers. I said great. What are you guys doing today with A.I. uh, well, we haven't released anything yet. Okay, cool. Like, so what's on the roadmap? Well, we're probably going to release something in the next one, two years. He's like, I know that might sound slow to you, but like when we come out with something we want it to be really good. You know, like that was the, the interesting statement. And they're to your point, they're the 800 pound gorilla. They kind of dominate the market they're in. Um, I don't want to knock him at all because I mean it took a lot to get there. I think what's fascinating though is again you look at the rate of change right now, one to two years. I think about what's happened in six months even, uh, you know, since I started this thing, you know, that rate of change, I'm like every day I feel like I'm getting up, like, oh my gosh, this, I mean the Gemini thing this last week, people don't fully understand I think what just happened even with that. But you know, even that just shifted the industry some more. And so when you, when you think about these multi billion dollar companies, but even the 100, 100 million, which is still a very respectable business, you know, the, the people that are sitting back going, well, I mean you and I both see it, probably 10% are on this forward leaning edge and really going to do that. So these other companies are going, I'm going to wait, what do you see? You know, what are the things that you're thinking and kind of leaning on those other companies to start, hey, look, understand the ramifications of inaction.

Dave Boyce: Yeah, it, so here's something that people do understand, Jesse. Um, data model and process definition. Like, because that can support my current business. Like everybody thinks their data sucks. You say, hey, so here's, here's a fictitious, um, here's a role play. It's not fictitious, it's actually real. But here's a role play. Um, what's your ARR right now? 150 million. Got it. Okay, what do you want it to be a year from now? 170 million. Okay, that's cool. What's the likelihood that you'll hit it? Oh, you don't know. Oh, okay, well, blah, blah, blah. They'll say a bunch of words, but basically they don't know. They don't know because they can't see it. And you say, well, how good is your data? And they're like, oh, our data sucks. Like our data sucks. Like it's all over the map. Like we try to run forecasts. We're, you know, by how much do you hit your forecast? What about, so that's your bookings forecast. What about your overall revenue forecast? You should be able to know the percentage likelihood with which you hit $170 million ARR number on $150 million base because most of that is coming from renewals and expansion. And then the swing is going to be based on the capacity of your um, of your engine for landing new logos. You should have that all dialed in. Okay, so do I need a data model? Yes, I Need a data model. Okay, so let's get our arms around that. Is that automation? Not at all. But it is a precursor to automation. Yeah, it is a precursor automation. So we can layer some stuff in even for people who are old world minded. We can layer in a data model, layer in process definition, layer in an operating model. And then at some point we can say, oh, we could probably outsource pieces of this to robots. And now all of a sudden it seems more doable because their data's in place and their process is in place. Uh, we, that's how I, if I got somebody really dragging their heels, I'm um, I'm like, well then let's at least get the business that you're running right now fully visible and operational.

Jesse Morris: I love that starting point because you're right, the barriers lower. People understand that when we're thinking about, you know, barriers to, to change, to adopting automation, adopting these, you know, different, like product growth type of models, there's a lot of different reasons we could name, you know, as to why, you know, tech debt being probably a big part of it. Uh, just people resistant to change being another big one. I want to double click on the change piece. So the sales kickoff I got asked the keynote at. One of the main topics they asked me was to cover essentially like, how do I help their organization, like kind of settle the fears of these all the front, especially frontline associates scared of AI and taking their jobs and all this stuff. And I think even at the leadership level, because it's not just, you know, the front line, it's also leaders that have been doing things the same way for years and years and years.

Dave Boyce: Mhm.

Jesse Morris: When you think about that and you've, you've had to do a lot of this over your career and getting people through change management. It's the thing I always say with my, my role, I've always had to do a lot of like, what's the why that actually lands versus the why that sounds logical and creates resistance?

Dave Boyce: Ah, uh, that's a tough one, man. It's almost like, you know, the person's who gets on the train and the person who stays on the bench are just two dispositionally different people. You know, like for the person to get on the train, it's almost like all you got to do is say there's a train, oh cool, let me get on it. Like, it's like, you don't have to talk her into it. Uh, she's already one step in that direction. As soon as she sees the train Approaching and the person on the bench is just predisposed to like, you know, yeah, that looks a little risky. You know, I'm going to sit it out. So it's hard to convince people, honestly, like, um, it's hard to convince people. The best thing that I found is you. Let's say we're talking about organizational change, not human change, but organizational change. Go find the one or two or three humans. Let's just say even one human who's got courage and who is willing has got what I call pain, power and vision. So they're a leading actor, not a supporting actor. That means they own the pain. Okay? They own a number, they own a result. They own something. They've got power, meaning they can control some resources and they've got vision, meaning they're willing to use their power for good. Let's find that one person not to protect the status quo, but to move into the future. So go find the one person who's got that and let's just go create a little pod, uh, of jealousy, um, because that person is going to lead her little team into places that the rest of the organization can't even dream of because they're still sitting on the bench and as soon as they lift their head up and they're like, wait, why is she getting all that stuff? Cool, now I got a pulling motion. It's within my own organization. The excuses are gone and I can use that kind of momentum to pull people forward. We do this all the time with change management. We create a pull instead of a push. It's not an open wide and swallow hard on change and you'll all eventually like it. Like, that doesn't work. It's, let's find the innovators, let's get them over resourced, let's cheat in their favor to get them succeeding and then let's celebrate their successes. And then natural kind of jealousy and competition will kick in and everybody will want to do what they're doing.

Jesse Morris: I love that take. And it's, you know, it's, it's interesting because it doesn't sound very radical, but it's very unusual. Weirdly enough, like a lot of companies don't take that approach. They kind of, to your point, are pushing more than pulling. And it is interesting because it also goes against the, you know, the, the fairness, I think in all of us, like, wait a second, you're going to over resource. But I think one of the things to highlight in that is exactly what you said at the beginning and that is the Fact that intrinsically we've got different people. And if you're open minded and you're willing, you know, willing to essentially say, I don't know enough. I'm. I need to learn. I know we got to get better. I'm open to how we're going to go about doing that. Let's go. That's a very different attitude than this. Hey, I've been doing it the same. You know, I don't remember. I was, I was reading something or watching the other day where it talked about how like one of the worst phrases is like, well, that's how we've always done it. And it's, and it's funny. I never will forget, you know, I was one of the youngest, uh, executives at a company a couple of companies ago by a long shot, like 15 years younger than the next. And you know, and when I walked in and I started, you're one of

Dave Boyce: those innovators, like, with courage, like finish, and that's how you got there.

Jesse Morris: I like taking the risk. But so I remember I walked into this meeting and I was just curious, right? I was pretty new to the company and I, I've always been curious. So I just ask questions. It's just naturally what I do. And you know, right away it was the, you know, crossing of the arms and it was, well, this is how we've always done it. Uh, and I'll never forget that meeting because it was just so telling and it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It was actually a great learning moment because that's the reality of a lot of these organizations that we're working with is you always are going to have people like that within organizations. The nature of human behavior, when we think about, um, it's, yeah, it's, it's super hard. But you know, what I, what I do like about what you said is like, hey, at the same time, if we start selling not only empowering and kind, um, of cheating in their favor, but, but if we start celebrating the victories and the wins and we don't do it in a way that's like putting them up on the pedestal, but we're winning, right? That changes the tone and the momentum and this idea of like, oh, we've got, you know, winning begins winning. We talk about this a lot. You know, there's a reason probably why your, your company's name Winning by Design, you know, talk a little bit about that and how that can change culture.

Dave Boyce: Yeah, um, yeah, everyone loves to be part of a winning team. It's sort of like, but how do we get the winning to start? You know? Um, so in, you know, in your case, like, if I, let's say I were selling to you and your company three companies ago, where you're the youngest executive by 15 years, I'd probably attach to you, and I'd probably try to help you find the resources you need, maybe go up to your boss or your boss's boss and get them to see you through a different light and get them to give you, like, cheat in your favor a little bit, give you enough resources to go create like, a little pot of success, and then I'd cheat in your favor a little bit and give you, like, some extra help, and we'd create like, a little pot of success, and then we would indeed, um, celebrate those successes. So, um, now, now people are going to be jealous. Some of those arms folded. People are going to be like, well, we always did it this way. I don't know who he thinks he is to do it a new way. Like, I'm going to dig in. Fine. Those are the same. Those are the architects who never embraced, you know, the computer for drafting. And those are the, um, you know, those are the bucket whip, buggy whip manufacturers who never embraced, you know, the, uh, the modern automobile. Got it. Okay, that's fine. You know, hopefully they'll retire and be happy. But you're gonna, you're the one defining the future.

Jesse Morris: It's just.

Dave Boyce: It's just human psychology. And, um, I'm thinking of one of our clients right now who continually goes, like, continually goes into the future. And by the way, I've followed him to three different companies, and he is always the one who his, like his CEO always knows that he is the one with courage. He's the one not afraid to go into, uh, like, the battle zone. He's the one not afraid to take the initial arrows. He's the one not afraid to skin his knees, not afraid to break things, not afraid to kind of pick up the pieces. And guess what? That person, even when they come back from that really hard assignment bruised and broken and let's say even having failed, that person gets the next risky assignment too. Because the leadership already sees them as having courage. And everyone over there doesn't have courage. But that guy has courage. So let's see if he can make this succeed. And those people tend to cluster together. So you'll have the youngest ever executive with two really, really high potential proteges that report to her.

Jesse Morris: What?

Dave Boyce: Why is all the talent over there? It's because they're attracted to her because they see her courage and they relate to it all of a sudden like, like winning, winning begets winning. And then everybody, and then, and then that, that kind of little pot of success starts to grow and then everyone just wants to append themselves to it. That's just the way it works.

Jesse Morris: Well, my last question for today, we could keep going for a long time, um, is what's like if you had to give. We've talked a lot today about change, adoption of new technologies, pushing organizations forward. If you had to give a piece of advice to companies that maybe are listening to this, that maybe haven't jumped on the train yet. Um, and again, like to me it's not about necessarily jumping on the train. It's about continuing to add value and meet the needs and serving your clients ultimately and creating great cultures. Um, but when you think about that, like, what would be a piece of advice you'd give to somebody listening today that maybe is still sitting back, seeing the train go off, thinking about joint jumping on hasn't made up their mind, what would that piece of advice be?

Dave Boyce: So no shame at all. This is a no shame zone. Just start where you are. Like, I don't have a cloud account. Okay, cool. Let's get a cloud account. I don't know how to write prompts. Okay, cool. Let's listen to Jesse's, uh, masterclass on how to write prompts and let's practice it. I didn't know about a project. Okay, cool. Let's learn about a project that's all assistive AI. That's great. It's going to help you at your desk, do your job, you'll write better emails, you'll create better copy, whatever. Okay. It's going to speed you up. Got it. Fine. No shame. There's another level though, beyond that that would be more agentic. So now I want to actually kind of like hire robots to do pieces of my work. That'll be the next phase. Just know that that's coming and then there's going to be like orchestrative, like, you know, almost like a manager of agents orchestrating an entire end to end process. Then maybe it's even human and, and robot hybrid. Okay, cool. That's way down the road. Don't shame yourself for not being there. Just get started wherever you are, get something working and then start and then just leverage that success if you can. Kind of, you think about, um, fractal patterns in nature. You know, the small thing ladders up to something bigger, but it has the same pattern ladders up to something bigger that has the same pattern. Start wherever you are and start building that success in a way that's going to scale. Um, and it turns out that automation does scale. So if you can automate the small stuff, then move on to the medium stuff, then move on to the big stuff, you're going to be automating your entire kind of business. And the question you asked before, that I didn't answer. I know we're going to want to wrap up. Should I be afraid of this as a frontline employee, as a manager? No. Because guess what? We're automating. We're automating all the crap like uh, this Polish, uh, fiction writer named Joanna Misa Joski or something like that. Said, I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so I can do art and writing. I don't want AI to do my art and writing so I can do laundry and dishes. Same way in our life. I want AI to write my reports, to fill out my CRM, to write my notes, to do my follow ups. I want AI to do the discovery calls, the qualification. I want to be the human that does the exceptional stuff, that actually does that. You know, the courage inducing stuff, the um, stakeholder management stuff. Like I want to be strategic. I don't want to be a 40 year old who's still running discovery calls or doing rote demos over and over and over again. Let the robot do that. I want to get good. I want to move up into the human realm. That's what your career looks like if you can get AI working for you.

Jesse Morris: I love it and I love the idea of kind of starting where you're at. It's like the idea of, hey, I haven't worked out in a year. You're not going to go in the gym and go, you know, you might lift weights really hard for one day and then you're not going to be able to walk for three weeks and then you're not doing it anymore. Versus hey, I'm going to go in the gym and I'm just going to go get on the treadmill and walk for 10 minutes and then tomorrow I maybe walk 11 minutes and maybe I walk 11 minutes for two weeks and then I walk, you know, 13 minutes next time. But this idea of, you know, continual progression versus again, you know, it's like start at least moving towards the train even if you don't want to jump on the train yet. It's, you know, that's that kind of visual. So I love that.

Dave Boyce: Absolutely. I love it. Jesse.

Jesse Morris: Well, Dave, thanks so much for joining. Uh, for those of you listening, if you aren't following Dave, you can follow him on LinkedIn. Um, and also, obviously Winning by Design as well. Those of you, uh, on the podcast, feel free to hit like and subscribe. But, Dave, thanks again for joining the day, man. Great, great conversation.

Dave Boyce: Thank you, bro.