The CRO Spotlight Podcast

Warren Zenna: Hello, this is Warren Zenna, the founder of the CRO Collective and welcome to the CRO Spotlight Podcast. Today I am really excited to have Coach K [00:01:00] here. You know, Jonathan and I worked together briefly. Thank you very much because, you know, when we started doing our CRO round tables, Momentum, which is a company that I became really attracted to in terms of what they talked about. And we did some work together, partnership related stuff, and then things just kind of took off for them over there and now it's really fascinating. So I thought what a good time to bring Jonathan on and talk a bit. So welcome.
Jonathan M K.: Warren as always my pleasure. Thanks for having me and thanks for everyone listening in. I appreciate it.
Warren Zenna: Yeah, sure. So tell us about yourself. Like, give us the whole thing. We got time. Who are you? Where'd you come from? How'd you end up where you are today? Yeah.
Jonathan M K.: It's funny. I always ask my guests the same thing on my podcast and it's like, oh, what do I say this
Warren Zenna: In the hot seat now.
Jonathan M K.: I'm in the hot seat, so I'll give you the briefer version. So I was in sales for a long time. My dad owned a tire mechanic shop in Idaho Falls, and I grew up busting farm tires and going out to the fields and fixing tires, and then I transitioned to selling and then I ran the store for a while because my dad had some health issues and so I was [00:02:00] running the store. And learned a lot about sales and business as a result and decided that I loved it so much that I wanted to dig in. So I went to my schooling for that. I traveled all over when I was single, just doing crazy things like living in Nashville, Tennessee, doing music. And during the night I would play music and during the day I would sell stuff. So my career for years was selling. In fact, my very first quota carrying role was selling Yellow Pages in Salt Lake City back in 2007. And it was, as you know, an enjoyable experience, especially because it was then that I learned my assignments were a certain patch of Salt Lake and then they didn't have anything like enterprise, mid-market, whatever you just had, whatever your patch was. So if it was in the corner of Salt Lake and it was an enterprise, it was mine or if it was a small business. So I learned a lot because I interacted with a lot of different people. And anyways, that's why I also learned that I didn't want to sell anything I didn't believe in. Because that was also when Google Ads was coming out back then and the internet was breaking through, and [00:03:00] I was thinking to myself, I'm like, it's so much cheaper and so much better than the internet. Why are people buying Yellow Pages?
Warren Zenna: Yeah.
Jonathan M K.: Anyways, and so for the next 10 years sold random things, insurance, cars, tires, obviously events, all sorts of things. And then I transitioned. I was Franklin Covey and I transitioned from sales to consulting and really got my teeth cut on enablement because that's what Franklin Covey does. And then from there, I've only been in enablement in rev ops, so I did enable rev ops for the last, oh gosh, 10, 12 years. And about five years ago is when I started with AI because the company I was with bought an AI technology that was out of India. And my job was to enable both the customers and team on what the heck AI was and all this stuff. And I learned from him. I was not the AI expert, I was just the enablement guy. And he was on some team that was like on the blue team, red team for OpenAI doing GPT-1 and GPT-2 and giving feedback. So when 3.5 came out in November 22, he was like, you need to go sign up and go play. And so I, with the rest of the planet signed up for OpenAI [00:04:00] and then had fun playing with it. And I realized really quickly that people weren't using it the way that, again, he taught me and how I think about it as an enablement person. Because as you well know now, like AI needs context to really have good responses. And as a trainer, that's how I think is in context. So anyways. I launched the Academy a month after that happened. I've had 10,000 people plus go through in the last three years I've advised I don't know how many companies, both in AI or GTM as a result. I've worked at several different places. The last one was, I was the VP of GTM Strategy and Marketing at Momentum, which is an AI orchestration platform. They got bought out by Salesforce, which is a really cool story we can get into if you want to. And then I just recently started as the VP of marketing at 1mind, which is an AI agent platform for companies. So I'm deep in the space, love it. I geek out on it. Live, breathe, eat, teach, talk, sell, play with AI all the time. Yeah.
Warren Zenna: It's amazing. Well, thank you. It's great. So it's a really cool [00:05:00] story. So, you know, you and I are, some things in common. You know, I started out the same way. I sold all kinds of stuff. I was selling door to door advertising and all kinds of things. And then I, we were probably relatively close to the same age. Because I got hit with the same technological wave and jumped into it too and sold all that stuff. It was a pretty cool thing to be able to say this. But, you know, the music thing, you know, I was a professional actor for a while while I was doing this stuff and it was really
Jonathan M K.: I didn't know that.
Warren Zenna: Yeah, and
Jonathan M K.: Were you in movies? Are you famous? And I don't know
Warren Zenna: Well I had a couple of things I did, but they were a long time ago. You know, it's funny. The things that I did, for some reason, I can't freaking find them. They weren't, I didn't do any movies, but I did. So I did a couple national commercials and then I did a small thing, which was really cool. MTV, I'm sorry. No, I did an MTV commercial. No, HBO was early back then. It was still early. What they were doing is they were experimenting, as you know, these production companies, they get budgets to do all sort of stuff, and they wanted to create a comedy ensemble [00:06:00] where they just have lecture, like more like on film as opposed to being like a TV studio, like the same people that would just keep doing weird skits and stuff. And I was in this troupe and we did all these really cool skits, and then they shot two or three of them, and then they, but they weren't. So like, it didn't get from the pilot, but it was really fun anyway. So, but you could, you know, you did a lot of like songwriting and stuff, you know, you did a stint of like zen of songwriting at recovery centers and stuff. I'd love to hear more about this. You know, you wrote this article, "You suck, give up," and I'd love to hear a bit more about that's really interesting. And I love that kind of thing. I think it's really neat. You know, I'd like to hear more about what that was about.
Jonathan M K.: Yeah. This is, it's funny you bring up, I wrote that article a long time
Warren Zenna: Yeah. 2017. Yeah.
Jonathan M K.: 2017 is a long time ago. I've never had anyone ask me that on a podcast, so I appreciate you asking. So originally I wanted to go into music and either become a professional musician. So I,
Warren Zenna: What did you, what were you a singer and were you a [00:07:00] guitar player? What was your thing?
Jonathan M K.: I
Warren Zenna: Me too. How
Jonathan M K.: And then sing. So I have songs on Fox Sports and NFL football and the songs, just so you know, they're not like the main ones. It's literally the 20 seconds in between the game and commercial transition. That's my music or some of it is.
Warren Zenna: I understand that's great shit. Yeah.
Jonathan M K.: Yeah, it was a lot of fun and so I performed a lot. But at one time I was thinking about, this is a really long story, I'll try to make it short. I was
Warren Zenna: That's okay.
Jonathan M K.: In this mode where I was a life coach. So part of what I did is I did life coaching and I did music and I sold. So selling is my main income to make things come by and I'd still do things like health coaching and emotional health coaching, that kind of thing. I was deep in the space because my original thing I wanted to do after college was being a life coach. Because I wanted to help people become better and have more success. And I'm obsessed with self-development books and thinking positive and being optimistic, all that kind of stuff. So I found [00:08:00] this world that existed, that was this music therapy world where people use songwriting as a way to help people recover from addictions. And I was like, that's cool. So I did it as an experiment once where I did it for a friend and then she told another friend about it. And then soon I was on this circuit where all I did was go around and I taught people how to write music to deal with addictions and grief and trauma and all this kind of stuff. It was so much fun.
Warren Zenna: Amazing.
Jonathan M K.: I wish we would've had it now, because now you have all these AI tools to make music. We could have had so much fun, but you'd be amazed at how some basic songwriting stuff can allow someone the space to get out things that they usually wouldn't have talked about, you know? So
Warren Zenna: Absolutely. I mute.
Jonathan M K.: I got a lot out of that, but tell me you,
Warren Zenna: No, I just love it because I, you have a lot, real lot in common. It's really pretty cool. It's good to know because I was involved in a lot of, I wasn't more, I wasn't necessarily life coaching, but I did [00:09:00] so much of this. I looked at business consulting, which I still do, quite frankly, as really, it's no different than it's holistic. I mean, the way you approach your business is your personality there. You know, it's not like a piece of you, it's all of you in there, you know? And you know, if you fix up your business life, you have to fix up the rest of your life to be good at your business life. It's just a reality, you know? And people try to compartmentalize this stuff, and it's just not possible. So, you know, if you're having problems at home, if you're having problems with your kids, it's really hard to bring your best to work and vice versa, you know? And so, you know, I look at things that way. So when I'm, I don't necessarily, well, I am pretty blunt now. I've gotten kind of blunt, but you know, like when I'm speaking to people, I can see, I can sense these things pretty quickly. I have an extra empathetic personality, and I can sense when someone is being driven by stuff that's going on that has nothing to do with what we're talking about. And if you can get underneath that stuff, you can have a much better conversation, a much better relationship. And [00:10:00] you can be helpful to people just by listening to them and understanding what they're really saying as opposed to what's coming out of their mouth. And, you know, I think about this a lot, you know, and so when you're talking about these things, plus, I agree with you. Music is sort of like a, it's unique in that there's no other creatures on the planet that make music like harmonies and melodies and rhythms and, you know, can create them. It's a really fascinating way our brains work and when people make music together, it's a form of communication and cooperation and collaboration that's very unique. And also, it's kind of hypnotic. I mean, you can listen to certain music and it makes you feel a certain way. It can put you in very specific moods. And there's things about the frequencies and stuff. And I don't wanna get too kind of crazy, but I love music very much. And so I think about these things. So when I'm with musicians, I get kind of nuts. Because I have a lot of really close friends who are really amazing
Jonathan M K.: I'm with you. The whole frequency thing is like,
Warren Zenna: It is everything. It's
Jonathan M K.: It's the whole quantum physics, metaphysics, [00:11:00] frequency healing stuff that is so cool. Like I could talk about
Warren Zenna: Reading about this a lot right now. I actually put these frequencies on now when I'm in bed at night. And, you know, I tell you, it really, it does. Your brain likes it, you know, you know, another thing too. I've been thinking about it a lot lately, you know, as we get older, our attenuation gets better. Like we start to understand why it is that we don't work with certain people? Well, we tend to blame ourselves as we get younger. We're like, oh, you know, we didn't get along or we had a disagreement. But I realize most of it is just, there's, I think there's like, sort of like, maybe I'll be simplified. It's like three frequencies. There's a frequency that's incompatible, like some people you talk to that it doesn't matter how much you're on the same page, it's just you're incompatible.
Jonathan M K.: Click. Yeah.
Warren Zenna: Can't, you know, it's just, there's no flow. The energy and then there's compatibility where you can really get along with someone. You can circulate communication and then there's an accelerant. There are some people that when the two of you work together, you become better because of it. Like there's a higher
Jonathan M K.: Love that. [00:12:00] I like it.
Warren Zenna: And I find that my baseline is compatibility, but my goal is accelerants. I want people around me that when I'm with them, I find I'm better because of that relationship. And I could feel it. I could tell I talk differently. I do things better. You know, there's just a way in which the energy is supporting a certain or stimulating a part of me that I don't know what it is. I can't explain it. I'm not God, you know, but it's really true and I think there is a musical component to this and I think that it's true. So people have a frequency, there's no doubt about that. And
Jonathan M K.: I call them soul pings. Anytime I have a conversation, I'm like, ping. It's like, you feel this connection, like there's something different here. You know? It's, yeah.
Warren Zenna: So it's cool. I mean, I like talking about this stuff. So let's talk a bit more about what you're doing now. So, I mean, I like you, I'm a nerd, you know, I like playing around with all this stuff. I'm always in the middle of all these tools and I've always done it, you know, I was frankly lucky enough to be involved when the iPhone came out and right at the beginning of that, [00:13:00] and even when Google was launched right at the beginning of that. And so I've always kind of grabbed onto these things and this AI is, you know, it's just amazing. And the stuff I'm doing on it right now, and I'm sure you're probably doing more. So I have some things like, so the thing I talked about before about you is that you've been the one who builds the machine so somebody else can run it. Like the person who has to go out and turn the machine into money. You're the person who helps to build it so that they're capable of running it. You know, it's a unique position to be in. One of the things I frequently talk about is this panda problem, which is, you know, pandas, when they're in captivity, they're really messed up. They don't mate, they don't socialize, they don't eat. Like it's really weird and they haven't figured it out. And they finally did. It took a long time. They realized it's not the panda, it's the environment that they're
Jonathan M K.: Right,
Warren Zenna: When they're in the wild, they're actually incredibly competent. And they mate and they eat and they're fine. And this is the conundrum of the chief revenue [00:14:00] officer, is that they're in an environment that isn't suitable for them. And it looks like they're incompetent, but in fact, if the environment were different, they'd be more successful. And the idea is to understand the environment that they need. You are the builder of the environment. That's how I view you. Right. So I mean,
Jonathan M K.: Oh, well that's very kind.
Warren Zenna: So well, you know, just your role, right? You've always been the one who sort of builds, you know, the systems and the machinery. So talk a bit more about that. Like, what is the functional sweet spot that you occupy when you're in a business and what is it that you're bringing to the organization?
Jonathan M K.: Yeah, it's a good question because I had my MBA marketing, I ran a product marketing team slash enablement team before Momentum, but I never really ran marketing before until I got to Momentum. And they gave me marketing and I had a blast, you know, but I think too much like a systems operator. That's how I think and inefficiencies and what's working, what doesn't work. And I don't jive well with just theory. Theory is great for an [00:15:00] extent, but I'm too much of an application. Practical. How do we actually do this type of view? The theoretical stuff doesn't jive with me very much. So when anyone comes in and says, theoretically you do this cool thing, AI my kk, theoretically you do a lot of things, but what do you actually do? Like how do you do that? You know? And most people don't have answers and I don't mind if someone doesn't have answers, but I wanna know, like, can you do that? Can you not? And can we try it, do we not? Like, it's just trying to figure out where you can put different things or not. So if Momentum is an example, I was probably 80% marketing. The other 20% was rev ops. And because I did all the monthly numbers for the board meetings, I did all the analysis on closed loss or reviews. I did a lot of the high level strategy of just figuring out what was going on. Because it helped me as a marketer understand what's right or wrong. So I can inform the market on how I did messaging and positioning, all this sort of stuff, but it serves two purposes. My personal opinion is you talk about environments, it's kinda like how was [00:16:00] it Einstein said that,
Warren Zenna: You can't fix a problem for the person's consciousness that made it can't be fixed. They can't. Yeah. It's very true. Very true.
Jonathan M K.: And the other thing of if someone expects a fish to climb a tree, they think it's an idiot. I'm like, the fish is never made for a tree. It's like this whole
Warren Zenna: Yeah.
Jonathan M K.: And then I've been thinking a lot this last, we just released the Ignite Book last November
Warren Zenna: Yep.
Jonathan M K.: And almost all 30 people who were in that book talked about some sort of system thinking. I realized I think a lot the same way, and I've been thinking about it a lot. People in the air systems think technological systems. I'm talking more, a little bit more ambiguous, about more philosophical ways of working jobs to be done. And I use the example of Michael Jordan. So Michael Jordan was obviously the best player in my opinion, and he is the best player who ever has been so far. And he went to the Bulls before and they never could get to the finals because the coach at the time built the system around him instead of complimenting or accentuating him. Phil [00:17:00] Jackson comes in and does the 3, 3, 3 model, which is a totally different system that doesn't ignore Michael, but doesn't depend on Michael. And they go and win six championships. You know what I mean? It's like you have an incredibly talented individual in a bad system, or I shouldn't say a system that's not really designed for them. They can never hit the championship. But once you have that system that's designed well, then they thrive and you bring all this other talent. So I think about revenue teams in the same way. So like whether it's the buying process or sales process or tech systems and AI, it's like what's the end in mind? Where are we trying to go? Do we need all the frivolous shenanigans that get in the way? Do we need that? Do we not need that? And being willing to push against the status quo. Because a lot of times the CEOs I've worked with have either been so connected to what they've done in the last five companies. I'm like, we can't do that again. I know you've had success before, but especially now, we can't do it that way anymore. You know? It's just someone's willingness to think differently and to expand their repertoire of what can happen. [00:18:00] Because I don't have all the answers either, you know? So. Yeah.
Warren Zenna: Hey everyone. I wanna thank you again for listening. Get great comments across LinkedIn and other channels about the show, and it's really gratifying to see that we're having an impact on you. Another thing I wanted to let everybody know is that we also produce events. About two and a half years ago, we started the CRO round tables. Predicated on the idea that, well, two premises. One is that CROs are looking for other CROs to talk to, which is really true. It's a very lonely job. And how do we get a bunch of CROs in a room where they're not being, let's say, disintermediated by panel discussions and sponsorship events and demos and stuff, and really give them a chance to talk to each other. So we created a round table event. Essentially that it's [00:19:00] a three and a half, four hour discussion between 20 and 30 chief revenue officers. And these are amazing events. The format took off, people love them, and I get requests all the time as to when is your next CRO event. So, to that end, I just wanna let y'all know that we have a number of the roundtables coming up over the next year, over the next like 2026. And I wanna share them with you so you can, if they're in your market, you can come. So the next one we're having is gonna be in London, actually in February, February 24th in London. So if you happen to be a Chief Revenue Officer in the UK or even in Europe and you wanna come by, you'll be hearing about it more on my website and LinkedIn. But early on your calendar. And then following that, we're probably gonna be doing an event in San Francisco in March. There's gonna be one in New York in March. I'm gonna do another one in Chicago probably in April. And then I'm gonna do an event [00:20:00] in Boston. I'll do an event in Atlanta. I'm gonna do an event in Salt Lake City. I'm gonna do an event in Austin and I'm gonna do an event in Los Angeles or the Southern California area. So those dates are to be determined, but they'll be going across all next year. And these events are taking on huge momentum. They're the place to be if you're a chief revenue officer and you want to be in a room with no interruptions and have an opportunity to really share with each other in a sort of a private and confidential open discussion about everything that you wanted to talk about as a Chief Revenue Officer and collaborate with great people. So thank you and thanks for supporting the show and look forward to seeing you at the events. No, thank you. Because it's a perfect segue into what I wanted to get into with you, which was this whole idea of systems. You know, the CRO Collective sort of evolved as most things do, right? It went from a function, which it still is. I mean, there is obviously at the core of it, there's a person who has a job and that [00:21:00] job has definitions and scope, et cetera. But then it came about the company that manages that person and how that person's like authorities and scope. But then it really evolved into what we just talked about, which is the system that they inherit. So when a CRO comes into a business, they inherit the system that is there, right? And then their job is to, well, what the way it usually works and the way, the reason it doesn't work a lot is because they're hired to operate the system that they're inheriting as opposed to being hired to change, fix and build the system that is needed. You know, and the Michael Jordan analogy is great. I mean, if Michael had the wherewithal, and maybe he did, maybe he went to Phil and said, look, I need a system like this and I'll play better, but it's possible that he was a great coach and he saw that without being told. But the CRO does need to advocate. They need to go in and say, the system I need is the one that I need to build. I need to understand your organization and build a system that works. And if you don't have the organizational maturity, let's say organizational [00:22:00] latitude, the mindset, what they're gonna try and do is just impose the system they have on you and say, we hope you fit in here. Right? As opposed to you bringing some operational expertise and saying, no, the system we need is different than this one and give me the license to build it. And number two, you have to then also have the competencies to do that. So you know, this is sort of like a two-way street, right? We'll give you the keys, but you need to know how to drive. Right. And so I'm curious, like your thoughts on how that is, because what you just described is great. It's like you are the person who sort of sees the bigger operational picture. Are you the partner to the CRO or are you pulling the strings and then you bring, like what's your relationship to the, yeah. Okay.
Jonathan M K.: Yeah, usually. And to be fair, I've worked with some amazing CROs who were the change agents, and I was the one learning from them. And other
Warren Zenna: Sure.
Jonathan M K.: It was people coming in who had a hard time, and I was one kind of saying, I'm here to help you change, but we have to work on these [00:23:00] basic principles. You know? Because a lot of times they're glorified VP of sales who have never run a CRO org and they have no idea what they're doing. And it's no offense to them, it's just they don't know. They don't know. It's not like I think they're dumb. I just think they're put in a spot, they're doing their best to fit the role, you know? So for the most part, I become kind of like, I always tell CROs, I'm like, think of me as your internal McKinsey analyst that I'm gonna go through and be honest about what I'm seeing, but I'm also the person who's not just analyzing, but I can go fix it. So let's analyze it. Let's figure out where to go, figure out really what the problem is and let's fine tune it, get some feedback, make sure the obviously the metrics are changing when they do tweak the next thing. It's like always continually going back and forth, which I love with AI. Because you can do that really quickly. Now, in the past five years ago, it was very hard to do this because it took nine months to do that and that's half of an average tenure of a CRO. Whereas now you can get a good [00:24:00] feedback mechanism depending on the sales cycle within a quarter. So within, and that's like long, I can get in 60 days depending on some of the enterprise motions, we could get some really good results in 60 days. It just is required for someone to know ahead of time what they're looking for, instead of just throwing things at the problem saying, I think this is gonna work and that doesn't, because then you're just guessing and I don't like doing that.
Warren Zenna: Yeah, I got it. You need data that you can analyze and enterprise motions have a lot of it. You know, if you're working at a smaller business, let's say it's like a 25, $30 million business, like what do you do when you don't have enough data to make that short-term analysis? Is it just you have to wait or is there ways you can accelerate it? What would you do, because most of the people I'm working with are trying to jump from the 50 to a hundred, that's their big thing.
Jonathan M K.: Yeah, it's not an easy discussion. Like when you listen to the pros in the field that have done this, like for Kyle Norton's a classic example. The first thing he talks about is getting your data structure correct. And I would agree, because you can't [00:25:00] do a lot with AI optimization or AI transformation if you don't have the data. Because that's what AI feeds off of. And then to make intelligent decisions, you can't do that either. So I would say you gotta get your house in order. It's like building the foundation. You can't build this massive skyscraper or even build a plane, whatever concept you wanna compare it to. You can't do that without the fundamental skeleton of what's happening. That skeleton is data, but the challenge is that's one side of the pie. The other side is all the things that make up your system, like your process and the handoffs and what are the humans doing inside the process and where do the break offs happen and what do the customers think? Like it's that more subjective human side. And then there's the technological data side that most people don't deep dive into either. They just throw people to the problem and hope for the best and do some sales training here and there and think that that's gonna answer the problems and it doesn't. Because it's not a training problem, it's a systems problem. Does that make sense? It's like, I can train a fish to climb a tree better, but that's not gonna solve the problem.
Warren Zenna: Right. That's right. It's still a fish that shouldn't [00:26:00] climb trees, right? Yeah, exactly.
Jonathan M K.: Exactly.
Warren Zenna: Yeah. And I think we're doing that too often. I think we're trying to make systems do things they shouldn't or people do things they shouldn't instead of just changing the system and finding people that are perfectly
Jonathan M K.: Yeah, exactly. Well, and you tell me like there's, I'm assuming no agreed upon methodology of CRO systems that exist that people can go to, oh, you're using the MEDDPICC CRO thing. Are you using it? Sounds like that doesn't exist. There's nothing. Right.
Warren Zenna: No.
Jonathan M K.: Yeah. So it's chaos.
Warren Zenna: It is with, yeah, you have to come in with an architect mindset. It's a weird situation, right? Because most architects, most anyway, are looking at a flat piece of ground and they're gonna construct something from the ground up, right? But you're not in that situation unless you start from day one. And most of the time you're not gonna last until long. You're probably gonna be out of there then after 10 million anyway. So, you know, if you're really coming in at a point at which it's, it's a really weird job because it's a great job, but you can't really be effective until there's enough complexity for [00:27:00] you to work on. And that complexity is your worst enemy if you're not given the authority to do anything about it. And this is what
Jonathan M K.: Right, right.
Warren Zenna: So what we're doing is we're working on this, like fixing that. But to your question, if I'm a CRO and I'm coming into a situation like this and you know, you'd be a great person to have at the company, I'd be, thank God I got someone like this there who kind of can think this way and can help me build stuff. That doesn't always happen. You know, you get a lot of people who are more like they're practitioners and they just sort of put their head down. They work on what's in front of them. And what they're doing is they're all busy trying to make the fish climb a tree. That's what they're doing all day. As opposed to saying, you know, why are we doing this? Like, get rid of this damn fish. And so the CRO needs to come in and say, all right, like you just said, what's my framework for analysis? How do I look at a business with fresh eyes? Because I'm a new person here? And determine based on the commercial model, the customer, the motions. Is it a product, is it a service? Whatever the case may be, what's the right system that's needed for this business to run profitably at the unit metrics that we have for the business [00:28:00] and all that stuff. And then do an analysis of the organization in a good way. You need to have a process for that, like you already mentioned. And then have a tool with which you can get the right answers. Because sometimes, you know, you get bad answers and then you have bad outcomes, right?
Jonathan M K.: Right.
Warren Zenna: Because I agree with you, you're right, the data needs to be the baseline. So that's the first thing that you do. So all the things I'm saying are a process, but they're not the outcomes. You have to be willing to say this particular MEDDPICC thing, you guys like, it won't work here so we can't use it. It's just not right for this place. I know you like it Steve because you worked with it for 20 years and you could talk about it, but it's not the right system for this company and we gotta use this one and you need an organization that's gonna go, okay, you know, I'm uncomfortable with that. But we hired an expert and went ahead and built a system that's gonna make it work. And if you have that, then you have a great situation, but most don't. And they have to figure out ways to manage those compromises and those sacred cows to figure out how to make it work. And that's why many times CROs don't last long is because they don't, [00:29:00] what happens is without them having that authority, they just get measured on quarters. And when you're measured on quarters, you make all sorts
Jonathan M K.: Is tough.
Warren Zenna: That it's, it's really difficult.
Jonathan M K.: What's tough, I think that's the key problem is that they're trying to make longer term transformational change based
Warren Zenna: In short term, the short
Jonathan M K.: Like you can, you can see results in a quarter, but your strategy shouldn't be determined by quarters. That's a totally different
Warren Zenna: The quarterly view is a metric. It's not an outcome. It's like, okay, what happened this quarter? Okay, great. What does that mean? You know, as opposed to, did we hit our number this quarter? I mean, I understand. Believe me, you and I both come from sales. I completely respect the need to have a horizon when you're selling that people have something to shoot for, believe me. But that should be nothing more than a way to incentivize activity, not run the company. And I think that the problem is that you're using things that drive the ability to build coalitions around activity and turning it into an operating model. And that's not, they're not the same thing. [00:30:00] And I think a CRO needs to come in and say, look, hold on a second. I don't mind looking at the business quarterly. I'm gonna chop up the four pieces. We can do that. But these goals that we have, if our intent is to become a hundred million dollar business and then get acquired and we're only at 20, well, that's not gonna happen in quarters. You know, it's gonna happen in cycles. Right? And those cycles, we're gonna define them by how we run the business. And these are the constraints. I think particularly when you have a board and an investment group. Because they run their portfolios that way. That's the way that they manage across all their businesses. It's easier for them to just have a model and they run it across and they're trying to shove all these businesses into a similar system because it's easier for them to manage all of them.
Jonathan M K.: It's easy for them. Yeah.
Warren Zenna: Are they appropriate for that, you know? And so it's sort of like, you need to have some flexibility. And this is the problem we see. We see there's like, that latitude has to be disrupted by a CRO who knows how to come in and be an expert disruptor and knows how to do it with confidence. And that's not, it's a hard thing.
Jonathan M K.: It's not easy, especially when you've, like [00:31:00] you said that just came out, VP of sales and you're trying to figure out what to do and there's no solid framework, and you're like, what the hell? Yeah.
Warren Zenna: Yeah. Those people get thrown through the wolves. That happens all the time. So let's talk about, I'm gonna ask you a question, so it's a weird question. Do you think enablement deserves a seat at the revenue table? Like, is it a
Jonathan M K.: I'm probably the wrong person to ask because I definitely have opinions on this
Warren Zenna: Okay, good. That's why I heard it. Yeah.
Jonathan M K.: Yeah, I was disabled for years. I talked for this tooth, the enablement community. My answer is yes. However, the current state of enablement is not what I think should be at the table. It's what enablement was originally supposed to be, which is that internal analyst slash execution, like what I've described to you. That's what I think enablement is. It's the person who says, a win ratio is at 22%. We gotta get it to 25. Why is it doing that? And then create programs to fix it. Most places don't operate that way. They're glorified training or content engines, which is fine, but they have, like, I can't tell you how many [00:32:00] times I'll ask an enabling person, what's your sales cycle? What's your ACV, what's your revenue goals and how far are you from, and how do you know where you're going? And they're like, what's ACV? I'm like, what do you mean? What ACV? What are you talking about? Like,
Warren Zenna: What's CAC? Yeah. Right?
Jonathan M K.: What's CAC? It's like, oh my gosh. So it's gotten to a place which is our own fault, that it becomes a content creator in the corner, or a training mechanism that has little or no oversight or insight into what's happening. And it's just not doing it the right way. Now, the future, I've been saying this for three years, is that you need to have, like a, a forward deployed engineer, which we call a GTM engineer. But you gotta have that higher layer. So in the book, we call it an intelligence architect. You need someone who understands the business guts of the business and then can say, okay, we should put AI here, here, here, and here, and make sure it works the best. And then humans do this thing. But it requires knowledge of your buying process. And again, things like CAC and win ratio and all this other stuff that [00:33:00] you can know, where do you wanna move the dial? And then you can attach AI to ROI. Because you know what you're supposed to be hitting in the first place, you know, but people look at it too, either siloed or it's like, how do I get AI to help me make a deck faster? I'm like, I don't care about making decks faster. I care about getting a win ratio up to 25 to 40%, or whatever the case is. You know what I mean? That's what I care about. But we're looking at too small of things from an enable point of view.
Warren Zenna: Thanks again for listening to the CRO Spotlight Podcast. We're excited about all the great guests we have, and more importantly, we're excited mostly about you for being avid listeners and supporting the work that we do here. Feel free, please to share, like podcasts with any of your colleagues. We just think there's a great wealth of information here and we wanna get the word out to as many people as possible and your support of the show is really appreciated. I wanted to share information about a program that we offer called the CRO Masters Council. The CRO Masters Council is a bi-monthly group of six seasoned chief revenue officers who are looking for a chief revenue officer [00:34:00] board of directors, so to speak, so that they could share what's going on with them. Collaborate with ideas, get some feedback on what's going on in their current role. And these are great conversations. I facilitate them. The CRO Masters councils, again, they're twice a month and they last for at least six months to a year. So if you're interested in having your own CRO suite, your own board of directors of Chief Revenue Officers, it's a private, confidential conversation that we have, it's infinitely useful. Imagine having a room full of other Chief Revenue officers you can talk to and say, hey, I'm working on this, or have you guys figured that out? Or I'm having this issue right now with my business or my results. These are just invaluable conversations with Chief Revenue officers. Chief Revenue Officers have a very, very unique role. It's a very lonely job, and only other CROs understand what you're going through. So that's why we created this program. So if you're interested in being a member of the next CRO Master's Council, which we have a number of them being put together right now, just go to my LinkedIn and DM me Masters or Master's council and I'll follow up with you and set up a [00:35:00] call or send you some more information about it. Looking forward to seeing you there and thank you. I'm in agreement with you. I know it does, and it's a really good point you make, which I do agree that, you know, like many roles, I think it's weird, you know, when you don't have guardrails on a role or a steering committee on a role, it's easy for over time that role to just turn into something different and like, it's not what it originally was intended for. It happens all the time. And I agree. Like I, first there was sales enablement and then there's revenue enablement. I would be curious to know what you view as the distinction between those two things. I obviously have an opinion on it. I mean, just if you look at the sales enablement world and the revenue enablement world, are they just the same with a different name or is it a different animal?
Jonathan M K.: The way I describe it is that revenue is just as concerned about the customer journey than it is the seller's journey. So it's like, what's the buyer going through and how can I enable that? And then it's also across the entire GTM function. So it's like, not just sales, but sales CS partners. Whatever. It's like I'm [00:36:00] trying to enable the entire revenue org. I personally think that enablement or rev ops both need to have that holistic view across the organization. So you can see like, again, where are the holes? Is it the partner program? Is it CS? How does CS affect sales? How does sales affect CS? How's all that affect marketing? Like I was that middle person in the past where I had to go communicate to marketing what just happened on the last sales call. Because marketing didn't have time to go watch the sales call and I was just there, you know,
Warren Zenna: Mm-hmm.
Jonathan M K.: I became that. I became that person saying, hey, I just heard this on a call. This is the fifth time I've heard this thing. We need to do some marketing on this. Whatever pitch. The cool thing now is that all that can be done with AI. Like that's exactly what Momentum does. Now I can automate all of it, which is super nice. Like I always compare, my comparison is, if you think about the revenue org as the Hunger Games, the CRO in my opinion is the emperor and the enablement person is the game maker. So you don't really see them, but they control the environment. That happens so that people again can, instead of me trying to kill people with crazy wolves, [00:37:00] I'm trying to create an environment where people can succeed and understand what's happening in the game to make it so they can win. But there's a, again, a lot of times enablement's not given the authority to do that. Because sometimes it's things like incentives that enablement has nothing to do with that is the trigger to get performance to change. And sometimes it's something else, it's, you just need to rethink, are we getting out of this function what we need? Call enabler or not? Who cares? Let's call performance AI, whatever person. But that CRO needs that person who understands the game so they can equip their team in a way so that the environment and the systems and everything in the game is conducive for them to win. Because then I can take mediocre players, put them in a good system and they'll be kick ass. Or I could put a good player like Michael Jordan in a bad system and I won't win. So like, I gotta be, I gotta have someone who has a pulse on that while I'm running the rest of the freaking org to make sure things are running well, you know?
Warren Zenna: I love it. You know, I'm curious, do you see Rev operations? What's the [00:38:00] relationship between revenue operations and revenue enablement?
Jonathan M K.: Current state enablement usually reports to rev ops. Rev ops is usually number two, and I believe the reason why is because of data. And rightfully so. Like most rev ops people I know are incredibly smart. They're systems thinkers generally speaking, and they're more, I guess you could say process oriented. They're just a little bit more analytical. And AI, or enablement for the most part, are more kind of the fluffy feel good, do an SKO, make sure everyone's happy. Not that that's bad because you need those people, but that's kind of classically what you see is like analytical data systems, process, rev ops, SKO training, content, whatever, enablement, which I think is totally backwards.
Warren Zenna: Yeah, I agree. I've seen rev ops report to the CFO. It's very common. It's really
Jonathan M K.: It's, yeah, it's very
Warren Zenna: Nuts. It's nuts. It's almost like the CFO was there early and needed the metrics to put together his numbers, and [00:39:00] so he grabbed the rev ops person and said, you're my boy and you're gonna make my decks for me so I can present to the board. And that's it. It's, he's co-opted the entire, like, function to become like a financial advisor as opposed to an actual like, go to market. But, you know, I think it's a good point because I agree. I think that the rev ops person should report to the Chief Revenue Officer, and the enabler is an enabler of that rev ops organization, and it helps to push out the staff to the teams and make them, you know. So let's talk about AI for a sec. So I, we're, I'm in the middle of all these conversations, just like you. So right now I am like everybody else. I'm sure not, I'm not unique here. I'm in the middle of all these, you know, like I'm running these programs. Fact one is running right now as we're talking and, you know, I have all these really cool things I'm building. In fact, I'll even be really transparent.
Jonathan M K.: Yeah.
Warren Zenna: An agent created that, what it does for me, and I'm really proud of the way I built it. It takes a long time to do.
Jonathan M K.: You build it in in Claude, and
Warren Zenna: Built it. No, we [00:40:00] have a, we have this really weird, funky thing that we found. It's called Personal AI and it was developed by this cyber guy and he put it in GitHub and it's really incredible. Well, I'll talk you through it one day.
Jonathan M K.: Yeah. Yeah.
Warren Zenna: Anyway, so we use this thing and basically it runs on Claude's brain, but it uses every language that needs to, so it just fetches the model based on what it does. But the core central brain is Claude. So anyway, I created an agent team that I say launch the podcast agent inspection, whatever it's called, and it does an entire diagnostic on my guest with every single thing about them and all their points of view related to my point of view and my audience. And then it produces all these really great, provocative things based on what it is that I'm trying to, you know, talk about and
Jonathan M K.: Is that, that is how you get my article from that. Oh, that's crazy. That's cool.
Warren Zenna: So I [00:41:00] have all this cool stuff. I'll send this to you. In fact, I'm gonna share this with you. I'll send you the document,
Jonathan M K.: Yeah. Please.
Warren Zenna: Neat. So it's just, you'll, because you know, you and I are wonky, you'll look at this and you'll think, oh, this is pretty neat. But basically what it does is it sort of, it's designed to take your profile, your history, the content, your ideas, your thoughts, your points of view on all the stuff you've done, and then sort of mash it in with mine so that when I'm working with you in this conversation, I can see how we sit together and whether it's some disagreements or agreements, or whether there's opportunities to talk about things and is be a lot of cool insights about you that I could have done myself, but it did an amazing job. So I have these, I run these for everybody. And I think what I might do is like after I'm finished with every one of my guests from now on, I'll send this to them and say, here's my thing I did on you and take a look at it and you can
Jonathan M K.: Yeah. That'd be cool. I love it.
Warren Zenna: Sure. So there's that. Right? So, do you think, like, how do you define an agent today?
Jonathan M K.: Well, I could give you the technical [00:42:00] response to that, but let me give you what I think is happening. So there's, from the marketing point of view, for most users, it's on a spectrum. So some people call chat to your perplexity or whatever tool you want to use as an agent. When it's not. It's just you chatting with an LLM and it's calling back and forth and giving you token usage and giving you responses. To me, that's not an agent. Agents actually require agency and some sort of action so that you're able to do things. Now the cool thing is if anyone here listening has used Claude Cowork and created a bunch of skills, that is becoming more agents like, because it's doing things without you having to prompt every single step of the way, which is pretty cool. And like you said, agent teams is where if you've ever used a deep research product of any of the products, you're using an AI agent team who's going through who knows how many bajillion articles to then research whatever topic you're prompting for, and coming back with a really in-depth report on all these different stuff. You just don't, all you're doing is you're interacting [00:43:00] with one single chat, but you're talking to a team of AI agents doing things and coming back with one singular report, which is kind of cool. So the world we're
Warren Zenna: Let me make sure, I wanna get in the weeds a bit. I don't mind, if you don't mind, because I wanna make sure that you just said something that's important. It's like, what's that? In your view, what's the granular distinction that makes something an agent as opposed to it not? Is it because it's automated or it's operating independently of you? Is that what makes it more of an agent? Or if I ask something to do, do a task for me, I query one of these and I say, go do this for me. And then it goes and does it and it does it and it finishes it. Was that an agentic relationship that we just had or is that more like, it was a functional one where it did something for me until it finished it.
Jonathan M K.: Yeah, again, it's, that's why I put it on the spectrum. Because it kind of depends. Now if, like, for example, with Momentum, we were, our AI agents were more automated, meaning that they're based on a trigger and it took some responses. For example, I'd have an AI agent run on a [00:44:00] sales call and the AI agent would decide on a score and then feed that score into Salesforce, then could populate into some other dashboard or whatever the case might be. So the amount of control or agency I gave to that was very small. It's like you can do this numerical score and you can gimme this summary and that's the only thing you can decide on. Everything else is definitive to where you have to do it in this way with this thing and this signal, and that's it. So that control is very small. Now, when you think about what's happening with open Claude, this is why everyone's freaking out, is because it was based on the skill infrastructure to where it's trained on self-improving and doing things without being asked for from the point of view of self-improving. So like an example is the guy who made it talks about how he needed the AI to do something about consuming a voice note. He never trained it or gave it the ability to understand noises or audio, but the AI in the studio is an audio file, and it did its own thing to understand it, and then did the task that was [00:45:00] being asked for without being asked of building its own ability to understand the voice note. So it's getting to the point where AI is taking preemptive motions so that it can kind of understand like, okay, you have a call with a podcast person tomorrow. Not only I'm gonna do the research for you, but I'm gonna make sure they're, I'm gonna send an email off and make sure the calendar invites you there. And I started doing things kind of like an assistant of
Warren Zenna: Mm-hmm. Yep.
Jonathan M K.: And the next level is when you do more strategic, like things like, for example, thinking about a world where instead of a rev ops person doing a territory plan, it's an agent and that agent has access to personality profiles of your salespeople, has access to your ICP, has access to the third party signals and starts matching the right people with the right different places without ever asking, saying, I know you're gonna need this for the next quarter. Here's your plan, here's the reasons why blah, and this does all this stuff for you. It's like, it's all about how much control you're willing to give or not to an agent to do things. It's about the control of the agency. Most people are very far [00:46:00] to the left where it's very definitive saying you can do this. A really small amount of automation. Because that's all I'm comfortable with. And the world we're going to is more and more like Jarvis from Ironman where he is running the whole freaking company. Because he has all this agency over whatever's happening. So
Warren Zenna: Thank you so much again for listening to the CRO Spotlight podcast. This podcast is an important plank in the CRO collective communication strategy and we're really thrilled to have such great guests on here. So listening and sharing the podcast with other people is really vital because we want to get as many people listening to this great stuff as possible. A couple things to note, if you're an aspiring CRO. Or a recently hired CRO or even an old salty CRO, and you're looking to either become a chief revenue officer or improve your chops and gain some more insights and improve your competencies. As a Chief Revenue Officer, we offer the CRO Accelerator course. It's five years now. It's the first CRO focused course that was out there. [00:47:00] It's a 15 week course that is populated by aspiring chief revenue officers and CROs. We're pretty selective in terms of who can be a member of the CRO accelerator course. It's people who are probably more ready to be a CRO right now. They have a number of years under their belt as a revenue leader, whether it be a sales leader or a marketing leader, or even rev ops leader. And they either wanna move into the C-suite or they're CROs that want to just make sure that they win in the role. So, if you are interested in being a member of the next cohort, please just write me a note on LinkedIn. Just DM me CRO accelerator and we'll set up a time to talk and then I can send you more information to give you a brochure of the course. So again, CRO Accelerator course, 15 week program for aspiring and newly hired CROs. Take advantage of it. It's been great and you'll see some more information about it on the website. Thanks. It's almost like a child, and you say at a certain age [00:48:00] you can play in the front yard,
Jonathan M K.: Yeah.
Warren Zenna: And then you say, all right, you can play in the front and the backyard.
Jonathan M K.: Yeah.
Warren Zenna: On it's
Jonathan M K.: Slowly a little bit more. Yeah. Yeah,
Warren Zenna: Because you give more, let more and more allowances as the trust builds and you feel more comfortable. And I think that the interesting part you're mentioning here is the danger of how far off the range you allow these things to go before you, okay. The example you just gave, which I think is a really cool idea, by the way, the territory management platform, right? Where I think makes a lot of sense. You can give them all that data and it comes back, it says here, so I, at what point do you think we're gonna get to the point where we feel like almost, let's say 99% confident that that plan is correct based on the way we asked it and the information it got. How much homework or how much hallucination do you have to do before you send it to your boss and say, okay, this thing's done. Like where's the human part? And I know you know the answer, but do you see that as ever happening or is it always going to be people who need to check these things? [00:49:00] Okay, so people are always going to be involved.
Jonathan M K.: Yeah. Yeah. There's gonna be, again, I'm gonna reference if anyone has not used Claude skills or a cowork or a Claude code, this will be understanding. But like when you look at Claude skills as an example, one thing we talked about in the book is you have to have AI to be explainable. So it cannot be a black box. You have to be able to dig in and see what's happening inside this agent to drive whatever behavior. If you can't prove that, then it's uncontrollable. Right. And the reason Claude skills are so cool is because skills are literally just HTML or a markdown file with instructions on different things. You can read the markdown saying, oh, that's why this agent does this thing, is because the markdown says to do this thing. So that's the world I think we're going into is to where more and more people can see what's happening and the moat's gonna become, like for example, you have all this information on CROs that you could create a skill package of your CRO
Warren Zenna: We're building, we're building it right now. Yeah.
Jonathan M K.: You could do like that, that IP is moldable. Because the only way that AI would have that is if access to your brain. You know what I mean? [00:50:00] And then when you know you can trust it, that it then carries the weight of your reputation as Warren, the CRO collective to where people can both see the content inside of it and they can see the results. Because you've already queried it and it's based on a system that works. Does that make sense? And the reason why I say skills is because skills is a motion where if you work with a skill a lot, you have to test. It's just like prompt engineering. I have to test and retest and prove and reprove, like my prompts are accurate 99.9% of the time because I work on them a lot. And so I can prove and I know how prompt's gonna behave because I've been an engineer deeply for three years. It's the same thing with skills. You train it and you go, that wasn't really good. I gotta retrain again. That's why they call them evals. You gotta figure out where the evals are. It's just now we have the evals of the revenue motion just to figure out what level am I able to give it. And I think that's where we are as a whole [00:51:00] marketplace, is that people are trying to get a good idea of where they can trust AI. That's one thing we're doing at 1mind, is that we mix both generative and definitive AI, which is again, a way to say generative AI can hallucinate, definitive AI does not. It's like you have to have that mix because generative gives it this personality and ability to think on its feet. Whereas definitive is saying, if this happens, then do this. It doesn't hallucinate, you
Warren Zenna: Mm-hmm. Yep.
Jonathan M K.: And so you're able to have, I mean, we've had people through 1mind who are literally replacing, if you had a seven step sales process, the first three, you're done by 1mind, and then the last four steps are done by a human. You could theoretically have a technology, whether it's 1mind or somebody else, do the entire sales process. The X factor is the buyer. Do they want to have that experience?
Warren Zenna: That's right. Yep.
Jonathan M K.: Which is, again, that's a brand question. What experience you want to have is like, I think the world we're going to is at least the immediate future is you have to have options of saying, okay, I want the premium [00:52:00] experience. Because it's gonna be a premium of a human because it's gonna be scarce of an expert who knows their topic or whatever. Or I want to have the AI version that's just AI going through at 2:00 AM on whatever process and buy stuff. You know? And I think more people can enable either path, because you're gonna have some customers who love AI. Some people are like, eh, it's okay. And some people are like, I don't have anything to do with AI. Let me talk to Warren.
Warren Zenna: Mm-hmm. Yep.
Jonathan M K.: Yeah.
Warren Zenna: So let's talk about 1mind. So congrats. By the way, It's really cool. I know Amanda, it's a really, really great company and they're doing some really amazing things, but the last time I played around with their agents, let's call them, it was still earlier. So I haven't really had an opportunity to engage them in a while. Where are they going and what's your role there and what's the future look like there? And what are you bringing in? What are you being brought in to do?
Jonathan M K.: I'm handling marketing, so I'm doing some go-to-market and marketing stuff. So they don't have a CRO currently. My path is to a CMO spot at some point. [00:53:00] And they have an incredible, like Katie is the VP of sales there. She's amazing. She'd be a great VP or CRO. And anyways, my job is to think about more of the go-to market strategy and the marketing to make sure we can grow. They haven't done, I mean, just because Amanda's Amanda, they have a really good traction. They've done some events, but they have no cohesive strategy. So my job is to get out there and hopefully make sure people know that they exist and to help build trust in the brand because again, AI is very untrusting. I had to do the same thing at Momentum, you know? And right now I think some of the cool, cool things they're doing are like, one example is they have the AI just on the website, but it's able to bring up decks and dynamically talk to them and answer literally any question you want. And it's also, they're adding this new feature where you can have an interactive experience where you can say, okay, now you click on this and you guide it. And they actually guide through an interactive experience, which is freaking cool. The second version they use a lot is called the ride-Along, where it's not a face that pops [00:54:00] up, it's just another entity or a picture on a Zoom screen or teams. And you can literally say, Hey Nigel, that's what our agent's called Nigel. Can you gimme the diagram on this particular thing? So if a sales person needs something in the moment, it's just, there's a ride along to pop up stuff that you need to, kind of like an enablement slash sales engineer combines to make sure you can help with different concepts. And then the last one is on support. So I think HubSpot right now uses us for support . When someone buys into HubSpot, the 1mind takes them through the first iteration of onboarding to understand how to use HubSpot, which is really cool. So what I'm finding is it's not so much that we're replacing humans, it's that it's doing things that humans were never doing in the first place.
Warren Zenna: Mm-hmm.
Jonathan M K.: We were never talking to someone on the website and if we were, it's through typing, which was not the most
Warren Zenna: Or there's a loom video or
Jonathan M K.: Yeah. Loom video. Yeah. It's like, it's more, I see AI is in general doing two different things. It's either doing the old way better, faster, easier, cheaper, or it's opening up totally new ways we never thought were possible [00:55:00] because we never had the capability before. And that's where I feel like 1mind is going is doing things that we've never known we could do before, you know? So, which was pretty cool.
Warren Zenna: And then another thing I'm just fascinated to hear about, because it's always cool to understand, I dunno how much you could talk about it, but like, the momentum, Salesforce relationship, I mean, how did that happen? And fascinated just like what that was like, you know, it's gotta be an interesting process, you know?
Jonathan M K.: Yeah. There's a few things. So a shout out to Kyle because he's kind of like the point of all the things here, but, so there's a couple things happening all the same time and I'll give you the quick story. So Kyle has been a customer before I joined in marketing. And part of my marketing plan was to help amplify him as a voice. So I would book him on podcasts and book him on events. And he talked about us, whether I paid him or not. He was just very good about supporting us. Anyways, one of the people he talked to was at SaaStr, which is Jason Lemkin.
Warren Zenna: I know Jason. Yeah.
Jonathan M K.: Jason bought us because of Kyle. [00:56:00] And so one time on 20VC, Jason was talking to Marc Benioff and the other guy in 20VC about this AI tech that does this automatic entry into CRM and Marc Benioff was like, what the heck is that tech? And it was like, it was Momentum. So to Marc Benioff, he heard it at the same time, a guy named Adam who was over the SMB market of Salesforce, he kept hearing about Momentum and he knew Kyle. So he asked Kyle, I was like, can you tell me about Momentum? Do you like it? Like, what's going on? And he came to us originally to buy the technology for his salespeople. And then that turned into more of a deeper conversation. Because at the same time we're in series B. So Adam then talks to Marc, who just heard it from Jason about the same time, about this Momentum and is like, what the hell, what's this team? And
Warren Zenna: Energy, synapses all happen
Jonathan M K.: Yeah. All at the same time. And then it just walked down that path. That was back last fall at Dreamforce when the first conversation happened and progressed and then we went to a deal and [00:57:00] closed and really quickly announced it back in, gosh, was it January? I think of February, whenever it is. And
Warren Zenna: Yeah. It was around February, if I'm not
Jonathan M K.: Three weeks ago. Yeah, I can't even remember now. It seems like a blur. And the Salesforce team has been great. Like me, most of my team's still there. I still believe in them. The Salesforce team, Chris is the main EVP of Agentforce is brilliant. Really good guy. He's changing things up. Dina is the CMO of Agentforce. She's also brilliant. Adam's great, like Salesforce is making all the right moves to not become irrelevant. They have a lot of things they gotta do, but I totally believe they're gonna be still relevant and a really cool technology into the future. It's just gonna take them a little bit of time to get there. And Momentum is one of the key pillars of how they're gonna get there, because they've never had first party conversational data pieces, like Momentum to feed the rest of Agentforce, which now they're gonna have, it's gonna be a really, really cool thing to see.
Warren Zenna: Amazing. Well, congrats on that and on both things actually. It's really great stuff. It's a great story.
Jonathan M K.: Yeah, it's really cool. [00:58:00] I'm really, really proud of the founders. I'm just glad to have a small part in it. I wish I could say I was a large part of it, but I am a very small piece of a larger team that did a lot of good things together at the same time. It's like one of these things where I look back at Momentum. The founders were killers. The customers they got way before I ever got there were amazing. What we had was really special. Because we all got along well. Everything was firing all cylinders. Like there's so many good things that happened for us that I, again, I was a very small piece of a larger team that did some amazing things really good together. And I'm, it's a highlight of my career and something I'm very, very proud of. I just miss that magical feeling, you know?
Warren Zenna: I know. We talked about that before. It's like when you're in Led Zeppelin, you're never gonna get that again. You know? Everyone's the best at what they do. It's like, okay, that's cool. Lightning in a bottle, right?
Jonathan M K.: Yeah. It's like, I think we have that now at 1mind. It is like we're, I'm still getting to know them. So it's a little, it's a little bit different. It's like when you're in the zone together, that's when [00:59:00] it's just, and I feel like 1mind's gonna do that. It's just, I know we had it at Momentum, which was just special.
Warren Zenna: It's beautiful. Well, good. Well congrats to you, man. And I have one last question. It's an interesting question and that is like, what is it
Jonathan M K.: Is it?
Warren Zenna: That you know, other people need to tolerate you to get your leadership? Mm-hmm.
Jonathan M K.: Oh gosh. What? I've never been asked that question. That's a phenomenal question. Tolerate me. Probably way too much. The last feedback I got was that I move fast. I need to help my team move fast with me. So they have to tolerate a lot of speed. Sometimes in my speaking, sometimes in my task getting done, I move very quickly. So I have to be aware of that and make sure people come along. And then I also know that their strengths and weaknesses with every strength I know has another flip [01:00:00] side, you
Warren Zenna: Yeah, sure.
Jonathan M K.: My strength is in my sensitivity and my weakness is in my sensitivity. So it's like, I'm very aware of that. So people need to, I have to coach people on how to be aware of my sensitivity. Because once they know what it's like, and I'm not like defensive people critique me all the time, it's fine. I'm not sensitive from a critiquing point of view. It's more like I'm sensitive to, like you, I have this feeling of like if something's off, so I'll tell people like, you don't have to tell me, but I feel like there's something off that there's something going
Warren Zenna: Mm-hmm. So you, you have a very fine attenuation to what's going on and you're sensitive to it. Yeah.
Jonathan M K.: And people have to tolerate that because not everyone's comfortable saying that kind of stuff. And my purpose is not to be nosy. I just care. And people have to tolerate that. Because some people don't like that.
Warren Zenna: I'm the same. I am very transparent about that. And some people love it. Some people are like, Ooh, I don't wanna talk
Jonathan M K.: Some people don't like it. Yeah.
Warren Zenna: I understand. I do. [01:01:00]