My Journey with David Meyer: Starting From 6 People in a Living Room

[0:05] Intro: 

Welcome to Revenue Rehab, your one stop destination for collective solutions to the biggest challenges faced by marketing leaders today. Now head on over to the couch, make yourself comfortable and get ready to change the way you approach revenue. Leading your recovery is modern marketer, author, speaker and Chief Operating Officer at Tegrita, Brandi Starr.

[0:34] Brandi Starr:   

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Revenue Rehab. I am your host, Brandi Starr and we have another amazing episode for you today. I am joined by David Meyer. David is helping global and scale up technology companies to create sustainable revenue growth through the provision of sales, marketing, and talent consulting and services. David is the co-founder of Clarify; he has been intimately involved in every aspect of growing the business from six people in a living room to 130 plus people where they are today. David, welcome to Revenue Rehab, your session begins now.

[1:21] David Meyer:   

Hi Brandi, thank you so much for having me on the show. I've just realized that time has obviously passed because we're nearly 180 people now. So things have moved on quickly. But thank you.

[1:33] Brandi Starr:   

Well, that is awesome. I was going to say growth is good and we'll get into talking about that in a little bit. But I always like to break the ice with a whoosh saw moments that I call buzzword banishment. So tell me, what buzzword would you like to get rid of forever?

[1:54] David Meyer:   

So the buzzword I want to get rid of forever is not necessarily a concept I want to get rid of, but it's a word, and its ABM. So Account Based Marketing. And the reason I want to banish it, put it in room 101, whatever you want to call it, is that I think it's just so badly misused by so many people. So much of what I hear is not account based, it's people talking about things they're doing on an industry basis or a persona basis or what have you. So that's my challenge at a high level with ABM.

[2:22] Brandi Starr:   

I am with you there and it's funny, a few episodes ago, I was talking to Jamie and Wendy, about gated form strategy, and we were talking about ABM. And Jamie had to correct me because he was like, what you're talking about is not actually ABM and I was like, I've become one of those people who is using this as a generic term. But you are right in that it's like if you're b2b, everything gets talked about like it's ABM. And that's not really the case like ABM really is that one to one or one to few. And that's usually not what we're talking about when we are referencing ABM. So I'm with you for this conversation, we can take that term, and we can put it in the box, we'll put a little bow on it and we'll toss it for now.

[3:18] David Meyer:

Sounds cool. You watch, and I'll reference it several times but hopefully always from the right perspective. We'll see.

[3:24] Brandi Starr:   

Yeah, I was just saying I think that's what happens with buzzword banishment. Whenever we say it, it's like all of a sudden it becomes the word that you actually need to use; but we'll try. So now that we've gotten that off our chest, really excited, you are the second guest in the My Journey Series. So episode 35 I talked to Tyler Shields. And I started the My Journey Series because one of the things I hear so much from our listeners and CMOs and CROs that I talk to is everybody's always thinking about what's their next step. We know that especially in marketing, Head of Marketing is one of the shortest tenures. And so it's always where is my next move? And so I really enjoy talking to people like you who I consider to have interesting career paths, because there are things that we can all learn from your journey. So excited to dive into how you got where you are today. 

[04:32] David Meyer:

Sure.

[04:33] Brandi Starr:

And so I believe in setting intentions; it gives us focus, it gives us purpose, and most importantly, it tells our audience what they should expect from our discussion today. So I'd like to hear what is your intention? What would you like people to learn from your career journey?

[4:52] David Meyer:   

I think probably the number one kind of intentional or takeaway that I would like people to have and it's faith in that conviction. So if you believe that something is important and valuable or under recognized, or whatever it might be, I personally believe that you need to persevere with that and that a good chunk of the time everybody else is wrong, and you'll get; you'll get there in the end.

[5:16] Brandi Starr:  

I love that. And that can be really hard in having faith in your convictions. Because that means you are going against the grain, you're battling the naysayers, all the different cliches, and it takes a lot of chutzpah to really be able to do that.

[5:37] David Meyer:   

Yeah. And there's a real complexity to that as well, because I think what I'm not talking about is kind of blind belief. I think you have to keep challenging your convictions, are they right? Am I on the right path? But ultimately, if it's passing all these tests, then that should be reinforcing the way that you feel about that thing. And I don't know if you want me to go on to a kind of more specific example of what the conviction was that kind of started Clarify and started my journey to an extent, would that be a helpful kind of way to connect things?

[6:09] Brandi Starr:   

Yes, and that actually segued nicely into what I was going to ask is, Clarify is clearly one of those success stories that you hear about. A lot of times it's more six people in a garage, but in your case, it's six people in a living room now to 180. So help me understand how you got started, what was that conviction that that led you down that path?

[6:34] David Meyer:    

Sure. Thank you Brandi. So myself and my co-founder, Claire Edmonds, and then a few other people that we'd been working with up until that point, the conviction that we had was that enterprise selling could be done in a much more effective way; enterprise sales and marketing can be done in a much more effective way. What we were seeing, before we started Clarify was that organizations had a pretty clunky approach to how they were growing their new logo acquisition, the growth in existing accounts, which was to hire really expensive salespeople. And then remember, this is nearly 20 years ago. So there was there was a lot of limitation around the different channels you could use. It was events, there was a bit of email, your website was quite an important facet at that point. But there was a limit to the number of channels you had. And it was very expensive, it was a throw lots of resource at trying to crack those problems. And we felt that there was a very different way of doing that, that could be more productive. And it was a kind of less is more mentality, rather than generating 3000 MQLs. What if we generated five that most of them went to pipeline. Isn't that a better way of doing things? And we got so much pushback at the beginning. So that's where the kind of strength in your conviction piece comes from. For me, I met with lots of senior marketing leaders again, nearly 20 years ago, there's no good you finding me or helping me to uncover a small number of really valuable opportunities, because I'm measured on volumes of MQL. If I can't deliver 3000, MQL, then I'm not doing my job properly. And so it was really tough, particularly at the beginning to find marketeers and sales leaders who cared about how do they build a more efficient engine? How do they get it working more effectively, rather than just build a bigger and bigger and bigger kind of process?

[8:24] Brandi Starr:   

Yeah, and I can definitely relate. So I started my career in marketing 21 years ago. So you know, not long before Clarify started. And my measurement then was all volume. It was how many eyeballs can we get on our collateral? How many MQLs? Can we get in the pipeline MQLs were defined really, really loosely, because the ability to measure at that point was still minimal. And that seemed like the way, it was always sales and marketing was deemed a numbers game. You get in front of so many people and that yield so much revenue. And you're right, at that point, no one was thinking about optimizing or how do we make this better? I think at that point, especially like that's when marketing technology started to really take hold, it was like just more how do we do things with what we have? So I want to back up a little bit to your career before Clarify, because I know that you started your career in sales. It seems like you follow the a pretty traditional sales path. So did you set out to be in the sales world, did you stumble into it? How did you get your career started?

[9:50] David Meyer:   

Like a lot of people I didn't set out on a career in sales. I actually did a marine biology degree of all things. because that was something I was interested in. And I do use a lot of those principles in my day to day career, but it was one of my lecturers who said, hey, look, basically in the nicest possible way, he said, you're not really cut out to do this. It's not what you're all about. But you seem to present well, you seem to like working with teams have you thought about a career in sales? And that was my first real exposure to that as an idea. And then I had a couple of interviews, some of which were pretty terrible. Because I didn't know what I was doing. But I learned a huge amount. And if I could remember who those people were, and go back, and thank them, I really would one in particular, I went for an interview to do advertising sales. And he said to me, I don't think you're an advertising sales guy. I think that's to foster a sales motion for the kind of skills that you have and the things you're interested in, you need to find something bigger and more expensive to sell. And that launched me into the next set of interviews that I did, which got me my first role in a sales organization. And in that environment, I was working for a company that was an agency effectively for a very large telecommunications company. And that was my beginnings in a sales career. And I was spotted as somebody who was progressing really well. And they then moved me into a new business role for them as an organization, which meant I was then selling to sales and marketing leaders in technology companies for a good two and a half years or so before we founded Clarify. And so that was where I then saw a lot of the issues that we're talking about today.

[11:30] Brandi Starr:   

And those career defining moments where you have someone, either it's an experience of something you did, or something that someone said, those things are so important. And I can think about some of those along the way for myself. And where I've really flipped that now as a leader, is I think I'm a lot more conscious of creating those moments for other people. Because that is incredible advice to be able to say you're in the right forest, but you're barking up the wrong tree, like go do this thing that pointed you to something that gave you the exposure and the experience that I assume led to you seeing the problem in enterprise sales to then being able to found Clarify.

[12:26] David Meyer:   

100%. And that's what I mean, for that person that that didn't take a huge amount of effort, I don't imagine. But for me, it made a massive difference to the trajectory of my career and ultimately, the careers of 180 people today, and the number of people who who haven't gone the whole journey. It's the butterfly effect in action. So I agree, I try wherever I can to help. I believe really strongly that if you help people understand why you're doing things the way you are, or why they might be doing things the way they are, and help them unlock what they could be doing differently you're just perpetuating that opportunity for the butterfly effect to work it's magic.

[13:12] Brandi Starr:   

Awesome. So let's talk about after you founded Clarify, as a co founder, what did your role look like then?

[13:24] Brandi Starr:   

So startup world, this is a special place, and I miss it, I really do miss it. So as I said, before, there were kind of five or six of us. Claire, and I divided our roles downlines that had reasonably been established. We've worked together before we knew a bit about who was good at what and how we were going to play things. And broadly speaking, that division of labor, I was focused on sales and growth and developing some of the practices that we used in the self development capabilities that we provide. And so that was kind of broadly where I needed to focus and Claire's focus and energy, Claire is really passionate about people, and creating development pathways and understanding people and those kinds of things. And both of us have overlap? It's not like, I don't care about people, and I don't care about development. And likewise, it's not like Claire doesn't care about customers and growth and driving business. But those are, those are the patterns if you like we formed between us. And then we had this team of other people around as well that were hugely important than I think you referenced, we were in a living room to begin with, because we didn't have an office. We went hunting for offices, Claire just had her first child. So at one point, we kind of tell this tale quite often to ourselves. There was a scenario where Claire had to be talking to a customer. And there were five guys all in our early 20s with a baby that needed its nappy changing, trying to work out what we were supposed to do with this crying object.  That was quite entertaining quite stressful for Claire but very funny to kind of look back at. And of course, very quickly, we had an office and it kind of started scaling things from there. But a lot of the challenges you have at that, in those very early days are overcome by just enthusiasm, youthfulness, passion, energy, all of those things kind of deal with most of the problems as you go, in my experience.

[15:21] Brandi Starr:   

Okay, and since then how has your role in the organization changed?

[15:26] David Meyer:   

So fundamentally, it hasn't really changed. I'm still responsible for many of the same things. So I wear a Chief Revenue Officer hat, which is responsible for all of our client relationships, growth of our customers, retention of our customers, etc. And I also wear a hat that is kind of managing director of our sales development business, which is us helping our customers to grow and grow and manage their sales development functions. So I'm still consulting and advising around, how do you build great high performing sales teams, I'm leading a group of people who are driving those outcomes for our customers. So fundamentally, it hasn't changed in that sense. But of course, doing that, at the scale that we're now doing, it is completely different jobs. So it's not about me doing it myself, it's about me helping, supporting, enabling other people to be the best versions of themselves that they can be, and keep them aligned with where the business is trying to go, and what our customers need, and how we drive all of that forward. So on the one hand, it's very similar and on the other hand, it's completely different.

[16:28] Brandi Starr:   

Understandable, so in your career, since you have founded Clarify, what has kept you on this path? And to sort of elaborate a bit on the question, you have a lot of founders who would not still be in the business almost 20 years later. Their exit strategy is to sell or to go public or to have someone else come in to run the business so that they can go off and do something else. So what's been your journey that has led you to still be in the same but different role almost 20 years later?

[17:11] David Meyer:   

So I think it's a really good question. And the first part of it would be to say that it's not like I never doubted it. And I'm sure Claire, I know, Claire doubted it at various points along the way as well. So it's not a linear kind of like, hey, I'm just gonna keep going. At various points along the way, you question, am I doing the right thing? Is this right for me? Is it right for my family? Is it right for the business, for other people, etc. And so that's quite tough. But I think the piece that has kept me going is that I don't feel like we solved the problem yet. There are still so many companies wasting so much of their time, their energy, and ultimately creating a less than great prospect experience. And for me, that was a big driver of what we were doing was, how can we help companies deliver a fantastic prospect experience so that the people were on the receiving end of what you're doing are going Wow, these guys have really thought this through, and they, they understand what we're trying to achieve as a business and driving it a different way. So ultimately, the fact that we've we've helped a good number of businesses to do that. But we're nowhere close to the edges of the market opportunity. And just one defining moment on that was probably 9 or 12 months into paradise existence, we stopped and looked around at what some of our competitors, if you like, people who are doing similar sorts of things, or trying to fix the same sort of problem, we're doing. And they were growing way faster than we were. And they were doing in a way that we didn't believe in. But we had a whole conversation, like the five or six of us that it started the business sat down, and when are we getting this wrong? Are we are we We're trying to push water uphill? Should we really be doing this? What if we just do what everybody else is doing? Because if we do what everyone else is doing, we're going to grow at about the same pace, if not faster than they are. And I can, I can picture exactly where we were when we had that conversation. And it was a real defining moment in what Clarify ultimately became because we could have taken the easy path and we collectively went no, we're not going to work. And that I think has been a big part of it is that I don't feel like we were committed to a path and we still haven't got to the end of that journey. And so that's a big factor in why I'm, as you say, fundamentally doing the same thing I was doing 20 years ago.

[19:21] Brandi Starr:  

It's really interesting, because that's very similar to the journey here at Tegrita. Like if I look at, you know, some of the other consultancies that I would consider direct competitors, they are definitely growing at a much faster pace. But very similarly, we have made some decisions of how we fundamentally want to operate, and how we want to grow and how we want you know, the experience for our team in working for our company. And that means more slow, methodical, purposeful growth, which can be hard sometimes because you have those ups and you have those downs. And when it's down and you see everybody else growing faster, it's kind of like, Well, should we just do that? So I definitely can relate to that. And I'm sure like, you know, most of our listeners are not in the same position of being a co-founder but I do talk to a lot of people who work for startups. And there is that same kind of like drive of, there's a little bit of a risk in working for a startup. And it's like that, do I save, do I jump ship? You know, do I believe in this? So I'd like to ask sort of a question. Because I don't get the opportunity to talk to founders as often here on Revenue Rehab. What thoughts or advice do you have for those that are working in the startup environment, that want to have the same level of dedication and seeing the mission through, but they aren't in the driver's seat of being one of the co-founders there, to a certain degree, at the mercy of the broader business? Like any advice on being able to thrive in a startup environment?

[21:14] David Meyer:   

I mean, there's about four things have gone through my head, as you've said it. So I think one is, is you do still have to be objective about what you're doing. As a co-founder, or what have you a, you have a stake and you have a responsibility. And that's pretty clear as to what you need to do. Whereas if you're an employee, and perhaps a fairly small scale, shareholder, don't go crazy, I'm not talking about you can't, you can't be in a situation where you're working every hour that that you have for nothing. That there has to be a given get in that scenario. But equally, I think, whereas the choice that I made, the journey that I wanted to take at the beginning, and I've been questioned along the way, is a really long one, it's a very big problem that I'm trying to fix, and probably bigger than I realized when I set out on that journey, and that's why you have those questions like to I still want to do this. But I talked to people who are in the startup business, and that the runway is, is shorter, the perspective they're working to, can be quite a lot shorter than the one I'm talking about. And that doesn't make it worse or different. It's just different, it's focused on the...  if the next two years or the next six months is for us to get from point A to point B, then then give that your all unless you're not getting back what you expected to get in the first place. And be prepared to challenge others along that journey of like, are we doing the right thing by our people, by the customers that we're serving, and make sure that that process is working effectively. So I think you can bring the same passion, whether you're a founder or not a founder, and I look for that passion in the teams that we're building and how we operate things, I think it's really important that people have that passion, that ownership of what they're doing. But yeah, it can be equally I have seen situations where startups or the leadership of certain businesses have abused that, and I think you still have to be aware to it as an individual and protect yourself.

[23:19] Brandi Starr:   

No, definitely makes sense. And I want to jump back to your faith and convictions. Because Clarify definitely a success story and how you all have grown, and been able to sustain for nearly two decades. But I know that it can't all be good. And so talk a bit about the rough patches and where that face in your convictions have, you know, kept you steady held the business up like, tell us a little bit about the places where there was struggle. And how you were able to manage through that.

[23:57] David Meyer:   

So I think any business or any journey of that kind of length, there's going to be periods where weather rough times, if you like dark times, where you're questioning what's going on. For us some of the key waypoints along that would have been in the very early days, challenges around cash flow, and how do you manage all of those. And there's a lot of risk there both in terms of people and their livelihoods, not just your own, but everybody else's. So those are obviously a challenge. But they are ones that people are kind of ready for as a startup. A lot of the others are as you start to scale up, there are almost levels or plateaus that you reach along that journey. Where what got you here won't get you there and recognizing that that's the point that you have reached or that you're about to reach and finding, what am I going to change? How am I going to move it on to the next thing is both a source of the fresh challenge but also frustration and could potentially bring the whole thing to a halt. So we've had a few of those. I think running a team of 10-15 people is kind of one thing, when you then start scaling to 20-30 people, you have to suddenly have a bunch of things that you didn't have before. And the transition between those two phases is quite tricky. I would say again, between probably 50-60 people to 100 people, there's a whole other transition. Again, to do 200 People, there's another transition. So I'm sure much smarter people than me have defined the characteristics that say, well, this is when that that those kind of inflection points come. But every one of them is painful. And we made big mistakes, things that you wish you hadn't done, we expanded geographically. What was it probably 12 years ago, now, we we had the right problem that we were trying to solve in our business, which was, we had hire native French and German speakers in the UK. So why don't we open an operation in France and open an operation in Germany? That's a great idea. Let's do that. And we fixed part of our problem, which was we were able to hire people locally but we didn't think about how we were going to sustain those businesses in those other geographies. How are we going to drive growth in those spaces? And ultimately, we failed and we had to close both of those operations down. And that's horrible, to be in that kind of position, where you're having to retreat, withdraw from something that you've done and reinvest time and energy elsewhere. That's not the last time that we've had a challenge, but there are all of those kinds of things that that come along the way. And I think back to the kind of belief in what you're doing is if you can stumble, you can fall, you have to pick yourself up, brush yourself down and find a way to keep moving forward.

[26:40] Brandi Starr:   

Awesome! And so, I always like to ask for advice. So for our marketing leaders, because the majority of our listeners are head of marketing, so CMO, VP of Marketing, in some cases, CROs that own both sales and marketing. What advice would you have for those people, they may not be going down the path of becoming a founder, but what career advice would you give in helping people to figure out what's their next step?

[27:14] David Meyer:   

I think a chunk of the advice or guidance that I've always held on to is looking at it through the eyes of the prospect. And I think we do that far too little in both marketing and sales. We're so focused on the objectives that we have on the experience that we're trying to create for our own people internally, that it's, it's easy to forget, what's the prospect seeing, are we? Are we being true to what they would want? How do we build a better kind of experience for them? And I see this time and time again, where people are doing creative, or they're doing messaging, or they're doing profiling work, or whatever, and they're not stopping and going, but if I'm in that person's shoes, how would I receive this information? And personally, I think that's one of my core strengths is, I spend my life and it's a weakness if you go too far in one direction of thinking about and trying to look at things through somebody else's perspective, is just hugely important, I think.

[28:12] Brandi Starr:   

Well talking about our changes is just the first step and nothing changes, if nothing changes. And so in traditional therapy, the therapist will give the client some homework, but here at Revenue Rehab, we like to flip that on its head and ask you to give us some homework. So I always like to end with an action item. So for those that are listening, who have heard something in your journey that resonates with them, what is that one thing? What is the next step that you would advise taking after listening to this conversation?

[28:48] David Meyer:   

I think the next step would be if you're unclear when I keep talking about conviction, and faith and belief, and all of these kinds of words, if you're unclear what that is, then the number one kind of takeaway is work out what it is that you believe in and put some parameters around it. Where are the edges of that? Where does it not fit anymore? And in our example, it was the parameters were the size of the deal needed to be significant, the number of stakeholders that were involved in closing those deals needed to be significant. And if we were going to devalue what we did and generate a higher volume of things that weren't geared up in the right way, then that was breaching that, that trust for us, if you like. And so I think just being really clear about what it is that you actually believe, you can't protect it unless you understand it.

[29:36] Brandi Starr:   

And I think that's so important, because if you think about the difference early in career versus once you have reached a leadership level, early in your career, you're just looking for who wants you. It's like, do I meet the requirements? Will they hire me? Okay, this is an opportunity. And as you get to the leadership level, that is where as you move through your career, you do have the opportunity to have that discernment. And to understand like, this is what I believe in, this is where I can thrive. So I really like that if you don't already have a clear understanding of what the conviction is, then you've got to define that first before you can have faith in it.

[30:22] David Meyer:

Yeah. And I think, at the start of a new year, you've got the opportunity to embed some good behaviors around that. It's a principle that you have. Okay, great. Well, how are you going to reinforce that? What habits can you bring day in day out to kind of reinforce that not just for yourself, but for the others around you and really drive that performance forward.

[30:45] Brandi Starr:  

I love it. Well David, I have enjoyed our discussion. But that's our time for today. Thank you so much for joining me.

[30:56] David Meyer:

It's been a pleasure. Thank you Brandi. Really appreciate it.

[30:59] Brandi Starr:

And thank everyone else for joining us today. I hope that you have enjoyed my conversation with David. I can't believe we're already at the end. See you next time.

[31:12] Outro:

You've been listening to Revenue Rehab with your host Brandi Starr. Your session is now over but the learning has just begun. Join our mailing list and catch up on all our shows at revenuerehab.live. We're also on Twitter and Instagram at Revenue Rehab. This concludes this week's session. We'll see you next week.