The Power of No: Doing Less to Achieve More

0:00 (logo whooshing) - James, thanks for being here. Really excited to go through this today. I think something that we run into a lot as RevOps professionals is the to-do list on our plate is literally never ending. So I think having aspirations of having a to-do list of zero everything's done is almost completely fruitless. And I'm wondering, how do you ruthlessly prioritize your day or your time and how do you say no to things? 'Cause I think there's a lot of power in having the ability to say no. - Great question. Regarding prioritizing my time, I attempt to walk out time on my calendar to ensure that when I need to focus on something,

0:52 I'm focused on that particular task or item. To your point also that there is, it's a never ending request list that comes through to RevOps professionals from updating something in the CRM to creating a doc for training or a number of other items. You need to kind of think about what would create the biggest business impact and best support the team or teams that you're currently focused on. So you wanna think through what are the major pillars or boulders rather that you should be focused on for that given month or that week in that quarter. There's always a roadmap for the company and then you wanna figure out how RevOps fits into that.

1:42 You also wanna figure out from that point on, what are the things that you need to do on a monthly, weekly, daily basis to get the job done. It doesn't always work out that you follow that to a tee, unfortunately, because there are things that come up, bugs or errors that you need to address or someone needs help with something. But at the end of the day, having a set amount of time on your calendar that you kind of just block off and just say, hey, I'm unreachable at this time just so you can focus on the work that needs to get done would be how I try to block out time to focus on it. When it comes to just general prioritizing

2:24 or saying no to things, again, it comes back to,

2:30 everyone in the company, I think, you're always looking at ways to help make more money or save money for the company. And so when it comes to saying no to things, it may not be a hard no, it may actually be just a not yet or not now kind of thing. So that is, a request comes in, that's a great request. We'll work it into our OKRs and our just weekly planning of what we need to get done as an organization and as a team. But really it's what do your revenue generating teams need right now? And then everything else kind of needs to fit in somewhere in between. - I think I use that same strategy with my kids when they want dessert, it's like, it's not no,

3:29 but maybe not now, or they want to watch another show. It's not no, but maybe later. Would you say, where do those urgent requests typically come from? They're coming from sales reps, managers, leadership, the urgent report, the urgent fix in Salesforce. Who's typically the squeaky wheel? - It varies between all the organizations that I've worked in. I would say things that are very timely would be on marketing and sales in particular, because there's always a contract that needs to go out or a deal that needs to just get done or get updated. So that way everyone's in the know. And then additionally on the marketing side,

4:17 when it comes to events that we as an organization hold or a conference that we attend, getting those lists into the system. So then we can have tracking around those lists and those prospects. So I would say two biggest culprits in a number of organizations have been sales and marketing, which isn't to say that's a bad thing. It's just, you need to account for that in your daily and weekly planning. - No, makes a lot of sense. I wanna go back to when you said, you really like to block off time on your calendar. In theory, I love it because it means you have, oh, one, two, three hours, whatever you think is relevant to have some of that deep work time,

5:02 spend time moving those big rocks, spend time analyzing data or getting into flow with something. The only way I've been able to do it. So I have my deep work time very early in the morning. It's like five to 7.30. And I literally leave my house. I go to a coffee shop to work there during that time. Just in case kids wake up or something else, I'm in a different environment too. How do you do that? Where do you put it in your calendar? How do you make sure you actually protect it versus people looking at that on your calendar and thinking, oh great, they're not in a meeting. Let me throw something on James' calendar.

5:37 - Yeah, definitely by having a calendar event on my calendar and making it public saying, this is heads down time and I need to focus, please ask before booking anytime then. And then it depends on the particular projects or item that I need to focus on. So whether it be something that's due or an OKR for that particular quarter, that's something that I'll address, whether it's an ask that I received just kind of ad hoc that needs to be addressed. Or quite honestly, if there's any kind of enrichment that I would like to do for myself, so then I can then figure out the next move, whether it be reviewing documentation of a platform that we just started using

6:27 or how to better use the platforms that we currently have a hold of. All of that needs to be designated and assigned and I wasn't always that kind of person. I kind of like to go with the flow, but as I've learned to be more productive in a shorter amount of time, you need to kind of really hone in on and block out time in your calendar to get things done. - Where do you put it? Is it in the morning, late afternoon, throw it in the middle of the day? - I throw out quite honestly. I would say in the morning is usually the better time for me, but I also spread it out regardless of time of day, but generally I would say in the morning for sure. - Makes sense.

7:14 And how much time do you carve out? - Depending on what needs to get done, at least an hour, hour and a half to focus for sure. - Nice. So then I think comes, how do you decide what's important, what's not important, what's urgent, what can wait? Do you have a system that you like to use that gives you some confidence that saying yes or no to something is the right decision in the time? - We do use monday.com and my current organization to prioritize what needs to be worked on. I also like using the James level of intensity scale, which is basically what is easier for me to address and what is more difficult. And if you've ever heard the term,

8:06 I think it's swallowing the frog or something like, or eating the frog, that's like the biggest boulder to, or the hardest item I try to get done earlier in the day because then the rest of the day, everything else I can figure it out based off of my intensity effort level. What is easier or harder for me to work on? And then I just focus my time. Quite honestly, the way I look at everything is, everything is solvable to a degree, whether it's the answer you want or like or dislike is irrelevant. It's just, is it solvable to some, in some kind of fashion? So I try to prioritize based off of what we as a company have decided on.

8:55 So looking at company level OKRs and how that relates to, RevOps OKRs relate to the rest of the company. And then what's the little, even if it's, what's a bit of that item or OKR that I can get done today right now, that would then get it 1% or 2% more complete than it was before is also where, how I prioritize because of course again, there's your to-dos that can take an enormous amount of time and will legitimately take you an entire quarter or more to accomplish. And then there are items that, you take 20 minutes to figure out and you got it done. So it's just trying to figure out what works the best for you and what needs to get done for the company.

9:48 - Makes a lot of sense. I love monday.com. I think it's a great platform. We used it here at LeanScale for quite a long time, especially if you're using it for internal purposes. I think it's great. Do you add that complexity scale into Monday? Is that a column when you're looking at your tasks? - I haven't just because it's something I've created in my mind over the last number of years being in operations. So it's nothing I have formalized necessarily into a Monday column, but something that I think about or use when looking at everything that needs to get done. - No, I love it. I think we need rules in order to decide whether we work on something or not

10:33 'cause you're going to have to say no to things. And I think one of the tools I've used in the past, I know a lot of people are pretty familiar with it, is the Eisenhower Matrix. So it's a quadrant, you map the urgency of something and the level of importance of something. And anything that's highly urgent, highly important, that's P zero, let's do those things. And then anything that is low urgency, low importance, I call that just don't do it. Don't do it until somebody's bringing up enough about it to make it important or make it urgent. And then where I think people get really, really, really stuck is what to do about the other two.

11:15 So if you have something highly important, but it's not quite urgent, you have something highly urgent, but it's not quite important, where do you decide to spend your time? And my opinion is if you can spend more of your time in that highly important bucket, even if it's not super urgent, nobody's breathing down, you're not trying to get it, nobody's blowing you up on Slack or email to get that done. But if you can spend as much time as possible in that category, you're gonna move your business forward further, you're gonna move your career forward further in leaps and bounds further than if you spend time working on the urgent stuff.

11:57 If you can delegate these other things, amazing, that way you can get both done. But I would give up on some of these things or at least delay them and do them later and make sure you're really carving out time to move that highly important initiative forward. - Absolutely, I think that's why it's important to have a game plan at an org level. And then it comes back to RevOps, how does RevOps assist with those things? And again, to your point, I love the Eisenhower matrix because you'll find or I find that I'm constantly asking, how soon do you need this? Which is helpful because then I can plan out my day, my week, my month based off of that.

12:37 So, oh, you need this in two weeks? Okay, so I don't need to get to it today necessarily, but maybe the person that I am, I do like to get things done ahead of time. So maybe like the following week. So I got it to you done a week earlier than you needed it, which is great because then again, once I have, it's not about getting things done, it's about getting things done that have purpose. And as you figure out what works best for you and what the organization is or needs rather, and what those things are, then it's just a matter of again, setting up time to do those things because, okay, I got this thing done a week early.

13:22 That means that time I can now use for a bigger item or larger item that is of high importance, but not necessarily urgent. - I love that line that you just said. It's about getting things done that have purpose, not just about getting things done. I think there are a lot of people who are sprinting really, really fast on a hamster wheel, and they're working really, really hard, and they're putting in a ton of effort. They're waking up early, they're staying up late, they're working on weekends, but they're not working on the things that are moving things forward and have a purpose like you said. And they're simply just burning themselves out

14:04 and the worst part, not adding as much value as it could be. - Right, I mean, I've been there. The important thing is, or what I've learned to do is start to question, okay, you want me to do X thing, why is that? Like, why is that important to you? Why is that important to the organization? And what kind of impact are we hoping for if I were to get that done? Now granted, my mindset is always in RevOps, I'm trying to work my way out of a job. Unfortunately for me, there's always something to get done, so I'll never work my way out of the job. But if I've done my job correctly, I've set up a particular department in a way where they can be self-sufficient,

14:50 where it's more of maintenance at that point than any big boulders that I need to use that analogy. And there's no big ticket items that I need to adjust or work on for that department. So if I were to go on vacation to a number of places that I'd still like to go to, like Australia, for example, I can go do that and leave the team alone for a week or two, maybe longer, maybe I stay a little bit longer in Australia, but they'll be able to survive without me, which is kind of the goal. You're trying to set up your teams to not only be effective and efficient without you, but they can figure things out on their own, and you kind of show them a little bit of,

15:42 okay, if this happens, this is how you want to address it, and try to make sure that they're able to grow and learn themselves. You're kind of like a muse for the whole company, you're trying to help everybody out and do the best that you can and make sure everyone's doing the best that they can, and hope that what you're doing leads to long-term success. - Yeah, your job really becomes about designing systems and ensuring you can empower the company, not necessarily about you knocking out tasks. And I think there's a line from a show that really, really sticks out to me, and I think about this a lot. Probably was insignificant for most people watching,

16:25 but a show I really like watching is Suits. I know they have a remake in LA, I don't know if it's gonna be as good, probably not. I think Harvey Specter makes a cameo or two. But in one of the episodes, so for those who don't know, it's about lawyers, it's about a law firm in New York. They have a new managing director come in, and the top lawyer, Harvey Specter, comes into the office, and the new managing director is just sitting down reading a newspaper in the middle of the day. It's probably late morning. And he says, "Don't you have any work to do?" And his response has stuck with me ever since I've seen that episode.

17:08 He says, "If I have work to do, then I'm not doing my job." And I really thought that highlighted the importance of, your job is to design the systems so that the business can run smoothly. And if you need to go in and do hero mode on a lot of things, then you haven't done your job very well. So I don't know if we can all completely work to where we can just sit around in the middle of the day like reading and hanging out. But I do think there's something where it's like, yeah, if I can't take a step back, if I can't be out of the office for a week, then I haven't done a good enough job of setting this thing up. - Right, with RevOps, the job is never done,

17:50 but also don't let perfect be the enemy of great or good. So don't try to architect a perfect process. You can stand something up that is good or great, and you can always iterate on it. That's the important part. That's the way I've started to look at making improvements within an organization. Just stand up a process, and then you can make tweaks to it, or pretend like it's a huge machine kind of thing, and you're just tightening up a bolt here, or tightening a screw somewhere else. And that's all you're trying to do at the end of the day, because once you have the framework in there, then it's just a matter of making sure it's running more efficiently.

18:36 And again, if you need to tear the machine down and start all over again, at least you tried something, and you got to see what worked and didn't work. - No, that makes sense. I think for people in RevOps, being able to say no is an absolute power move. And I think if you're saying yes to every single thing that comes your way, you start to really lose credibility and can come off really weak to the rest of the team. - Yes, I would agree. Mostly because you do, as a human being, you want to help people, you want to do a good job, looking more internally of how you want to be looked at from everyone at an organization.

19:27 But also, if you're constantly saying yes, or you don't have feedback, or you don't speak up, that could be detrimental as well, because that means that you're not leading the leadership,

19:45 or whoever you're speaking with, in a direction that they should consider. And a lot of folks that I've worked with in the past, they actually have asked me for feedback if at that particular moment I didn't provide it without it being initiated. So definitely something you want to consider is, does this make sense? And also, does it make sense for the business? So it's kind of funky where you're trying to think of it as, does it make sense for the organization that you're at to operate in that kind of manner, regardless of what kind of ask that you're getting? And then also from a RevOps perspective, does that make sense at all, like for operationally,

20:33 to consider it the ask, whatever it is, to spend the time to do the thing that is being asked? Because there's, again, this kind of leads me back to what I had mentioned earlier, which is try to understand the why of what is being asked, and then you can provide feedback on, okay, this makes sense, but let's try to do it this way instead. Or that doesn't make sense because of XYZ reason. Something that'll help you on your way is also being able to include data in any kind of rebuttal that you have, because again, you wanna steer the company in the best direction possible, and being able to say no to certain things

21:18 and why you're saying no is definitely helpful. - Yeah, it signals leadership. And I think anyone who wants to be a RevOps leader, you have to be opinionated. You have to be vocal about those opinions, and you have to have good opinions. So you have to really have a stance on why we should or shouldn't do something, and then be able to back it up with data, be able to back it up with experience in the field, be able to back it up with what's going on in the market or what new techniques there are, and then be able to communicate those and push back. If somebody's telling you to do something, that's not a good idea from a RevOps perspective.

22:03 You have to have a strong enough opinion to tell them no, but maybe we do this instead, and those opinions have to be helpful. So I've seen, sometimes I see people who are very opinionated have good opinions, but they're not very vocal about it, and they lose a lot of influence. I see people who are really opinionated and vocal, but they have terrible opinions, and then they just lose credibility, and people roll their eyes every time they talk in a meeting. So you really have to have all three, I think, in order to have the confidence to say yes, we should be doing this and investing time in it, or no, this isn't aligned with our mission,

22:46 and this isn't aligned with what's gonna help create a well-oiled revenue machine here. - Right, I would like to consider myself somewhere in between, but also the framing that I like to keep in mind, too, is you're all on the same team, so try not to take it as, if someone says no to something, or if you're saying no to something, you're not saying it to that person, you're saying it to the plan, or what is the best direction for the organization? It's not a game of who's right the most, because that's just a losing proposition. What all you wanna do, because I'm certainly not right all the time, and nor would I wanna be,

23:30 but when you are wrong or when you're right, the idea is you learn from those things, and whatever direction you end up going, you have to think about what could go wrong here, what could go right here, and what happens if either happens. If you're right, okay, great, we go all in in that direction, and we move forward, and that particular item is trending well. If you're wrong, how do you have a plan B or plan C if something doesn't go the way that you do? For example, for an outbound campaign for a business development team, whether it's BDRs, SDRs, or whatever sales individuals that you have, if you want to go after a certain competitor,

24:21 that could be an experiment of an outbound campaign that you have, that you're working on. It could be close lost opportunities from a certain timeframe, and then even if those experiments don't turn out the way that you think they would, doesn't mean that the experiment necessarily was a failure, it just means that you proved something. You proved, the hypothesis is, can we win any close lost opportunities from like two years ago? And if we can't, why? Same thing if we go after a certain competitor or a number of prospects within a certain ICP or a location rather, you want to think about, or rather just certain criteria,

25:10 you want to think about, if that doesn't work, how do we tweak it? And why didn't we win? If we do get meetings with them, what happened to those meetings and opportunities, et cetera? So the whole point is like, just because you're wrong about something doesn't mean that you can't use it as a learning experience for yourself and for the organization. No, everything we do is a calculated risk. So inherently, things we do are not gonna work out. I think as long as you're hypothesis driven, and you, like you said, you have a fail safe if something starts to go off the rails, and you know your probability of it going well

25:47 or going wrong, and if the outcome is worth it, then go for it. I think as long as everyone is aligned with what the risks are. So I don't spend too much time at a casino, but I've played roulette and blackjack before, and you know what your probabilities are. So before you ask for another card, or when you put money on red or black, like you know what the likelihood is to win. And if you lose, it's not because you made a bad decision. Well, maybe if you bet too many times it's a bad decision, but you were aligned with the risk you were taking. And I think people tend to be okay with that if they know the level of risk and the whole team is aligned.

26:34 I think it's when they didn't know what the level of risk was. Like, hey, you put money on green. I thought that was just as likely as red or black. Like, no, that was pretty risky. So I think making sure people are aligned with that helps give that comfort. And then if something doesn't go wrong, it's like, hey, we knew this could happen, but it was worth it because we could have won. And that's okay. Let's of course correct and do what we need to do. - From a RevOps perspective is, and any professional quite honestly is, my mantra is hard things are worth doing. And whether it be it's a difficult decision or not so easy decision for a company to make

27:20 or for an individual to make. If you spend the time and develop yourself and work on yourself, you will, it will pay dividends in the future. For example, I've done a lot of self-learning on how to use the systems that I'm currently using on how businesses should, quote unquote, best operate. As long as you're developing yourself, challenging yourself and showing that, for example, I ran my first marathon last weekend. - Hey, congratulations. That's huge. - Thank you. That was not an easy thing, especially for someone that does not train as much as they should.

28:06 But when I was in it, when I was running it, I just said, okay, I'm here. Like you just keep going. Like that's all you can really do. And so from how I think about that with revenue operations is if I can figure out something in this moment, it doesn't mean that it's not something that can't be figured out. It's something that I just need more time to figure out. So whether it be speaking with a colleague, whether it be reading literature or book, whether it be reaching out to a number of communities that I'm a part of, for example, RevOps Co-op or Wizards of Ops or even Pavilion, there's so many folks out there

28:55 that are happy and willing to help you as well. I think the biggest piece there is just because you're running into a problem doesn't mean someone else hasn't run into it themselves before. So there's lots of other folks that are going through the same things that you're going through. You just need to find these people and ask them like grab a cup of coffee with them or just get on the call with them and ask them like how did you figure this out and what are some other things that I may not be thinking through that would be helpful. - I think leaning on community is huge. Leaning on your colleagues is massive. And there is a lot of research that's been done

29:33 that you can learn from the mistakes of others. Take the baseline of what's out there today and take it a step forward and tailor it to where you are rather than trying to reinvent something that already works really well. I think that goes a long way. And congrats again on completing a marathon. I think one, doing itself is just amazing but two, as a metaphor for anything else you do in life, having the perseverance to make it to the finish line is big. - Appreciate that, thank you. - Well, I think that's a good segue. I think it's interesting how people end up in these particular roles of any of the jobs out there in tech right now.

30:14 I think this is the one where nobody expected to be sitting in RevOps. Engineers went to school to be engineers and they kind of went down a path and built into that way. People who are in sales probably wanted to go in that direction and they maybe had some innate extra version to them that led them there. But people who end up in RevOps never said, oh yeah, I was really hoping I'd be doing revenue operations for a tech startup one day. So I'm always curious. And one, just genuinely like, how did you end up where you are? But two, a lot of people listen to this or trying to get into these type of roles or are trying to grow into a leadership role.

31:00 So just love to hear the story, how you got to where you are. - How much time do we have? - So there's a lot of twists and turns, so. - Yeah, I'll start off with college. College went to Rochester Institute of Technology, graduated with a bachelor's in new media publishing, which funny enough doesn't exist at the college anymore. But with the publishing piece, if you couldn't tell, there's a printing part to that, which I actually took and used for a decent amount of time. I got to work on cruise ships, working in the print shop, got to travel around a bit, printed menus and daily programs for all the passengers aboard.

31:47 Following college, worked at a print shop on Long Island. And from there, at that point, I honestly thought, wouldn't it be great if I got into professional sports, not as an athlete, I'm not that talented. - I think we all would have wished for that one, but that's okay. - Exactly. But just to work in professional sports would be fantastic. So I did spend some time with the New York Islanders, the Mets and the Yankees, which I truly enjoyed my time there because I got to go to a number of games, which is always cool, but also just seeing the atmosphere, seeing what it's all about and getting to see behind the scenes, which was really neat.

32:36 But that all led me to a role in customer service and sales at a company called Livestream, which was acquired by Vimeo, so Vimeo now. And I got to say, that year, that first year of working in sales, I think I read, I don't know, somewhere of 40 or 50 business sales books and operations books just to devour anything I could that would help me better understand what are the things that I need to be doing or should be doing to help improve the business and how do I just get better at the role that I'm in. I got to sample what the ops world was like in that role, the role following that did more of the same, but it was still a sales role after Livestream.

33:33 And then from there, I was actually able to make the official switch over to business operations. And that really got me fully into operations mode, learns everything I could about Salesforce. My role after that, spent a lot of time in Salesforce land as well. During the last four or five years of being officially in operations, even longer, I've spent a lot of time getting Salesforce certified, a lot of Salesforce certifications. So not only understanding the tools, but being somewhat of an expert in that particular tool set, learning a number of other platforms within the tech stack that any organization would use,

34:21 but typically RevOps is the admin for or manages. And then from there, getting project management certification as well, or just reading up on what are best practices for an operations role. And funny enough, a lot of business books, because at the end of the day, everyone that works in an organization is responsible to a degree for how well that business performs. So having a general idea of how businesses operate and what good looks like is always good for anyone to read up on and to better understand. Where I am now is a company called Healthy, H-E-A-L-T-I-E. We're an EHR platform. I'm the Associate Director of Revenue Operations.

35:16 Definitely a mouthful when you try to tell someone in your family like what your job is. And so I usually just end up saying I'm in operations, but revenue operations in particular, I have to say, to your point, never thought I would have ended up in this role. Very appreciative of all the skills and experiences that I had in sales, since sales never really goes away, 'cause instead of trying to convince customers to purchase something, I am now trying to convince internal stakeholders why we need to do something or what it means if we did. And every day is like trying to solve a puzzle. How do I make this company better than it was yesterday?

36:08 And whether that be systems related or process related, it's really cool when you do make changes and the folks that are impacted by those changes smile as opposed to any other reaction. Because if you're able to do that, now granted not every change is gonna be a good one for them necessarily, but as long as the good changes outweigh the not so great changes, you're doing your job. And that for me is very fulfilling, especially being in healthcare, it's already fulfilling. And then being in revenue operations in my particular role is fulfilling as well. So never thought I would have been in this role and at the organization that I'm at,

37:01 but here I am and everything's going well. - That's great to hear. No, I think there is something special about RevOps where you get to take a step back and see what you've built. Not every role or job has something as tangible,

37:20 but it is nice to take a step back and just see everything you've been able to accomplish. James, thank you so much. It's been a ton of fun. I appreciate you sharing everything you shared today. I think for anybody in RevOps, just the power and saying no, so you can focus on the things that actually move the needle, the things that move your organization forward. It not only will help your company, but it's gonna help your career. It's gonna give you the level of respect that you need to advance in RevOps, especially with a noisy crowd like sales and marketing. It's not always easy to push back against some pretty type A personalities

38:01 that tend to gravitate there. But it's so essential. And you can end up working yourself completely towards burnout without ever even making an impact if you don't really, really focus on that. Love the frameworks you shared, love the tools you shared, loved all the advice. James, thank you so much. And as you continue to go throughout your career in RevOps, we hope to have you back again. Appreciate it, thank you. Thank you for having me.