Think Like an Owner Alex Bridgeman

Ep. 218: Alex (@aebridgeman) is joined by Henry Schuck (@HenryLSchuck).

My guest today is Henry Schuck, founder and CEO at ZoomInfo, one of the most successful data businesses in recent times with a market cap today around $12B. I’ve been looking forward to this podcast for a long time because Henry has proven to be an effective founder, acquirer, and public CEO capital allocator, which is a rare combination of skills to find in a single CEO. He’s thought very deeply about building high performing organizations, sales functions, and how his own role needs to evolve as the company grows.

We talk through lessons learned building vs acquiring capabilities, M&A and integration lessons learned, fixing problems with a process vs culture approach, and how data businesses will succeed in the future

Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. 
Learn more about Alex and Think Like an Owner at https://tlaopodcast.com/

I want to tell you about the audience survey we are currently running. These surveys help us create the best content for listeners and better understand your needs and interests. Thank you in advance for sharing your feedback, we greatly appreciate it. 
Take the survey here: https://bit.ly/3QLBB1N

Links:
Zoominfo
Henry on X

Topics:
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:03:49) - What would you focus on if you were running Boeing?
(00:07:26) - How have you seen other CEOs solve culture vs. process problems?
(00:12:47) - How do you approach hiring?
(00:20:28) - How can you incentivize employees to buy into company values?
(00:23:11) - What have you learned working with investors and other CEOs to be a great founder and M&A executive?
(00:26:52) - How do you incorporate new tools or partners into Zoominfo?
(00:33:53) - What have you learned about integrating acquired companies?
(00:36:24) - How do you get a conviction when doing due diligence on a potential acquisition?
(00:38:49) - What skills around M&A are you looking to improve?
(00:41:19) - How will data companies in the future succeed?

Ep.217: Alex (@aebridgeman) is joined by Mike Stone (@michael-stone).

My guest today is Mike Stone, CEO of CertaPro Painters, the largest painting company in North America structured as a franchise with 370 owners across 500 territories and over $700m in revenue. Their goal is to become a $1B company shortly and a $2.5B revenue company by 2032. The painting industry is a $60B industry growing modestly and is highly fragmented, making this an interesting industry to explore given the lack of similarly-sized national competitors.

Mike and I talk about why the industry is so fragmented, the tailwinds behind the industry, what needs to evolve and grow to hit their growth goals, and how CertaPro builds a differentiated playbook within home services.

Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. 
Learn more about Alex and Think Like an Owner at https://tlaopodcast.com/

I want to tell you about the audience survey we are currently running. These surveys help us create the best content for listeners and better understand your needs and interests. Thank you in advance for sharing your feedback, we greatly appreciate it. 

Take the survey here: https://bit.ly/3QLBB1N

Links:
Mike on LinkedIn
CertaPro

Topics:
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:04:26) - Mike’s path to the CEO of CertaPro
(00:09:16) - Meeting Herb Kelleher
(00:11:25) - Where does your company stand today among competition?
(00:13:14) - What is holding back your competition from scaling like you?
(00:14:54) - Is it faster growing under a franchise model?
(00:19:52) - Are there other consolidators chasing talent?
(00:22:37) - What has become harder as you’ve grown?
(00:26:59) - Successful meeting structures
(00:29:24) - What data do you value for marketing?
(00:32:22) - How does seasonality affect business?
(00:33:43) - What else do you need to build to scale to your goals?

Ep.215: Alex (@aebridgeman) is joined by Ayman Al-Abdullah (@aymanalabdul).
My guest today is Ayman Al-Abdullah, former CEO of Appsumo and now executive coach to other ambitious CEOs looking to scale 7 and 8-figure businesses past $100m, Ayman’s specialty. I love learning from CEOs who’ve made that journey and can share key lessons and takeaways, and Ayman fits that to a “T.” He’s also a Durham native, which is where my wife and I will be moving to this summer so we had some fun talking about his move from Austin.
Ayman and I talk about chokepoints in a company’s growth, habits that made him successful at Appsumo, why he stepped down as CEO, and how other ambitious CEOs can be more effective in their leadership roles.

Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. 
Learn more about Alex and Think Like an Owner at https://tlaopodcast.com/

I want to tell you about the audience survey we are currently running. These surveys help us create the best content for listeners and better understand your needs and interests. Thank you in advance for sharing your feedback, we greatly appreciate it. 
Take the survey here: https://bit.ly/3QLBB1N

Links:
Ayman on X
Ayman's website
How to Make a Few Billion Dollars by Brad Jacobs
The Accountant Trailer

Topics:
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:04:20) - Leaving AppSumo to pursue coaching
(00:12:28) - What was the most informative experience for you in the CEO role?
(00:14:27) - What gets companies over the $7m hurdle?
(00:18:26) - What culture questions do you enjoy asking?
(00:24:03) - Improving the Sales role
(00:25:50) - Who was the best salesperson you ever hired?
(00:27:38) - Skills you need vs. what can be taught in sales
(00:31:34) - Have you reflected on whether you were born to be a CEO?
(00:34:44) - What have you found that helps CEOs succeed in the role?
(00:37:29) - Weekly journaling and exercise rituals
(00:42:30) - Ayman’s 25-year vision
(00:50:57) - Do you study other CEOs?
(00:53:25) - The hero’s journey
(01:02:41) - What’s something you’re passionate about?

Ep.214: Alex (@aebridgeman) is joined by Dennis Dresser (@DennisDresser).

My guest today is Dennis Dresser. Dennis was a sales leader at IBM and Oracle and became CRO at Anaplan and Dialpad before taking on an advisory role with companies looking to develop best-in-class sales organizations. Throughout his career, he’s developed a playbook for creating these high-performing sales teams and has thought deeply about talent management, performance management, and implementing better processes.

This episode dives into some of that playbook along with characteristics to look for in hiring great sales leaders, scaling sales orgs, sales qualification methodologies, and so much more.

Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. 
Learn more about Alex and Think Like an Owner at https://tlaopodcast.com/

I want to tell you about the audience survey we are currently running. These surveys help us create the best content for listeners and better understand your needs and interests. Thank you in advance for sharing your feedback, we greatly appreciate it. 
Take the survey here: https://bit.ly/3QLBB1N

Links:
JMI Equity
Dennis on LinkedIn

Topics:
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:03:17) - Career lessons learned
(00:06:27) - Evolving a Sales Team
(00:08:14) - Churn impacts
(00:10:10) - The high-performance sales framework
(00:14:28) - Characteristics of successful Salespeople
(00:15:58) - Hiring in Sales
(00:18:29) - Is there one skill or quality you’ve been able to coach up?
(00:21:17) - The Sales Qualification Methodology
(00:23:50) - What are some effective ways to involve those outside of Sales in the process?
(00:25:43) - Where do you see Sales Teams most often get stuck?
(00:29:15) - Characteristics of a high-performing prospecting function?
(00:32:14) - The future of content marketing
(00:35:04) - Advice to CEOs and heads of Sales teams

Ep.213: Alex (@aebridgeman) is joined by Armon Petrossian (@ArmonPetrossian).
My guest today is Armon Petrossian, co-founder and CEO of data transformation company Coalesce, built on Snowflake’s ecosystem. Armon and I kick off talking about his time in China and learning Mandarin in undergrad, and move through topics like building within Snowflake’s, nuances in selling to enterprises, hiring in sales, opportunities in data, and navigating challenging topics with a co-founder.
Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. 
Learn more about Alex and Think Like an Owner at https://tlaopodcast.com/

I want to tell you about the audience survey we are currently running. These surveys help us create the best content for listeners and better understand your needs and interests. Thank you in advance for sharing your feedback, we greatly appreciate it. 
Take the survey here: https://bit.ly/3QLBB1N

Links:
Coalesce
Armon on X

Topics:
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:03:54) - Experiences living in China
(00:09:59) - Founding Coalesce
(0012:14) - How does Data Transformation work?
(00:13:46) - Choosing to build around SnowFlake
(00:20:01) - What other opportunities arise as data becomes more abundant?
(00:22:41) - Where are you investing capital right now?
(00:23:49) - What evolution does your sales team need to make right now?
(00:27:39) - What’s a typical sales cycle for you?
(00:29:54) - What have you learned about selling to enterprises that people often struggle with?
(00:31:36) - Navigating political dynamics or relationships
(00:33:02) - What do you look for in new sales hires?
(00:35:11) - What have you become passionate about within building the company?
(00:38:32) - How do you handle disagreements with your co-founder?
(00:42:00) - What works for retaining engineers?
(0044:54) - What companies do you admire?
(00:45:30)- Advice to other data founders

Ep.212: Alex Bridgeman (@aebridgeman) is joined by Sieva Kozinsky (@sievakozinsky).
My guest on this episode is Sieva Kozinsky, co-founder of Enduring Ventures, a holding company founded in 2019 with 17 acquisitions to date. Sieva and I met at a dinner following the Berkshire Hathaway meeting in Omaha, his first time attending the meeting. A theme from our first conversations in Omaha that continues through this episode is long-term thinking being a huge advantage, and that compounding happens everywhere. Reputation, lessons, and learning - well beyond capital alone.
Given that our guest last week, Eric Jorgenson, is the CEO of one of Enduring's companies, I thought this would be a timely episode to bring back to the top of the feed
We talk about Sieva’s background as a founder and how it impacts his role at Enduring Ventures, how he discovered he is a better buyer than a builder, great companies and founders he’s studied and taken lessons from, and much more. Enjoy!
Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn.
Learn more about Alex and Think Like an Owner at https://tlaopodcast.com/

I want to tell you about the audience survey we are currently running. These surveys help us create the best content for listeners and better understand your needs and interests. Thank you in advance for sharing your feedback, we greatly appreciate it. 
Take the survey here: https://bit.ly/3QLBB1N

Links:
Sieva on LinkedIn
Sieva on Twitter
Enduring Ventures
Founders Podcast
Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow
The Gambler: How Penniless Kirk Kerkorian Became the Greatest Deal Maker in Capitalist History by William Rempel

Topics:
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:04:27) Belief Documents
(00:09:13) Long-termism trends
(00:11:57) Takeaways from the Berkshire Event
(00:20:36) Helping employees & executives think and behave like an owner
(00:26:17) Being a Buyer vs. Builder
(00:33:08) Culture Index
(00:35:55) The importance of having experience as a founder/operator to succeed at Enduring
(00:44:50) Perretto Prinicples
(00:54:17) Habits, tactics, and learnings from biographies on great founders and companies
(01:08:46) What strongly held belief have you changed your mind on?
(01:10:06) What’s the best business you’ve ever seen?