Ep. #967 - What is Revenue Operations (RevOps)?

Lauren Conaway 00:00
And we are back. Thank you for joining us for yet another episode of the Startup Hustle podcast. I’m your host, Lauren Conaway, founder and CEO of InnovateHER KC. And this episode of Startup Hustle is sponsored by FullScale.io. Hiring software developers is difficult. We know that. Full Scale can help you build a software team quickly and affordably. And they have a whole platform ready to help you manage that team and make it as seamless as possible. Visit FullScale.io to learn more. Now, today, friends we have with us, we’re going to be talking about something a little different than what I usually talk about. And so, I’m very interested and very excited to go on a journey with Catherine Mandungu, who is the founder and CEO of Think RevOps. We’re going to be talking about all kinds of things. And I’m really excited to get started. But first things first, Catherine, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today.

Catherine Mandungu 00:56
No, thank you, Lauren. Really appreciate you inviting me to the show.

Lauren Conaway 01:00
Absolutely. Well, let’s go ahead and get cracking. So the first question that I’m going to ask you, I’m gonna, you know, tell us a little bit about your journey.

Catherine Mandungu 01:09
Yeah, sure. I’m actually Dutch. So I started in Holland and moved to the UK many years ago, about 15-16 years ago. And then decided, just over what it is now, almost three years ago, after a journey of working in the tech space in commercial operations, to start my own consulting company. So my business, Think RevOps, is a company that really helps specifically about 90% of tech startups and scale-ups. And really help them implement a revenue operations framework. And which would help them really drive revenue, basically.

Lauren Conaway 01:56
Yeah. Well, I mean, of course, revenue is what startup founders live and die by. It’s one of the first things that you have to think about, you know. What does your revenue model look like? And so your job is essentially to find efficiencies and implement processes and really help startup founders maximize the revenue potential. Is that correct?

Catherine Mandungu 02:18
Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, if you look at the history of revenue operations, it is still quite new. That’s really been a hype. In wrap-ups, I would say, what, five years before that, you had the siloed departments, right? You had marketing doing their own thing. You have sales, and you have customer success. What wrap-ups does is try to align and centralize these departments, right. And we do that through the alignment of strategy, data, process enablement, and technology as well. So it’s really to enable the teams to have that full funnel accountability that will help them drive revenue.

Lauren Conaway 03:00
Yeah. Well, I can’t imagine what weight of a founder’s shoulders that would be to have the kind of support that Think RevOps offers. That’s incredible. So tell us, how did you get into this work?

Catherine Mandungu 03:18
Oh, wow. I mean, you don’t wake up one day as a kid thinking, Oh, I really want to be in operations. I was kind of thrown into it. Back in university, I wanted to actually do finance. And I applied for Microsoft back then for an internship in finance in the finance department. They flat-out rejected me, but they called me. They flat-out rejected me. So I cried for three days.

Lauren Conaway 03:45
I do. I want our listeners at home to know that you just said that. And you have this giant smile on your face. You have a beautiful smile, by the way. But the fact that you can, you know, you can talk about that and be so enthusiastic about it because it led you here, right. It led you to where you are. But yeah, continue. I just love your smile.

Catherine Mandungu 04:07
Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, I can laugh about it because they did call me back three days later, or four days it was, and this right, we rejected you for that role. But we think your personality would be good for this other role we have available, which was basically my first dip into commercial operations. And actually, it was kind of in between operations and sales. Because I had to sell, I had to sell to Well, I had to do renewals with some of the public school government. So public school and government contracts had and did some evergreen renewals, which was exciting. I have never made sales in my life. I was 21. Now also had to work closely with the direct sales teams and support them had to work with the operation center in Dublin. That’s how I really had a taste for operation. I thought. Actually, they were right. It was more me because it was not just, you know, number crunching. It was a process, it was working with people, it was just a very, very dynamic role, which just fits me. So hands here. I mean, it’s been, what, 15 years later.

Lauren Conaway 05:15
So think about who you were when you started, when you embarked on this career? Did you think that you would be where you are now?

Catherine Mandungu 05:26
I always knew that I wanted to have my own business, and I always knew that somehow, in some way. I wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I didn’t know it was going to be specific to robots. I mean, I only started my business three years ago, and even then, when I started, it wasn’t a plan.

Lauren Conaway 05:50
Yeah, well, I mean, honestly, like, I’m super impressed with Microsoft right now for being able to see you. And I’m assuming that the interview process was fairly comprehensive, let’s say because that’s what those big tech companies love to do. But I mean, really, they didn’t know you for very long, comparatively speaking, and they were able to come to you and find you have a role that just fits you so perfectly. And I love that. Super impressed. Yeah, well, tell me this. Well, looking back on your early career for the point at which you started from where you are now, do you have any advice that you would give your younger self?

Catherine Mandungu 06:31
Oh, my younger self, um, you know, what, as a young person, I mean, I pride myself in being the person that was really, really determined, always right. So it was always determined by motivation, but just because of the background I come from. So I come from a, you know, single African woman for kids, by the way, for daughters raising daughters. Yeah. Hopefully, yeah. So I had to always set an example with my sister. So I’ve always been that way. But I think what the advice I would give myself if I could go back, it’s just saying, don’t worry so much, I guess, don’t worry so much and enjoy a bit more of, you know, you know, the youth of, you know, you know, being young, and you know, the world to you, I would have definitely said that to her.

Lauren Conaway 07:29
I love that in particular because often we talk about the fact, you know, founders, we often have to struggle to prioritize ourselves and to take that time and self-care time, you know, that I feel like sometimes the work will come. You know, just keep doing good work. And also, make sure to take time for yourself. So that is really, really profound advice for sure. You know you don’t have to completely lose yourself in what you do in order to be a successful founder. Right?

Catherine Mandungu 08:04
Absolutely. Although, right now, I can sometimes use that advice myself.

Lauren Conaway 08:12
I feel like we’re all the better at giving advice than taking it. So I totally get that. But it’s something to think about for our founders at Home who were at nap and went out. Go grab that coffee. Well, that is fantastic. Now I’m very curious. So think Revox, you’re a consulting firm, but you’re helping build out SAS revenue operations, and you have, you know, data collection components, and you have buyer journey, transformation work that you do. I’d like to hear a little bit more about that. So can you kind of dig into what exactly RevOps brings to its customers?

Catherine Mandungu 08:55
Yeah, absolutely. So um, so first of all, a lot of the clients that come to me, you can probably put them in two main categories right now. Because they’re startups. I mean, some are still skills. Most of them are startups. They hear about these bus robots, robots. We need RevOps, right? But they don’t necessarily know what it is really and how to implement it. So often, what they do is because it’s an operational head, they will try to do it themselves. So as you know, startups, we all wear different hats, so don’t try to do roll-ups by ourselves. Which is great, right?

Lauren Conaway 09:44
I mean, I say this still great because that means, you know before you have traction and customers and money like it makes sense, but at the same time, like I’m just kind of giggling over here because I’m thinking, you know, something as complex as what I think robots offer. You’re not going to be able to do that. As a solo founder solopreneur, even if that’s not within your wheelhouse, we talk a lot around Startup Hustle about the fact that often you need to bring in experts in order to do what you do really well and focus on what you’re best at. And then let other folks come in, take things off your plate, and do them better than you ever could to help optimize your business. Right? It’s so important.

Catherine Mandungu 10:23
It is. But as you know, most startups will try to do it themselves, right. So you have that group of customers or clients that then realize, you know, what, which fight it? But maybe we can find an expert out there, right? And then you have clients who are those who know RevOps, actually, quite well, they might have an operational team, but usually, they don’t have a RevOps leader, right, someone to really hide the operational team. So those are the two types of clients that come to me and how I help them. It is pretty much a similar way, right? So first of all, you have, you know, what I call a transformational project, right? Regardless of how small or big the transformation is going to be, some sort of transformation needs to we need to undergo right, so meaning that there is the whole talk process around revenue operations is, you know, education enablement and empowerment as well in the organization, so that everyone really understands what it is and why they should have it or why they should implement it right now. And then after that, we then look at the methodology of Alright. How are we actually going to achieve that? So the way I do it with thinking robots always starts with an assessment. I try to really understand how bad is bad, right? Or how good is good, right? Yeah. So I’ve had to really assess everything. So from data from their processes from the tech stack, and also people, right, because people, it’s probably the biggest and most important thing, right? Because you can’t, you can’t do data processing and tech without people. So and often, everything wrong with, you know, what, you know, in your stack, or RevOps, really, overall, is people because people aren’t enabled efficiently to be able to do the right things and follow the best practices. So I look across that. And I’m really assessing and trying to understand across the entire customer journey what’s going on, right? You know, what’s under the hood. And then I provide them basically a result, right? So hey, this is, you know, where I see the friction. This is what you’re doing, right? But hey, this is where the challenges are. This is where I think you should prioritize or put your big bets on because they’re gonna make a big difference in the organization. Right? So yeah, we start there. And then once we’ve aligned those priorities, because again, it’s, you know, providing the result of the assessments, but it’s a collaboration, we’re partnering, it’s a partnership. So once we come up with, okay, these are the priorities. That’s when we kick off the project. And I always, and I never, never start with tech, right. And well, if some companies might do that to some people and often startups, the way they would think about a solution is think we just need new tech, we need to just throw a tack towards this problem.

Lauren Conaway 13:16
And it always seems to be the solution. And sometimes, you don’t need a new app or friends. Sometimes, you invest in your people and take a closer look at your data and refine what you’re already doing. You don’t always have to have technology at it, much as we love technology.

Catherine Mandungu 13:33
Exactly. So most people do that. But I tried to not talk about tech because what I talk about first and which is really, really important to me for businesses is their blueprint. Yeah. What do you want your business to look like? How do you want your business to actually operate? How do you want that customer journey to be? How do you want your customer experience to be right? And that is very important. And we try to really map that out and to and from, how they attract, you know, prospects in the funnel to how they try to retain their customers, right? So we really map it out in detail. This could be from an AI built an actual blueprint map, first of all, but we also build potential programs, because we might revisit our sales process and say, Actually, your sales process is not quite aligning with the market, you’re selling to let’s change that same for their CLM or customer lifecycle engagement model. If that doesn’t align with their market or customer market, then let’s change it as well. And we create those programs, right? So we did a blueprint first. And once that blueprint is done, and everyone signs off from you so that this is basically how we need to operate our business. That’s when we then get into Okay, now let’s talk about technology, right? Because now you can actually intelligently talk about technology because you know exactly what your blueprint is to be. and how that well, what needs to fit in your tech stack, right. And then you can now analyze and say, Actually, based on what we want, the tech stack we have today is maybe not up to scratch, or it is, but it was ill implemented. So we need to, you know, change some stuff, or we’re missing a very piece of technology today. So we should invest in some new technology, right? So that’s what it does for you. And once we have the conversation again, and we sign off on the technology, this is when we then look at okay, now let’s implement your blueprint into your tech stack and think robots do that as well. So we do the implementation in the tech stack. Specifically, the main CRM is Salesforce, really, and then anything that connects towards Salesforce, of course, any kind of integration applications. And sometimes also HubSpot with some of the smaller companies are still running on HubSpot as a CRM. But yeah, then once we’ve done that, then really the last part of it is right, let’s enable and empower the business because now we made all those changes, change management, right? It’s important, making sure that everyone is, you know, understand what has happened, understand how to use the new processes, the technology, but also really driving accountability, right? Because the council often if they have an operations person, it’s always everyone’s just pointing fingers to the operations person. But actually, every single person in the organization should be accountable for data for the process of technology, because you are also users.

Lauren Conaway 16:31
Yeah, absolutely. Well, let me ask you this, when you’re, you’re talking to your customers, what is the feedback that you’re hearing, as you’re implementing these processes and kind of doing these deep dives into information? What are your customers telling you? Are they surprised by the results? And by the insights that you bring to the table?

Catherine Mandungu 16:51
Yeah, I mean, I wouldn’t say surprised, because they know, those are insights, they can surface the problems they don’t know how to because there’s so much misalignment and friction, right? In the customer journey with a tech stack with the processes. So it’s more of an almost like an aha moment. Okay. Right. So we had this is data that we could surface, but now we’re able to do now we’re able to do so now we can potentially, you know, have data at our fingertips, which I find very important because, and the way tinkerers really try to drive things for organizations is from insights, right, from insights, working back understanding, what does the business actually want to measure? Right, asking the question, how are they actually measuring this today? What are the data points? How are they collecting the data in the entire customer journey? How are they sharing the data? What tools? Do they have to crunch the data? Right? Are they just using CRM for what they have? Do they have BI tools? So yes, a lot of companies or clients that I work with, they have that aha moment as, as in Well, finally, right? Because they’ve almost had a handicap, right? I mean, think about what board reports do. And it’s very hard to actually serve as information, or they were just doing a lot of manual work to get the answers when it could have been automated, right? And then outside of the data is just about the process of action. Because if you really think about it, and in terms of going back to robots driving revenue, that’s when the operational side will fix them. But what it does is, in fact, it tries to improve the impact levers. Right, right. And what I mean with an impact lever is, think about your win rates, think about your conversion rates, right? Think about your sales velocity, right? That’s what it should impact, right? We’re not just you know, implementing technology or processes for the sake of it, I mean, one customer experience, that’s also a very good metric to look at. So what’s your customer satisfaction rate after that, right? What are your conversion rates and your win rate after that, and that’s what we need to try and measure and make sure that we are driving that. And that is why it’s important with wrap ups that it’s not a one time thing I implemented and no, that’s it, it’s gonna work. No, you have to validate it, you have to test it, you probably also have to change the way you do things maybe every year, especially when you start off because things are changing all the time. So you want to be agile in that way.

Lauren Conaway 19:26
For sure. Well, as we all know, we look at data and we look at the work that organizations like RevOps does in order to make better decisions. And that’s really what that’s what we need. As founders, you know, often when we’re starting companies, we don’t have a blueprint. We don’t have a roadmap. We’re kind of figuring things out as we go. And so having that empirical data can just, it’s transformative for a business. So thank you for your work. I also want to remind our friends listening at home that finding software developers and experts doesn’t have to be difficult, especially when you visit FullScale.io. You can build a software team with them quickly and affordably. Use the Full Scale platform to define your technical needs, and then see what’s available. developers, testers and leaders are ready to join your team. It is literally that simple. And I actually just went out just this week, with a table of folks who were Full Scale clients, and we were just talking about how easy and seamless they make the software development process, you can visit FullScale.io to learn more. Now, Catherine, I want to ask you, you know, not, not all of the founders listening, have a really, really clear idea or picture as to how to maximize the revenue operations. And so I’m just going to ask you, what are some best practices or tips other than hiring think robots, which I, of course, highly recommend for all of the founders listening, and you can definitely check out the show notes, folks, for information and for links to find out more information. But just for the folks playing at home? What is some guidance or some tips that you would give them if they want to, to essentially do the work that you do just optimize, maximize their revenue, and make sure that all of their departments are talking to each other? All of those things that you do so beautifully?

Catherine Mandungu 21:24
Yeah, sure. So I just talked earlier about the impact levers, right. So yeah, that’s what they need to try and do to start there, at least understand what is currently impacting revenue, right? If they are under so let’s say, you look at your insights, hopefully they have them. And let’s say your MQL to SQL conversion rate is down and which is impacting your revenue, right? Or your win rate is down for that matter, then you try to trace it back and try to really understand, okay, what is happening? If it’s win rate, right, then maybe something is wrong with the sales team, right? It could be the sales process, usually start there first, try to understand, Okay, what’s happening with the sales cycle today? If not, it could be on the enablement issue, an enablement issue today with you know, your productivity of your team. So you can start there. But in fact, levers are a really good way for you to start understanding where in the process it is broken. So this is how you can start to start small right? Now, if you want to really look at things holistically, however, which I do recommend is going back to the blueprint is understanding first of all, how do things work today, map them out, map it exact map out exactly from end to end from it, because the customer journey today? What happens on the customer side? And then reflected on the internal side? What are we doing? Who is involved? Right? Knock it out entirely. And then you will easily identify where the gaps are, and then put a plan of attack together. And you don’t have to do everything at once you just try and prioritize the ones that are really killing your revenue today?

Lauren Conaway 23:20
Yeah. Do you have any success stories that you could share with us with a client that you worked with that was able to change the trajectory of their business? Based on your support?

Catherine Mandungu 23:34
Yes, um, I had one of my clients last year, to be exact. Who had specifically an issue around their CPQ. I don’t know if you know what that is. That’s a quote, price configuration. So it’s basically, the process around how you are going to quote, right price, do the contract thing with your customers, and how effectively and quickly you’re going to do that, right. And that was a bottleneck for the organization. So what we did is we had to flip that process on its side entirely and just basically reinvent in terms of, you know, what was being done. And we mapped out that entire process, and we also created governance around it, because there was an issue around actually understanding how to operate within the quote to cash process, right. So we created governance around it. So everyone understood we were enabled, we implemented the process and the project went quite smoothly and the uptake of that project was around a 10% difference in terms of the revenue that we’re making, but that was only because in the US, there was so much manual friction, no zero efficiency. And once we’ve been able to implement that 10% uptake, which was fabulous.

Lauren Conaway 25:12
I love that. And again, anytime you’re able to bring in an expert to help you do business better, that’s just huge, it’s a huge coup for founders and business owners. And so you know, thank you for your work. What are some of the challenges that you and Think RevOps have experienced as you’ve attempted to grow and kind of claim your stake in this business?

Catherine Mandungu 25:38
Yeah, that’s a good question. Um, so I’ve obviously, three years ago, started by myself. I am primarily still a one woman operator, but I work with contractors right. Now, my next challenge is actually I’m going to be hiring full time people in the organization, which is great. But the challenge today is the talent hiring people. For sure. It is hard, it’s really hard. It’s hard to find the tech talent, but also just Redbox talent. And especially here in Europe, it’s very scary, so figure out something, but I am working on something as well around putting a program together to teach younger folks about robots, because it’s really an exciting role. Actually, it’s very exciting. And it’s up and coming and in this role is going to evolve so much more, I see so much happening with revenue operations. So I think young folks just coming out of uni need to pay attention.

Lauren Conaway 26:44
Yeah. You know, as more and more founders wake up to the fact that oh, hey, you know, we might need revenue operations, we might need to figure this out. I hope to see a lot of growth coming out of you. But you mentioned that you were starting a program. And so are you thinking of a mentorship kind of situation? Are you offering? I don’t know, online courses? What are you thinking there?

Catherine Mandungu 27:07
Yes, today, I already offer coaching. And I’m coaching, actually, women in space. Oh, that’s just, I’m all for empowering women.

Lauren Conaway 27:21
Surprising Absolutely. Nobody makes me very happy.

Catherine Mandungu 27:25
But I am indeed also looking at putting a program to get like training course modules for folks out there who would be interested in revenue operations and getting into that role.

Lauren Conaway 27:36
Okay. So if you were interested in a career and revenue operations, what should you study?

Catherine Mandungu 27:43
So I studied business myself to enter into technology, but um, you could have come from any background, that’s my experience. That’s really as strong as you can have transferable skills, and often I have to say, with RevOps, you need some practical experience, right? Okay. Because, for example, you need to have, you know, gone and learn how to do Salesforce, if Salesforce is going to be your main tech, right or HubSpot for that matter, and get you know, accredited. Outside of that is, you know, just learning business strategies, if you’re going to be in the tech industry, or SAS industry, understand what the SAS model looks like and how it operates. Understanding the customer journey, these are things that you don’t necessarily always learn in university. And sometimes it just takes you going out there online and reading, just reading a lot of books, there’s so many books out there about that. So it’s just different things. And that is why I’m putting the program together, because it’s not immediately obvious what you should. So I’m trying to put all the different elements that you can get everywhere into one place.

Lauren Conaway 28:51
Yeah. Well, one of the things that you mentioned, you talked about the fact that, you know, people are just kind of coming around to understanding the importance of revenue operations, and you expect to see an explosion in the field. So are you anticipating a great kind of sea change moment within the industry? Like, what do you see happening there? I guess, culturally, societally. For revenue operations, what’s the future, you know, 510 years from now?

Catherine Mandungu 29:24
And it’s a very interesting question. I think there’s a lot of different routes, I think, for revenue operations currently as a possibility. So I mean, you know, about a CRO role right now, the CRO role primarily has always come from, you know, people who had a sales background, but more immoral. So I see that revenue operational people could get into a CRO role, right. Yeah. Whether or not I agree with that. That’s another discussion. I also see different routes to obviously, SEO could also make sense for sure. I mean, it’s still an operational role, but it’s, you know, much larger and looking really wide across the organization. But I also see something very interesting as I was working on it just recently is the CBO role to the chief data officer. Okay, because more and more the revenue operations role, the rev ops leader is becoming more a role that really leads with data first, right? That’s that responsibility and governance around data. And I’m all about how to use data to monetize the business, right. So using data monetization, monetization, basically to drive revenue. Now the CTO role that is also kind of up and coming today, it’s kind of doing the same thing. And there’s more tech on the tech side as well. But I think that’s a big possibility for wrap ups. And just recently, I was doing data summer school with Caroline. Caroline corridors and Jackson Peters, their consulting firm who do data summer schools to teach people how to be a CTO, and we just finished graduating.

Lauren Conaway 31:17
Having myself with that, let’s take a moment to celebrate that. I’m gonna give you a little round of applause. Well.

Catherine Mandungu 31:26
But yeah, no, but I think the possibility is quite great. We’re revenue operations, and I’m super excited for what’s to come.

Lauren Conaway 31:34
Yeah, well, and it’s so interesting hearing your take, in particular on the future impact and the direction that the field is going to be taking? That’s really interesting. And I think I had started, I’ve started to see that CDO title coming around, I think that, you know, we’ve reached a point in our digital evolution where it’s becoming easier and easier to track data. But more importantly, organizations are kind of waking up to the importance of putting resources around that data tracking and making sure that you’re investing in that. So as a business owner, what are some of the other I guess, markers or things that you look out for on behalf of the clients that you represent? What are some of those data points that you should absolutely be? So tell me this, Catherine, you know, we’ve talked about the importance of data. And I’ve started to see that CDO title come popping up more and more. And I think that companies are just really, really investing in data as the future of business, really, I mean, we were in this digital economy. What are some other markers that were data points that organizations should be tracking that they might not be aware of? Are the folks listening at Home? What can they start to track that might have some positive potential impact on their business?

Catherine Mandungu 32:51
Yeah. Well, I’ll name a whole list of metrics, especially in the tech industry, or assess, you know, you have the regular SAAS metrics, and we talked about a few of those impact levers. And in fact, soon on my site, I will make all the SAS metrics available, actually, for anyone to download for free, which is great. But what I do think that every organization doesn’t think about, I mean, we’re talking about data here and data. So important for every business, right? Because it will, it will help you monetize. And you have different ways of external monetization. But certainly, I’m talking here about internal monetization. So how do you use insights to drive revenue? But if you want to do that, then you really need to be measuring the quality of your data. Nobody does that. And that’s an important metric that you need to start creating in the organization. Because it has such a huge impact. I mean, think about your go to market quality as our go to market data quality. Right? Right. So think about all the prospect data where it’s missing phone numbers, titles, industries, whatever kind of data points, you would need to really understand your customers, their persona, the, you know, the market, really, and so you can understand how to sell to them is so important. But yet, we haven’t quite fixed that. So every business has this as a major issue today. But it really goes back to that there is no data strategy, first of all, in the organization, and especially startups are not thinking about the strategy at all, unless it’s about having to do with their product that they offer when it comes to go to market strategy or go to market data strategy. They didn’t look at that. And that is still very important, right? And then they should assign metrics around that data quality, because it will drive everything else they do. Otherwise, you’ll just fail.

Lauren Conaway 34:55
Yeah. Well, I’m sure that our founders lying At Home appreciate those insights. I have a question to ask you. And it’s kind of a silly one. But I always ask folks, in particular, knowing that you’re Dutch, can I ask you how many languages you speak?

Catherine Mandungu 35:13
I speak three languages and am trying to learn Bulgarian at the moment.

Lauren Conaway 35:19
That’s delightful. Any particular reason?

Catherine Mandungu 35:23
Gary in his family doesn’t speak English.

Lauren Conaway 35:26
Do it for sure. You know, you go home with him for the holidays and say, Hey, that would be a little awkward, so sweet of you to be putting forth that effort. That’s amazing. I always ask that because I’m just always really, really curious when I speak to folks who potentially speak a lot of languages. Alright. Alright, so I’m gonna get back into it. Sorry, I’m just distracting myself. Alright, so now I’m going to ask you, I want to get a little bit more specific with you. And tell us about the future of Catherine. And tell us about the future Think RevOps. You know, we’ve talked a little bit about the landscape. We’ve talked about what you do, but what do you see coming down the pipeline for you as a founder and your organization?

Catherine Mandungu 36:10
Yeah. I’m actually working right now. I’m working on something that would truly make RevOps a platform as a partnership to organizations and really help them drive, rev up strategy RevOps framework if you like, RevOps, thought leadership. So I’m working on something now. And it’s very exciting. I’m hoping to roll something out by next year. But really, for me, the future is that we really become a partner to really make an impact to potentially innovate the revenue operations industry. And that’s what I’m really looking forward to.

Lauren Conaway 36:47
Yeah. Well, that sounds pretty incredible. I’m not gonna lie. So now I come to my personal favorite part of the show, and I’m gonna ask you the human question. And friends, I have to tell you that when I was prepping Catherine for this, she made a face when I told her about the human questions, so I feel like you might be a little nervous. Maybe not, maybe not, I could be wrong, but you made a face. So I’m gonna go ahead, and I’m gonna give you one of my favorite questions, but it’s a pretty easy one. And I’m going to ask you, what are you reading right now? Oh, if you tell me datasets and spreadsheets, that’s a totally valid answer. But I’m gonna say, Hey, I’ve got some book recommendations for you.

Catherine Mandungu 37:32
Actually, I just started reading something yesterday. It’s, um, I can never get his name, or I can just learn learner. Anyway, it’s called unlocking your potential. And it’s an amazing book so far. Anyway, it’s audible. I’m not reading it. I’m listening to it. Unlocking your potential. It’s for entrepreneurs and founders. I mean, I reckon I mean, I recommend anyone to pick up this book and read it is really, really good.

Lauren Conaway 38:03
Awesome. Okay, so unlock your potential now. Here’s the real question, though. Where can we find you? And where can we find RevOps?

Catherine Mandungu 38:10
Yeah, sure. Well, you can visit our website: thinkrevops.com. For sure you can find me on LinkedIn. So my name is Catherine Mandungu.

Lauren Conaway 38:20
All right. Well, thank you so much for that. And I’m going to be finding you on LinkedIn. We’re going to be LinkedIn pals now. Well, I can’t thank you enough, Catherine, for taking the time to chat with us and share your insights. You have a lot of wisdom stored up in that beautiful brain of yours. So thank you for that. And thank you for sharing it with us so willingly.

Catherine Mandungu 38:40
Thank you, Lauren. What’s up? I really enjoyed this.

Lauren Conaway 38:46
So glad. I did too. And I learned a lot. I feel like I learned a lot. And those are some of my favorite episodes. Whenever I walk away feeling like, oh, hey, you know, that was a piece of knowledge that I didn’t have before. So again, thank you so much. And we’d also like to say a thank you to our episode sponsors. Thank you so much to FullScale.io. They are a company that knows that finding expert software developers doesn’t have to be difficult. And they can certainly help you do that if you need to create an app or if you need to create a technological tool. Full Scale is the one to help you do it. Visit FullScale.io to build a software team quickly and affordably. You can use the Full Scale platform to define your technical needs and see what available developers, testers, and leaders are ready to join your team. Visit FullScale.io to learn more and check out the information in the show notes. I also want to draw your attention to one of our other hosts. I don’t know if y’all know this, but Andrew Morgans are one of our Startup Hustle hosts. He is an expert in e-commerce. If you are looking to sell a product online, especially if you are looking to leverage Amazon as a sales tool, he’s the guy. So definitely listen to Andrew’s episodes. He’s a fun guy. I enjoy chatting with him, but he has a lot of wisdom to share. I invite you to check out the Andrew Morgans e-commerce episodes of Startup Hustle. Friends, we are so grateful that you take the time week after week to chat with us and listen to the stories of founders. And we just hope that you keep on coming back. Thanks so much, and we will catch you on the flip side.