On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda McCabe speaks with Kelly Breslin Wright, Founder & CEO of Culture Driven Sales. They discuss resilience and purpose related to the Culture Driven Sales methodology where Kelly Breslin Wright operates as a C-level executive, board director, advisor, and adjunct university professor.

Kelly Breslin Wright is an experienced executive and corporate board director for both public and private companies, with over 30 years of experience in leadership, sales, operations, and strategy roles. She has served as an Independent Director and Advisor for multiple Boards and has helped companies navigate multiple stages of growth. These include IPOs, enterprise expansion, CEO and leadership transitions, globalization, M&A, financings, business model changes, and global crises. She has a unique mastery of sales, go-to-market, leadership, transformation, strategy, growth and scaling, data and analytics, and culture.

As an operator, Kelly Breslin Wright served as President and COO of Gong, an artificial intelligence platform that serves revenue organizations to deliver insights at scale. There, she managed all go-to-market functions, including Sales, Customer Success, and Marketing. For nearly 12 years prior to Gong, Kelly Breslin Wright was Executive Vice President of Sales (Chief Revenue Officer) at Tableau Software (formerly NYSE: DATA). She joined as the company's first salesperson, where she grew Tableau’s worldwide sales and field operations from zero to $850M in revenue and managed over half of the company’s 3,400 global employees. Tableau was purchased by Salesforce in 2019 for $15.7B. Before Tableau, Kelly Breslin Wright spent time at Bain & Company, McKinsey & Company, Bank of America, Dale Carnegie Training, AtHoc, and Southwestern Advantage.

You can find out more about Kelly Breslin Wright at:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellybreslinwright/

Culture Driven Sales Website: https://culturedrivensales.com/

University of Washington Foster School of Business Website: https://foster.uw.edu/faculty-research/directory/kelly-wright/

Winning the Board Game:
How Women Corporate Make THE Difference

Show transcription:

00:04

Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. The Founder's Sandbox is a podcast now in its second season. It's a monthly podcast in which I reach entrepreneurs and business owners that want to learn

00:33

about building resilient, scalable, and sustainable businesses with great corporate governance. I am Brenda McCabe, your host on the Founder's Sandbox, and my mission is really simple. By interviewing guests through their stories, I want to assist entrepreneurs in building those scalable, well-governed, and resilient businesses. Guests to my podcast are founders, business owners, corporate directors, and professional service providers

01:01

who like me want to use the power of the private enterprise, be it small, medium, or large, to create change for a better world. Through storytelling with a guest that will touch on topics that include resilience, purpose-driven enterprise, and sustainable growth, my goal is to recreate a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. Today, my guest is Kelly Breslin Wright. Thank you, Kelly, for joining me today.

01:31

Thank you for having me. I'm excited for the conversation. I've been pursuing Kelly for a number of years. And finally, we're making it happen today. So Kelly and I are going to talk about purposeful, culture driven sales. I'm going to give you a little background on Kelly. She is founder and CEO of Culture Driven Sales. She has promoted and led the Culture Driven Sales methodology as a C level executive,

02:01

public and private company board director, advisor, and adjunct university professor. She is an experienced executive and corporate board director for both public and private with over 30 years of experience in leadership, sales, operations, and strategy roles. We actually share a common past. We both originated from McKinsey and Company, where are paths crossed there. She has served as an independent director and advisor for multiple boards.

02:30

She's helped companies navigate multiple stages of growth, including IPOs, enterprise expansion, CEO and leaderships transitions, globalization, M&A, financing, business model changes, and global crisis. So we're in for a treat today. I asked Kelly to come because she really has a unique way of bringing in culture

02:58

behind sales. I think sales often times is a hidden or unwanted child. And I was amazed that none of my guests up until now has the expertise nor did they speak about sales. So it's the first time, Kelly, that you're gonna be talking to my listeners around your 30 years experience in sales. As an operator, Kelly served as president and COO at Gong, an artificial intelligence platform.

03:28

And we're going to talk a little bit about AI today. And prior to Gong, Kelly was Executive Vice President, Sales Chief Revenue Officer at Tableau Software. And it is formerly was on the stock exchange with the sticker symbol DATA. She was there for nearly 12 years. And she joined that company as the 10th employee. And we're going to listen to her story and what brought her to them.

03:57

So thank you again for joining me on the Founder's Sandbox, Kelly. Thank you for having me. You know, when we were just prepping for today's podcast, Kelly said, what actually made you wanna reach out to me? And it goes back quite a few years. Our first encounter was through a common passion serving on corporate boards. And you reached out to me to thank me for sharing my experiences that is in a book.

04:26

published and written by Betsy Berkhemer-Credaire, winning the board game, how women corporate directors make the difference. So I'm always thankful to people that do reach out unexpectedly and just thank you. And I finally, two years later, I've achieved what I wanted to get you on my podcast. So I am honored that you agreed to share

04:56

quite a few real world experiences that started while in undergraduate days and informed your career choices that led you to be the first sales person to join Tableau and number 10 employee. And while you were the CRO, the company went public. The learnings you continue to share as advisor, educator, board director, and executive to private and public companies are centered around your passion for culture-driven sales.

05:26

In preparation, I listened to a recent podcast interview on operators, building and scaling companies and your recruitment to Tableau. It had something to do with educational books. It also had something to do with grit and resiliency. And I work on resilience with the founders I serve as the foundational piece. And I wrote an article myself on empowering resilience

05:54

by unlocking your personal and enterprise value. I touch on three things, Kelly. I'm knowing oneself as a leader, having options and making choices, and finally being thankful. So can you share why Tableau asked you to join as employee number 10? That's going way, way, way back to the beginning of the career. Well, so,

06:20

it's interesting, you mentioned about selling books door to door. When I was in college, I knew I wanted to do something entrepreneurial and I wanted to be independent. And I came across this opportunity to run my own business selling educational books door to door. And that's what I did for my four summers when I was in college. And I think there are a lot of things, Brenda, that you had touched base on. One was sales. And we'll talk about that a lot today.

06:49

The second was resiliency. And I appreciate that you're always talking about resiliency because it's so critical, not only in business, but in life. And selling educational books door to door, when you show up at someone's house, you're not the most welcome person that they want to see that day. So there's a lot of doors that are slammed in your face and a lot of adversity that I dealt with in my 18 to 21 year old formative years.

07:20

taught a lot about resiliency of how to get yourself back up, keep on going, being able to learn to control what you can control and not worrying as much about the rest, a whole bunch of things. So we could talk about resiliency. Anyway, going back to how I started at Tableau, because when I was in college, I was known as this person that while everyone else was doing these cool internships or

07:48

They were lifeguarding at their home pool. I was talking to thousands of families, working 80 plus hours a week, running my own business. And people thought I was crazy, but I ended up making quite a bit of money. I paid for my undergrad, it paid for my first car, paid for my first house, paid for most of business school. And so later on in my career, when people were starting their first,

08:17

their startup or starting their own entrepreneurial venture. Oftentimes people would call me and say, hey, Kelly, you did that crazy job in college. They'd say, you sold all those books. Maybe you can help us. And that's exactly what happened at Tableau. So what happened at Tableau was the CEO of Tableau had gone to Stanford Business School and was classmates with a friend of mine from undergrad.

08:45

And so I had met him multiple times as Tableau was an incubation idea. And we had met actually at an Oscar party. And so when it came time to, to hire the first salesperson, there was this conversation of, Hey, maybe you should go talk to Kelly. And I remember thinking about resiliency and just raising your hand. When I first had that conversation and I looked at the job requirement.

09:14

Brenda, I literally didn't match anything on there. It was understand a lot about data, has taken multiple companies public, has been at companies that have grown to sizable amounts of revenue. And I had done none of that. So I think I'd had sales and hopefully the, smart and can think on your feet, hopefully that matched, but I didn't match any of the other things. And it really came down to,

09:41

having a passion about what the company's mission was and alignment of the values and how we wanted to work, which is how I ended up joining as the first salesperson. And then the story goes on from there. Wow. And you did just touch briefly on mission and we're gonna get to that in the next question. Okay. Yeah. So, so Tableau, 12 years, amazing. I admire that company.

10:08

A piece you wrote back in 2021, it's on your website and it will be in the show notes. It's called creating winning company culture by perfecting these two elements. You touch on mission. Often founders wait for later in creating a mission statement. And that they're either focused on for a client, a customer, their product or service, hiring a few of their team members

10:39

When does it make sense in your experience, Kelly, to create a mission statement? And what are those two elements you believe that create a winning company culture? That's a loaded question, but you've written about it. We're gonna hear it here on the founder's sandbox. Well, Brenda, I think that it's really important to have a mission from really early days.

11:04

And I think you're right in that companies often feel like they need to have, they need to figure out their product, they figure out the service, they figure out their operational cadence, they go get the first customers. But it can be very confusing if you don't understand where you're going. The way I like to describe it is building a business as you hire employees and as you get investors and

11:32

as you find your first customers and partners, it's building with these building blocks, similar to having a map. Okay. You have a map, you have to have a destination, you have to know where you're headed, because otherwise you can get very lost. And so although companies might not have their exact wording of a mission statement from very early days, it's important, I mean, I think it's important to have a mission right from the beginning. When I talk about Tableau,

12:02

Tableau from the time I started, the mission was help people see and understand data. And that was something that I really was drawn to, which is how I ended up joining as the first salesperson and employee 10 before we even launched version one. Because everyone then that we were hiring, our customers, the whole team was aligned on what it is that we were doing. What was the company's purpose? What was our why?

12:31

And what ends up happening is when companies are not clear on what that is, you might hire different people that all know you're building something in this space, but they may have very different ideas of the reason and the purpose of the company, the why of the company. And so it's really imperative to not only drive the alignment, but to also...

12:57

be able to make sure that the people that you're hiring to go on this journey with you are passionate and committed to what it is that you're trying to build. And if you don't have a stated mission, then everyone will come up with their own definition and reason for why you exist. And it's not always the same. And one thing, Brenda, that I really liked, like for instance, when you started off and kicked off this podcast, the first thing you said is at the Founder's Sandbox, our mission is this, and you explained it.

13:28

So everyone knows what it is that your, what your purpose is and why they're listening. And it's really important for companies to do that. But the mission isn't the only important part. So the two things is there's a mission and then also core values. Okay. Any companies that I meet with, they'll say, we're not gonna spend that much time on mission and core values, because then they're just words on the wall. You throw it up and it doesn't mean anything. Well.

13:54

If you're going to have mission and core values and they're just going to be words on the wall, yeah, then they're not going to work. They're not going to work and it's not going to mean anything. But it is actually really important to have them and help them guide and advise how you build your business, how you hire, how you engage with your customers, and then holding yourself and your teams accountable.

14:22

to make sure that you're behaving in a way that's in accordance with your core values or your operating principles. And I'm sure we can talk about that more as we go through. But each company that I have joined is very intentional about their mission and core values. And that helps them to be very intentional about how they build their culture and how they're guardians of that culture. Yes, and you actually, for your...

14:52

the course you're teaching in the Culture-Driven Sales Institute. You did a lot of surveys and interviews. Can you shed some light on some of the background? I think you talked about the 85 companies at different stages of growth. Tell us a little bit about what you found, those aha moments of particularly back to mission and core values. Yeah, well, so at Tableau, just to go back a little bit.

15:19

So at Tableau, the management team at Tableau had not built a business of that scale before. We were all doing it for the first time. And so we were in a space that was very disruptive and transformative. We were in business intelligence, we were doing data analytics in a different way. We had a different go-to-market approach of how we were actually handling sales. And there weren't companies to go look at to how to do it. So the way we were doing it as,

15:49

first time executives in a first time team is we were very clear, I mentioned on our mission, to help people see and understand data. And we had very specific core values that helped to drive the way that we were behaving. We were on a mission, we used our products, we kept things simple, and we could go through and talk about a lot of these other core values. Well, that is really what helped us to go build this

16:19

really transformative company. When I finished at Tableau and decided that in this next stage, I wanted to be able to help other companies to grow and scale and do work both in teaching as well as an advisor or board director. I wanted to figure out, well, how can I be the most helpful? What is it that companies actually need? And so I ended up meeting with the whole slew

16:47

of founders, go-to-market leaders and CEOs. So in that first year, I did, I sat down with about 85 founders and CEOs over the course of the next few years. I've met with maybe 135, 140. And I asked these companies some very specific questions. One of the first questions that I've always asked, because I'm so passionate about mission, and I just assumed that companies were doing it in the same way we did at Tableau. And I found out,

17:16

that that actually is not the case. So when I was meeting with companies, one of the first things I would ask these CEOs is, well, tell me about your mission. Tell me about your company why. What I learned was actually quite eye-opening. Some of these founders would say, our mission is to get 30% market share. Our mission is to get to profitability in X number of years.

17:45

or very operational KPIs. And so I'd say to them, that's not a mission statement. That doesn't rally around the purpose of what you're doing. And sometimes these CEOs would say, no, that is our mission statement. That's how we're rallying our team. And so that I kind of was scratching my head. That's not a mission statement. Even more interesting to this though, is often times these CEOs or founders would say, hey, Kelly, you're an expert in go to market.

18:13

we're having some lack of alignment and we need help of why we have our salespeople don't want to sell what it is our product team is building or our sales team is trying to sell something that's different than how the marketing team is marketing it. Got it. And so then I would say, well, let me talk to some of those other leaders. And I would ask everyone that I talked to, first question is, what's your mission statement? And this was what was so...

18:42

crazy. I would ask the CEO, I would ask the co-founder, I would ask the chief revenue officer, I'd ask the chief marketing officer, the head of product, what is your mission statement? And guess what? Almost all of the time, each executive that I would ask would have a different answer to what their mission statement was. Wow, at the same company. So crazy, even if they had a published mission statement. And that's when I realized, oh,

19:12

People are just using these as words on a wall. And then you wanna know, well, why is a company not aligned? Well, if you have a product leader who is driving the engineers according to one mission statement, and you have a sales leader that's going and trying to engage your customers with a different mission statement, well, duh, you're not aligned if you're actually training your teams and advising your customers that you do something different.

19:42

And that was a huge aha. And the same thing was true for the core values. And so it is actually, here's just a main takeaway. Okay. Companies need to realize that the corporate strategy is very intertwined with the go-to-market strategy. Got it. Many companies think of their corporate strategy is often very aligned with the...

20:12

product strategy, but it all trickles down to how are you hiring? How are you engaging with customers? How are you making sure those customers are successful? How are you telling your story on your website and how you engage with your investors and in the world? And that go to market strategy goes all the way back up to the corporate strategy and all starts from mission, vision.

20:41

What is your company's story? What is your company's why? And we need to roll that all together. And that's a lot of what I teach in my course on culture-driven sales. That's a lot of how I end up helping companies when I'm advising or on the board. All right. So I often pride myself on my guests bringing in some practical tools while in the interview.

21:11

alignment of strategy with the culture. All right, we get that. Corporate strategy is very intertwined with sales strategy. And again, depending on the stage of the company, what do you see as key takeaways? I mean, how do you recruit? Is it dependent upon stage of the company? What are those KPIs or what are those core values? How do you measure? So can you walk us through some specific examples and tools that you perhaps used at Tableau?

21:42

on bringing in the mission to the core processes, hiring, training, the sales motion. What are those behavioral elements that you would include in your managing your teams, as well as growing the company? Yeah. Well, Brenda, I think it is really important to be able to have very specific hiring and performance management tactics that help to make sure you're managing that.

22:11

bar of your mission and value. So here are some very specific things. And I can give kind of tangible examples. Like for instance, companies should be using behavioral interviewing. And what happens is many companies are focused so much on the experience and the resume skills that they're looking at, has someone done this job before? Have they been successful in doing this exact

22:40

thing that I need, whether it's enterprise sales or have they been a CFO before, depending on whatever the role is. But it's really important that everyone can do behavioral interviewing. Now behavioral interviewing can be kind of tricky. The first thing you need to do is you need to make sure that you understand what behavioral traits you're trying to flesh out and be very specific on that. And then training everyone that is in the interview process on

23:08

How do you do behavioral interviewing? Now, some of the things that to do with behavioral attributes is look at the most successful people in your company, what are the behavioral attributes that they have, and then how do you interview and flush that out in the interview process? So that's example one, and we can do a little bit more there. Number two is how...

23:36

can you make sure that your core values are being identified and fleshed out, not only in your interview process, but in performance management? So I'll give a very specific example. At Tableau, one of our core values were like the first core value was we build great products, second core value, we use our products. How do we flush that out? In at Tableau, I had.

24:06

at the end, maybe 1800 people on my team in the GoToMarket organization. Virtually every single one when they were hired during the interview process had to do a demo on Tableau because our mission was we help people see and understand data. Our product was so easy, everyone could use it. And typically in software sales, it's the sales consultant or the sales engineer

24:34

that does the demo. But in Tableau, it's so easy, we wanted everyone to use the product. So here's an example of what often would happen, especially for someone that was more experienced and further along in their career, we would give them the assignment of, we need you to go download the product, takes 90 seconds to download, go find your own data set or you can use our sample one and do a demo. And this is gonna be one of the interview stages.

25:04

And sometimes people would be very excited about it. Other times people would say, hey, you know, Kelly, I'm interviewing with a ton of companies. And if you hire me, then I will learn the product, but I'm not gonna spend tons of time to go learn the product in the interview process. And the answer there, you can imagine Brenda, was thank you very much. The interview process is done.

25:33

And yeah, because, and that was a few things. One is our mission is we help people see and understand data. We want people that are super excited about that. So if you want to work here, we want you to be very excited about understanding what it is that we do. And if you're not going to do that in the interview process and you're not really that passionate about our mission. But secondly, we wanted people who were going to be all in and be able to use our product.

26:00

And that was one of our core values that we fleshed out very early on. So there's ways that you can look at that. Another tangible is in the annual performance review, it wasn't just the work that you did, but in our annual performance review, at most of the companies that I've been involved in, one of the checks are how much are you abiding

26:28

and embodying the core values of the company. People didn't get promotions, they didn't get pay increases, they didn't get high ratings unless they were living every day according to the core values of how they interacted with the internal team and with the customer. So those are some tangible ways to summarize again, behavioral interviewing flesh out the core values in the interview process.

26:58

and make sure that those core values and adherence and passion about the mission are part of your annual performance review process. Thank you very much. Three practical tools when you're scaling your organization, not just in sales, the entire organization. That's very, very helpful. You've recently launched Culture Driven Sales Institute.

27:28

And I know in one of the podcasts that you've been a guest to, you talk about storytelling and that a salesperson has to have at least three stories. So I wanted to do a practical exercise here today. Give you a bit of your own medicine, right? Which is you've started a culture-driven

27:58

that you would tell about. Yes. Well, so let's back up a little bit and why storytelling is so important. Thank you. I think what happens is when companies think about selling their product, they often are so focused on the what and the how, they miss the why. And the why comes back to why the mission is really important. Because

28:28

Well, when you think about not only employees, but for customers, customers want to understand why a company exists. Because what people don't realize is that the whole process of purchasing is very emotional. People use logic to do their research, to make sure that that product or service has everything that they need. But the lion's share of why someone actually makes a purchase decision,

28:57

is actually emotional. And so companies need to be emotionally connecting with their prospect and their customers. Think about this on a very tangible level. Just think about it separately of why you as an individual would buy a house or why you would buy a car. If you're looking for a house, you know you want it in this neighborhood, you want this number of bedrooms, you want this amount of square footage, this amount of bathrooms, but in the end,

29:26

you have to like feel it with the house. It's an emotional connection with that house. And this is the same reason that people buy, even if it is a software or an enterprise product or whatever it is that people are buying, a system or consulting, you need to feel it with the person and company that you're going to be interacting with. And it's shown in, if you look at research,

29:56

had done a whole survey to understand why people buy a certain product or service, most companies behave as if it is the specs of the product or service and the price. And as it turns out, those are two reasons why people buy. But the largest reason why people buy is actually their engagement and experience with the company. So this is really important to think about. So now going back to the stories.

30:25

The stories are, well, you want to be able to communicate the company story. You want to be able to communicate the individual, your personal story, and then also your customer story. So three stories, company story, personal story, and your customer story. So if I were to talk about it specifically for me, the company story of why I founded culture driven sales in the first place was.

30:54

What I realized is companies were just focused so much on the what and the how, focused so much on operational processes and operational execution and all these tactics. And they were missing the real reason of why companies buy, which is tied to

31:19

having an integrated go-to-market strategy that ties back to the corporate strategy, coming all the way from mission, vision, company story, values, but then how that ties into how a company tells their company story. What are your unique differentiated value propositions? Who is the ideal customer profile that you're trying to reach?

31:48

And then what is the best sales approach to be thinking about it? Companies were often asking me, well, how can I go get my specific sales? Hey, Kelly, just help me with, should I be enterprise sales or a different motion? What should be on my sales operational tactics? And they were getting in at such a detailed operational level, they were missing that high piece, which helped guide the strategy on the go-to-market strategy. So this is why.

32:16

I founded Culture Driven Sales in the first place. The second reason of my personal story is why was this important to me? Well, when I talk about what we did at Tableau, remember we discussed how this was the first time I had built an enterprise software team. And the first time that I had been building a company from zero up to a public company.

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We had a team that we were so focused not only on building a great company, but thinking about our high priority was we want to build a great place to work. We were intentional on creating a great place to work with a great culture where people felt like they could bring their authentic self and be able to really build their career at Tableau. That was as important a goal to us.

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as it was to go build a huge sustainable business that was creating great products for our customers and good returns for our investors. And what I realized was not all companies were thinking about that, but we were creating this movement where our customers were really excited and our employees are really excited. And this is something companies want to do, but they just don't know how to do it.

33:45

by putting culture at the center is really important. And so having culture drive sales rather than just focusing on your sales and thinking culture will just fall out on the backside. Culture isn't just a derivative that happens. You have to be as intentional and thoughtful about culture as you are in driving all of your other strategic priorities as a company. So that is the whole company story.

34:12

And then my own personal reason, my personal story for why I did it for a customer story is customers are actually realized that they get better results when they do this. And so when I'm on these different boards, oftentimes companies are saying, you know, how, like what, what, one specific example is oftentimes a company will say,

34:41

Well, how can I do this myself? If you look at their website and then you look at the website of their five competitors, they might all look identical. You take their name and their brands off and they all say that they're doing the same thing. But when you weave the company's story into it and their unique differentiated value propositions, that company gets more of a personality. It actually is unique. And that is what...

35:10

can really help to light up these individual companies so they can be different, they can be unique, and they can understand how they're gonna go and differentiate themselves across everyone else in the noise when they go and focus on culture more than they have before. Yeah, so what maybe, you know, biodegradable chickens are largely made by emotional, right? Okay, so.

35:38

One of the things that we did that was very different at Tableau is we did storytelling training. Okay. Many companies, they do when they're training their salespeople, they do customer centric selling, they do spin selling. They're trying to talk about solution selling in a way where it's really more about pitching the wares of the company. When you're really focused on the customer more.

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you want to do storytelling because we've already established that it's an emotional type of cell. So we did a very atypical type of training. We brought in storytelling training and we taught people, well, how can you learn to tell stories? More about the company's why, more about the customer story, more about your personal story. And it was very interesting what happened is after this two interesting derivatives came out of this is

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Our employees said, wow, this is not a typical sales trading. This is a communication trading that's helping me to communicate with not only my prospects and my customers, but everyone in my life, my family, my kids, all these things, because sales is about communication and emotionally connected. So that was the first derivative of our employees said, this is really useful.

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The second derivative that came out of this is we had our customers came back and they were saying to me and my team, huh, why is it that Tableau is selling in such a different way? It seems like the Tableau salespeople are understanding me and my problems and my company in a way that others are not. And it was because when you're storytelling,

37:31

you're really emotionally connecting in this more deep communication way. It's not just twitching your wares. This is why you should buy. Here are all the things that we should do. And companies want to really be able to strive to do that. And the companies that do this well, they're often talked about that they're creating a movement. They're doing something transformational and disruptive where they're bringing these customers in that really wanna be

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part of that whole aura, rather than just buying the widget in a transactional way. It's a way to really connect with your customers in a much deeper, more meaningful way. Thank you. You heard it here. Storytelling training. This is fascinating. Going to switch gears. Let's get back to the corporate boardroom. All right.

38:28

The right you check so many boxes. So you with scaling companies. They start out with advisory boards, but when they're at their first