The Revenue Architect turns 3!

My journey to 150 issues

Welcome to the 150th issue of The Revenue Architect!! Wow. I can’t believe it.

When I started this newsletter three years ago my goal was simply to stay top of mind with my network while I figured out what to do next. I had no idea where it would lead to.

I was at a crossroads in my career, having been laid off unexpectedly from a full time CRO job in early 2020. Not wanting to jump straight into another full time role, I’d fallen into consulting and started to notice two interesting patterns.

The first pattern was that every CEO I talked to seemed to have near identical problems; an ICP that was a mile wide and an inch deep, a spray and pray prospecting strategy that involved high effort for low return, messaging that was full of jargon, salespeople that talked too much on calls, pipelines full of stalled deals, discount desperation and CS teams that didn’t know how to upsell. I found myself offering similar advice over and over again.

The second pattern I noticed was that every CEO responded to my advice in the same way. Wow that was really actionable. We implemented it and its working. How did we not think of that before. There’s so much fluff online its hard to know what to believe. Your stuff is so refreshing. Hearing this feedback resonated with me because 10 years earlier I had been in my first CEO role and also struggled to understand sales, having come from a product background.

Putting the two patterns together I realized that there were likely a lot of early-stage CEOs out there facing the same problems and running into the same frustrations as my clients were so I signed up for a substack account, started writing and invited about a hundred people from my network to sign up, hoping they would magically spread the word. Sure enough, word spread quickly and sign ups grew so naturally I started extrapolating the trend and getting overly-excited. Then I hit the first wall.

Anyone who has worked in an early-stage business will tell you that its hard to be objective about your growth when you are in the thick of it. The highs feel incredible and the lows feel devastating, especially when you read about other startups taking off around you. For me that was seeing other newsletter writers effortlessly racking up tens or hundreds of thousands of readers while there I was looking at flat line. There were many evenings when I struggled to write anything and a few occasions when I considered just quitting altogether.

But what kept me going was getting to know my readers. Seeing which topics got the most views and using that as inspiration to go deeper in subsequent posts. Reaching out to subscribers to say hello and hearing them tell me how refreshing and actionable they found my advice. Reconnecting with people I hadn’t spoken to in years, deepening friendships with people I already knew and getting to know a lot of incredible sales and marketing leaders across the world. It all validated that I was going down the right path, even if I wasn’t building the next rocket ship.

So here I am three years in to this journey, blessed with thousands of readers, over a hundred paying subscribers, a thriving fractional CRO business and two highly-rated cohort courses. Looking back its quite an achievement. But more importantly it’s enabled me to have a happy and fulfilling life. I’m able to provide for my family without having to sacrifice time with my family, a balance I was rarely able to achieve in my full time career. I’m able to be very healthy, running 50km a week and going on epic bike rides. An I’ve found the time to record 3 albums of my music and put them on Spotify.

I had no idea I’d be here 3 years ago and honestly have no idea where I’ll be in 3 years time. Most days it feels like I’m still just figuring it all out from scratch, which I know from experience is a good sign. When you think you have it all figured out it usually means game over and time to move on. So I hope I’ll still be writing regularly and you’ll still be reading regularly.

If you’ve been a long time reader of The Revenue Architect, thank you. If you’ve ever recommended it to a colleague, thank you. If you’ve only recently discovered it, welcome and thank you. And if you’re a paying subscriber, thank you for supporting my work. I appreciate you all from the bottom of my heart.