Build Series EP.4: Identifying and Prioritizing Value Levers with Sam Hyde and Steuart Botchford - EP.257

Thrilled to have Sam Hyde and Steuart Botchford, who together run Northstar Fertility, on for the 4th episode in our Build Series on Think Like an Owner to dive into identifying and executing value levers as CEOs.

We explore the challenges of balancing long-term and short-term initiatives, experimentation, extensive investments in sales and marketing, and their evolved philosophies on performance evals.

Thank you to Lindsey Gray (Pacific Lake) and Aaron Perrine (Trilogy) for setting the stage for the conversation in our introduction.

9 key takeaways from the episode:

1. Of the value levers to pull, sales and marketing is often the most powerful.

2. Customers are frequently less price driven, join customer calls and conversations as CEO to understand their priorities. For Sam and Steu, top factors driving a purchase decision were security, certainty of outcome, and service delivery. Moving to a fixed price model removed uncertainty.

3. Run experiments with a limited budget, and add resources as it shows signs of success. Develop a culture of experimentation across the company at all levels.

4. With experimentations, normalize failure so employees don’t feel their status in the company has been compromised when experiments don’t work.

5. Hire people comfortable with ambiguity. 

6. Goal should be for employees to, over the long-term, be hitting 75% of their bonus.

7. Scale performance individually on 1-5 scale, but almost nobody gets a 5. 3 should be a good score.

8. It’s a sign of a healthy organization when the CEO is only making the hard decisions and the easy ones have already been delegated.

9. Overrated value lever: changes to the way you provide a product or service. Underrated value lever: sales and marketing, can never do enough investing here.

Checkout episodes 1-3 of our Build Series on Think Like an Owner wherever you listen to podcasts!

We’re also on YouTube now! Check out the channel here.