Ep # 127: The Future of AI in Sales & Customer Success: Insights to Action ft. Tom Lavery (President & Founder, Jiminny)

[00:00:03] Adil Saleh: Hello, folks. We are back. This is the first episode of twenty twenty five. We've been traveling, a lot in the first two months, and, of course, there's vacations and all. Everybody, is having fun time during Christmas and New Year. [00:00:17] Adil Saleh: So, thank you very much, everybody, for listening and coming down again. We have today, we I mean, we talk a lot about AI in the recent Tom, and, ever since we have this last episode three months back, a lot has changed in a very big way when it comes to conversational AI, generative AI in general, and, you know, how customer support, sales organizations, the whole GTM function has changed and impacted and, you know, in a good way. We we it's just my pleasure to have, you know, have Tom today who's the founder, father founder of Jiminy. It's a conversational, intelligence platform specifically for for, you know, revenue teams, but to be more precise, more like sales organizations for sales training and, of course, unification of all the data, the life cycle of, customer interactions from, you know, from starting from onboarding to expansion and, making sure, you win more deals. So thank you very much, Tom, for taking the time today. [00:01:18] Tom Lavery: Yeah. How you doing? Great great to be here. Thanks for having me on. [00:01:22] Taylor Kenerson: Woo. Excited. Hello. Tom, so you have extensive experience in sales. Really curious, In your sales journey, what was the moment that you were like, oh my. [00:01:34] Taylor Kenerson: The I need something like Jiminy in my life. And what when you had that moment, what were the next couple steps that you had to take in order to make Jiminy what it is today? [00:01:47] Tom Lavery: Yeah. It's, I think when most people start a company, you you find a problem, right, and you wanna fix that problem. So I think I think when you're selling day to day, you're kind of in your tunnel and maybe you're a rep or a CSM and you're doing your own job. But when when you become a leader, it becomes a lot harder. So I was an SVP of sales for a long time, and we became like a a global company with multiple countries. [00:02:13] Tom Lavery: And we had a sales team in New York. And, it's predominantly what before COVID, what people used to call that inside sales. People don't call it that now because everyone does inside Saleh. But, you know, it was just really difficult at the time to understand what was happening on all of their meetings. Like, there was a disconnect. [00:02:30] Tom Lavery: You had, like, GoToMeeting, but people were dialing in on the phone. Everyone was writing notes on pads. Everything was manual in Salesforce. If you wanted to actually record a call, you'd have to go into a laptop and try and download it from an Excel file. So it's it's just incredibly hard. [00:02:45] Tom Lavery: And we kind of had, like, this, thesis, really. We talk about it in onboarding. There was, like, a collision of things going on. So, like, to like, the the buyer was changing, technology was changing, and, you know, selling was becoming a a team sport and people wanted to, you know, improve and get better. And it just really inspired us to build Jiminy. [00:03:08] Tom Lavery: And I think that the thing that started off was just how do we capture all this data. If we can capture this data in a meaningful way, can we always be helpful to our customers by giving it to them in in better ways to digest? And it's just been the evolution of that, really. Mhmm. [00:03:26] Taylor Kenerson: I think that's a key point you touched on is, you know, there's so much data that teams and organizations need to look at, but what is that meaningful information that's actually gonna drive action? So how is Jiminy like, if I'm an exec, for example, how is that changing my reality if I were to implement something like Jiminy, opposed to, like, all the other you know, there's a lot of different tools out there on the market. So what is how is Jiminy switching that reality? [00:03:53] Tom Lavery: Well, one thing we talk to customers about all the time is you could have all the AI or insights that you want in the world, but if you don't do anything with it, it doesn't make change. And that's the reality. Right? Even if you're going ten years back and you're talking about dashboards in Salesforce Tom what you can do with Insights today, I don't think it's a Jiminy problem. I think it's a SaaS tech problem, that, you know, it's very hard sometimes to see the ROI. [00:04:23] Tom Lavery: And most big behemoth SaaS companies are just the main database, at the end of the day, and that's why they're the big ones and the big players. So I think it's like, how do you turn insights into actionable things that businesses can use? And that's what we're really focused on is, like, does the software tell you outcomes so you can make change? And I think we're on a journey to do that. But so for any for example, Taylor, is it like, right, you've got a team of 10, and does it tell you what the strengths are of that rep over that the last thirty days and where they need to improve Lavery, like, those last thirty days? [00:04:58] Tom Lavery: And that's the kind of thing we're working on is, like, don't make me think. Tell me the answer. And I think with, like, you guys alluded to earlier, with generative AI, you can do way more than you could previously. So it's quite exciting. [00:05:11] Adil Saleh: Okay. And I just wanted to see your viewpoint on, whether to go about having a Copilot approach, in a lot of enterprise motion. Just like, I assume that yours have I see that you have an enterprise head of enterprise, customer success, leader, on your Tom, and, your your motion is more like enterprise, more, you know, hands on and white glove in the beginning, and you're trying to optimize and using your own product to, you know, optimize the data for revenue teams, as well as success teams Tom make it more like a hybrid motion. Are you more about, going about copilot approach or you want to go more about? Because a lot of this has been transformed with this new AI model, especially with OpenAI, this Chinese model that, you know, people talk about a lot Tom completely make having an agentic approach and having agents to do research and, you know, communicate and come up with different, angles for you to, you know, drive conversations and, you know, the revenue conversations as well as, you know, expansion, all of this. [00:06:10] Adil Saleh: So how do you see that this moment to this day? I know that it's there's a huge gap when it comes to capabilities around problem solving for the computer science or programming and problematic approaches and conditions that these, building that comes on top of these language models. But, what do you see? How you see it about Kenerson it comes to conversational intelligence? [00:06:31] Tom Lavery: You look, things are moving really fast, but the reality of what things can do is maybe not, always there yet. Like, it's a process. Yeah. I mean, you could say, is SAS gonna die? But there's still people using on premise ERP. [00:06:47] Tom Lavery: So, like, k. You know? Things take time to change. But I, when I when I think about it, and I think about our world so let's talk about, like, go to market teams and revenue teams is if you're gonna be that, that go to for their their kind of insights and data and you're analyzing all their conversations, their emails, then I think you have to be able to help on multiple levels. So, like, operationally so let's think about it like your normal sort of pyramid. [00:07:20] Tom Lavery: Like, operationally, like, can you be really great at saving the team time, automating the CRM, you know, being able to help them self develop, self coach, give them insights? But then if you're, like, mid Lavery and it's tactical and you're you're a manager, like, how are you helping them understand what good looks like, support their team, move renewals and new business deals from, middle of the pack up the funnel? And then, we've always been very big on thinking about it as a business tool. One of the things that we've worked on is, it's not that people want to guard, the CEO and the CFO from data, but it's easy to do that. And I think one of the things that we're very big on with a lot of our customers and we partner at the moment is how are we giving insights directly to the c level exec on the things that they wanna see. [00:08:08] Tom Lavery: And even in bigger companies where you think hundreds or thousands of people, they're still quite operational, the things they wanna find out. So, it's a hard it's not easy because you're servicing a lot of people, and you have a lot of stakeholders. And that comes with, you know, a lot of time and effort, not not not, in the tech, but often outside the tech because you're trying to help them understand the insights. But, I think that that's kind of how our world and how we see it. I don't know if that's a helpful answer. [00:08:39] Taylor Kenerson: And I would love to, if we can, Tom, dive into just what you mentioned on. You're serving so many stakeholders, and you're driving different outcomes for each of them. So internally, how are you managing that, like, as a company? I mean, obviously, you have your enterprise c s CSM, but what does that look like on an internal organization? Because you also mentioned something earlier where it's this ever present, philosophy of we're a team more than ever, and we can't be siloed anymore. [00:09:08] Taylor Kenerson: So what does that look like on the internal, view of Jiminy? [00:09:13] Tom Lavery: Yeah. So I think I think that a massive part of it is technology, and technology has to be good and do the job. But then, I think we think about customer experience, so let's call it that, in, like, multiple layers. So it doesn't matter what size company we're working with. We break it down, to, like, technical onboarding, enablement because a lot of these companies don't have big revenue operations or enablement teams. [00:09:40] Tom Lavery: You might have someone with, like, 200 customer facing roles, and there's, like, two people in enablement and RevOps or something. Like, the ratio is just whack. And it's so, like, how how can you be an extension of their team? And then we have I think I found out the other day, like, we're used in, like, 93 countries around the world. So we like instant support, like, getting back to people in under one minute. [00:09:59] Tom Lavery: So being really, responsive. And then we kind of like you've learned over the years, if we can do those individual sports, if you wanna call it that separately, the CSM has way more time to be tactical and work with, you know, sometimes reps, sometimes managers, sometimes execs. They can go up and down, the stakeholders and be a good partner and help them solve different problems while they while they kind of work with us. So, yeah, there's kind of layers to it and breaking it down. So it's probably a big part of it. [00:10:32] Taylor Kenerson: And then Tom, like I mean, we're talking about tech and AI, and I also I I often sometimes feel and think about this myself. You know? How much I'm trying to save time using tech, but then how much time am I actually putting into the tech, and, like, in in the tech and then opposed to actually driving the goal. So as you're, you know, on an outside looking on an outsider looking in from yourself, what do you how do you see, you know, people, teams that are looking for these new, like, technical solutions to optimize, you know, their processes and really drive different outcomes while balancing, okay. Well, you know, I now we have to onboard and uplift. [00:11:07] Taylor Kenerson: Is there a lot of friction in, you know, those conversations and getting people to, you know, realize the value and opposed to, you know, am I actually wasting time here? [00:11:17] Tom Lavery: Yeah. I I I think the real look. The stuff you wanna get when you have a project, like, oh, you could go in and say chat GBT, write help me write this. Right? And you're doing the Saleh. [00:11:28] Tom Lavery: But it's the everyday stuff. So the everyday stuff goes back to what I said earlier. Don't make me think tell me the answer. Like, is it putting everything in Salesforce without someone touching it? Right? [00:11:40] Tom Lavery: Because then then you're not having to go click something effectively. And then when you're, I don't know, looking at renewal or looking at a deal, they're like, is all that information there, and can you surface what you want all from the same place without leaving Salesforce even with the AI? So I think it's about it's not like revolutionary things. People are still trying to do the same things. But, like, I don't know, probably, like, seven, eight years ago, you'd think, oh, I got a really salute simple solution with one or two clicks, really easy to use, you know, but, like, you know, you know, the the key now is to not make them do the click. [00:12:17] Tom Lavery: Do you see what I mean? Mhmm. [00:12:21] Adil Saleh: Amazing. Very interesting. And I also looking up, to your product, and I was seeing that you recently implemented, the intelligence, like, Gemini intelligence. Tell us more about it because as opposed to this, we spoke to Gong and their leadership as well. Of course, you guys are playing in the same market. [00:12:36] Adil Saleh: They have, and a lot of other companies there. Their own agents, like, for research, for training, all of that. So how you're approaching this, this spectrum of agentic AI and having agents, to enable your customers to do things. And, you know, simply they can talk to your platform. In minutes, they can get outcomes and, especially through these conversations that are more towards, you know, expansion and, you know, revenue based, conversations. [00:13:03] Tom Lavery: Yeah. I think there's lot lots to unpack there. I think I think the agent thing, I can see how that works today, in the reality of I'm in a call center, and I've got to ask the same 14 questions on an insurance policy. If you're selling more of a subjective be like, your audience, like a b Tom b product where there's not always one conversation quite exactly the same, like, in this environment, I think it's a little bit harder to, like, completely automate, even on the business development SDR side or on the Saleh side. But I think I think it will come over Tom. [00:13:37] Tom Lavery: I think so, you know, for sure. I think I think for me is, it's consistency. Like, if you look at, probably most if you guys have sold in your career or anything like that, often the very best salespeople, are good at doing the same things again and again and again. And, you know, a lot of salespeople just like to veer off track or try something different on a call. And it's not to say you can't be creative, and it's not to say you can't think on your feet. [00:14:07] Tom Lavery: But I think the the way that AI can really help is, like, is it helping you be consistent? Is it measuring you that you're consistent in what you do? And then, you know, if you can apply that a bit more Saleh than, like, 20% of your team, then that could be massively helpful. But I think going back to your question, I think, Taylor, you were asking about companies. Like, even though we've been live, I don't product, like, six and a half, seven years since there's a company, 90% of the customers that sign up with us each quarter have never had this 10 IG before. [00:14:41] Tom Lavery: So you can be in a bit of a bubble on LinkedIn and your network, and, you think that everyone knows about this. But the reality is there's a lot of companies out there that have Teams, Salesforce, and a Notepad that you so, you know, there there is still an evolution of people just being able to, do the basics. Mhmm. [00:15:00] Taylor Kenerson: And then and then I just have a as you you're almost, like, educating the market. Even though, like you said, in the silo, it seems like everyone knows about Jiminy and, like, these Rev intelligence platforms and, like, it seems like no one has the pen and paper anymore. But how like, in the go to market now just, switching lenses, how are you going to market even though you're still in the market, but it's changing because of these new a like, AI and all the tech that you have to almost align yourself now because AI wasn't as, obviously, as prominent when you first started, Jiminy. [00:15:34] Tom Lavery: Yeah. We've always had forms of machine learning, so it's not like something new for us. We've been transcribing for for years, but, like, for people with I think it's interesting. If you look when the iPhone launched, everyone suddenly had an epiphany and could understand what an application was. Right? [00:15:48] Tom Lavery: When, you know, because you put an app in your phone, you downloaded an app. Oh, this is an application. Like, people wouldn't have known if they weren't in in business what an app was. And I think, ChatGPT a couple of years ago really, like, it dawned on people what AI is. It was like the same kind of thing as Steve Jobs with the iPhone. [00:16:06] Tom Lavery: It's like, oh, I get what an app is. I want a great user experience. And everyone's like, Oh, I get AI. So I think, look, it helps us that people understand transcription, note taking, and things like that. So in ways it's sped up people's education on capturing this data probably more than COVID. [00:16:23] Tom Lavery: Because people just have an understanding. Yeah. You can hear on news outlets. You might be on the radio in a car, and people will talk about AI now. Whereas, you know, two, three years ago, it wouldn't wouldn't have been the same. [00:16:36] Adil Saleh: Interesting. And if I talk about your customer segment and, you know, are you or you guys evolving towards the markets that are less technical, with this capability of, technology and AI in Kenerson, like, be it real estate, be it health care? So what kind of how are you approaching those segments? [00:17:16] Tom Lavery: I think for us personally, we're very specific. Every year that we've been in business, I think you kinda get more focused rather than less and you think you're focused. So, you know, we really try and, you know, look at customers that are maybe sort of 50 employees to two, three thousand, you know, using main, like, core CRMs, like, sort of your Salesforce, your HubSpot. So we know we can service them really well, give them great support. So, like, our marketing team is very focused on a particular ICP. [00:17:49] Tom Lavery: Of course, there's stuff that just organically comes in outside of that. But in terms of what we're trying to drive, it's all around that, other business, that size and that tech stack. Mhmm. [00:18:03] Adil Saleh: Mhmm. Very nice. And, thinking about, you know, your inbound, outbound, I know that a lot of people say that outbound is pretty dead. It says just shaped in a different way. You got more smarter people that are more data led. [00:18:17] Adil Saleh: They are, like, more intent based. So how are you approaching outbound for your sales internally? [00:18:22] Tom Lavery: Yeah. The outbound that thing is it's Lavery interesting, isn't it? I think look. It's just, what's that Gary v thing says? Like, market is break, like, ruin everything, like, break stuff. [00:18:32] Tom Lavery: You know, it's just much harder. I think probably not as old as me, mate, but the I remember when you had a BlackBerry and it's much easier to get like a response. And I was like, it's just noisy. There's way more businesses. You know, like you've got Slack, LinkedIn, Inbox, all these other places where it's just harder to break through. [00:18:50] Tom Lavery: But the reality I think I did a post a while ago. The amount of people who are actually social selling or building their personal brand is still very small. And I think, look, it's just changed. You, you know, used to be able to go, oh, look at this list of companies, pick up the phone, they'd be sitting at their desk, you can get through a gatekeeper, no one you don't even know if they're in the office to ring them. Right? [00:19:12] Tom Lavery: So it's just it's naturally become harder. But can you build your own personal brand? Can you social sell? Then can you do those things on top? So I don't think outbound selling is dead. [00:19:21] Tom Lavery: It's just it's changed. It's changed how you get the result. And that that's the thing for me. You do it in a different way. You know, not just ringing up people's head office isn't gonna get you. [00:19:33] Tom Lavery: Maybe in some industries and some things, but, depend always depends on the vertical. But, yeah, I think you just gotta adapt adapt or die. You gotta be thinking about doing it slightly differently. Mhmm. Absolute [00:19:45] Taylor Kenerson: And I I wouldn't even say like, outbound in the traditional sense is dead, but in the in what you just said, Tom, yours in the personal brand element, the more social selling, that's it's outbound. You know what I mean? It's just taking a different form, and it's more it's relying more on the human element, which is ironic because that's almost what selling was like before. You know? It's human to human, but you just pick up a call. [00:20:08] Taylor Kenerson: And now it's like, okay. You can't pick up a call. It's the medium can't be through a device. The medium has to be meeting someone or connecting with a friend or, you know, using your personal brand as the driving force for that. [00:20:21] Tom Lavery: Yeah. I think I think you got a really good point. I think, you know, as well, you've gotta think about it a bit more long tail. Saleh way you ring someone up years ago and they go, oh, that that won't be a project for six months. You just gotta think about how you're you know, someone might comment on your post and you interact back and then six months Lavery, you're still then you're in their mind. [00:20:47] Tom Lavery: Right? So it's harder to track and I think that's why people feel like they don't understand it as much because they can't put it in a spreadsheet or, you know, necessarily funnel it all into a CRM. But it's just a different way of, doing that. Mhmm. [00:21:02] Adil Saleh: Mhmm. Amazing. And I was also thinking about, you know, networking and investing into different events. I went to, this semester last year, in London, and I met their team, Hook. You know, these guys there. [00:21:14] Adil Saleh: Most of their team is from The UK. And, you know, I spoke to the founder, and he said, like, it it's essential. Like, it has become pretty essential. Like, acquiring a customer, via outbound approach and marketing towards has become, like, 10 x harder. So need to, you know, force these relationships and make sure you show up to these events. [00:21:31] Adil Saleh: So how do you see about this spectrum, like, investing into events? You have an office in Boston, Massachusetts as well. So are you, you know initially, maybe you just started. You had more customers from The UK or European region. Now you're trying to expand more in The US or North America. [00:21:45] Adil Saleh: So how this component of investing into different events and doing then these networking, having your team be show up across these events, especially in The US, how are you thinking about it going forward? [00:21:58] Tom Lavery: Yeah. I know Ferraz really well. He he uses Jiminy, and we use Hook. So I I know I know the team there. And SaaS is a great event. [00:22:07] Tom Lavery: I think I think, with marketing, you have to pick the right disciplines for you. And I think where it's got really hard for companies now is that, again, marketing has evolved so much. There's too much you can do. So, like, it's it's it's trying to nail very quickly the two or three kind of mediums that work for you well. I think, we do do, like, sort of medium sized events where we can speak at them often and, like, again, push the brand and and sometimes have a a a store or event. [00:22:38] Tom Lavery: Again, this is based around RICP. But what we find works well for us is, doing a lot more partner stuff with, people who have a similar ICP, and we might run, like, quite smaller Kenerson, that might be like in a hotel and we have a panel or we might just run a dinner, with some themes and topics, that people could, like, talk to in private with their peers, you know, and feel like they can speak up and collaborate. So, yeah, smaller, sort of more boutique events that we run with partners, we find that we get better return on, generally, and they're cheaper. Yeah. [00:23:15] Taylor Kenerson: I Mhmm. And it and it goes back Tom to, you know, you being able to, like, host those smaller events. You have the contacts right there sitting in front of you to be able to make those personal connections, way easier. I I see a lot of ROI and, you know, at least on the hosting side, if you are able to host smaller, more intimate, medium, events, the the ROI is, you know, it it's there. But just now diving and taking the, putting the lens inward a little bit, Tom, and, like, the Jiminy and the team, how are you, balancing just managing the team and in a world that where personal growth is more important in this concept of work life balance, even though I think that's bullshit. [00:23:56] Taylor Kenerson: There's no such thing as work life balance. You have life, and then you have work and your other relationships within the bucket of life. But, there's you can't separate the two. So how are you helping the team and, like, helping your internal team personally grow and, like, setting up the right education and different paths for them to, you know, not just staying in one, you know, in one role and, you know, evolve in their time with Jiminy? [00:24:21] Tom Lavery: Yeah. It's a it's a great point. I think, you got a loaded question when you talk about work life balance. I think it really depends on the person. It really depends on their appetite for where they wanna get in life and what their job is and what they do. [00:24:37] Tom Lavery: So that's one thing. Look. I I think, look, we we've never been a growth at all cost company, so we knew we could get to certain sizes. We're probably leaner and, meaner than than other companies in terms of, like, how we operate. We've always been that way. [00:24:51] Tom Lavery: We started Bootstrapped. But I think, look, one of the things is this just because someone's in a business for four years or five years, you can split it up into chapters. People often don't leave the company. They leave the manager. So So it's really important that you have good leadership and that people feel like they really wanna work for that person who's leading their team. [00:25:14] Tom Lavery: So that's the first thing I think that's really important because they ultimately, they'll stay if they they've got a good manager. And if they feel like they're growing, often you might have been in this situation, guys. You, you know, you leave somewhere because you don't feel like you're getting the growth or personal development you need. Am I learning? Am I working with great people? [00:25:32] Tom Lavery: You know, all of those things that you kind of thrive on. So, it's harder when you're Taylor, like, you don't have big budgets and everything else. But if you make sure you've got great leadership and that they are growing and learning all the time, that's great. And look, if if someone's good and they're a great asset to your business, find a way to progress them, find a way to give them that promotion they want. I think probably in the, you know, a few years ago, I'd fight against that and be like, oh, you've only been a year and get a promotion. [00:26:01] Tom Lavery: Gen z want a promotion every five minutes. So, you know, whatever. But look, I think the reality is that, we live in an on demand world and everyone wants everything faster. So they wanna call themselves a senior this or whatever that, and it keeps them happy, then, you know, so it's not the end of the world to do that. Mhmm. [00:26:18] Taylor Kenerson: Yeah. I love that. And that's that's super important too. And as a founder, it's important to just be aware of all of those, variables that you have to take into account and what, you know, drives the team. It's not just, you know, the customers that they're dealing with or the KPIs they have to meet. [00:26:32] Taylor Kenerson: It's the people they're working with, the managers they're always talking to, you know, you as a founder, how you're, helping and educating them, and that's all plays into a a huge role. And, also, congrats on your series a. You raised, a few a little while ago. [00:26:46] Tom Lavery: Feels a while feels a while ago now. But, yeah. [00:26:50] Taylor Kenerson: The I I do wanna I do wanna dive into that, Tom. Just in the world of fundraising because it's it's gone to many different spectrums, over the past few months, it feels like. So when you were raising, like, what was one mistake that you made? And then, like, looking back, maybe, like, one or, you know, what was something that really helped you in in fundraising that you maybe didn't expect would play a huge role? [00:27:18] Tom Lavery: That's a great question. The one thing I was gonna talk about is culture, but we can put a pin in that and come back to if you want. [00:27:24] Taylor Kenerson: Go. Dive in. [00:27:25] Tom Lavery: No. No. No. It's cool. I'll come back to you later. [00:27:28] Tom Lavery: So, look, I I think, like, when you go out to raise, you have to be ready. People would tell you this at any stage, but, like, once you take, institutional money, there's no going back. Right? So you you're on that hamster wheel. So I think you've got to prepare yourself that you're ready to go down that path. [00:27:48] Tom Lavery: And then if I can give any words of wisdom, there's multiple ways to get funded. Venture is one way. And if you wanna, you know, raise to the top really quick in IPO, then great. Do venture. If you have a different view, then maybe there's things like private equity, growth equity, maybe debt, maybe angel. [00:28:06] Tom Lavery: There's lots of different ways to kind of raise capital. I think, look, if you're it helps if your metrics are good at the time. You have to be show that opportunity. I think you just got to be really clear on your vision, really clear on knowing your competitors in your market and where you want to take it. And I think if you can tell that story in a really cohesive way, then you have good people interested. [00:28:28] Tom Lavery: Like raising money is fucking hard. Like, especially like, Dale, you were talking about like seed. Like when when you've got like hardly any customers or you're no one wants to bloody know you. Like, it's just like it's the hardest thing in the world. We did a lot of private equity in my previous company. [00:28:46] Tom Lavery: Private equity care about EBITDA of a certain size. I go start Jiminy. I'm a growth startup with, no, hardly any revenue. No one wants to know. Any of my contacts I don't want to know because you don't have any EBITDA. [00:28:58] Tom Lavery: So like it's almost like starting again. I didn't know anyone, you know. So yeah, look it's, you've got to find someone who believes in you and going to back you And probably the one thing I would say, you gotta be aligned. It's like a marriage. Because I'll give you a great bit of advice once, you know, you're getting married but you know you're gonna get divorced. [00:29:17] Tom Lavery: It's the weirdest relationship Lavery. But you gotta be aligned on, the divorce. Yeah? Because nothing lasts Lavery. So, you yeah. [00:29:26] Tom Lavery: Like, do you do you align on the same trajectory of growth? Do you align on some sort of, plan for the future vision of the business? So it's not always easy, but I think you've gotta be able to align on those things. Otherwise, that's where it becomes, like, friction and tension. Mhmm. [00:29:43] Taylor Kenerson: I was gonna say that's where we've seen a lot of Kenerson, and friction spark up is when you're not aligned. You know, you're just chasing after the money, but you don't realize that you're in a marriage actually until you take the money, and then you're like, oh, shit. I got the ring, got all the wedding and everything, and I don't like I don't like my partner. That's where it goes down. So I think that's a great bit of advice. [00:30:07] Tom Lavery: No. You're just saying about, like, teams and promotion and motivating, people. But, you know, it's just saying we talk about when we onboard people at Jiminy, and I think it's really important is, like, from day one, when we write the text back and we had a blank sheet of paper, we also write the mission and the values. And I think what happens with a lot of companies, is they get successful, hire a couple of people. It starts to work. [00:30:29] Tom Lavery: They say, oh, shit. We need some values and, you know, whatever. And it's it's almost like an afterthought. Look. I had the luxury of working in an employee engagement business and having two exits. [00:30:39] Tom Lavery: So I saw it firsthand what it was like to build a great company. So I think, you know, everyone should have that university of kind of life experience and you can apply it back. But for me, it's like if you have the mission, like ours is be the best version of you. Like everything we do at Jiminy is like how do we help sales and customer success people become better? So the whole idea of it being, like, a personal sales assistant has always been there. [00:31:03] Tom Lavery: It's just easier with generative AI to do it in in a more innovative ways than ever before. And then so you have the mission and then our values, they're all they've all, like, have a doing word in front, like an adjective. So, like, be open, be brave, be inventive. So the point of your values is you use them. You use them in one to ones. [00:31:24] Tom Lavery: You use them in hashtags in Slack. You talk about them. You call people out on them. You know? You use them in meetings. [00:31:30] Tom Lavery: So the the the people really believe them. You know? They remember them. And if people are look. At the end of the day, company is just a bunch of people. [00:31:40] Tom Lavery: So if they're living the values and breathing them every day and everyone believes in the mission, then you create a culture. Culture isn't, I get some free beer and I get this great benefits plan and, you know, I get to play ping pong or, like, whatever. It's literally about how it feels to come to work every day. Do you love the people you work with, and do you enjoy it? Yes. [00:32:00] Tom Lavery: You have hard conversations. Yes. It's never easy. All of that stuff. But, generally, as a rule of thumb, like, do you enjoy the people you you work with? [00:30:02] Taylor Kenerson: But please dive into what you, you you wanted to touch on on on in terms of culture. [00:32:07] Tom Lavery: And I think that's what culture is for me. You know? [00:32:10] Taylor Kenerson: Yeah. I love that. And I and I I think you're I mean, from your experience, you've obviously learned that. I was it reminds me of a book. It's called Delivering Happiness, by Tony Hsieh and, the Zappos. [00:32:21] Taylor Kenerson: And the Zappos culture, it was literally, like, Lavery day, you're either living the values or you see them in front of you. And my question was always, as a founder, how do you kinda focus your values or decide, okay. Like, here's the values that I'm gonna hang my hat on because, I mean, there's a lot of principles that one could prescribe Tom, but how do you choose, I guess, which ones are gonna be it and then, you know, drive that in terms [00:32:48] Tom Lavery: Yeah. The corporate principles. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [00:32:50] Tom Lavery: Look. I think it's like a piece of art or a product. It's never finished. So our values today, there was five. Now there's seven. [00:32:57] Tom Lavery: Some of them are different. They've evolved. Your business evolves. They change. So they don't have to be set in stone. [00:33:02] Tom Lavery: Right? It's not the 10 commandments or whatever in the bible. But, like, I think that you can evolve them as the business evolves. So, yeah, I I, I think that they should be saying you should review as the business goes through, like, bigger chapters that you get to a few hundred people. You might have an employee engagement committee, and the team needs to be involved in because they're closer to the business, and they understand team and the people more than maybe the exec team even. [00:33:28] Tom Lavery: So, yeah, I think I think it's just about evolving them over time. That's really important. Mhmm. [00:33:35] Taylor Kenerson: Yeah. I feel like every function of the business, the more, we have conversations that evolve or die. It's the whole business as a whole, your theory, your initial mission, you know, any features you have, Everyone across the board, it's a it's a universal principle in order to, you know, at least be sustainable for as long as you have them, which is clear and evident for that. So I appreciate that. [00:33:58] Adil Saleh: Perfect. And I I appreciate it how, you know, you you had at least concrete, elaboration towards culture. I guess it's more about how people feel going out and, you know, waking up every single day and thinking about work and going to work And, you know, having these conversations, hard conversations, good conversations, keeping it a part of, and partial of, of that role and being being content, about it is it's what culture is all about. So you guys have any roles open if you want to explain about those roles. If you have any open, you can, you know, speak it out here. [00:34:33] Adil Saleh: And, you know, anyone listening and people interested, on switching their jobs, GTM roles, and it was you can simply Mhmm. Play it up loud. [00:34:44] Tom Lavery: Yeah. We fixed I think we've hired a few lately. We've just, well, I hired a, a COO to help run the business, hired a new marketing director, sales director, just hired a new CS lead. So, like, building a a bigger management team for the next phase of the business, I think you're always rebuilding that. And, yeah, we just hired a a solution consultant. [00:35:07] Tom Lavery: You know? It's it's very important to do that enablement part and technical part, outside of the, AE. And I think we're looking for a couple of CSMs at the moment where we expand the Tom. So, yeah, like, if you go to our jobs page, you'll always see a a couple of jobs out there, that we're looking for on the go to market side. [00:35:44] Adil Saleh: Maybe if not, if if this thought is, like, one month, like, they have, like, three months from pretty much all the reason. What is the biggest thing you're excited about this year going into, 2025 about you, like, product wise? [00:35:55] Tom Lavery: Yeah. Look. I think a lot of tech companies, see this wave of, generative AI and go, maybe, shit. How do we do it? Like, how does that fit into our product? [00:36:12] Tom Lavery: You know? Is it just like a, knowledge base, whatever? We're very lucky. We have a really rich dataset, of structured data and unstructured data. So structured data being, like, what's in the calendar, what's in Salesforce, what's the team do, what's in the email. [00:36:28] Tom Lavery: Sorry. The unstructured data would be like transcriptions, prompts, stuff like that. So for me, the magic is about how we're pulling this together, and, like, telling people answers. Right? So for example, you know, we could go listen to 10 calls over a month and get a good gauge of how Taylor doing. [00:36:46] Tom Lavery: What does Jiminy tell you how Taylor doing? Yeah? That's the same difference. Like, same as if you lost 40 60% of your opportunities in the last quarter. You can actually go in and Jiminy will analyze each one, but how are we telling you or different parts of the team what are the common themes of where you lost? [00:37:08] Tom Lavery: So for me, it's this aggregating and rolling up this data in a way that makes it really easy. We've done some really inventive things, like put it put it into, like, a podcast style or, like, a free page report that people can read. So I'm I'm just as interested in, you know, how people get the information from Gemini outside of Gemini or Salesforce or whatever CRM they use as much as in it. Mhmm. Mhmm. [00:37:34] Tom Lavery: think I think that's a game changing thing for that's a game changing thing for me. To answer your question succinctly is [00:37:42] Tom Lavery: Making those insights easier and faster to digest in a medium that the customer wants and needs without them having to do anything. Mhmm. Mhmm. [00:37:49] Adil Saleh: Perfect. And does would it as you mentioned, it's it's gonna have, like, external sources as well. So it's gonna be external data sources like Kenerson information coming into, play as well to give the bird eye insights, like, in quick Tom? [00:38:04] Tom Lavery: Yeah. I think, I think it's interesting I think it's interesting crossroads here because, you know, company gets a certain size. Historically, they would go get a BI platform. There's loads available. I don't know. [00:38:19] Tom Lavery: Snowflake, Looker, Power BI. And then they'll have to structure Adil the data or Tableau or whatever. And then do they really get insights from that that they can give back to the teams? So I think, you know, there's an opportunity for us to be, a power RLLM to be a powerful BI tool for revenue teams. And so so it's exciting what we're what we're feeding back to customers, what they're seeing, and the response we're getting. [00:38:46] Tom Lavery: You know? Even when people could see the recordings in the early days, like, eight years ago, they're blown away or they could see things transcribed or but this is a different level of, like, shock for people, like, in a positive way because because they're like, oh my god. It's telling it's telling me what to do. It's telling me outcomes. You know? [00:39:27] Tom Lavery: Yeah. There's a whole RevOps APIs. Like, if you look for a business and they get Tom send size, it's look. If things evolve, it wasn't bad, but, like, it's just outdated. There are all things that you can measure that are static in Salesforce. [00:39:40] Tom Lavery: Some are helpful, some not. [00:39:42] Tom Lavery: You know? So, like, oh, I want us to rewrite like, I want us to kill pick lists because they're pointless. I want us to rewrite the way that, like, KPIs work for revenue operations and exec teams. And I think that's that's really exciting. [00:39:05] Taylor Kenerson: I mean, that's a Yeah. [00:39:08] Taylor Kenerson: Sorry. But what what Tom just said in terms of, like, being able to just, Jiminy ingesting, you know, your 10 sales calls, and you're just asking it questions on the calls. And it can it's literally just saying, okay. These are these are the common areas of opportunity, or this is where, you know, you may have lost it. That's that's game changing. [00:39:58] Adil Saleh: Okay. So before I set you free, this is one, intuition that has grown, over the last one year to a lot of these founders. They are thinking about, you know, going multi product, in a sense that, let's say, customer intelligence platform tries to be, of course, having agents and co buyers tries to be more customer support platform just like you're thinking about revenue, intelligence to more like evolving it as a BI tool as well for all of your customers because they have loads of customers. So they want to they want to not lose out on all the capabilities that AI has while their customers have these problems to build inside the same platform that they're sitting. So how do you see, from business wise and marketing marketing positioning wise, like, how you're gonna position your, your your product to be to go multi product, for all the overlapping use cases around, you you know, of course, your ICP, that are using different tools to make them and convince them to use your tool that is sort of a a stop shop for, let's say, a GTM function. [00:40:57] Adil Saleh: Let's say, we research, you know, teams that they have technical support teams. So how do you see it in a longer term view, at Gemini from a business standpoint? [00:41:07] Tom Lavery: It's an interesting one that there's no right or wrong way to do it, and every business that's successful will have its own story. Look. Going multi product is hard. I think you have to think that when you do that, your second product should be better than your first product. Let me take it like a HubSpot example. [00:41:26] Tom Lavery: First product, marketing automation. Second product, CRM. CRM Salesforce. First thing, Saleh Cloud. Service Cloud, now number one product. [00:41:35] Tom Lavery: Right? So I think it it it's about that. For us, though, I think it's too interesting not to be, like, laser focused. So, for example, in a video call, we just started to understand, like, tonality and video emotion. Like, no one's mining that data today. [00:41:52] Tom Lavery: So I think, look, people won't buy an app. They'll buy, I need these three bits of AI to run Salesforce or do whatever. Right? I'm like so I think, you know, are we gonna be that piece of AI that they need to do the job? And I think that's kind of how we think about it. [00:42:10] Tom Lavery: So we can double down on that. If it look. It might again, it's specific to verticals and to the but if I'm talking about go to market teams, building features and products, getting people to adopt them and use them is not easy. So it goes back to my thing again, like, don't make me think, tell me the answer. So for me, it's much more interesting about how we can be the the insights. [00:42:31] Tom Lavery: And then I think for us, it's about how do we do that for the whole business. So rather than thinking I'm gonna sell people loads of individual tech products and be a Swiss army knife, How do we provide the whole business the data they need to do the job well? Yeah. Whether they're marketing, whether they're product, whether they're sales, whether they're CS. I mean, that's that's what we're most interested in. [00:42:51] Tom Lavery: So we're thinking about it differently. Like, how do we spread across the business and the team to add value rather than building products? And that can work in pricing, monetary terms, usage, all of that stuff. But it's just a different way of approaching it. Mhmm. [00:43:05] Adil Saleh: Wonderful. Wonderful. I love the fact that you're keeping it pretty siloed and making sure that you drive this product and deliver value first before going into, you know, exploring new use cases for the same customers. Great. So, I mean, it was really nice, meeting you, Tom. [00:43:21] Adil Saleh: And, probably we have met more than hundred founders in the past three years, and this is the only product in the conversational AI space that has, like, this much of funding with a team less than hundred. So a lot of these wanted to come up in a 50, two hundred people. We've got Taylor of big burn that we have that is gonna be part funding. We're investing, like, $50.60 grand a month only on ads this time. So I appreciate that you you're keeping it pretty lean, business wise, and, you know, you've been pretty smart in making sure that you, as you mentioned earlier, like, you raised funding while you were generating revenue, and it's not long time ago, since you raised your series a. [00:43:58] Adil Saleh: Is that right? [00:44:00] Tom Lavery: Yeah. Yeah. It's August. I mean, that time will tell whether it's the right choice to do it this way. Right? [00:44:04] Tom Lavery: I'll let you know. [00:44:06] Adil Saleh: Yeah. Perfect. Tom, one one more time. It was really nice, meeting you and getting to know you and your product of your business and how you're approaching and seeing, AI technologies and evolving as a as a as a business owner as a as a business. So thank you very much for your time. [00:44:22] Tom Lavery: Cool. Great to meet you both. See you soon. Thank you, Tom. Perfect. [00:44:27] Adil Saleh: Okay. Yeah. Perfect. It's gonna sit now for a couple of weeks with the editing team, and we'll keep posted when this is up. We have a small team. [00:44:35] Adil Saleh: Like, we we also want to go lean as a product and as a team, so we will come up with some ideas. I would appreciate if you just connect us with some of your team members for content collaboration or co marketing or anything that we are planning on doing in the next episode Kenerson topics. [00:44:48] Tom Lavery: Once you've got the edited version, I'll just leave you Tom Maddie. We have our own podcast too called Saleh Sessions and might cheat exactly on our website. Yeah. Yeah. Mhmm. [00:44:57] Adil Saleh: Perfect. Perfect. Tom, God bless you, brother. Have a good rest of [00:45:00] Tom Lavery: your day. Hope it was good. Alright. Thanks, mate. [00:45:03] Adil Saleh: Yeah. [00:45:03] Adil Saleh: Bye bye. [00:45:03] Tom Lavery: Bye bye.