Leveraging Leadership

From Theory to Practice: Gaining Operational Experience w/ Chief of Staff Revant Gupta

August 12, 2024 • Emily Sander • Season 1 • Episode 96

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In this episode, Revant Gupta, Chief of Staff at Margin, shares his journey of pursuing the Chief of Staff role to gain crucial operational experience. He talks about managing internal operations, designing user experiences, and automating customer onboarding. Revant also provides insights from his time at Home Depot, emphasizing the importance of inventory turnover in the CPG industry. Additionally, he discusses how Margin uses AI to assist small businesses with financial planning and achieving industry benchmarks.

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Who Am I?

If we haven’t yet before - Hiđź‘‹ I’m Emily, Chief of Staff turned Executive Leadership Coach. After a thrilling ride up the corporate ladder, I’m focusing on what I love - working with people to realize their professional and personal goals. Through my videos here on this channel, books, podcast guest spots, and newsletter, I share new ideas and practical and tactical tools to help you be more productive and build the career and life you want. 


Timestamps:

00:45 Meet Revant Gupta: Serial Entrepreneur

01:24 Revant’s Involvement in Home Depot Finance Team

05:14 Transition to Margin: Automating Financial Planning

06:44 The Role of AI in Margin's Strategy

08:21 Challenges and Strategies for Small Businesses

11:40 Revant’s Role as Chief of Staff

15:27 Marketing and Growth Strategies

29:34 Leadership Insights and Personal Growth

Speaker:

Welcome back to Leveraging Leadership, where we unpack the art of business leadership. I'm your host, Emily Sander, Chief of Staff turned Executive Leadership Coach. I work with people to help them step into effective leadership and realize their professional and personal goals. If you have known failure and success, if you have had good bosses and bad bosses, If you are a high achiever and want new ideas, and if you want the practical and tactical side of things, then you are in the right place. This show is all about finding your points of greatest influence and leveraging them to better serve those around you.

Emily:

And today's guest is Ravont Gupta. How are you doing, Ravont?

Revant:

Doing well. Can't complain. It's a beautiful sunny day here in Atlanta. Um, weather's been pleasant, work's going well, and hey, it's uh, it doesn't really feel like a Tuesday. It kind of feels like a Thursday in disguise.

Emily:

Can't complain about that. So just to give people a little bit more color to your background, you are a serial entrepreneur and currently a chief of staff at Margin, which is a B2B SaaS. FinTech company, which we'll get all into, but you work in their go to market strategy, growth strategy, and product management and execution. So that's a little bit about you for our listeners. But before we get into all that, I wanted to rewind the tape a little bit and talk about your experience and role at Home Depot. And so you led their finance team or you played a major role in their finance operations. So can you tell us just a little bit about. What you did there.

Revant:

Absolutely. So at that point in my career, I'd created two recognizable skill sets. One was in financial planning and analysis, and the other was in data analytics. Home Depot people don't realize is a very innovative company. I think the reason they stay the market leader is they've got a super strong it backbone, about 90 percent of their software is all homegrown. They're not super acquisitive. They take like calculated risks. And they wanted to create what they called finance of the future. So bring like these competencies and data analytics and visualization and forecasting to the like FP and a side financial planning analysis side. So I joined their company as a finance manager on the e commerce team. I worked on some really interesting projects and machine learning and data visualization and, you know, combining data analytics to get financial insights. And then, um, shortly into my stint, they tapped me to lead the finance function for their internal startup called HD home. And that was doing home decor e commerce only. And it was growing like a weed. It had like a really strong profile. And they wanted to like create that startup ethos for it. So they gave it its own campus, gave it its own P and L, you know, gave it its own staff, a lot of support. And they said, just run. And so, you know, the company going that fast, you know, especially at a startup. There is a good amount of burn. So it was good to join a team that was being that innovative, but also bring my skills in like, you know, financial discipline and planning and forecasting to help them, like, just provide some more guardrails to how they were spending money and how we were like calculating profit.

Emily:

And you worked on setting up a CFO for success. So in your opinion, a modern day CFO should have a certain toolkit to work with. So can you talk a little bit about that?

Revant:

Yeah. So like, you know, I like to think of myself as being like the mini CFO for HD home at that point. And I realized in my like state there with a lot of big corporations and even like fast growing companies like HD home, the faster you grow, the bigger you get, the more complex the operations get, there's going to be a lot of cross functional collaboration. A lot of departments you're going to touch. And there'll be a lot of people outside of your immediate, like sphere of influence. You'll need to get information from a lot of what I found, honestly, in my day to day was like, just getting data, getting good information and getting answers, and it was very inefficient. I thought, um, I had to talk to people in supply chain a lot. I had to talk to people in merchandising and a lot. I had to talk to people in inventory, uh, procurement and management a lot about getting accurate answers on things that were pretty boilerplate in my opinion, like freight cost or like inventory costs, inventory, like turnover ratios, inventory, like old periods, um, where inventory was being stored and it wasn't something that I was. These weren't issues that require me to do creative problem solving and actually, like, produce insights and think strategically. It was mainly just, like, data wrangling. And I thought that a finance person is capable of much more than that with the tools that we're equipped with. And there should be technology to help enable you to get that information easier so that you could actually spend more time with like strategic finance, which I think is like what helps companies make better decisions on how to grow and manage their cashflow effectively.

Emily:

All right. So we'll come back to the AI theme and a little bit later in the conversation, but take us from You ha work for a bank, home Depot, and then the Chief of Staff role at Margin. So bridge that gap for us to get us to margin. What does, what does Margin do? What's your, what's your role there?

Revant:

Yeah, absolutely. Margin automates the financial planning process for small and medium sized businesses. We are in the process of integrating ai. To help you make better decisions with regards to your forecasting and your operational decisions to maximize profit IE margin. One of our key hallmarks is that we have a database that scans. different industries and tells you what are the like hero statistics and metrics you should strive to and like how do you compute those metrics because each industry will have different like ratios and like calculations we need to abide by and we can democratize those pieces of information and therefore give you visibility and what you should strive towards and then using AI tell you what you need to do operationally to get closer to those metrics and those benchmarks.

Emily:

So, and I know like a lot of those industry ratios are relative. They're not like an absolute value. It depends on, you know, are you, are you the category leader compared to what? So it sounds like it gives you ideas about that, but then how does it, how does it dictate the operations of, of your business?

Revant:

Yeah. Great question. I mean, for example, if you see that you're in, let's say CPG, consumer packaged goods, right? Thanks. That you need to hit a certain like inventory turnover ratio, meaning you need to cycle through your inventory X number of times per year, and you're currently well below that we can give you that average ratio and help tell you that, hey, maybe you are buying too much inventory at a time. And therefore things stale and you're not actually able to refresh your inventory and get it off the shelf quick enough so that would inform your decision to maybe buy smaller bits of inventory at a time and do what we call demand forecasting. So better predict what demand is going to look like. Therefore, by like be more astute about your inventory procurement decisions, and therefore like you are selling in accordance with people's tastes. And your inventory is turning over much quicker, which is always, is usually a good thing in consumer product goods. And so that, that's one example. And a lot of times, small, medium sized businesses, especially in this era, where it's like, solopreneur economy, you can launch a business on a dime. A lot of people don't have as much experience, like, managing or leading a business. So, like, they might not be fluent in these types of metrics. They may not understand, like, how different departments of a business, like, interrelate, like, you know, and what you need to do to affect financial outcomes in another, um, department, or just how to affect financial outcomes in general. And so, like, what we do is we create that logic in our platform to see how those different departments interrelate, and we quantify that. With like our financial forecasting.

Emily:

So this is for someone who's very much in the startup phase, or maybe in like, if you're thinking small to medium business, like on the small end of that, where they don't have maybe a fully fledged financial team, or they don't have a CFO who's doing this full time. Is it for people who like I've started this company. I'm I'm off the ground. It's proof of concept, but I need to be smart about finance and maybe some of the seasonality of my industry. Is that where, is that where margin fits?

Revant:

Absolutely.

Emily:

Okay.

Revant:

Exactly where margin fits. It's for companies that are high growth, but don't necessarily have the resources or the bandwidth to bring on like, like a full stack CFO and a finance team. They, they just have too much going on. So we can be that outsource CFO and give you like tools to help you produce those like investor grade financial statements and like models and reports. But more importantly, help with the strategic finance implication, which is giving you operational insights about what the, like, the numbers and the financial statements are telling you.

Emily:

And then just one more thing. I'm interested in this. So before you had mentioned, I don't want to be spending my time. Collecting this data. It's like this data should be available. So if like a founder or a CEO is listening, they're like, that sounds good. But is it upfront effort to like load in these inputs or integrate these different things? Like, how does margin get the data to make the, the predictions or recommendations it needs to make? It provides.

Revant:

Oh, yeah. Great question. We would get that data through like a proprietary onboarding process. We've got a very like streamline onboarding wizard. Um, it really understands what industry you're in and asks you tailored questions about like what are the necessary parts of your business. And how we can help you model that out with just answering a couple of different questions. And I, we're also building out our integrations with your accounting software. So you won't really have to upload any files or anything. You'll just simply tell us where your, your, your PNL, your financial statements live. Xero, QuickBooks, uh, Sage. And we will go ahead and ingest all that information. And then what you'll tell us is more about like the growth profile. Xero. how fast you expect to grow, um, how much you want your margin to be in the next few years. Like, based on your industry, like, we'll ask you questions about the drivers of your business, like inventory turnover, you know, or if you're like a, a big fixed asset business, like depreciation schedules and things like that. So it's, it's a lot. The questions we ask are tailored to the industry that you're a part of.

Emily:

It reminded me what TurboTax. So it asks you all these questions and it like narrows down and then depending on how you answer it, it'll like do branch logic. So like, do you own a boat? Like, do you have any foreign investments and all these things? And then it's smart enough to like pull in like W 2s and different, uh, documents from different, you know, like fidelity and, uh, retirement funds and all these different things, they suck it into their program and then just create this streamlined process for you. So what you described kind of reminded me of, of that. Knowing that context, how did you become chief of staff? Was there a problem or challenge the company was trying to solve or an opportunity they were trying to capitalize on? What got you into that role?

Revant:

Yeah, absolutely. You know, it was an interesting journey. So I wrote a thesis at my time at Home Depot called CFO's tech technologies, tools and solutions for the modern day CFO. And at first I wrote it because I wanted to get into VC. And then the more I spoke with VCs, VC said, you should probably like build out your network of entrepreneurs, maybe build out a portfolio of investments so that you can actually like live the life of a VC and know what it takes to be a VC. So I did that. And then through that network, I met Margin, which was a budding startup led by Yoni Rubin. And And he read my thesis. He really aligned with it because he also came from a finance background. He, uh, worked at like a very strong late stage startup where he was like head of business operations. And his turning point was actually, um, in coming up with the idea for margin was. His CEO asked him to like determine how to cut operating costs by 30 percent overnight. And he had to spend like an entire night just cranking through a financial model. And he realized how onerous it was, um, how like just manual it was to just go in and like key formulae and stuff from scratch. Google, like how to do certain complex formulas in Excel. And he thought, well, what if we built all this logic in an online platform and made it as easy as just asking you questions on the assumptions, you don't have to do any sort of like, you know, building a formulas from scratch. You don't have to do any formatting, any of that stuff. It's already there. It's super turnkey. And so I aligned with that vision. I just like written a thesis on it and I wanted to get more operating experience because at that point I felt in order to be a successful VC, you have to learn like what it's like to work at a startup. So I wanted to get more operating experience. He offered me the role of chief of staff. And from there, it just took off. I realized. That I had a lot of fun executing projects, helping like implement a vision for a company. And if I wanted to do investing, I can always do it on the side. Cause I had this great network. Now I have this great portfolio and all the, all these things. So it was just off to the races. I joined Margin. I was learning a lot. I enjoyed our job to be done and our mission. And, um, I knew Yoni could use the support. I mean, being like a solopreneur, I think he started a company on his own. There's, there's a lot. You have to wear so many different hats. So kind of being that individual to help him with project management to help him with financial analysis, help him with strategy, help him with just managing the specialist in the company. It to me seemed like an amazing growth opportunity.

Emily:

And did he approach you, did he suggest chief of staff? Or were you the one saying, Hey, I think you kind of need a role. And I think the role you need is chief of staff.

Revant:

Honestly, I think it was a bi directional conversation. You might've mentioned it first. And I think I, I really liked the sound of it because at that point I didn't know what I wanted to do in a startup. And I think I'm probably still figuring that out. Um, and chief of staff sounds like, sounds like a great way to like get multifaceted exposure to a startup's operations. And I mean, it would be also a good way to learn straight from Yoni who had a very storied career in like taking companies public, working at late stage startups, and now starting his own startup. And he's also pretty well networked in the investing sphere. So it was, it just seemed like a holistic, good fit.

Emily:

Yeah. And your executive team is like a handful of people and then margin is still relatively small itself company wide. Um, what, what types of things in terms of like, I know you did a grassroots marketing campaign and some different go to marketing growth strategies. Can you talk us through some of your initiatives?

Revant:

Yeah, I think some of the biggest initiatives were we did a lot of grassroots marketing at first to determine, I mean, to just get the word out. Yeah. So I helped design what those like programs look like on social media, Google, um, you know, affiliate advertising. Now we have a really strong social media presence, which we constantly use to put out updates with regards to our, our product development, our fundraising status, conference status, so on and so forth. Another big thing is channel partnerships. I help design our channel partnership strategy so that other people who are adjacent to finance, for example, like accounting firms or consultants or, um, let's say law firms, they can use our platform too, to help them with their workflows. And as, and as a result, be incentivized to bring their customers to margin. And so coming up with that whole user experience and also what that revenue share agreement looks like to get them to like pipe over customers to our platform was, was a big initiative. And also really figuring out what our like AI use case was going to be. At first, we knew we had the technical chops to like integrate it into our business, but And we just didn't know, like, what would be the most impactful way. And working with Yoni, we crafted this idea of coming up with like industry benchmarks, you know, a lot of data could be obtained via the web and figuring out like, what are the KPIs for each different industry and providing that to our customers and then using those as like North stars to help like. Help guide their operational decision making, um, like, and through like the, the assumptions they provided us in the platform was like, I think a really, a good move for on our part, because it was something we could quite seamlessly pull off. And it was relevant to our customer profile, which were these small, medium sized businesses who maybe didn't have as much savvy and knowing what those KPIs were.

Emily:

So can you give me an example of like a KPI where once they knew about it, That helped direct them toward a certain strategy.

Revant:

Um, yeah, like, so I would, I'll go back to that CPG example.

Emily:

Let's say

Revant:

inventory turnover should be like eight times per year.

Emily:

Okay,

Revant:

you're currently turning it like three times per year. You know that you're probably over investing in inventory. You're probably like you should buy inventory less frequently, sorry, more frequently and smaller sizes. So you can sell through it many more times per year and not have like bulk, like big batches of inventory sitting on your shelves. Cause like in, in CPG retail, a lot of times like taste evolves so frequently that If your inventory isn't turning over that frequently, there's a strong chance you'll have to liquidate the stuff that's just sitting on your shelves. Cause like taste have evolved and you'll then take a huge haircut and your margin will be impaired. So we would tell them that maybe invest less in inventory. We'll tell you how much to invest, when to invest in that inventory. And then we'll able to be able to like model out what that benefit will be to your margin. Because the like more inventory turns you have means that you have greater sales Transcribed Which means obviously you have greater margin.

Emily:

So as chief of staff, where are you involved in this? Are you speaking to customers and prospects? Are you looking at the data that's coming in holistically and you know, iterating on The the logic of the AI tool like what like where do you are you marketing this thing? Like are you all over the place? Where do you sit in terms of your chief of staff role?

Revant:

Oh, that's a great question. I think it's it's pretty multi faceted. Um, my role in particular has been a little bit more Transcript Inward facing. So my key, like customer, so to speak, are like our team and our stake. Well, a lot of it was working with our product team and Yoni on coming up with that AI use case. How are we going to build that? What are we going to be? The hyper parameters we would use, like what was going to be like, how are we going to obtain the data? How are we going to present it from a UX perspective? All of that, that channel partnership. Aspect I was talking about designing that user experience is working a lot with our software engineering team and our product team on coming up with that. Um, overall growth strategy. That's working a lot with our marketing leaders and Yoni on like who is our ideal customer profile. That's also something we partnered on. At first we were like, should we go after startups? Should we go after like, you know, medium sized businesses, but then we thought, let's go after more small, medium sized businesses, particularly in the consumer package, good space and help them like get this financial hygiene. So that was more of an internal effort. And I think with a startup, like with a software as a service startup. A lot of your onboarding you, in my opinion, you want it to be as automated as possible, so I think you want to minimize handholding with your customers. You want them to feel very comfortable and that the onboarding experience is very intuitive, so they can see, like, very quick time to value. And sure, you can have, like, some systems in the background to do customer support. Like, you know, if they have questions or they have building issues or what have you, um, but by and large, we want to, we're trying to implement more of a product with growth strategy.

Emily:

Okay. So it sounds like you're very much on the technical side of things and internal side of things. How do you. And your principal communicate, what do you talk about? Is it, Hey, I'm seeing this from our tech teams. I think we could position ourselves this way in the market. Is he telling you kind of what he's hearing from his different conversations? What kind of discussions do you guys have about the strategy of the business?

Revant:

Yeah, I think it's, I think a lot of it is, you know, market research and decide determining whether our messaging, our branding is resonating with put prospects in terms of like signups and conversion and like, you know, feedback that we get through surveys. And after we'd come up with a high level strategy, we'll test it. And then we'll go through those results. We'll determine if that passes our SNP test of validation. And if not, then we'll go back to the drawing board. And we won't immediately, like, scrap what we're already doing because, like, you still want to, like, keep the engine running. Um, but, like, you will run, like, an A B test. So you'll run, like, two tests at the same time. One is, like, the legacy version, and one is, like, a new version. Right? Like a new campaign. So you can gather like fresh data and see whether those outcomes are superior than the previous one. And then after you're comfortable with like the latest batch of data, then you might supplant and replace the original version with a new version.

Emily:

So you're iterating based on like, is this giving us a better output or a more accurate. piece of information for our customers.

Revant:

Yeah.

Emily:

Okay. Is there a decisions, like, is there conversations around, for instance, you mentioned, um, you're targeting, uh, CPG and I'm, I'm assuming that your tool, an AI tool has a lot more data and a lot more rounds of machine learning in that area. Are you having conversations around, do we double down in this area or do we start branching out into this new vertical? Um, what is that? Is that a discussion or not really? Okay.

Revant:

That's a really good discussion. I think we're still like scrappy and we're still growing. So I think there's a lot of like money on the table with regards to more deeply penetrating small, medium sized businesses and CPG potentially in like retail. So I think AI is so expensive that I feel after we gathered, after we feel like we've done enough. work in that space and generated enough like revenue and traction, then I think we can consider like, you know, expanding our aperture into other, you know, industries and verticals. Um, with regards to the AI right now, though, I think we're pretty comfortable like where we're at. And I can, I can get more input, like from my team on what are the other industries we're currently targeting besides CPG. That's like just one of several. Um, like we are, we're well set right now because like right now, honestly, small and medium sized businesses are some of the, it's like one of the largest, like underserved category. It's like trillions of dollars, right? A lot of software as a service companies go after enterprise and we've like concertedly decided not to go after enterprise. We're going after SMB. So in that sense, like we think there's a lot of money on the table, a lot of blue sky. And so we just kind of want to stay, keep our heads down and execute it.

Emily:

And is there a tipping point where you get, okay, if we, it's kind of like the network effect. If we get this critical mass of customers, then it just starts kind of working on its own and we don't have to do as much to, to get that inertia going. And then maybe like, is that a decision point where, okay, now we have the critical mass. There, and now we can offload some of our other efforts and budget and resources to another area.

Revant:

I think that's completely spot on, honestly, when, especially when it comes to marketing, after you get this like critical mass of people that are talking about your platform and you get a lot of earned media and your virality coefficient gets really high, and you generate a lot of buzz through word of mouth. That flywheel starts turning, and so you probably don't have to spend so much on things that are quite resource intensive, like Google ads or meta ads and like, you know, just affiliate marketing and stuff like that. So, I think that is definitely one of the objectives, is to do things that, like, invest somewhat in those mediums, but also do things like grassroots marketing, social media marketing, to get the buzz going, and to get people to like interact with our brand. So, for that. Yeah. And once that does it, it does kind of create a ripple effect that can be pretty cost efficient. And

Emily:

at this stage of the game, what else, what other big things are you working on as chief of staff?

Revant:

Right now, I think it's, it's really execution. We're focusing on making sure our platform stays stable, that we have a really strong product roadmap that we can actually execute on and figuring out what those feature enhancements are going to be in the next like six, 12 months. And do like feature driven product management. So have a focus on like, have our software engineering team focus on specific features that we want to release. In the coming months, as opposed to like, like newer, like versions of our platform. So just keep the main code base, the same, keep the main like platform, the same, just like add small, tiny features and tweaks here and there. That's, I think one of our main goals. Um, other than that, it's really, if you, after you, you start the business, it's like you have systems and processes, hopefully that are pretty recurring. So now it's like tuning the engine. We just have to stay on top of like what our marketing engine looks like, make sure that we keep reducing our customer acquisition costs, making sure that our conversion rates are going higher. Um, we're able to upsell people from our lower tier version of the product to higher tier. So their lifetime value increases, observing all those metrics and then coming up with different, different campaigns to address that like messaging campaigns, email campaigns, marketing campaigns. Those sorts of things.

Emily:

And just out of curiosity, do you guys have a strategic planning? Like some people use OKRs, some people are on balanced scorecards. Some people have something more informal. You're kind of at that point where you're very startup stage, but you're breaking into that more mature stage. I'm wondering, do you use anything specific for strategic planning? I think the

Revant:

OKRs are probably one of our key North stars. Objectives and key results are like different hero statistics. We want to meet. I mean, that's what we preach to our customers. So we definitely try our own dog food and make sure we come up with those North stars. We have a way of tracking them and then we continually try new things to try to get closer.

Emily:

Very cool. What about, um, like startups, you have a passion for that and you wanted to get some operational experience, like what is it actually like to work in? And I can relate to that because I worked for a number of private equity backed companies and the managing directors and the different analysts there all come from different backgrounds. And I remember one gentleman who was. incredibly smart, like whip it smart, like, Oh my gosh, he just was an intellectual powerhouse, but he had never actually worked in a company. Like he had never actually been a manager of people or managed a team or, you know, done sales or anything like this. So all of his knowledge was theoretical. Now he was incredibly smart, incredibly good at his job, but There were points in conversations where it's like, I can tell that you, you haven't actually done that. And so you're, you're going off of like a theory and an academic book of how this is supposed to go. And I'm trying to convey to you, like, this is not in reality, this is not how it happens. So what have you learned as part of your experience as chief of staff and your experience in the operations side?

Revant:

Yeah, that's a really good question. I think it's being able to adapt to different personality types. I think like everything can look really pretty like on paper or in a model. When you work in a company where like you're a lot of folks who are in many different hats, they're working long hours, It does, I think, boil down to behavioral science. Like, do you understand the people you work with? Are you able to, like, motivate them? Are you able to, like, give them space when they need it? Are you able to understand their communication preferences? So I think that is like the art of leadership is like understanding your team and ensuring that there's like healthy disagreement. Like, so everyone feels like they're being heard and you're taking everyone's perspectives into consideration and like having that balance between executing and going like quite fast when you need to get something done, but also having these like pauses so that you can actually reflect. and like gather opinions and like gather different points of view. So that to me is like the real art. It's, um, just making sure that everyone feels valued and seen and also understanding when to pull back a little bit and not like, you know, really try to get super high, um, output when like things have been super busy, but like, you know, You know, encourage celebration or encourage taking a break. So it's, I think it's a huge art. Um, but that's like what I think I've learned about being at a startup is that it's, it's people are going to get very emotional about what they do, because like, that's the reason they chose to maybe give up like a more steady corporate job is because they like, believe in this culture, they believe in this team, they believe in this vision. So you have to like, be cognizant of like, what they're going through. And to like accommodate as much as possible.

Emily:

Yeah. So it's interesting. You mentioned sometimes you have to pull back because people are human. So it's not like you're working on a spreadsheet. We're not robots. Um, but sometimes you need to pull back because people need room or they need time or what have you. And I actually. Uh, struggled with that as a leader and certainly as chief of staff in some spots where I, I'm very goal driven. And, you know, part of me is like, I don't care how you feel. Part of me is like, I care a lot how you feel. And there's the human side of that, but how, like, how do you tell, Oh, like I need to pull back here. This is one of those moments where we just need to let this breathe versus I actually need to drive my team and create a sense of urgency.

Revant:

I think a lot of it's honestly practice. I think it's. You have to pick up on, like, behavioral cues, um, when you interact with your team. That's where, like, EQ comes into play. Understand when people are a little bit more stressed out and therefore, like, give them some space or give them some support. And you also have to be mindful of, like, how much you're asking of them. I mean, you know, like, you definitely want to get results. Um, at the same time, you want to maybe like not ride them too hard and distribute workloads effectively amongst all members of the team so that like no one one person gets burnt out. Um, to the extent you can also like slot in yourself and get stuff done. You know that that shows that like you're also in the trenches sharing a foxhole with them. So I mean, it's it's it's a combination of like a couple of those things. I think like a lot of it does come down to how you would like to be treated and being able to extend that same grace towards the people you work with.

Emily:

if you had to give one recommendation for how to stay organized or advice for time management for chiefs of staff, what would it be?

Revant:

Take really good notes and have like systems set up so that you can keep track of things as they're getting done and things that you have left on the horizon. I am, I'm like a big believer in having checklists. My life runs on lists and reminders. So in a, in a job like this, there's, you're going to wear many different hats. There will be things that are going to come up constantly. It's, it's not like corporate in the sense that I don't think it's like a lot of like habitual tasks and activities, cadence to meetings. It's a lot, a lot of things come up ad hoc. It's just that you want to ensure nothing falls through the cracks. and that you are annotating everything you're getting done. So no one's duplicating effort. And then, um, in that same vein, you're also prioritizing learning, like should ensure that you're taking enough notes and reflecting enough. So you're learning about what went wrong on like a project, or you're learning about like one discovery. Like in the market, you know, or about your customers. And you are like tabulating that you're putting that in some database and ideally trying to share it with your team so that like everyone can get smarter as a result of it.

Emily:

I think a lot of people skip that second step. So maybe they do kind of keeping tabs on things, but they. Skip the reflect and learn part. And I see a lot of people skip the share part. So let me share kind of my thoughts on this and get people's feedback, but that's great advice. So second exit question would be what book or podcast or resource would you recommend for chiefs of staff or leaders in general?

Revant:

What, um, I'm really big into biohacking because I think there's a lot of tools you can use in that sphere to stay more emotionally regulated yourself, which I think like pays dividends on how you manage your team and how you interact with others. So one podcast that I really ascribe by is a feel better, live more. It's a holistic health podcast. I think it can provide a lot of actionable tools with like behavioral science and neuroscience and like, Supplementation, uh, and physiology to like help people who've got pretty high opting careers. Like I'm sure a lot of folks do on like even keel staying emotionally regulated, staying, um, like in a non stressed out state, what they call parasympathetic state so that you can see the force from the trees. Cause like one thing I've learned in a technical environment is that if I stay super focused on a project, I'll get very detail oriented and sometimes I'll like, I'll forget like what the overarching goal was or how it fits into other areas of the business. So like the more I can have these tools that help me stay a little bit like more balanced and like leveled out personally, the more I can make better strategic decisions. And, um, and connect the dots and help us avoid pitfalls and, and et cetera.

Emily:

Also an often overlooked aspect. And when people are like, Oh yeah, yeah. I'm really like, you know, take care of yourself. Self care. I'm like, hold up, you know, what it's like to wake up when you're like, Oh crap, I got four hours sleep. My head feels like it's in a vice and I like, everything is hard. And then, you know, what it's like to wake up. When you're like, Oh my gosh, I'm rested, like I feel good. I can go out and do things. That's just one aspect. Like sleep is one aspect of that. It's a big aspect, but people intuitively know the difference between those two states. Now imagine optimizing yourself across multiple aspects of like that just puts you in a better position to lead. So I love the fact that you mentioned that the third and final exit question would be, if you If you were talking to an aspiring chief of staff or your fellow current chiefs of staff, what is a word of encouragement or maybe just a reminder of like, we get to do this. This is my favorite part of being chief of staff.

Revant:

Scaled. Like you have to keep your eye towards the OKRs. and like a really big outcome for you and your team. I know at times it's going to feel like it's like slow going and it's like rough sledding and like it's not, it's not going the way you want. Um, having that conviction, however you build it, that like, this is going to be like a billion dollar outcome, or this is going to be a unicorn, or we're going to, you know, have like this, um, this growth trajectory over the next five years can be very empowering because it just gives you something to look forward to. And like, it motivates you and helps you stay like very creative and coming up with new ideas to like impel growth. Um, building that conviction is another art because I think that has to come from like, Um, truly understanding the product and the job to be done and doing enough research on the market to like, convince yourself what they call product market fit. Like you are actually solving a real need and that like, this is something that can improve people's lives. I think once you square that, reminding yourself that this can be like a huge outcome for everyone involved can be extremely motivating.

Emily:

If people want to connect with you, we'll have that in the show notes. We'll have some of the articles that you've written and some of the other pieces you've done and all the information on Margin. If, if people want to know about you or Margin, I know it's spelled a little funny. So where's the best place for people to go?

Revant:

Uh, best place would be if you want to learn more about Margin, go to our website. M R G N dot a I. And if you would like to connect with me, LinkedIn's a great place. I'm usually pretty active there, and you can find my profile just by searching my name.

Emily:

All right, Rayvon. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure to have you on leveraging leadership and thank you for sharing your insights.

Revant:

Thank you so much, Emily. This has been a lot of fun.