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Insights on Inciting Change with John Munro
5 Plays3 years ago
As a founder, you're facing constant pressure to perform. Whether it's to your employees or your investors, you have a lot to prove. Now, imagine you're hired as a CEO for a startup that's had not one, not two, but five separate CEOs. This week, we're talking with someone who has filled those very shoes and has taken a struggling startup to one that's been acquired by a major enterprise. Join us in today's conversation with John Munro, CEO of Chargeback, and investor Gavin Christensen of Kickstart (a VC firm for startups in Utah, Colorado, and the Mountain West) as we bring you both sides of a Perfect Pitch. In this episode, we'll talk about:
John's transition from COO to CEO at Chargeback
The mental impacts of a high pressure role
An investors' perspective of a startup that went from low-performance to acquisition
Identifying whether your board is one you want to accept or change
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Setup
00:00:00
Speaker
As a founder, you're facing constant pressure to perform.
00:00:03
Speaker
Whether it's to your employees or your investors, you have a lot to prove.
00:00:08
Speaker
Now imagine you're hired as a CEO for a startup that's had not one, not two, but five separate CEOs.
00:00:16
Speaker
This week, we're talking with someone who has filled those very shoes and has taken a struggling startup to one that's been acquired by a major enterprise.
Guest Introductions
00:00:24
Speaker
Join us in today's conversation with John Monroe, CEO of Chargeback and investor Gavin Christensen, as we bring you both sides of A Perfect Pitch.
Focus on Startup Journeys
00:00:44
Speaker
Perfect Pitch is a podcast from Kickstart that reveals the minds of both investors and entrepreneurs throughout a startup's journey.
00:00:53
Speaker
I'm your host, Karen Zelnick, and I'm excited to introduce you to today's guests.
00:00:57
Speaker
John, I'm going to tell our listeners a little bit about you.
00:01:01
Speaker
After growing and preparing Utah-based Orange Legal for a successful sale, you were then the co-founder and COO of HeyZook.
00:01:09
Speaker
a software development company, and then Vice President of National Markets for Blackstone Discovery, and the CEO and founder for Impact Discovery.
00:01:17
Speaker
So clearly, when you joined Chargeback as COO in 2018, and then transitioned to CEO in 2019, you had a lot of experience under your belt.
00:01:27
Speaker
And we're going to talk more about that.
00:01:28
Speaker
We're really going to dive into that story.
00:01:30
Speaker
But before I move on, is there anything else you'd like our listeners to know about you?
John's Path to Chargeback CEO
00:01:34
Speaker
Probably just that I recognize that I'm on this podcast today because the likes of Davis Smith or Rob Nelson or other celebrities couldn't fit it into their schedule.
00:01:43
Speaker
But in all seriousness, obviously, I'm super stoked to be here.
00:01:47
Speaker
Excited to talk to folks.
00:01:49
Speaker
As I said, we're very excited to have you.
00:01:50
Speaker
I cannot overuse that word enough for this episode.
00:01:53
Speaker
And Gavin, of course, it's always great to have you back on the show.
00:01:56
Speaker
We're going to have a link to your bio in our show notes.
00:01:59
Speaker
But can you tell us something that you're seeing in the VC ecosystem that you're interested in?
00:02:04
Speaker
It's just a really unique time in the world, in the VC market, as public markets have taken just a real haircut in the tech space.
00:02:14
Speaker
And we're seeing that trickle down, starting with the biggest companies and trickling down to the smallest over the next several months.
00:02:21
Speaker
There's still a lot of money out there.
00:02:22
Speaker
It's still an incredible time to start a company.
00:02:25
Speaker
As I've told my team, it's sort of back to being a venture capitalist.
00:02:28
Speaker
And there have been times over the last few years where it felt like
00:02:31
Speaker
was maybe easier to raise funding or easier for things to go well.
00:02:36
Speaker
It's back to being lots of risk out there and challenging to navigate.
00:02:41
Speaker
So that's what we're seeing.
00:02:43
Speaker
So Kez, welcome back.
00:02:45
Speaker
Thank you.
00:02:46
Speaker
And I'd love to hear, I'm sure our audience would love to hear something about you that they don't know.
00:02:52
Speaker
I had a little boy.
00:02:53
Speaker
So back from maternity leave and so excited to be here and something else they might not know about me.
00:02:59
Speaker
I'm scuba certified.
00:03:02
Speaker
I didn't know that either.
00:03:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:04
Speaker
There's just always layers to the onion, I guess.
00:03:08
Speaker
But let's dive into the discussion.
00:03:11
Speaker
It's going to be a good one.
00:03:12
Speaker
John, we're going to start with you.
Transition Challenges and Strategy
00:03:14
Speaker
As I mentioned, you were the COO of Chargeback for about six months before transitioning to CEO.
00:03:20
Speaker
What can you tell me about that transition?
00:03:23
Speaker
I think I realized that people probably need perspective on where chargeback was at that time.
00:03:28
Speaker
Runway was extremely short.
00:03:30
Speaker
Our tap table was semi-questionable, but being cleaned up.
00:03:34
Speaker
We had significantly expanded our leadership team.
00:03:37
Speaker
We had this incredible demand from these key customers, but it significantly outweighed our ability to actually deliver on those promises.
00:03:45
Speaker
Then of course, the driver of change was of course, a transition in the CEO role.
00:03:50
Speaker
I had been in the COO seat for about 60 days when the CEO departed.
00:03:55
Speaker
And I operated for another 3 months or 4 months or so as the de facto CEO.
00:04:01
Speaker
I don't think Gavin and the rest of the board were quite certain yet if I was the guy.
00:04:06
Speaker
We were fixing a lot of the challenges that we had had internally while we're really navigating some pretty challenging employee scenarios.
00:04:15
Speaker
Folks that were really excited about where we were going and then you jump into the next conversation, people were freaking out, ready to run out the door, realizing that everything was on fire.
00:04:24
Speaker
So just a really crazy time.
00:04:26
Speaker
I think for me, the biggest thing that I learned in that process was rip off the bandaid.
00:04:32
Speaker
Everything was going well.
00:04:33
Speaker
I had really wonderful relationships and communication with the organization.
00:04:37
Speaker
The employees were starting to feel great.
00:04:39
Speaker
There were some of those things that you see in turnarounds where you start seeing light at the end of the tunnel.
00:04:44
Speaker
You're like, Oh, we're going the right direction.
00:04:46
Speaker
Let's go.
00:04:46
Speaker
So I didn't really want to ruin that by coming in one day and saying, Hey, so by the way, I'm the CEO.
00:04:51
Speaker
Still the same guy, but a different role.
00:04:52
Speaker
And so I kind of slow played it, tried to reduce the opportunity to create a real moment of power.
00:04:59
Speaker
When I say moment of power, it's a power of moments is a book that I read a number of years ago.
00:05:03
Speaker
And it really was an impactful book that talked about how the situations that people aren't used to can really have a lasting effect and really move you in the right direction.
00:05:13
Speaker
So I really think that I should have used something like that or thinking about my kids now, a rite of passage that really put everybody's mindset, including my own in that right space of, okay, this is a different role as much as we don't want it to be.
00:05:25
Speaker
I'm in a different place
Owning the CEO Role
00:05:26
Speaker
and the organization's in a different place.
00:05:28
Speaker
I think for our listeners, it's important to recognize this is a unique case study in a sense that there's a lot of people that are listening that are saying, hey, at some point, I want to be COO or I want to be CEO of a company.
00:05:40
Speaker
And what does that look like?
00:05:41
Speaker
And so I just make a couple of points here.
00:05:44
Speaker
One is you don't generally get the chance to be the CEO unless something hasn't gone right.
00:05:51
Speaker
And so a big part of stepping up and being the leader, as John says, is just accepting where things are and not saying, well, if only a lot of the CEOs that I've worked with that aren't able to make the transition and be successful CEOs spend a lot of their time blaming the previous administration and saying, well, you know, I'm failing because of this and that.
00:06:14
Speaker
And
00:06:14
Speaker
Look, when you become CEO, you kind of get to do that for a while, but at some point you own it.
00:06:20
Speaker
And the reality is you never would get to be CEO unless the person in front of you either left or that they made a few mistakes.
00:06:28
Speaker
I think it's really important to just have this for folks who are aspiring to be the leader, to be the CEO, CEO, whatever the leader is for them that they're aspiring to be is to recognize that probably the number one thing you can do is just accept responsibility and own it.
00:06:42
Speaker
and let other people know that you own it and get rid of the excuses.
00:06:46
Speaker
And John was a great example of this.
00:06:49
Speaker
He had five previous CEOs he could have blamed for any number of things that were wrong.
00:06:53
Speaker
He had some tired investors.
00:06:55
Speaker
He had some employee relationships that had been broken because of things that other people had done.
00:07:00
Speaker
But he really took the attitude of like, hey, this is mine now.
00:07:04
Speaker
And I'm just grateful that it's mine.
00:07:06
Speaker
My advice is like, be grateful that it's your stewardship and recognize that it is your stewardship because of some of the failures that have happened.
00:07:15
Speaker
That's an important perspective.
00:07:16
Speaker
Thank you for jumping in on that.
00:07:18
Speaker
And John, that was obviously a lot of pressure for you, even as grateful as you were for that position.
00:07:23
Speaker
What led you to accepting the position after all those previous CEOs?
00:07:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:31
Speaker
That's a great question.
00:07:32
Speaker
And I have no idea, of course, because especially the stage that we're setting, I had an understanding that this was some sort of fire, whether it was a car fire and needed to rescue a child, or it was a fire that was ready to roast the best marshmallow in the world.
00:07:46
Speaker
It was definitely still a fire.
00:07:48
Speaker
And so I think maybe to Gavin's point, there is something about...
00:07:53
Speaker
creating change, fixing things that I'm attracted to and was excited about in this opportunity.
00:07:58
Speaker
Within the first week or two, we had to recognize very quickly that we couldn't blame anything on the past.
00:08:04
Speaker
We couldn't go back and say, Oh, well, this has caused the scenario today and we're all angry and we're going to be frustrated and bitter about having to fix it now.
00:08:13
Speaker
I also want to pause just for a minute and recognize that I have never before in my life experienced...
Mental Health and VC Support,
00:08:21
Speaker
the recognition or understanding of how somebody could have a nervous breakdown.
00:08:26
Speaker
And I want to be very open and honest with that in this, especially in this discussion.
00:08:30
Speaker
I persevered and used grit and used prayer and used all sorts of things to get through.
00:08:34
Speaker
But it was really the first time in my life where I really could truly feel, man, I see how somebody could go there.
00:08:41
Speaker
I see how somebody could fall into this
00:08:44
Speaker
cycle of anxiety, cycle of imposter syndrome, things like that, that actually can absolutely impact you in the CEO role or any high pressure role.
00:08:53
Speaker
And I experienced that more vividly and strongly than I ever had in the past.
00:08:58
Speaker
So it really required me to reframe that story and to say, I'm going to be grateful for the challenges that have been put ahead of us.
00:09:05
Speaker
I'm going to recognize that it's not perfect.
00:09:08
Speaker
But I also had to be extremely grateful for the incredible things that
00:09:12
Speaker
each one of those people that may have sinned in the past in our org also did to get us there.
00:09:17
Speaker
You can't get the good without the bad and you can't get the bad without the good.
00:09:20
Speaker
So having that perspective and trying to use that in that process really helped me.
00:09:25
Speaker
Gavin, you're nodding your head.
00:09:26
Speaker
I would love to hear what you have to say about that.
00:09:28
Speaker
Thanks, Kez.
00:09:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:29
Speaker
So I would jump in there and say, one of the amazing things about startups is it's a crucible of psychology.
00:09:37
Speaker
If you have the right leader, and we certainly had that in John...
00:09:41
Speaker
The last thing you need to do is add pressure.
00:09:44
Speaker
You actually add support, you add advice, you add resources as opposed to piling on.
00:09:50
Speaker
And I'm always surprised when I work with other VCs or other angel investors who...
00:09:58
Speaker
actually don't know how to do that, they add pressure.
00:10:02
Speaker
That doesn't help.
00:10:03
Speaker
It actually leads to worse outcomes anyway.
00:10:04
Speaker
So it's kind of an irrational thing I think people do to deal with their own fears.
00:10:09
Speaker
But I just think it's important to recognize the role of the folks who are supporting the people in the arena is like, there's enough pressure and temperature we're there to support and try to get through it as opposed to throw
Acquisition by SIFT and Success Factors
00:10:22
Speaker
tomatoes.
00:10:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:24
Speaker
And so anyway, I just, that would make that observation because it's actually irrational behavior on the part of investors and VCs and angel investors.
00:10:33
Speaker
Gavin, that's such a good point about it.
00:10:34
Speaker
It brings out who we truly are.
00:10:35
Speaker
It brings out the best and it also brings out the worst.
00:10:37
Speaker
But I love that you highlight that it's just this duality as so many things in life are.
00:10:42
Speaker
Segwaying a little bit, John, Chargeback's growth really boomed since you became CEO.
00:10:48
Speaker
And in fact, it was acquired by SIFT, a digital fraud prevention company in May of 2021.
00:10:53
Speaker
Can you tell us what that experience was like for you?
00:10:57
Speaker
living through it, it certainly didn't feel like a boom until looking back and being able to say, wow, okay, this is pretty special.
00:11:03
Speaker
But I would say it was an absolutely incredible experience from every angle.
00:11:07
Speaker
SIFT is an absolutely amazing company.
00:11:08
Speaker
One of the things that you think about both for investors, for yourself, for employees, for everything is where can we land this thing?
00:11:15
Speaker
Recognizing that an exit is necessary.
00:11:18
Speaker
With Sift, it was really nice.
00:11:19
Speaker
They've built a really incredible suite of digital trust and safety solutions.
00:11:24
Speaker
And they're really trying to help everybody have higher levels of trust in the internet.
00:11:28
Speaker
And we recognized early on that our customers needed a combination of their solutions with our solutions.
00:11:33
Speaker
And so we partnered early with Sift and it looked like it was just going to be an incredible partnership that was really going to help us both along.
00:11:39
Speaker
And then...
00:11:40
Speaker
We were very excited when it turned into, okay, this looks like this will be a match made in heaven and we will get to move forward.
00:11:46
Speaker
But I will say the thing that excited me that absolutely, you know, was really at the top of my list when I was making that, should we do this?
00:11:53
Speaker
Should we not do this list for myself was the cultural fit with SIFT and Chargeback was absolutely incredible.
00:11:59
Speaker
I had many employees come up to me and say, I just couldn't have imagined a better organization for us to come be a part of.
00:12:06
Speaker
And I think they found the experience rewarding across the board.
00:12:09
Speaker
But recognizing that the employees have the right place to land and have had an incredible experience, I couldn't be happier about that.
00:12:17
Speaker
And Gavin, what was it like for you as an investor to witness this transformation from the beginning to John taking over as CEO and then being acquired by SIFT?
00:12:27
Speaker
Chargeback was one of my investment out of fund one.
00:12:32
Speaker
This is an $8 million fund that we raised back starting in 08.
00:12:36
Speaker
We announced the sale.
00:12:37
Speaker
I sent out a social post that quoted Shakespeare saying all's well that ends well.
00:12:41
Speaker
And I was the only one left that had been there from the beginning.
00:12:45
Speaker
It's literally just me.
00:12:46
Speaker
You definitely could argue, hey, why do we keep funding this thing and finding new investors and bringing in people?
00:12:52
Speaker
And there was a problem to be solved.
00:12:54
Speaker
And I was pretty dogmatic about it and continue to believe, maybe foolishly so, but it was nice to...
00:13:01
Speaker
have this be a win for really everybody that was involved at that point.
00:13:06
Speaker
And yeah, a lot of lessons along the way for us and a lot of incredible effort by John and many other people to get it over the line.
00:13:14
Speaker
And so I was just happy to be cheering along the way.
00:13:17
Speaker
And I mean, this was a massive relief to kind of...
00:13:23
Speaker
be safely housed within SIFT.
00:13:25
Speaker
And this will probably be the key company for the returns of Fund One, which is near and dear to my heart.
00:13:33
Speaker
So love that.
00:13:35
Speaker
And Gavin, Fund One was basically your startup.
00:13:38
Speaker
Basically, that was your... Fund One is in some ways my personal chargeback.
00:13:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:44
Speaker
I guess we've kept the same team, but fun one is a little bit rockier than our other funds.
00:13:50
Speaker
Well, a lot.
00:13:51
Speaker
And a lot of things learned over the years with that.
00:13:55
Speaker
Well, it'll be all's well that ends well with that too, I'm sure.
00:13:58
Speaker
So that'll be great.
00:13:59
Speaker
And then I want to know, Gavin, what strategies did you see John implement that really drove change?
00:14:05
Speaker
Let's get really tactical and specific here.
00:14:06
Speaker
What strategies did you see?
Leadership and Board Dynamics
00:14:09
Speaker
Yeah, I think John, what he really brought to Chargeback, I think, was a lot of deafness with people and engagement in mentoring people.
00:14:20
Speaker
and coordinating the efforts of the team in a way that Chargeback had not seen.
00:14:25
Speaker
Did you say deafness or deftness?
00:14:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:29
Speaker
Not deafness, but deafness.
00:14:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:32
Speaker
So he... Yeah.
00:14:33
Speaker
He had a lot of facility with people that was notable, getting product and engineering talking and sales.
00:14:42
Speaker
And so maybe I could just speak to a moment...
00:14:45
Speaker
when I realized that we had made the right move in promoting John to CEO, it would probably be a board meeting that was maybe two or three board meetings in and us going through the update on the business, update on the team, the go forward plans and me saying, this feels like one of my other great companies and not like a chargeback board meeting.
00:15:11
Speaker
And it was John who was able to take those best practices that he had and what he learned and really transform a culture that was probably pretty consistently delivering an experience as a board member that was very different than other companies and leveled it up pretty quickly.
00:15:28
Speaker
And that was like the tangible evidence for me of like, oh, this board, meaning this is like a company with momentum and energy and foresight and it's coming at us in a proactive way.
00:15:40
Speaker
I have to, of course, admit in that process that the first three times that I swung and missed, Gavin was extremely supportive as well as secondarily, definitely provided coaching as did the other board members on, let's look at changing this a little bit.
00:15:54
Speaker
And obviously some of the pieces were just reality of what we were actually living.
00:15:58
Speaker
And so it was a time in chargebacks history where, you know, we maybe didn't have a lot of things that would look really great on a board deck.
00:16:05
Speaker
and would not put us in a scenario where you would want to compare us to other portcos.
00:16:11
Speaker
And sometimes very much, we were just sharing the reality, but because of Gavin's coaching and certainly the rest of the balance of the board's coaching as well, it jointly was able to get us to that point where we could be proud of it.
00:16:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:25
Speaker
Were there any pieces of the device specifically that you'd like to pass on to other entrepreneurs and how they handle their board meetings?
00:16:31
Speaker
Maybe I'll skip ahead to something maybe I was thinking about earlier that I was going to share later, which was this really important point where you decide who's going to be your cheerleaders.
00:16:42
Speaker
And you identify whether it's the board you've been given or the board you're going to create.
00:16:47
Speaker
And if you've been given a board, immediately own it and make sure that it's the board you wanted to create.
00:16:52
Speaker
And if not, make changes to fix that.
00:16:55
Speaker
And obviously some of those things are plausible and some of them are not, I recognize.
00:16:59
Speaker
But having that balance of challengers and cheerleaders on your board is one of the most important things that you can possibly do.
00:17:06
Speaker
And I will say Gavin's number one character trait that really helped me to not give up in the process and not to say, Hey, this was awesome.
00:17:18
Speaker
Thanks for this opportunity, but you all can have this thing back.
00:17:21
Speaker
really had a lot to do with his cheerleading.
00:17:24
Speaker
He came in and absolutely asked the tough questions, absolutely challenged the things that should have been improving and should have been doing better on.
00:17:31
Speaker
But he always found the time and the ability to say, I see the progress.
00:17:36
Speaker
I see effort.
00:17:37
Speaker
I see all of these things that I think Gavin referred to earlier, which blows his mind that you don't always get that.
00:17:42
Speaker
But we were already on a pressure cooker and to have Gavin be able to walk in and be like,
00:17:46
Speaker
look guys, chill out.
00:17:47
Speaker
This is good.
00:17:48
Speaker
We're making progress.
00:17:49
Speaker
Let's go.
00:17:50
Speaker
Let's continue with this progress.
00:17:51
Speaker
Let's double down on it.
00:17:52
Speaker
Here are the things that I think are great.
00:17:54
Speaker
Let's focus more on those and less on the other pieces was beyond invaluable in really building...
00:18:01
Speaker
an environment that I felt like I could continue to lean into every day.
00:18:05
Speaker
And certainly every month, which turned into every six weeks, which turned into every quarter for board meetings.
00:18:10
Speaker
Luckily, the frequency reduced once we started having some results, but we spent a lot of time with Gavin first little bit.
00:18:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:16
Speaker
John got off the emergency protocol.
00:18:19
Speaker
So that was a good sign.
00:18:20
Speaker
If the frequency is dropping, you're, you're getting a little more rope, which is awesome.
00:18:25
Speaker
It's very possible to build relationships with board members and investors when you're sharing bad news.
00:18:31
Speaker
That is very possible.
00:18:33
Speaker
And if done well, it will, if you do it well.
00:18:36
Speaker
The worst thing you can do is hide bad news.
00:18:39
Speaker
I think some entrepreneurs feel like they always have to give good news.
00:18:42
Speaker
And that was part of our history at Chargeback, which...
00:18:45
Speaker
got us into problems.
00:18:47
Speaker
Once you're on the same side of the table, it's really important to just share the journey and get to know your people.
00:18:52
Speaker
And especially at the early stages, be really transparent.
00:18:55
Speaker
As you build a bigger and bigger company, you do need to manage your board.
00:18:59
Speaker
It starts to be just a little bit more of a performance and the public company situation being the ultimate performance.
00:19:04
Speaker
Even at that point, you're sharing what's going on in a transparent way, but you're being very, very thoughtful and deliberate about it.
00:19:11
Speaker
It's the worst possible and most difficult possible scenario for managing your bosses because they're all your bosses.
00:19:17
Speaker
And you got to do an amazing job at finding that balance of telling them what you need from them as well.
00:19:24
Speaker
I'm not sure I did that very well for a while.
00:19:27
Speaker
John, now that we understand your story with Chargeback a little better, what advice would you give to our listeners when their companies are going through seemingly endless hard times?
Mindset and Gratitude
00:19:36
Speaker
I have to be very honest that I considered giving up a number of times.
00:19:41
Speaker
I don't think actually many would have blamed me.
00:19:43
Speaker
There would have been sadness.
00:19:45
Speaker
And I think Gavin especially would have been like, Oh, darn it.
00:19:48
Speaker
We thought this was finally the 15th CEO.
00:19:52
Speaker
That was a realization that I came to later of like, Oh, not everybody will hate me if I were to give up.
00:19:57
Speaker
But I'm beyond grateful, especially having completed the experience that I didn't give up and to be able to experience and go through the final outcome.
00:20:06
Speaker
You know, some of the times when I was ready to quit, I really took myself through an extremely powerful, what I guess I'll call it a visualization exercise where I visually talked through the conversation and vividly forced myself to go through the conversation where I would let an employee know that I had to fire them because Charjack was not going to be successful.
00:20:26
Speaker
And not that those scenarios aren't the best thing for the organizations sometimes.
00:20:31
Speaker
But in my scenario, I recognize that, especially in certain times, we were so lean.
00:20:36
Speaker
If we had to cut a few, we might just be out anyhow.
00:20:39
Speaker
And so allowing myself to go to that dark side and allow that to really drive me and to show up that day when I didn't feel like it because...
00:20:47
Speaker
you know what, Courtney, or one of the other folks is dependent on us succeeding.
00:20:52
Speaker
She does not want to go find another job.
00:20:53
Speaker
She does not want to lose all the effort and goodwill she has put into the organization.
00:20:58
Speaker
And that willingness to serve her or another employee got me through a ton of really difficult times.
00:21:06
Speaker
So I think if you can spend time in that process as well, and then of course, use the chip on your shoulder here and there as well, then it's a great place to be.
00:21:14
Speaker
That's a really interesting perspective.
00:21:16
Speaker
I like going to the end and playing things out.
00:21:18
Speaker
I think that's a really powerful exercise.
00:21:21
Speaker
I would like to end... You've already shared so many.
00:21:24
Speaker
I'd love to ask you the question we ask everyone on this show.
00:21:28
Speaker
And that is, what's an effective practice that you've implemented in your work or personal life that you think has had a great impact on your success?
00:21:36
Speaker
I'm absolutely convinced that maintaining the positive attitude is a superpower.
00:21:42
Speaker
I think the people who can leverage that and maintain that is absolutely get you through scenarios where you wouldn't otherwise ever be able to make it through.
00:21:51
Speaker
If I think about it tactically, how do I maintain a positive attitude?
00:21:55
Speaker
I'm sure that some of it's in my nature.
00:21:56
Speaker
I'm sure some of it's in my belief system.
00:21:59
Speaker
But also tactically, I find that my morning routine makes an outsized impact on me being able to maintain my positive outlook.
00:22:10
Speaker
I happen to like to get up early.
00:22:11
Speaker
If I see the sunrise, there's something about that day that allows you to just have it be a more incredible experience than otherwise, right?
00:22:17
Speaker
I drink water first thing.
00:22:19
Speaker
I exercise first thing.
00:22:21
Speaker
And then I really focus on a journal that I kept that I write down three things that I'm grateful for every day.
00:22:26
Speaker
I spend some time in scripture and then I really define the one most important thing for me that I want to accomplish that day.
00:22:33
Speaker
So if nothing else happens, if nothing else works, I'm going to accomplish this one thing.
00:22:37
Speaker
And I don't always get it done, but most of the time I do.
00:22:40
Speaker
And the whole process together takes me like 90 minutes of the morning and really sets the stage for allowing me to walk into the office and feel like I can maintain a growth mindset and I can feel like the leader that I want to be.
00:22:54
Speaker
And I think that's really set the stage for me.
00:22:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:57
Speaker
Now I'm reevaluating my morning routine.
00:23:02
Speaker
Gavin, I would love to know your insights on what John has said and how you've seen that play out in his role as CEO.
00:23:10
Speaker
What's cool about the chargeback experience is we can say, hey, this was really challenging and hard and it was still a positive outcome for a lot of people, which is awesome.
00:23:17
Speaker
But I think it's also cool for people to say, hey, even when it's positive, it's super hard.
00:23:22
Speaker
And there's a lot of luck and there's a lot of things that have to go your way.
00:23:26
Speaker
That's just how the game works.
00:23:28
Speaker
And a lot of what makes it rich and a meaningful experience is those things you overcome in yourself and your team.
00:23:36
Speaker
And so I just want people to realize...
00:23:38
Speaker
People are listening to this are probably in a tough journey right now and just say, hey, that's actually the norm.
00:23:43
Speaker
And so when someone raises a big round or they sell a company or they get a big promotion, just recognize that it's probably a lot harder than it looks.
00:23:51
Speaker
Don't beat yourself up if it's hard right now.
00:23:54
Speaker
I really appreciate this discussion, John and Gavin.
00:23:56
Speaker
Thank you so much for being on the show today.
00:23:59
Speaker
I had so many takeaways, not the least of which is, John, I really think you are just a glutton for punishment because coming in as CEO like that, thank you for being here.
00:24:07
Speaker
Thank you for the insights you've shared and the valuable takeaways that I know that our listeners are going to walk away with.
00:24:12
Speaker
So thank you.
00:24:13
Speaker
And thank you enough.
00:24:14
Speaker
And I just wanted to finish with a shout out to the incredible team at Chargeback, all that came before, all that were there during my time and all that will continue to make it in the solution successful at SIFT.
00:24:25
Speaker
Just indebted to you, everybody in the organization and the investors across the board are indebted and couldn't have done it with the kindest and most brilliant founders, employees, investors, customers, etc.
00:24:37
Speaker
Just been an incredible experience.
00:24:39
Speaker
Thank you so much.
00:24:40
Speaker
Thank you, Kaz.
00:24:42
Speaker
Thanks, John.
00:24:43
Speaker
And of course, thank you for listening as we dive deep into what it takes to create the perfect pitch.
00:24:48
Speaker
If you want to learn more about our investor, Gavin Christensen from Kickstart or our CEO, John Monroe at Chargeback, we'll have a link to the company and a longer bio in our show notes at kickstartfund.com.
00:24:59
Speaker
You can listen to more episodes of Perfect Pitch wherever you listen to your podcast.
00:25:04
Speaker
And if you like what you're learning, leave us a review or rating.
00:25:07
Speaker
We'll be back next time with more insights from entrepreneurs and the investors who funded them.
00:25:11
Speaker
So be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a thing.