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Cutting Through the Noise: Rachel Korn on Growth, Focus & the Real Impact of AI
34 Plays22 days ago
In this episode, host Kaycn Goranson sits down with Rachel Korn, a seasoned growth leader whose career spans consulting, private equity diligence, and executive roles in fast-growing tech companies. Rachel shares her insights on driving meaningful growth in today’s AI-saturated landscape, why focus and product-market fit matter more than ever, how teams across an organization must align to fuel growth, and why in-person connection is making a comeback. The conversation wraps with Rachel’s perspective on resilience and navigating constant change in business.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Resilient Revenue Podcast
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Welcome to Resilient Revenue, a Women in Revenue podcast series designed to magnify the voices, victories, and valuable insights of trailblazing women in revenue-generating roles.
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Each episode will showcase stories of resilience, mentorship, and self-advocacy. You'll learn exactly how these remarkable women are breaking barriers, redefining success, and showing us the transformative power of unity within the tech industry.
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So join us as we embark on this enlightening journey toward equality and empowerment in the world of resilient revenue.
Discussion with Rachel Korn on AI-Driven Growth
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Hey, y'all. I'm Kaysen Goranson. Today, I'm joined by Rachel Korn, Chief Growth Officer with GoPower EV. Today, we're going to dig a little bit deeper into growth in this new world of AI that we're all living in. So, Rachel, very excited to have you joining us today.
00:00:59
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Good to be here. Thank you. So would love to start with an introduction, maybe high level your career path and your journey. Sure. So I started my career in consulting. I worked at Bain & Company for many years.
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ah From there, I transitioned to another growth equity consulting firm where we do digital due diligence on companies. And from there into the tech world where I really focused on growth.
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I was CEO of one company called Fleeter, turbocharging growth efforts there. And recently joined GoPower EV, where I'm the chief growth officer in charge of sales, marketing, business development, and all growth efforts.
00:01:44
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I love that. That's a lot of growth in your background. How did you get into growth and why are you so passionate about it now?
The Role of Growth in Company Success
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So I've had many careers and many opportunities that have touched on growth. I feel passionate about the fact that without growth, you really don't have anything. And growth can make or break a company. You can either turbo target and have it do really well or quite the opposite, the front end of a company that will determine its success.
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Selfishly, as a marketer, I can't disagree with anything you just said. You can't grow a company without some sort of growth engine there. Do you think there's any emphasis or how do you feel all of the teams should work together on growth?
00:02:29
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What are your thoughts on that? Every team should support growth. Absolutely. So obviously led by sales and marketing, heavily supported by sales support, engineering, and really the product team is critical to it because if you don't have a good product, a product that suits your market and go good product market fit, then you don't have anything to sell. So everything has to work together.
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And, you know, obviously support, because if you don't have a good support team, then your customer satisfaction will go down and it'll hurt your ability to get new customers.
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So it should be a really tight knit group that everybody's working together. Can't agree more. And I love that you included a lot of teams that people tend to leave off of go to market.
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Okay, so obviously the past AI has been around for a very long time. And especially in the past few years, it has been the top buzzword on
AI's Impact on Growth Strategies
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everyone's mind. the hot new thing. And everyone, if you're not using AI, you're falling behind.
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I would love to hear how you think AI plays into Grow. So the good thing about AI is that it allows you to move very fast. It allows you to create a lot of material that is targeted.
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For small companies, it's a real lifesaver because you don't necessarily need huge teams. And you can accomplish a lot and get a lot of content out there, content that is very tailored towards your target market.
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The downside of it is that... People may fall into the trap of creating too much content and too much noise there and not very good content. So you end up with compromising quantity over quality and just a lot of blogs, posts, marketing materials, social, et cetera.
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And it's a bit of a downward cycle towards the lowest common denominator in which nobody's ever sat down and thought through, know, how do we make this really good? How do we make this focus? How do we focus on less but make it really hard hitting?
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So there is a tendency to just put a lot out there by everybody. And it overall diminishes the quality of the overall effort. I love that. A sales leader I've recently worked with called out the question to his team once, is this effort that matters or is this just noise? And so just listening to your answer right there, sounds like there's a lot of noise being put out, but is it actually content that matters or something that you should pay attention to or even change how you're operating or working in?
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If you and all of your competitors have the same tools and are doing the same thing, everybody's going sound the same. Yes, I think that's a great point. Thank you for calling that out.
Finding Market Focus Amid AI Challenges
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So for someone who is not on go-to-market or a revenue team right now, and they wanted to potentially change careers and get into this world, what's the piece of advice that you have for them?
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who So the most important moving background that I had was actually in strategic consulting, where we thought about growth from a strategic perspective in terms of What segments do we go after? How do we differentiate our position?
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How do we differentiate the company? How do we build products that can really suit a segment? There tends to be from a growth perspective, a tendency for everybody to try to do everything for everybody. And especially small companies get pulled in a lot of directions.
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What consulting taught me and what a lot of growth marketers need to learn is how to focus. How to be able to pick one segment where your product has really good product market fit, focus on that and do really well in that. If you establish leadership in this one segment, you can then expand to others.
00:06:34
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But the tendency to do a little bit for everybody doesn't get anybody anywhere. So that's what, that's the lesson that I learned to focus Which requires a lot of discipline because, you know, inherently have to say no to opportunities.
00:06:49
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And it's really hard for founders who are chasing growth to say no. But ultimately, you're going to do best in the segment in which your product fits the best. I love that. I think that's great good advice.
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And how would you say, especially whether it's because of AI or even just the world of micro and macroeconomics that we're living in right now, how do you or what piece of advice or how to do you think growth teams should think about growth now compared to maybe how we were thinking about growth five years ago 10 years ago What is challenging now, primari primarily because of AI, like you said, it is very hard to differentiate out there. There is noise.
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People's attention spans are obviously a lot shorter. I mean, we went from when I started my careers, people reading white papers to now they're used to 140 characters.
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Really hard when you have a complex product to differentiate in an environment where people don't take the time to listen. so It's challenge to get your message out there in the little time span. Ultimately, what I realized is that you have to spend time with people in person, that we have to go back to getting them in person, talking to them, in having real conversations.
00:08:09
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I love that. I think definitely starting, give or take, five years ago as the pandemic hit, meeting people in person has definitely fallen to the wayside, and a lot of people have lost that muscle memory. So I love that you're calling
Defining Resilience in the AI Era
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that out.
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Okay, so last question, and I like to end all of my interviews this way. But what does resilience mean to you? Resilience means, piggybacking on a lot of the discussion here, being able to weather all the changes and challenges that are being put to you and in adapt quickly to them. So AI being the latest challenge, how do you adapt to that and take it as an opportunity to lead and to growth and to excel as a company and as a person?
00:08:56
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Before AI, there were plenty of other challenges. Obviously, we're not going to face tariff challenges as well. So resilience is really being able to react quickly, modify your approaches, and adapt and actually take advantage of them in a way that does better for you and for the company. And ultimately, those who take advantage of the challenges are the ones who succeed.
00:09:21
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Well said. Thank you for sharing that. Well, anyways, I really enjoyed this conversation today, and I'm so glad you you came to join us.
Closing and Community Invitation
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Audience, if any of you want to connect with Rachel, I would definitely recommend reaching out to her on LinkedIn. but Rachel, thank you so much.
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And that wraps up another episode of Resilient Revenue. These narratives are more than just personal triumphs. They embody the collective journey that we undertake as we strive for a future where every woman, no matter her career stage, location, industry, or demographic profile, has the opportunity to excel in her chosen field.
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Women in Revenue exists because we know amazing things can happen when driven, talented, bottom line oriented women are fired up and collaborating to grow their careers and organizations.
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We invite you to join our amazing community of 7,000 plus members. If you'd like to become a member for free, head on over to womeninrevenue.org to join today.
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See you next time on Resilient Revenue.