GrowthCurve.io

Financial acumen is a career growth lever.

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I got my first promotion into management in 2006.

With it came new meetings and access to data I hadn’t seen before as an individual contributor.

I remember sitting in my first bi-weekly “utilization review” meeting, feeling like an impostor.

With MBA-educated peers to my left and right. Executives across the table.

Not only did I need to learn new terminology and metrics, I needed to impact outcomes in new ways.

So I studied, read books, and asked questions.

Over time I figured it out. I became savvy enough to manage my line of business and grow it.

Fast-forward to the early 2010s. I interviewed for a VP, Customer Success role at a fast-growing SaaS startup in the southeast.

During the interviews, the CEO grilled me on metrics.

Specifically gross retention, net revenue retention, and customer retention.

I failed the test. Couldn't provide a clear and concise explanation of these metrics.

While I was familiar with revenue recognition, the Income Statement, and Gross Margin from my professional services leadership days, I hadn’t invested the time to go deep on SaaS metrics.

Didn’t get the job.

Both experiences were painful, but caused my career trajectory to steepen.

Since then, I've spent years soaking up every SaaS benchmark I could get my hands on.

David Skok (forentrepreneurs.com) and Dave Kellogg (kellblog.com) were among the pioneers of SaaS I learned from. And still do.

For me, financial literacy was like a one-way door. Once I understood, I couldn't help but think differently about impact.

I began asking myself...

• What are the true priorities of the business?

• How will my team and I support those priorities?

• What impact will our efforts make on the company's financial outcomes?

• What are the leading indicators I can use to gauge progress along the way?

• How will I adjust if conditions change or plans aren’t shaping up?

We built a course to help you answer these questions, nail those interviews, and avoid the impostor syndrome I once felt as a leader.

Most importantly, we built it to help you make an impact.

#CoverYourSaaS is a financial literacy course for SaaS leaders. It'll be available for download tomorrow, Monday, March 11, 2024.

No matter what professional track you’re on, financial literacy will accelerate your growth.

For those who join the waitlist and purchase the course, we’re setting up a temporary, private Slack group (available through April 30, 2024). Jeff and I will hang out there daily to answer SaaS financial literacy questions you have and chat about the course.

Join the waitlist now 👇

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[1] ZIRP - Zero Interest Rate Period