Cracking the Venture Capital Code: Building Billion-Dollar Ventures

Hey, welcome to another episode of Making Billions, I'm your host, Ryan Miller and today I have my dear friend Jeff Gardner.

Jeff is an executive chairman overseeing five high growth companies, leveraging his extensive expertise. Additionally, as a partner of Springtime Ventures, as well as the author of the newest leadership book called, Love Your People. Previously, Jeff served as the CEO of Zen Planner, where he orchestrated the development of an exceptional team and fostered a high performance culture, resulting in a remarkable compound annually exceeding the growth rate of 50%. His background includes executive roles in technology and payment firms, with notable tenures where he managed 2 billion in global business.

So what does this mean? This means that Jeff is about to teach you all the Cheat Codes on how to enter God mode as a leader, an investor, and a top tier asset manager in the alternative asset space.

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[THE GUEST]: Jeff is an executive chairman overseeing five high growth companies,

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• 16:00 (Cont.) Cracking the Venture Capital Code: Building Billion-Dollar Ventures

Transcript

Ryan Miller  

My name is Ryan Miller and for the past 15 years have helped hundreds of people to raise millions of dollars for their funds, and for their startups. If you're serious about raising money, launching your business or taking your life to the next level, this show will give you the answers, so that you too can enjoy your pursuit of Making Billions. Let's get into it. 

Ryan Miller  

If you want to invest in a startup and make that sweet 100x return like the big VCs, but you don't know what to look for, then I've got a treat for you. My next guest is about to teach you some of his strategies that he deploys in his venture fund in his pursuit of Making Billions. Here we go. 

Ryan Miller  

Hey, welcome to another episode of Making Billions, I'm your host, Ryan Miller and today I have my dear friend Jeff Gardner. Jeff is an executive chairman overseeing five high growth companies, leveraging his extensive expertise. Additionally, as a partner of Springtime Ventures, as well as the author of the newest leadership book called, Love Your People. Previously, Jeff served as the CEO of Zen Planner, where he orchestrated the development of an exceptional team and fostered a high performance culture, resulting in a remarkable compound annually exceeding the growth rate of 50%. His background includes executive roles in technology and payment firms, with notable tenures where he managed 2 billion in global business. So what does this mean? This means that Jeff is about to teach you all the Cheat Codes on how to enter God mode as a leader, an investor, and a top tier asset manager in the alternative asset space. So Jeff, welcome to the show, man.

Jeff Gardner  

Hey, Ryan, thanks for having me, I appreciate it, it's such a wonderful podcast. You know, I love the variety of guests that you bring onto the show and the discipline that you put into putting together a great show, with real actions that people can take away. A lot of these, you can get a little bit of you know, ear candy or you know, a little snack, you deliver a full meal.

Ryan Miller  

That's right. So we're, we've been fortunate enough to be in the top 2% of the world and it's all because of amazing guests just like you and yes, it's been a labor of love. And we want to just decentralize a lot of the wisdom and just let people know that this is not a language that only wealthy people or the elite Wall Street people speak, that you can learn this stuff too, and you are certainly one of those voices, bringing that to the people. So enough being said, let's jump right into it, man. So with some beginners, you've been a beginner, I've been a beginner, maybe in your industry, entrepreneurship, venture capital, all of these things that you've done, you've done some huge things, and you're just getting started, what can you teach beginners on A: how to win and B: how not to lose when you're starting out in this journey?

Jeff Gardner  

Yeah, there's so much to unpack there, particularly because I've been a beginner on as an entrepreneur, you know, starting businesses, and now a beginner as an investor. So let's talk about what it takes to win and you know, first of all, when I'm looking to make an investment these days, I'm looking for a team, a leader or CEO, that is really motivated, that I want to make sure they're solving a problem. And they're pure and committed to seeing it all the way through to the end. You know, it's interesting, a lot of times as we look at these businesses, you know, what we're looking for is somebody that full commitment. We see a lot of immigrants and first time founders really tend to outperform their peers, because they really want it bad. So that's one of the things we look for, we look for companies that demonstrate fiscal responsibility. So we don't want folks that are out there, just seeing how much cash that they can burn. You know, raising capital is not the end game, the end game is building a great business, raising capital is just a necessity to get there. And then we look for businesses that have really strong gross margins, you know, we look at 80%, I focus largely in tech and 80%, for software businesses. And then if we look at something more in tech enabled services, you know, we'd like to see gross margins in the 65%, or higher category.

Ryan Miller  

Awesome, man. So and then carrying on on that second component, on the second element is to say, when you're starting out, it's not enough just to get some early points on the board. Yes, you need to do that, but also, you can really make some pretty fatal mistakes in the early days as a venture capitalist. So what would you tell people who are aspiring to be a venture capitalist? What are some ways, what are some things that you can, cautionary tales you can give people?

Jeff Gardner  

Not only can you but you know, most of us do make those mistakes along the way? Well, we look at, you know, things that we've seen that have just not worked out well for us and we've spoken to other venture capitalists, and they see the same thing. You know, in this day and age, you know, post COVID, where a lot of remote teams, we just find that when teams are together, working together, particularly when you're building something new. Having them in that same location where they can collaborate, they can get together, it just speeds the cycle of building and creating so much better and we're just seeing them be much, much more effective than highly dispersed teams. We like teams that are really diverse and so you know, everybody wants to start a company with their drinking buddy or their college roommate or somebody that's, you know, very much like them. We look for a really rounded team. So somebody who's really strong and tech, someone who's really strong and go to market, somebody who's really, you know, great from a marketing perspective. So we want to see that diversity in that team that comes together in a solid way. Notice that most of what I'm talking about as a team, so we definitely bet on the jockey and we've seen it time and time again. And then somebody that has experience, so you know, you see a lot of dramatized movies of the first time entrepreneur just knocks it out of the park, that tends to be the exception rather than a rule. It, we see folks who have gone through some hard times, some difficulty, some persons, something they've had to persevere through and those are the folks that we've seen have that grit and determination to be very successful.

Ryan Miller  

Okay, perfect. So when you do an investment, do you have any discipline to look back, for example? Do you look back on investments in performance and analyze that? Or do, do we just soldier forward? How do you guys treat that?

Jeff Gardner  

We have a formalized day, twice a year, where all the partners get together and we go through and stack ranks for the investments that we have, how they're performing. And then we correlate sort of what there's different aspects of the business, we look at, you know, whether it's market, whether it's industry, the leadership teams, and we assess all those different components to see what is making the winning investments for us. And that helps guide us and we continue to look at that and refine that every six months.

Ryan Miller  

So it sounds like and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like it's it's really good to define what success looks like before you do the investment so that on the end, or we'll call it look back analysis or after action report, you can actually say, all right, when we started before we ever cut any money into this deal, we said if this is how it plays out, that is successful, you go back to your charter documents, you blow the dust off and say, alright, what did we say? Okay, okay, yeah, found the document, let's look back, did it perform the way that we expected? Yes or no? And if no, then you go, I'm assuming, you go into some further analysis to figure out why did it not achieve our expectations? Is that right? 

Jeff Gardner  

Yeah, Ryan, that's a great summary. So when we're analyzing that initial investment, we have a matrix where we go through the criteria and our confidence level in those criteria and then we have a debate as an investment team, as far as do we think this is going to be a good investment? And we're looking for unanimous agreement that, you know, that is the right investment, and we want to make sure it's gonna be fund return right. There are plenty of businesses and entrepreneurs shouldn't get disappointed when their business doesn't get funded by somebody and the nature of venture capital is that you're looking for fund returners. So you may be able to build a great business, good, solid business, but we're looking for, you know, the homeruns.

Ryan Miller  

Yeah, with that same note, do you have a typical hold period that you guys like to stay in the deal?

Jeff Gardner  

So, um, we're ten year funds, so depending on we make our initial investments in the first four years of each fund, and then beyond that, we do add on follow on investments, you know, if the opportunities arise, and the business is performing well, but yeah, that is, that's our approach for investing. It's a 10 year plan.

Ryan Miller  

Perfect. Okay, so we got look back analysis, we got all these cool things, just some advice, beginners, if you're starting out, you want to make sure that you're effectively picking the right jockeys, and then also not doing these silly things that can mess up your deals, or really just screw that up. And finally, very good discipline, that's how I know you're one of the good ones, is you do look back analysis to say, I don't care how much money we made or lost, that should not deter us from actually doing a look back analysis, we want to make sure that we're constantly getting better, as well. So it's not just our portcos or entrepreneurs that we've invested in that we expect to get better, we also expect to get better and better as we go along.

Jeff Gardner  

That's absolutely right and it's funny, I think our biggest learnings have come from those failed investments, and going back through and looking at why they failed and it is, it's it's yeah, it's so enlightening to do that and I'd recommend everybody go through that process.

Ryan Miller  

Yeah, it wasn't, I think it was Nelson Mandela, where, I never lose, I either win or I learn. So having that go having that operational discipline to use an NBA term and operational discipline that just says this out is around here, this is a standard we either win or we learn. And so thank you for being one of those companies and those investors that actually make sure that no matter what, we will always pull the lessons out and get better and better as we go along. I love that. So now as we invest, some of that has to do with the market, so I'm really curious, we can't have a show Making Billions not talking about economics. 

Jeff Gardner  

That's right.

Ryan Miller  

That's right, so in the market, I'm just curious, what are you seeing out there as a venture capitalist? What, uh, what's tickling your toes right now? 

Jeff Gardner  

Yeah, you know, we see 1000s and 1000s of deals per year and it takes something special to get us to that level. We're really digging in and doing deep due diligence. I'll tell you right now that you know the competition for deals is increasing for we are what I call a Class A assets. So these are businesses, you know, they have a product market set, they have doubt in their ideal customer profile, they know who they're going after, and they have a strong management team. You know, those assets are commanding very good valuations, and they're getting very competitive and so that's, that's nice to see, you know, from an entrepreneur standpoint, you know, you know what you need to build to get to, get a great investment. 

Jeff Gardner  

The thing that, you know, everybody's talking about now that we have to talk about is AI, right? Any investment that we're considering today, we look at it through two lenses, we look at it through, can this business be disrupted by AI in the future? So therefore, is it a risk if we make an investment right now that we lose, and this thing does not go the way we'd like it to? And then the flip side of that is, what opportunities do they have to utilize AI to disrupt the market? And so what is defensive, obviously, what is offensive, and there's some great offensive opportunities where there are not leaders in these industries, a lot of these industries. And so it's looking, you know, so way back when you know, the internet, and these are some great new businesses coming. And what we're seeing and what is very interesting is AI focus on specific industries or niches. So, you know, a lot of time is spent talking about, you know, the big generative AI models, the big, large language models, and what we like is specific applications. So there may be security concerns in a certain industry or things like that, where if you got a leading company that has an AI component, they can really sort of take a first mover advantage.

Ryan Miller  

Awesome and you know, another topic next to AI is vitamin D, or what I like to call some people call it debt. So I'm just curious on the debt markets, as far as funding deals, or people seeking capital, what are you seeing out there? 

Jeff Gardner  

Yeah, so I mean, that obviously, it's expensive right now, especially with companies without a lot of return revenue, or a lot of assets. It is extremely expensive and so I'd say in our earlier stage companies, you know, the C and A's, you know, we're doing mostly equity anyway, because they don't have a lot of, you know, collateral for the debt. But even in companies that are much further along and have the ability to do debt, we are getting much more opportunities to invest equity, just because it's, you know, the debt gap has closed between expected equity returns and expected debt returns and it, we're seeing a lot of opportunity with equity.

Ryan Miller  

All right, well, that sounds like a balanced market, even though we don't like when our capital is expensive, but we'll certainly work with that. So it sounds like in your opinion, what you're seeing is expensive debt, we kind of know that going, you took it a step further and says, but what that is, you keep me honest here, Jeff, but what that is doing is it's actually shifting people to prefer raising equity a lot more than debt like they used to before it was so cheap is basically free. Let's go get that and now they're like, hang on, there's payments, there's restricted covenants, there's all kinds of stuff plus the extra costs, I don't know, maybe we do go to equity. Is that what you're seeing out there? 

Jeff Gardner  

Absolutely, and I would say, you know, not only is the cost so high, it's the covenants are just so much tighter than they were, you know, two, three years ago.

Ryan Miller  

Yeah, absolutely and that's, that could be a barometer of some of the systemic risks that we're seeing in the market. And banks, or traditional lenders are also throwing in a few extra restrictive covenants if you want their money, gotta play by their rules, right? So that's right. I love that. Now, that's just today, but we all know, finance often trades around and multiples trade around, what are we expecting around the corner? We all get paid to look around corners and run through walls? Sounds like a fun job, but where's the smart money going? Where do you see the market going and where's the money following?

Jeff Gardner  

Yeah, it's just, you know, there's so much uncertainty in the market right now with, you know, elections in the fall, you know, what's going to happen with, you know, we thought we saw a nice trend on inflation to lower some interest rates, but there's still just a lot of questioning as far as what's going to happen. So we are seeing again, for top assets, those valuations, you know, we're seeing some really, you know, high multiples, not 2021 high, I mean, not in the 20s. But we're seeing, you know, sort of just overload double digits for really good assets, auto revenue multiple and again, my focus is on technology, so we're talking specifically on technology investments here.

Ryan Miller  

What kind of questions do you ask yourself, like going forward? What do you look for when you're looking at AI?

Jeff Gardner  

If you have a business that is, that's very logical to be disrupted by AI. So whether it's, you know, it's EggTech, or it's a language business, or things like that, where you know that, you know, there's an AI component, the question is not yes, it's just when, and how you will engage with the AI. So I've seen companies that are what I would call it in sort of at risk markets from an AI disruption. And they have really taken an offensive approach and said, listen, our industry that we're in is going to change and we are sitting in the driver's seat to be able to drive that change. So really taking control of it, and building sort of the frameworks and the infrastructure and infrastructure around it to make it very successful. So we love seeing folks that are, that are, that are not in denial, because it's easy to sort of try and stick your head in the sand, and the ones that are taking it, embracing it and want to be the drivers of that innovation. 

Ryan Miller  

Got it, as we round third base, you have so much experience, you've been managing 2 billion in business, and you've done a lot, and you are doing a lot. So with that, and I know you've written a book, so I'm just curious, nobody writes a book without having some really cool things to talk about. So we'll see if I can squeeze some of this out of Jeff folks, but wondering if you'd be willing to share some of the principles out of your book and just help our listeners to gain a competitive advantage from your experience. So if someone asked you, hey, what's some of the best advice you can give me right now, I'm starting out either as an entrepreneur or I'm learning to be a venture capitalist. What competitive advantage can you give them today?

Jeff Gardner  

Yeah, I would love to share that. So you know, the book, again, it's called, Love Your People and it's really an entrepreneurial leadership system. And so one of the things I found in working with a lot of CEOs and so, you know, we've done 50 venture capital investments. I've done a lot outside of the venture capital firm. And then I've worked with a lot of late stage, later stage businesses where we take them from 5 million in revenue, to 50 million in revenue. And so through that sort of full cycle of experiences, there are things that just sort of bubbled to the top and say, listen, here's what makes a great entrepreneurial leader and a great leadership team, and ultimately, a great company and great culture, where we feel really excited to invest in this type of company. 

Jeff Gardner  

So the book talks about 10 dimensions, I will share. I'm not going to walk you through all 10 of those, but I'll share three right now. So the first is to make sure that we have, you have a really clear vision and I think Andreessen Horowitz talks about this as well, but being able to so many entrepreneurs have it in their head and they think it's so obvious to everybody around them, but it's not. Especially as you grow and you start scaling, you got to be able to articulate this to, you know, the new team members, you're recruiting the invent new investors, you're bringing you on board, your partners. So getting that vision really crisp, and it talks about the vision really having three components, so your purpose, why you exist, and the values, so what are the behaviors and the way you're going to act as a company to achieve your purpose. And then I look for a specific mission and this is not a mission statement, this is, think of it as a military mission, like we're going to conquer that mountain. This is, you know, in three years, we are going to have X percent of market share, we're going to be the market leader or whatever, maybe you'll be very specific as far as what it is you're going after, and you measure your performance to achieve that, so vision is number one. 

Jeff Gardner  

Now, I'll share something that goes pretty closely with that is as setting clear expectations for exceptional performance and so we see our best companies, they share with us here our expectations for the business for the next quarter and then at the end of that quarter, they share how they actually perform. So it's that full circle of accountability and the folks that I work with, we talked about the big three. So what are the three things that you are going to be doing this quarter to move this business in the direction where you want to take it to, to utilize to achieve your vision. And so it could be things like , you know, your quarterly revenue target, it could be, listen, we want to improve our margins, or gross margins from, you know, 80 to 85%. And here are the things we're going to do, it could be sort of a logo targets, it could be just about anything, we're gonna launch a new product, and that has to go out by the specific date. So getting really specific on what exceptional performance looks like, and measuring your results to that performance that you're committing to. 

Jeff Gardner  

And then the last one I'll share with you as well. As you know, we'd love to see companies that have established a culture of innovation. So a lot of early stage companies, they think about getting that initial product out there, that initial thing in the marketplace and that's not what we want to see, we want to see this continuous. You know, we talked about continual learning earlier, this continuous culture of innovation, where these companies have built processes, and there are ways to do this really methodically, very disciplined, you know, quarterly release targets, you could have design sprints, there's ways to make this happen. So it is built into the DNA of the compan and so therefore, this is not a one and done. This is a company that is going to continue to innovate and evolve and in my opinion, I think you know, Amazon is probably, you know, the one the whole out there as far as creating new revenue generating opportunities, time and time again. 

Ryan Miller  

Yeah, that's amazing. I remember, and I'm sure my listeners will keep me honest if I'm misinformed, but I remember hearing a little rumor, and maybe this is true, maybe it's not, but it's still a great idea is believe it was Google that says about 20% of your time should be spent on kind of passion projects or something around Google, which allows people not only to have to be a little bit happier, but it also a lot of innovation. And I know a lot of products have come out from employees just kind of tinkering. And so having that culture of innovation even if you really dial then to say 20% of your time should just be thinking about cool stuff and how your talents can bring new ideas into the world. So I absolutely love that.

Jeff Gardner  

That 's right Ryan, the one piece of guidance I would have around that is, you know, Google is, as we all know, is massive and extremely profitable. For earlier stage companies that you and I and most of your listeners are engaged with, make sure that innovation is focused. So you know, give them a challenge to go solve, rather than just having sort of blue sky where you can go after and do anything, but giving some specific sort of guide rails to let folks go innovate and really solve the problems your customers are facing right now. 

Ryan Miller  

All right, spoken like a true pro. Now here's a question that I get asked a lot when I'm speaking at conferences, and I'm sure you do, too. And that is great, like we all talk about upside. Yeah, how do you know? And what do you invest in? What metrics do you look for? Great? Sure, we can tell you that. But what a lot of VCs don't tell you is what if you were wrong? What if you made an investment? And it looked amazing, right? You went through your process, everything checked out, but for some weird reason, this company is not performing. So my question for you, Jeff, is how do you know when it's time to cut a portfolio company from your portfolio? 

Jeff Gardner  

Yeah, it's, you know, a lot of the companies that we invest in with Springtime Ventures are seeing, and so a lot of them just by the nature of it, they're not going to make it right. And so for us, when we decide when they get to that stage, and they need more money, and we have to decide whether we're going to write another check, or whether we're going to walk away. One of the first things we look at, you know, are they delivering on the commitments they've made, and if not, you know, why haven't they? So one thing that we see is consistent is it you know, great leaders and great teams, they find a way to deliver on their commitments? And yes, there's times you're not going to get the market, right software, or technology takes more time to develop and you think, well, but what are the commitments they've made and what kind of progress have they made towards those commitments? So I'd say that's sort of the first part of the scorecard that we look at as far as whether we want to continue on or not. 

Jeff Gardner  

Another is just, this seems so simple, and so obvious, but it becomes such a challenge, is transparency during tough times and so CEOs and executive teams, young, great leaders get more transparent, when times are tough and when things are off track. And poor leaders, they tend to hide. So you'll see, you know, your investment updates, you know, they keep getting further and further apart, they become more and more vague. And you know, they're not as honest, like they're, they're painting through, you know, this, this really nice rosy colored viewpoints. And what we want is we want the gritty truth, we want to know exactly what's going on and we want to hear it more often rather than less. So if things are going bad, and you're an entrepreneur, don't run and hide from it, use your board, use your investors, share the information, and then they're more likely to be there to support you along the way. 

Jeff Gardner  

And then you know, are they making the right decisions, the hard call, so if things are off track, or not going the way they want? And you've got, let’s say for example, like, you know, sales are just off track, right? They're just not working, you know, you've hired your best friend to be head of sales, and now it's just not delivering. Are they going to, is that CEO making the right call to let that person go and hire a rockstar, you know, head of sales to get in there? Or are they sort of, you know, the wartime situation where they just freeze up in the field and I'm not making the hard calls. So we want to say that they're good with decision making, and they're making the right decisions. 

Jeff Gardner  

And then lastly, is capital efficiency. So we want to see the money that they've been provided, how have they use it? How are they continuing to use it and what are the investments, you know, they want to continue to make into business going forward, which becomes a key part of our decision making.

Ryan Miller  

Yeah, that's your man after my heart. So I'm a recovering CFO and, you know, capital efficiency is a big one and I love everything that you've said, as well as just saying it's important. That's not the only thing. But it's up there next to oxygen, right? So it's capital efficiency, and just how you manage and run the business and I think is what we're talking about. And you know, one of the things I remember, one of the engagements will say, I can't say what company but it was one of the companies I was with, they were they had to dip into a line of credit to get through payroll every month, and then, then they would get their payables and this this huge tsunami every month of cash and would pay it off. As soon as I saw that I was like we got to work in capital problem, you should not be, you should be able to self sustain your operations, if you don't, we have an issue. And so just I'll fast forward the story and get right to the signal here. So folks, if you're, if you're an entrepreneur and you want to go to me or you want to go to Jeff, we're going to I'm going to look for a couple of things in arguably not so much on seed but later on in a business, is working capital, making sure you have that dialed in, making sure your cash conversion cycle is dialed in, and your working capital turnover ratio. So those are the things I look for, right, you're just you're just talking to me, that's three of probably 250 things that I look at. 

Ryan Miller  

And I'm reminded of, I'm old enough to remember this on The Price is Right and you had this game, it was called Plinko, or something, you drop it in, and there's a bunch of pegs and this ball just moves left and right as it works its way down. And so I always pictured operations the same way is, you got $1 of revenue that comes in and then it plinko's its way through the operations and profit drops out the bottom, hopefully, it better eventually. And so when you have this game of drop $1 in number one is how fast can it move its way through the operations and drop out through the other side. And then number two is and how much drops out the bottom now in this one place that I was able to support and to help turn this company around. The answer was nothing dropped out the bottom, they needed debt to supplement it because it wasn't coming out and so it was so complicated and the timing of Cash Flows was off, and it was making this whole problem. And so helping, and now if you don't have that dial in venture capitalists are here we are here to help you, we do want you to succeed, our money reputation is tied up with you too. So working capital, cash conversion cycle and working capital turnover ratio, those are very, very good metrics, especially if you're at a later stage. Those are great metrics to say how's the operations doing? Is the operation, is the machine effective? Do you get good gas mileage out of the thing? Or is it a gas guzzler? Is it a cash guzzler? Or is it cash efficient? So is there anything you could add to that as well from what you guys do at Springtime?

Jeff Gardner  

Yeah, that is great, Ryan. So it's along those lines that serve the working capital, working capital efficiency. So most of the tech businesses were involved with, have a recurring revenue component. And so we look at something called the magic number, which is basically, the money you had invested in your go to market activities, you know, your sales and your marketing teams and your investment and you know, your Google AdWords and all those divided by, and then on the numerator is the new AR for the quarter. So you look at your investment and go to market versus how much revenue you're generating and you can look this up online, and you'll look for the magic number for recurring revenue businesses, it's great, and we're looking for something there's one or greater. So that's, that's showing us that the investments we're making, you know, in the sales and marketing organization, are returning the future growth for the business, which is huge. 

Jeff Gardner  

It becomes a little less clear when you're talking about, you know, earlier stage tech, and you know, you're building and it may be a longer before it actually results in revenue. So a couple things we do look at, one is customer NPS and net promoter score, and I think it was I think it was Bain that came up with it originally. But the idea is you ask your customers on a scale of 1 to 10, your likelihood of recommending to a friend or colleague, and we see products that are 30 or more so we feel good about that, when we see them that are getting a score of 50 or more that is really exciting for us. And those are really good products that we see, oh, we want to continue to invest behind and then we look at retention of customers. So you know, one of the things one is a bunch of different ways to look at retention. But you know, we look at Net Revenue retention, so if you look at, you know, our customers from the beginning, beginning of the year, now we look at them again, at the end of the year, that bucket of customers, we want to see that their net revenue retention is 105% is in a good range. If we see them 110% or more, we find that really exciting. And so what that means is they're taking the customer base that they have, and they're offering them more services and more value that the customer is willing to pay for and that is the sign of a good long term business.

Ryan Miller  

Awesome, man. So we have a few things that we cover, so just make sure that the company's ROI, it performs as expected, typically, what you said earlier is just make sure there's a clear vision and just a culture of performance, right? So and excellence around that performance, so you just want to make sure they have clear quarterly goals. The second one that you mentioned was just set clear expectations. So that could be revenue targets, logo targets, whatever that might be, you want to and then also showcase if you're pitching Jeff or me or someone showcase that your company that you've built has a culture of innovation. And then finally one of the last things that Jeff talked about is what are some of the things you look for when to cut your losses. And that is they're not delivering on any of their comments, when times get tough, the leaders don't communicate, they get less transparent. They're not making the hard calls in the capital is just not being well managed. Whether it's through cash conversion cycle, working capital, the magic number, Net Promoter Score, there was so many things that we covered. Would you say that's a fair summary. 

Jeff Gardner  

That is a great summary. 

Ryan Miller  

Awesome, man. So before we wrap things up, is there anything else that you'd like to share, anything at all? Maybe how to find your book or how to connect with you? Anything at all? 

Jeff Gardner  

Sure, so I love and people connect with me so you can connect with me on LinkedIn. So Jeff Gardner, I have a monthly newsletter out there called the CX10 Initiative, so it focuses on the 10 leadership dimensions, and you know, we'd love to be able to share that information and, and we're getting great feedback that it's helping a lot of entrepreneurs. And then secondly, you can get my book by going to my website, which is the cx10initiative.com, again, cx10initiative.com. And if you go to order my book, click on the purchase from the publisher, and you can get a 20% off with the code Billions. It's capital B, Billions. Thank you for the time Ryan, it was wonderful having this conversation and debating the equity markets.

Ryan Miller  

Awesome, yeah, absolutely. So just to synthesize a conversation is you want to make sure that businesses whether it's your own or the companies you're investing in, make sure you understand how operations look through financial statements. We've given you a ton of metrics to apply to that and look out for AI and make sure that you understand the questions to ask is, will this company get disrupted by AI? If the answer is yes, and they don't have a path forward? Maybe not the best one and the other one is, will this company do the disrupting through AI, that's another good one. Watch your debt and make sure your numbers are good. You do these things and you too will be well on your way in your pursuit of Making Billions.

Ryan Miller  

Wow, what a show, I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. Now, if you haven't done so already, be sure to leave a comment and review on new ideas and guests you want me to bring on for future episodes. Plus, why don't you head over to YouTube and see extra takes while you get to know our guest even better. And make sure to come back for our next episode where we dive even deeper into the people, the process and the perspectives of both investors and founders. Until then, my friends stay hungry to focus on your goals and keep grinding towards your dream of Making Billions.