In this episode, you'll hear from the Chief Revenue Officer for AppSpace, Steve Terp, on the importance of triangulating gut feel, forecasting, and accountability to drive a data-driven culture. He also discusses the importance of creating a complementary leadership team where metrics focus can be balanced with a deep understanding of the business to drive the best outcomes. If you run sales, marketing, or are in charge of building revenue teams, this is a must-listen.
Steve Terp is the CRO of Appspace. Steve is an experienced executive helping organizations grow in revenue and profit. He has over 30 years of technology sales, marketing, channel and alliance experience with the past 25 in leadership roles creating a culture of success in addition to financial realization for shareholders. He also has significant experience in attracting, leading and retaining A players in the competitive technology services market as well as acquisitions, integration, customer experience and growth in new markets.
Dan Rodriguez is the Chief Revenue Officer of CCG. Dan is responsible for all revenue-generation strategy and execution including sales, marketing, strategic partnerships, and customer success ensuring alignment across the organization to execute the company strategy and achieve revenue goals. Dan will also be responsible for conveying value for customers across the entire customer lifecycle.
The show where Dan Rodriguez, Chief Revenue Officer of CCG, goes behind the scenes with the top data and analytics leaders to understand what they really do every day. Discover how they operate: their goals, biggest challenges, budget, what tools they are using, the skillset of their team, setting expectations with other stakeholders. It’s about people who are smart, reliable, funny, and resourceful. It’s learning about their data culture. We are pulling back the curtain on what’s working now and what is not in how they are using data to gain a competitive edge. It’s learning how the best data and analytics leaders do their thing and lead their company to become an intelligent enterprise.
Dan Rodriguez 0:07
Hello, everyone and welcome to a data in the life a podcast dedicated to gaining insight into how successful leaders are becoming data driven, and progressing on their journey to become an intelligent enterprise where data and insight is democratized and flows freely. I'm your host, Dan Rodrigues, the founder of CCG analytics, where cloud data and analytics company here in the US, and I'm joined with a friend of mine, Mr. Steve terps. Steve, welcome.
Steve Terp 0:35
Thank you, Dan. I appreciate it. And flattered to be here looking forward to the conversation.
Dan Rodriguez 0:40
Absolutely. So Steve wants to tell us a little bit about yourself your role and what you're doing with that space?
Steve Terp 0:46
Sure, I'd be glad to do that. So I am a sales guy. So have been in technology sales and marketing for longer than I care to admit. But then in leadership roles over 25 years now. And so have always been with kind of cutting edge leading edge technology companies. And most recently, I've spent the last year as the chief Revenue Officer for a company called app space. We're headquartered in Dallas, Texas, but all over the world. And we are a workplace and team member experience platform. So we serve about 150 of the Fortune 500 companies, very SASsy company, if you will, modern platform. And you know, the big thing for us this, how do people communicate with their people? And in particular, right now, the hot topic is how do people get back into the office that returned office, we have the tools that allow people to be able to do that safely. So it's exciting times and a great place to be and we are people are spread all over the world, which makes it really interesting.
Dan Rodriguez 1:48
Absolutely. And what a great, what a great space to be. So obviously, with a lot of change, there digital disruption being at the heart of what AppSpace is doing, and some of the challenges that they're helping your customers overcome. Where does being data driven kind of fit into the vision or the mission there at AppSpace?
Steve Terp 2:08
Yeah, I think it's, it's, in my case, in particular, being responsible for, you know, the growth of the top line. Data takes place in a lot of different ways. One of them is, you know, the feedback that we have to have to be able to make good business decisions. I think that's a pretty general statement, right. And I think the second one that's really important, especially with what the customers have been through in the last year is, what kind of feedback what kind of data you're getting around what your customers are doing? You know, we have a solution that really, the history was mostly helping people light up screens inside of offices, well, you know, one day, they aren't there anymore.
So for us to be able to use data from our platform to figure out what's happening with those customers, and what their activities are, was pretty critical. And then, you know, flipping over to the growth side of it, to be able to look closely at what we're learning in from a sales and marketing perspective is really critical. So that's what I wake up and worry about every day is what are those indicators that data can tell us that we can make really good business decisions for the customers and also for, for our own growth?
Dan Rodriguez 3:16
Absolutely. And, you know, the CRM role, the chief revenue officer role, I should say, is fairly new, and has came about by a lot of companies like adspace, especially in the in the SAS area where software's kind of forced companies to look at the different functions that have sales and marketing and customer success. And recognizing the value of integrating those. For those that maybe are a little bit less familiar, what roles or what functions do fall under your purview at adspace.
Steve Terp 3:53
Sure, yeah. So I primarily oversee three big parts of our business. Part of that is marketing. So you know, the top of the funnel, the brand, the tools, the other things that we use to go to market and try to grow the company. And that is probably where most of the data comes into play in a big, big way. So they can make a decisions.
Secondarily is Field Sales. So what are our sales people doing out in the marketplace? How are we doing? Where are we heading there. And then third part is partner so we have a fairly large channel part of our business 230 something companies. And so to be able to enable those guys to get them excited about what we're doing be able to work well together. And Cosell is a pretty big part of that. So those are the three parts that are under my purview.
I spend a lot of time as you can imagine with the customer success team as well, because they're engaged with customers and retaining customers and a SaaS model is everything right? So it doesn't matter how much you sell, if you're not keenly, acutely aware of what is happening with your Customers are making sure you both keep and expand those customers. So that's an area where I work closely with with a partner in the business to make sure that we're maximizing customer revenue as part of our business.
Dan Rodriguez 5:11
Absolutely, thank you. That's very helpful. So you mentioned the the data aspect or the data centricity to marketing, especially as we're looking at funnel, and you brought up the brand and kind of getting app space out in front of your customer base. How much of your conversations with Field Sales are becoming more data driven? And maybe speak a little bit outside of we all know about commissions and quotas and shadow using data in that way? But are there broader conversations since marketing? And the partnerships also fall under your purview? Is there a broader conversation around data that's enabling your field sales to do their jobs?
Steve Terp 6:01
Yeah, so there's a couple things that said, number one is that I am not by nature, a technical guy, and I'm not by nature, a numbers guy, and my grades in college will reflect that for sure. I keenly remember quantitative methods of business analysis and the other classes that I had to take. But for sure, it didn't come naturally to me. And so I think, from a perspective of looking at Field Sales, and also looking at marketing, there's a couple different things that I've seen that have been really helpful, that we had to kind of get to. So from a marketing perspective, it's really about especially in the changing world we're sitting in today, it's really about measuring very quickly, so you can make decisions on shifting priorities. Where are you going to put that next investment? How are you going to get that next conversation started? Where are you going to get engagement, whether it be on social platforms, or whatever the case might be. And so I don't think in my entire career, I've ever seen technology, and data related things change faster than they are right now in the marketing world.
So if you look at marketing technology, or the mark tech stacks, as people say, the number of tools and the number of technologies that drive insight, are overwhelming. And I think almost a distraction to some degree, but the ability now to go do account based marketing where you know, the customers you want to go to, you're driving data based on what websites they're visiting. And being able to pull that in and score a prospect that you've never even talked to yet you have all this information you're pulling together to kind of understand what's the next thing that you can do is, it's just off the charts, nothing we could do just a handful of years ago.
So the first thing for us from a marketing perspective is we've got to be ready for that. And so in order to kind of overcome my not a natural data guy was finding somebody that complements what I do so so we were fortunate enough to find a world class cmo. And even then when you talk about a chief marketing officer, usually they either lead with really good branding capabilities, really creative, or they're really, really good at operations and data, you almost have to pick between them, because they're very few people that can that can do all of these things. And we lean towards something that really was great.
From a data perspective, it could build a team to do that. So the insights, they can give us an ongoing basis of what happened, what's happening. And what we think is going to happen is just phenomenal. So just the ability to sort through those tools and come up with the answers that allow us to make ongoing decisions on where to shift our priorities is a gigantic piece of what I think data means to us. And, you know, in growing a business, that role is so critical, more critical than it's ever been, it's more technologically driving than it's ever been as well.
Now, if I shift over to the field, you know, the pretty basic things with salespeople, right? So there's the technology and the data that you want them to have access to. So they can go do their job, you have expectations of outreach and follow up and SLS and things like that, that drives data, pretty basic stuff of what's happening, what happened. One of the critical things for anybody, especially those that have high growth rates that have investors, like private equity firms, or VC or public is forecasting and looking forward. So I think the place where data plays the biggest role for us has been driving accountability with our team members, by putting the data in front of them that that both allows them to let us know what they think is going to happen, but allows us to kind of have a checkpoint there.
So we expect, which I don't think we could have done that long ago, our team to be able to every week tell us what's going to happen from a sales perspective over the course of the next 3 30 day periods. And we'd back it up by giving them the data in front of them saying, Hey, this is what the pipeline looks like. This is what the stages are at. We can use algorithms to figure out what the numbers say you should do. You know, can you confirm this? Can you tell us what it looks like? Can you get a feel for it, and that does one of two things, either they're like, Hey, this is great. This is where I feel I now can act against this, or secondarily, they can go, you know what I'm wrong. So let me go fix the inputs to the data, let me go check on Salesforce.
There's not a sales leader in the world that doesn't spend a lot of time pushing their people for better information, because the data that's coming out is only as good as the information that goes in. But I think what we've done is been able to kind of look forward with the team and allow them to make better decisions, exact same thing that we've done from a marketing perspective, that's kind of the parallel between the two.
Dan Rodriguez 10:34
Yes, that was fantastic. And there's a lot of great stuff to unpack in there. So I was gonna go after marketing. But I'm gonna come back to that, because I want to talk a little bit about the forecasting, and how you're leveraging it, because you touched on some challenges that every organization faces. And that is, as data becomes a bigger part of the story. And as data becomes more readily available, then you want to start using it. But then you get addicted to the need for more of it. So for example, if you're saying, Hey, this is this is what we're forecasting. And the sales exact says, Okay, I can commit to this, or I can commit to that, well, then there's all these activities that they start executing against. And if those activities aren't visible, because they're either not going into your CRM, or, or they're not taking the extra click, or the extra step to make sure they go in there, then you start losing visibility into the progress that's being made.
So then you start going back and saying, hey, I need you to track all of that data, can you do this, this and this? And they're saying, hey, that's not helping me do my job at all. And you're like, I know. But in order for me to manage you, I kind of need all that visibility. So how do you how do you have those conversations where it's this tug of war between I would love to have data on every single thing that everyone's doing, so that I can do my job as a leader, but the reality is, well, they're entering data, they're not out there selling?
Steve Terp 12:02
Yeah, so I would say a couple things. It depends on what the role is, right? If you have a, just out of college, an SDR BDR, somebody that's doing outbound calling someone that's high volume, efficiency is everything in the world, then you've got to be super prescriptive with with information and, and efficiency and everything else in the world that we live in, which is not, you know, gigantic deals, although we deal with bigger customers. It is a little more about strategy. So I want them to put enough information that helps us create a good strategy together. And that the most critical things there is really what I'd call competence probability on every single opportunity, we really want to know, what is our opportunity of winning us at any point in time so that we can kind of determine how do we increase that?
You know, it's funny, I don't think people are football fans. But the one thing I constantly hear from the Bill Belichick world is they create more information and track more things than anybody in football. In essence, the Patriots do things that nobody else is willing to do. And almost all of it has to do with tracking more information. And so somewhere between that and somewhere between some really good basic things that allow you to have actionable items with the reps is the right is the right thing to do. So we try to find that happy medium, because we do want people to sell to people. But if we can find something and say it's at this particular stage at this particular probability, and how do we increase that and have a better chance and spend time on the right things? Then think right, so it's, we're probably someplace in the middle of the mix. But it also depends on who you're dealing with and what kind of selling they're doing.
Dan Rodriguez 13:41
And what's the response been like, as I mean, you have an interesting perspective, because you set yourself up as saying, you're not number friendly, you're not technology friendly, which is ironic, knowing that you've been in technology companies, your whole career, but so I even imagined for yourself, there was a little hesitation or apprehension around, okay, I've got to start using reports and all these things to help inform the way I'm going to lead and drive the team. But then I'm sure you're also seeing it from the team themselves. Just the kind of natural pushback from change and doing things a different way. So how have you kind of adapted that? And what kind of reaction Have you had from the team as you're, instead of taking their gut feel on what confidence and probability are, you know, augmenting that with real data and insights? What's that experience been? Like?
Steve Terp 14:32
Yeah, so it's interesting. I had a little bit of a wake up call many years ago when I first went into leadership. And this is, I'll tell you the story only because I think it leads to what we want the way that we want our people in the field to think so I got promoted to sales leadership for the first time the CEO, you know, invites me into his office doesn't ask me whether I have the time or not. I think he's gonna sit down and give me some sage advice on how to work with people and how to deal with people and you're going to be Managing your peers and all that. And he throws a 30 sheet, p&l statement in front of me and says, Well, if you're going to be a leadership, you're going to have to know numbers. And for the next three hours, we literally went through a p&l. And he showed me every single line item, went through everything and said, You absolutely have to understand where these things are heading in order to manage. But I thought that was a great lesson about what happened, right. And so always being able to look at what's happened in the past with a lot of details really important to make good decisions.
But I think what's happened moving forward with with our team is we've got to really focus on what's going to happen in what's in the future. One of those those those leading indicators, and a little bit of a wake up call, you know, probably six months ago, one of our leaders, we talked a lot about the statistics and where we're heading. And he said, Man, I feel great about, we've really got it pinned down as far as looking in the rearview mirror. Now, what are we gonna do about looking outside the windshield, right. And so I found that if we can put the, the that data in front of these team members in front of these reps, and get them to think six months out, instead of what I'm going to do next month, then that changes the complexity of how they do it. So it's been about giving them information about using smart people that help drive some of that data in order to get in front of them so that they can, you know, manage their business and manage it to a longer term. And ultimately, especially in long sales cycles, allow them to make adjustments at the sales cycle.
So we have, for instance, somebody, an analyst in the financial part of the business that he looks at every aspect of the pipeline, he looks at stages compared to what rep it is, and the percentages, and we're constantly running algorithms to figure out what do we think that we're going to end up at in the next three months, at the same time, we go to the reps and go through the same process with them to get an estimate from them. And then I asked the leaders that these reps report to to come up with something to it. So it really allows us these three data points of both gut feeling in numbers to kind of come together to get a better idea, are we perfect? No. But over time, you can start looking at the history and seeing and making adjustments to it in a way that makes you a lot more comfortable with with the decisions that you're making.
Dan Rodriguez 17:18
I love that. Especially the triangle analogy, or the triangle description, I think the reality is when we talk about continuous intelligence, which is a nice buzzword in the data space, but the implication is that we're continually evolving, we're continually learning. And that actually is the muscle that you're really trying to build. So you need the data, of course, and you need the technology, and you need people who are willing to go along with it and that evolution, but the idea is continuing to evolve, and just get started, get started, have the conversations, put the data in front of them and know that that data is going to get better and better over time.
Your estimations are forecasting on velocity and probability and conversion, those numbers are going to get better and better and better, the better your data processing becomes and the people around it. And and then you start getting the I believe, right, you start maybe there's the one person who really buys into it, and starts to show results. That's my favorite scenario, because then you can kind of highlight the the superhero who's doing things and get everyone going crap, I don't want to lose, I want to want to do it that guy's doing and they started adapting. But I love the idea of the triangle to really help different pieces
Steve Terp 18:36
in from an adoption perspective, one of the things that's really fascinating to me is this consumerization of of data, right? Taking what's happening as a consumer and applying it to business and vice versa. And so those same people who may have struggled with numbers and forecasting, the other things that we asked them to do, man to getting their health data, they know exactly how much they're sleeping every night. They're on My Fitness Pal.
They know exactly what they're eating their get off their peloton, they know exactly what their their PR is, like the amount of data that people in general, as consumers are, are, are now leveraging and using to supposedly improved their life makes it a lot more likely that they're going to they're going to go ahead and approach that in the business world as well. So it's pretty fascinating to watch these parallels about becoming a data junkie and your personal life makes it easier to understand how the impact that can have in your business life as well.
Dan Rodriguez 19:29
Absolutely. I often am blown away at the amount of data we've gotten used to seeing through things like sports and fantasy football and gambling. So now you're seeing it's coming across the screen. You're seeing scores, non stop statistics nonstop, especially the fantasy and gambling area of athletics has pushed all this data. And I I look at I think about 15 years ago When we used to put reports or dashboards in front of customers, and they would go, oh my gosh, that's data overload. I can't look at that. There's too much stuff on there. And I think about the screens we see on TV today, and the amount of the ungodly amount of data that we put in front of people, and they're like, okay, yeah. Make sense to me.
Steve Terp 20:18
There. Yeah, I think people have been now conditioned to processing it dramatically better than they ever had before. And so I tend not to overuse the comparison. But if you saw the money, the movie Moneyball, you know, there's the old school gut field people, and then there's the data people. And I think some of these old school thoughts around sales, have now moved more towards the Moneyball where, where people are way more comfortable using the numbers. And, and we can take advantage of that.
Dan Rodriguez 20:45
Yeah, absolutely. So I want to touch on one more thing that you mentioned, that I think is really interesting. And I'm curious how it impacted, kind of the overall business and maybe even the culture around being data driven. But you said you brought in a CMO that was really wired for data and looked at the marketing function, or at least acquisition and, and branding from a different lens? How has that impacted other areas? And how, what role has that played in kind of evangelizing data within the business? And maybe the way you look at the business?
Steve Terp 21:23
You know, I think it's, it's, you always think of what's possible, right? So, as a leader, you sit back and go, Man, I wish I had this. And I think when you have somebody that gets it, and that's both creative, and can build a team that really understands how to get stuff done, you now have a conference. So you can throw that out there and get an answer. And the really good ones not to give an answer and say, Hey, we can take this a step further and do x or we can do y. And so I think it's the ability to just think really broadly and think very forward really, and get answers as opposed to Yeah, I'm not sure we can do that the system won't allow us to do that, or I don't have anybody that can do that.
So I think that's been the biggest thing, I've just there's very few things that we've looked for, that we haven't been able to do. And we couldn't do that without the talent. And of course, the tools that go along with that as well. So that's probably the biggest thing for me is that it combination of getting what I asked for, but also getting ideas that are beyond what I've would have thought about. And that's, you know, I joke all the time people I go listen, when you meet somebody that's that's married or has a partner, usually one person is really, really good with the numbers in the checkbook, and the other one has no clue. I mean, that seems to be it. And so that's that kind of complimentary factor around if you can get the people the numbers that are really good with the people that understand the nuances of the business and the people parts of the business, it's a pretty deadly combination.
Dan Rodriguez 22:50
Absolutely. And those are, you know, finding that one person is the purple polka dotted unicorn. But I think it's a great point to highlight that. Finding a complimentary team, you know, that kind of that strengths alignment, where you get that Ying and Yang is really important. And we spend a lot of time advising companies on how to build teams, especially as they're trying to figure out how to tackle data and whether it's centralized or decentralized, and all the reporting structures and questions that come along with it. But the complimentary aspect of understanding the business and how to pull the levers, and then being able to see not only what's in the data, but what the story that's bigger than the data of how you can connect that to the business and the outcomes you're trying to drive is really powerful.
I'll tell you, a parallel to myself. And my journey here at CCG is we transitioned marketing a little while back away from being a branding and awareness, part of the business to being a strategic driver of the business. And that was when we started leveraging the data as you were speaking to. And it really shifted the way people saw marketing. and the value that they were bringing to the table, they were no longer the afterthought of, Hey, this is what we want to do marketing, you go execute. They were at the table saying this is what we see in the market right now. These are what customers are talking about. This is what the markets talking about. This is what they're driving, here's where we think the real opportunity is to grow. And here's what people are responding to and not responding to.
And so from a business planning standpoint, they were at the table talking about where they think the business can go, and not secondarily getting directions and then figuring out how am I going to go drive the demand that they want me to drive for the business?
Steve Terp 24:50
Yeah, again, I think it's just easier and easier to do because access to forward thinking information and people should sharing information and collaborating around what's happening in the marketplace is probably just better day it's ever been. It's, it's, I'm on a number of a couple of these forums, where all day long, it's just long, long trails of discussion just around marketing and sales technology. And I'm just amazed at what people are doing from some, some of the AI stuff, the sales recording type of stuff, like it's a, it's mind boggling, but it does change the face of marketing, for sure.
Dan Rodriguez 25:32
Absolutely. And at the end of the day, it should drive a better customer experience. Right? It should allow us to engage with customers better to be to get them what they need in a more efficient path and to ultimately deliver better solutions right out of the gate.
Steve Terp 25:49
Well, I think that's what it's all about, at the end of the day that customers stay with you because you're giving them what they need, or even more than than what they need to run their business or make their organization work depending on what it is. And so that's a big focus for us outside of the sales and marketing side on the on the platform.
So we have a modern cloud technology that allows us to tell customers exactly who's engaging with what content that they're that they're, you know, pushing out into their, their teams. And that's phenomenal. That changes the face of the conversations you have, they're no longer guessing about things, they're now able to see exactly what they've done. It's almost like screentime on your iPhone, right? Or, or next is a customers we joke all the time. It's very, like using Netflix using our content management system. But the amount of data that we get back to people that allows them to make adjustments to their business is pretty phenomenal. And that's become something that wasn't possible five years ago, right?
Dan Rodriguez 26:48
Absolutely. So, so we've talked about, I think most people understand or at least recognize that there's so much data and marketing and how that's used. And, and so we talked about the value of having leadership who's very data centric, and that role, especially when it's complementing other leaders, who maybe aren't as data centric, but are definitely recognize the value, but also have really the strength around the business and the nuances of business. And then you talked about the value of data in the way that you're interacting with sales, but not just interacting. But the way you're leveraging it to not just look in the rearview mirror, but looks as a windshield and put together a better ability to forecast to build that confidence and probabilities to understand the different stages conversion, velocity, all those fun things that we look at, as we're forecasting sales, and how you augment that with the actual gut feel from the folks that are on the ground and in the middle of it and kind of create that triangle.
So there's a lot of there's a lot of great points there and how to be successful, I think in any in any function, aligning the gut feel the business, nuance, and the data centricity to create that triangle of making the best business decisions. I think that applies everywhere. But I really appreciate how it applies when you're thinking about the revenue team or within that sales team, in particular, so a lot of really good stuff there. I guess my closing question would be, so you walked us through a little bit of your journey and how you've gone to create a really powerful team and the lessons that you've learned throughout your career, and surrounding yourself with great people.
And you're creating fantastic results at AppSpace, which has been really exciting to follow you guys and see what you're doing. The one thing we didn't touch on and maybe we just spent the last minute or so on is how's it been in the boardroom? Or in the executive team? How have you seen a transformation in the last year? Or a change in vernacular and conversation? Or do you feel like this has kind of been inherently key to the conversations that are happening at the executive or board level?
Steve Terp 29:12
Yeah, that's a good question. I, I think traditionally boards, at least historically, and traditionally, they have a tendency to review what happened last month? Or what do we feel like is happening right now? And I think with us, it's a shift to leading indicators. And so Okay, so there's the financials, there's what happened last? That's great. Let's learn from it. But more importantly, what's happening happening moving forward. So I've recently pulled together, our CFO, our CMO, and and one of our sales leaders, because I've looked at the first couple months like, Listen, this is great. We're hitting our numbers. It's high growth. Everyone's real happy about that. But the mix is this business is different than what we expected. When we went into it, we created a what we call revenue contribution model that takes into effect all that parts of our business, whether it's selling to customers, whether it's selling to new logos internationally, or which vertical it's in, and we predicted everything from average selling cycle to average selling price to close rate to what the funnel looks like.
So we came out of the first couple months and said, Hey, we're, we look great from a financial perspective. But the mix is different. And so instead of just going, Oh, man, let's make some crazy decisions about switching where we're going to spend time on marketing, or making different decisions on goals, or whatever it is, we started looking at the leading indicators, what does the pipeline say? What have we created? And what does that look like moving forward.
And what we found is the pipeline grew twice as fast as we expected it to. And the category we're concerned about was the top category and that growth model. So the idea that, Okay, great, we don't need a knee jerk to this, this is probably going to take care of itself in the process. Let's keep hitting the top line. And goodness gracious What a great feeling it is to know that you're building more opportunities to be able to sell in the third quarter in the fourth quarter, because ours are not short sale cycles. But that looking forward of what we can expect, completely changed, and allowed us not to knee jerk to something that was relatively short term. So that that's a that's kind of a parallel to trying to focus on leading indicators, with your with your leadership team, so you can make decisions on what to do next, instead of what already happened.
Dan Rodriguez 31:30
Yeah, that what a great example of leveraging data for decision making did started with leadership saying the mix isn't what we expected it to. So even just to have that many companies would say, well, there's there's 12 months worth of work to get to where we can see where the mix is. But yeah, taking that and then, and then driving it up, to make sure that that is anything to be concerned about, and kind of getting in front of the board is definitely a wise advice.
Um, well, Steve, this has been incredible. And I love to talk to folks who are really leveraging data in their business. And I love talking about how we can empower with the technology that we put in place, and the leadership that goes with it, and really creating that data driven culture, and getting folks excited and on board with how to leverage data along with the other capacities within the business and the other things that you have to do just to be a good leader, and where that fits in.
So this was really powerful stuff. For the audience, I greatly appreciate your insight into how you've done it AppSpace, and I'm sure how you've done it in your past. So I'll have one kind of a sideways question for you that I like to do at the end for fun. I know you're also a big podcast listener. So if there's one person you think that I've got to try to persuade to get on the podcast, to, to interview and let share their thoughts. Who would that be?
Steve Terp 33:01
Unlimited, we can talk about
Dan Rodriguez 33:02
unlimited.
Steve Terp 33:04
I would say, yeah, the best storyteller, which has nothing to do with data that I've heard on podcasts is Matthew McConaughey. And if you've ever heard him on a pat podcast, but he tells some great stories, so I like to be entertained. I like to learn a lot. But I but I also like to be entertained. And then I tell you, the other guy that runs what I think is the most interesting podcast to listen to, but also, I've heard him as a guest is guy Roz from how I built this. So I think those are two very different people that both would add a heck of a lot of value to to what's happening.
Dan Rodriguez 33:37
Yeah, absolutely. I would love my wife would let me talk to Matthew McConaughey. Without her being on podcast. I'm not sure I could pull that off. But, but I appreciate the insight. Those are both great podcasts. As always, Steve, it's great to talk to you, man. Thank you so much for taking some time out of your day. And being on the call. I'm sure the listeners are gonna love hearing your insights and advice.
Steve Terp 33:58
My pleasure. Thanks for having me. A lot of fun.