I spent my first five professional years at large companies, first at a Big Four consultancy and later at Shopify. Although my learnings weren’t insignificant, I had a hard time measuring my impact.
When you’re running a project for a large company, your stakeholders are typically a team, which sits within a bigger team, within a department, within a billion-dollar company.
It became impossible to tell whether I was making a difference or just moving levers on the machine.
It was around the time of this epiphany that I met Craig Handy and Seb Silva at Shopify.
They both had a side consultancy for revenue operations, and even in the two-dimensional Zoom setting, I surmised they had an itch to do something meaningful.
Sure enough, two months later they sold their consultancy to York IE and became full-time employees of the firm.
They described a company that was reimagining the way venture capital firms could be incentivized and helping startups compete with the bigger fish. A few weeks later, I was signing on for my first day.
As a RevOps strategist, my role is to develop strategies that will help companies optimize the entire customer lifecycle, from the time they see an ad or click a link to the time they renew a subscription or refer a peer.
Marketing, sales, customer success: There is an ocean’s worth of material on each one of these, but all of them together require someone with the ability to see the bigger picture.
Fortunately, my time working in five different industries — and specializing in change management, product management, RevOps, CRM, project management and experience design — granted me this ability.
In my first three weeks I had the chance to work with 13 different Advisory as a Service clients coming from a variety of industries. It’s been so rewarding to immediately see the impact of helping tech companies reach their full potential.
I’ve also been impressed with the mindset at York IE. People here move quickly and boldly. On my fifth day, my director told me to not be afraid to make mistakes. That’s when I realized that indecision and hesitation equal time that could otherwise be spent problem solving. This is a place that’s willing to try something new in the interest of challenging the status quo, and that’s exactly what I’m looking for.
Joining York IE as a RevOps strategist has been a game-changer for me. After spending five years in large companies, I was looking for a place where I could make a tangible impact and help startups grow and succeed. York IE has exceeded my expectations in every way.
From the supportive and collaborative culture to the innovative approach to VC and startup growth, I feel like I have found a true home here. In just three weeks, I have worked with a diverse range of clients and have already seen the impact of our work. I am excited to continue contributing to the success of York IE and its portfolio companies and can’t wait to see what the future holds.