---
title: "The Power of No: Doing Less to Achieve More"
episode: 37
podcast: "The LeanScale Podcast"
publisher: "LeanScale"
guest: "James Kase"
guest_title: "Revenue Operations Leader (Associate Director of Revenue Operations)"
date_published: 2025-10-29
date_modified: 2026-07-22
duration: 00:38:32
word_count: 6061
topics: ["revenue-operations", "sales-leadership", "gtm-strategy", "outbound-sales"]
canonical_url: https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/james-kase-power-of-no/
source: "LeanScale Podcast Knowledge Hub — https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app"
license: "Free to quote and cite with attribution to The LeanScale Podcast."
---

# The Power of No: Doing Less to Achieve More

_James Kase on ruthless prioritization, protecting focus, and why saying no is a RevOps power move_

**Episode 37 · The LeanScale Podcast**  
James Kase, Revenue Operations Leader (Associate Director of Revenue Operations) (Healthie) · Hosted by Anthony Enrico  
Published October 29, 2025 · Updated July 22, 2026 · 00:38:32  
Canonical: https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/james-kase-power-of-no/

**Topics:** Revenue Operations · Sales Leadership · GTM Strategy · Outbound & Sales Development


## Executive summary

Every RevOps professional shares the same secret pain: the to-do list is literally never-ending. From a CRM tweak to a training doc to an urgent Salesforce fix, requests pour in faster than anyone can clear them, and the aspiration of an empty queue is, as Anthony Enrico puts it, 'almost completely fruitless.' This episode reframes the problem. Instead of trying to do everything, James Kase — a Revenue Operations leader at Healthie, an EHR platform — makes the case that the highest-leverage skill in operations is the ability to say no, and that doing less on purpose is how you actually move the business forward.

James is not a career-track operator; he's the accidental kind almost everyone in RevOps turns out to be. His path ran from a new-media-publishing degree at Rochester Institute of Technology, to printing menus on cruise ships, to a stint around professional sports with the New York Islanders, Mets, and Yankees, into customer service and sales at Livestream (acquired by Vimeo), and finally — after devouring 40 to 50 business and sales books in a single year and stacking Salesforce certifications — into operations for good. That winding road is the point: nobody grows up wanting to run revenue operations, which is exactly why the discipline of prioritization has to be learned deliberately rather than assumed.

The heart of the conversation is a practical toolkit for protecting time and focus. James blocks 'heads-down' time publicly on his calendar and defends it; he reframes most refusals as a soft no — 'not yet, not now' — anchored to what the revenue-generating teams need right this minute. He prioritizes with company-to-RevOps OKR alignment, a personal 'level of intensity' scale, and the eat-the-frog rule of doing the hardest thing first. Anthony layers in the Eisenhower Matrix, arguing that the operators who win spend disproportionate time in the important-but-not-urgent quadrant instead of firefighting. Together they land a sharp distinction: it's not about getting things done, it's about getting things done that have purpose.

From there the episode turns to influence and identity. James's mantra — 'I'm always trying to work my way out of a job' — reframes the operator's mission as designing self-sufficient systems, not playing hero on tasks, illustrated with a favorite line from Suits: 'If I have work to do, then I'm not doing my job.' He argues you should refuse to let perfect be the enemy of good, stand up a workable process, and iterate. And he insists saying no is a power move — but only if you're opinionated, vocal, and right, back your refusals with the 'why' and with data, and remember you're saying no to the plan, not the person. Decisions are calculated, hypothesis-driven risks; a failed experiment that teaches you something isn't a failure.

Who should listen: RevOps and GTM operators drowning in requests who want a framework for prioritization and boundary-setting; sales and revenue leaders who want their ops partner to push back with substance rather than say yes to everything; and anyone trying to grow into an operations leadership role. The throughline is that alignment beats activity — that protecting your focus, building systems that survive your absence, and saying a well-reasoned no are how you avoid burning out without ever making an impact, and how you earn the credibility to advance amid a noisy crowd of type-A sales and marketing personalities.


## Key takeaways

1. **A zero-item to-do list is a fantasy — prioritize by business impact instead** — RevOps fields an unending stream of requests, from CRM updates to training docs to urgent fixes. Chasing an empty queue is fruitless; the job is to decide which few 'pillars' or 'boulders' create the biggest business impact this week, month, and quarter, and align RevOps work to the company roadmap.
   _Why it matters:_ Stop measuring yourself by tickets cleared. Anchor your week to a small number of high-impact priorities tied to company OKRs, and let everything else queue behind them.
   _For:_ RevOps Leaders, Revenue Executives

2. **Most 'no's should be a soft no — 'not yet, not now'** — Saying no rarely means a hard rejection. James frames it as 'not yet or not now,' logging the request into OKRs and weekly planning while asking the real question: what do your revenue-generating teams need right now? Everything else fits in between.
   _Why it matters:_ Reframe refusals as sequencing, not denial. It preserves relationships, keeps requesters bought in, and buys you the focus to work on what actually matters first.
   _For:_ RevOps Leaders, Sales Leaders

3. **The loudest requests come from sales and marketing — plan for them** — Across the orgs James has worked in, the most time-sensitive asks reliably originate in sales (a contract or deal that must go out) and marketing (event and conference lists that need to be loaded for tracking). That isn't a bad thing; it's a predictable load you should budget for.
   _Why it matters:_ Bake recurring sales/marketing urgency into your weekly capacity plan rather than treating each fire as a surprise, so the inevitable interruptions don't blow up your focused time.
   _For:_ RevOps Leaders, Sales Leaders, Marketing Leaders

4. **Protect deep-work time by blocking it publicly and defending it** — James puts a public 'heads-down' event on his calendar that asks people to check before booking over it. Anthony goes further, physically leaving the house at 5:00 AM for a coffee shop so his early-morning deep work can't be interrupted. Both carve at least an hour to ninety minutes for the hardest work.
   _Why it matters:_ Uninterrupted focus doesn't happen by default — it has to be scheduled, made visible, and physically protected, or the open slot becomes an invitation to meetings.
   _For:_ RevOps Leaders, Revenue Executives, Founders

5. **Use a simple intensity scale and eat the frog first** — Beyond monday.com, James runs an informal 'level of intensity' scale — how easy or hard a task is for him — and tackles the hardest 'frog' early so the rest of the day is downhill. He also believes everything is solvable to some degree; whether you like the answer is irrelevant.
   _Why it matters:_ Sequencing by personal effort-difficulty, not just deadline, protects your best energy for the work that's hardest to muscle through and prevents dread from bleeding across the whole day.
   _For:_ RevOps Leaders, Founders

6. **The Eisenhower Matrix: live in the important-but-not-urgent quadrant** — Map work by urgency and importance. High-urgency/high-importance is P0; low/low is 'don't do it.' The trap is the other two quadrants. Anthony argues that spending disproportionate time on important-but-not-urgent work — delegating or delaying the merely urgent — is what moves the business and your career forward in leaps.
   _Why it matters:_ If your calendar is dominated by urgent-but-unimportant firefighting, you'll stay busy and stall. Deliberately reserve time for important work nobody is yet screaming about.
   _For:_ RevOps Leaders, Revenue Executives, Sales Leaders

7. **It's not about getting things done — it's about getting things done that have purpose** — James distinguishes activity from impact: getting a request done a week early only matters if it has purpose. Anthony contrasts this with people sprinting on a hamster wheel — waking early, staying late, working weekends — who are exhausting themselves without advancing anything that matters.
   _Why it matters:_ Effort is not the scoreboard. Interrogate whether a task moves a real priority before you spend energy on it, or you'll optimize your way straight into burnout.
   _For:_ RevOps Leaders, Revenue Executives, Founders

8. **Work yourself out of a job by building self-sufficient systems** — James's mindset is to design departments that run without him — more maintenance than heroics — so he could take a two-week trip to Australia and the team would survive. The operator's real job is designing systems and empowering the company, not personally knocking out tasks. If you can't step away, you haven't built it well.
   _Why it matters:_ Judge your work by whether the business runs smoothly in your absence. Hero mode on everything is a sign the systems aren't done, not a badge of value.
   _For:_ RevOps Leaders, Founders, Revenue Executives

9. **Don't let perfect be the enemy of good — stand it up, then iterate** — Rather than architecting a flawless process up front, James stands up something good, then tightens 'a bolt here, a screw there.' Even if you eventually tear the machine down and rebuild, you learned what worked. RevOps is never done, so ship a workable framework and improve it.
   _Why it matters:_ Bias toward launching an imperfect-but-functional process over stalling for perfection. Iteration on a live system beats an elegant plan that never ships.
   _For:_ RevOps Leaders, Founders

10. **Saying no is a power move — but only if you're opinionated, vocal, and right** — Yes to everything erodes credibility and reads as weak. But a credible no requires all three: strong opinions, the willingness to voice them, and good judgment. Opinionated-but-quiet operators lose influence; loud-but-wrong ones lose credibility and get eye-rolls. Back your no with the 'why,' with data, and with field experience.
   _Why it matters:_ Push back with substance, not reflex. The combination of a defensible stance, the courage to say it, and being right is what earns a RevOps leader a real seat at the table.
   _For:_ RevOps Leaders, Sales Leaders, Revenue Executives

11. **Say no to the plan, not the person — you're all on the same team** — James reframes disagreement so it never becomes personal: a no is directed at the plan and the best direction for the organization, not at the individual asking. It's not a game of who's right the most, which is a losing proposition; the goal is to learn from being right or wrong and adjust.
   _Why it matters:_ Depersonalizing pushback lowers defensiveness and keeps cross-functional relationships intact, which is what makes future no's land without friction.
   _For:_ RevOps Leaders, Sales Leaders

12. **Treat decisions as calculated, hypothesis-driven risks** — Everything RevOps does is a calculated risk, so some things won't work — and that's fine if you're hypothesis-driven, have a plan B/C, and know the odds. James's examples: outbound experiments against a competitor or reviving two-year-old closed-lost opportunities. A failed experiment that proves something isn't a failure. Anthony's casino analogy: align the whole team on the risk before you bet, so a loss is a known outcome, not a surprise.
   _Why it matters:_ Frame initiatives as experiments with explicit hypotheses and fallback plans, and get the team aligned on the risk up front so 'it didn't work' becomes a learning, not a blame event.
   _For:_ RevOps Leaders, Revenue Executives, Sales Leaders

13. **Hard things are worth doing — and community shortcuts the hard part** — James's mantra is that hard things are worth doing; self-development pays dividends, illustrated by running his first marathon by simply refusing to stop. When stuck, he leans on colleagues and communities like RevOps Co-op, Wizards of Ops, and Pavilion — because someone has almost certainly solved your problem before.
   _Why it matters:_ Invest in your own development and tap the operator community instead of reinventing solutions. Take the existing baseline, advance it a step, and tailor it to your context.
   _For:_ RevOps Leaders, Founders

14. **RevOps is a puzzle of internal persuasion — and stepping back to see what you built** — James never planned on RevOps, but sales never leaves the job: instead of convincing customers to buy, he now convinces internal stakeholders why the company should do something. Every day is a puzzle — how do I make this company better than yesterday? The rare payoff is being able to step back and see the systems you built.
   _Why it matters:_ Operators who frame their role as internal selling and system-building — not ticket-taking — advance faster and find the work more fulfilling, especially in mission-driven domains like healthcare.
   _For:_ RevOps Leaders, Revenue Executives


## Frameworks

### Pillars & Boulders Prioritization (00:52)

**Definition:** Prioritize RevOps work by identifying the few major 'pillars' or 'boulders' that create the biggest business impact for a given week, month, and quarter, and aligning them to the company roadmap and OKRs.

Because the request list is never-ending, James starts from company-level priorities and asks how RevOps fits, then works backward to the monthly/weekly/daily tasks. The boulders come first; the pebbles fill in around them.

### The Soft No (Not Yet, Not Now) (02:24)

**Definition:** Most refusals aren't a hard no but a 'not yet or not now' — the request is acknowledged, logged into OKRs and weekly planning, and sequenced behind what the revenue-generating teams need right now.

Reframing no as sequencing keeps requesters bought in while protecting focus. Anthony notes it's the same technique he uses with his kids and dessert: not no, just not right now.

### The James Level of Intensity Scale (07:40)

**Definition:** An informal personal scale that rates each task by how easy or hard it is for you specifically to address, used alongside deadlines to decide what to work on and when.

James never formalized it into a monday.com column; it lives in his head from years in operations. Pairing effort-difficulty with the eat-the-frog rule lets him sequence his day around his own energy, not just due dates.

### Eat the Frog (08:06)

**Definition:** Do the hardest, biggest task ('the frog') earliest in the day, so the rest of the day is easier to navigate.

James tackles the highest-intensity item first; once the biggest boulder is handled, everything else can be figured out based on his intensity scale. It prevents dread from bleeding across the whole day.

### The Eisenhower Matrix (10:33)

**Definition:** A four-quadrant map of tasks by urgency and importance: urgent+important is P0; not-urgent+not-important is 'don't do it'; the two mixed quadrants are where people get stuck.

Anthony's rule is to spend as much time as possible in the important-but-not-urgent quadrant — delegating or delaying merely urgent work — because that's what compounds business and career progress. James uses 'how soon do you need this?' to sort incoming asks into it.

### Activity vs. Purpose (12:37)

**Definition:** The scoreboard isn't tasks completed but tasks completed that have purpose — work tied to a real company or RevOps priority.

James: finishing a request early only matters if it frees time for a bigger, high-importance item. Anthony contrasts it with people sprinting on a hamster wheel who work brutally hard on things that don't move the needle and burn out.

### Working Yourself Out of a Job (14:04)

**Definition:** Design departments and systems that run self-sufficiently without you — reducing your role to maintenance — so the business survives your absence.

James's test: could he take a two-week trip to Australia and leave the team alone? The operator's job is designing systems and empowering people, not personally doing tasks — echoed by the Suits line, 'If I have work to do, then I'm not doing my job.'

### Don't Let Perfect Be the Enemy of Good (17:50)

**Definition:** Stand up a good-or-great process quickly and iterate on it, rather than trying to architect a perfect one up front.

James likens it to tightening a bolt or screw on a running machine. Even if you eventually tear it down and rebuild, you learned what worked. RevOps is never done, so ship and improve.

### Opinionated, Vocal, and Right (21:18)

**Definition:** Effective RevOps leadership requires all three at once: having strong opinions, voicing them, and having good opinions backed by data and field experience.

Anthony's failure modes: opinionated-but-quiet operators lose influence; loud-but-wrong ones lose credibility and get eye-rolled. Only the combination earns the standing to say a confident yes or no.

### Say No to the Plan, Not the Person (22:46)

**Definition:** Direct disagreement at the plan and the best direction for the organization, never at the individual — because you're all on the same team.

James: it's not a game of who's right the most, which is a losing proposition. Depersonalizing the no keeps relationships intact and turns being wrong into a shared learning.

### Calculated-Risk, Hypothesis-Driven Experimentation (23:30)

**Definition:** Treat initiatives as calculated risks with an explicit hypothesis, a plan B/C, and a shared understanding of the odds — so a failed experiment that proves something still counts as a win.

Examples: an outbound campaign against a competitor or reviving two-year-old closed-lost opportunities. Anthony's casino analogy: align the whole team on the risk before betting, so a loss is a known outcome rather than a surprise.


## Quotes

_Speakers inferred from an undiarized transcript — verify before attributing._

> "There's a lot of power in having the ability to say no."
>
> — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 37 (00:00)

> "It may not be a hard no, it may actually be just a not yet or not now kind of thing."
>
> — James Kase, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 37 (02:30)

> "Really it's, what do your revenue-generating teams need right now? And then everything else kind of needs to fit in somewhere in between."
>
> — James Kase, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 37 (02:30)

> "The hardest item I try to get done earlier in the day, because then the rest of the day, everything else I can figure out based off of my intensity effort level."
>
> — James Kase, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 37 (08:06)

> "Everything is solvable to a degree. Whether it's the answer you want or like or dislike is irrelevant — it's just, is it solvable in some kind of fashion?"
>
> — James Kase, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 37 (08:06)

> "If you can spend as much time as possible in that highly important bucket, even if it's not super urgent, you're going to move your business forward and your career forward in leaps and bounds further than if you spend time working on the urgent stuff."
>
> — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 37 (11:15)

> "It's not about getting things done, it's about getting things done that have purpose."
>
> — James Kase, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 37 (12:37)

> "There are a lot of people who are sprinting really fast on a hamster wheel, and they're working really hard, but they're not working on the things that are moving things forward and have a purpose. They're simply just burning themselves out."
>
> — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 37 (13:22)

> "My mindset is always in RevOps, I'm trying to work my way out of a job."
>
> — James Kase, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 37 (14:04)

> "Your job really becomes about designing systems and ensuring you can empower the company, not necessarily about you knocking out tasks."
>
> — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 37 (15:42)

> "If I have work to do, then I'm not doing my job."
>
> — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 37 (17:08)

> "Don't let perfect be the enemy of great or good. Just stand up a process, and then you can make tweaks to it."
>
> — James Kase, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 37 (17:50)

> "If you're saying yes to every single thing that comes your way, you start to really lose credibility and can come off really weak to the rest of the team."
>
> — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 37 (18:36)

> "Anyone who wants to be a RevOps leader, you have to be opinionated. You have to be vocal about those opinions, and you have to have good opinions."
>
> — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 37 (21:18)

> "If someone says no to something, you're not saying it to that person, you're saying it to the plan — what is the best direction for the organization? It's not a game of who's right the most, because that's just a losing proposition."
>
> — James Kase, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 37 (22:46)

> "My mantra is hard things are worth doing."
>
> — James Kase, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 37 (26:34)

> "Just because you're running into a problem doesn't mean someone else hasn't run into it themselves before."
>
> — James Kase, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 37 (28:55)

> "Instead of trying to convince customers to purchase something, I am now trying to convince internal stakeholders why we need to do something. Every day is like trying to solve a puzzle: how do I make this company better than it was yesterday?"
>
> — James Kase, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 37 (35:16)


## Practical advice by role

### RevOps Leaders

- Prioritize by business impact, not ticket volume: pick the few boulders that align to company OKRs each week, month, and quarter, and let the rest queue.
- Make most refusals a soft no — 'not yet, not now' — logged into planning and sequenced behind what revenue-generating teams need right now.
- Block public 'heads-down' focus time (an hour to ninety minutes) and defend it; sequence with an intensity scale and eat the frog first.
- Aim to work yourself out of a job — build self-sufficient systems so the department runs on maintenance and survives a two-week absence.
- Back every no with the 'why' and with data, and be opinionated, vocal, and right; say no to the plan, not the person.

### Sales Leaders

- Expect RevOps to push back with substance — an opinionated, data-backed no is a sign of leadership, not obstruction.
- Bring the 'why' behind urgent asks: knowing the business reason lets RevOps sequence it correctly instead of dropping everything.
- Treat competitor-targeted outbound or closed-lost revival as hypothesis-driven experiments with a plan B, and align on the risk before running them.

### Revenue Executives

- Reward purpose over activity — a team sprinting on a hamster wheel is a burnout and mis-prioritization signal, not a productivity win.
- Protect your operators' focus time as a strategic asset; the important-but-not-urgent quadrant is where durable progress compounds.
- Depersonalize disagreement so no's land against the plan, not the person, and cross-functional trust survives the friction.

### Founders

- Don't let perfect be the enemy of good: stand up a workable process, ship it, and iterate rather than stalling for a flawless design.
- Judge operational maturity by whether the business runs without its builder — if a key person can't step away, the systems aren't finished.
- Encourage tapping the operator community (RevOps Co-op, Wizards of Ops, Pavilion) instead of reinventing solutions others have already proven.


## Operations takeaways

### Revenue operations

- **Prioritize by impact.** Anchor the week to a few company-aligned boulders, not ticket count; everything else is a soft no ('not yet, not now').
- **Protect focus.** Block public heads-down time, sequence with an intensity scale, and eat the frog first — the important-but-not-urgent quadrant is where progress compounds.
- **Build to leave.** Design self-sufficient systems so the department runs on maintenance; if you can't step away, the build isn't done.
- **Ship then iterate.** Don't let perfect be the enemy of good — stand up a workable process and tighten bolts over time.
- **No with substance.** Be opinionated, vocal, and right; back refusals with the 'why' and data, and aim the no at the plan, not the person.
- **Lean on community.** RevOps Co-op, Wizards of Ops, and Pavilion mean someone has already solved your problem — borrow and adapt rather than reinvent.


## Metrics mentioned

| Value | Metric | Context |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1–1.5 hours | Deep-work block length | James carves out at least an hour to ninety minutes of uninterrupted focus for the hardest work. |
| 5:00–7:30 AM | Anthony's deep-work window | Anthony leaves the house for a coffee shop to protect early-morning deep work before his kids wake up. |
| 40–50 | Books read in first sales year | In his first year in sales at Livestream, James devoured 40–50 business, sales, and operations books to learn the craft. |
| 1–2% per day | Incremental progress target | James looks to chip any OKR forward 1–2% each day rather than waiting for large blocks of time. |
| 4–5 years | Time officially in operations | James's most recent stretch formally in RevOps, layered on earlier sales/ops roles and multiple Salesforce certifications. |
| Completed the weekend before recording | First marathon | James's metaphor for doing hard things — you just keep going — applied to figuring out tough RevOps problems. |


## Entities mentioned

- **Healthie** (company) — James's current employer, an EHR platform (he spells it 'H-E-A-L-T-I-E'); he is a Revenue Operations leader there and calls the healthcare mission part of why the work is fulfilling. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/company/healthie/
- **Livestream** (company) — Where James got his first real taste of the ops world in a customer service and sales role, reading 40–50 business and sales books in his first year; later acquired by Vimeo. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/company/livestream/
- **Vimeo** (company) — Acquired Livestream, the company where James began learning sales and operations. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/company/vimeo/
- **Rochester Institute of Technology** (company) — James's alma mater; he earned a bachelor's in new-media publishing (a program that no longer exists), whose printing side he first used working on cruise ships. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/company/rochester-institute-of-technology/
- **New York Islanders** (company) — One of the pro-sports organizations James worked with early in his career, chasing a dream of working in professional sports off the field. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/company/new-york-islanders/
- **New York Mets** (company) — A pro-sports organization James spent time with before moving into sales and operations. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/company/new-york-mets/
- **New York Yankees** (company) — A pro-sports organization James spent time with, enjoying the behind-the-scenes atmosphere before his ops career. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/company/new-york-yankees/
- **RevOps Co-op** (company) — One of the operator communities James leans on when stuck — evidence that someone has almost always solved your problem before. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/company/revops-coop/
- **Wizards of Ops** (company) — Another RevOps community James cites as a place to find people who've faced the same problems and will hop on a call to help. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/company/wizards-of-ops/
- **Pavilion** (company) — Named alongside RevOps Co-op and Wizards of Ops as a community of operators willing to share how they solved similar challenges. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/company/pavilion/
- **James Kase** (person, guest) — Revenue Operations leader at Healthie (EHR platform); advocate of ruthless prioritization, protecting focus, and the power of saying no. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/guest/james-kase/
- **Anthony Enrico** (person, host) — Co-founder of LeanScale and host of The LeanScale Podcast. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/guest/anthony-enrico/
- **monday.com** (tool, Work Management) — The work-management platform James's current organization uses to prioritize and track what needs to be worked on; he keeps his personal intensity scale in his head rather than as a monday.com column.
- **Salesforce** (tool, CRM) — The CRM James went deep on — earning multiple Salesforce certifications — and the system of record where urgent sales fixes and updates constantly land on RevOps.


## FAQ

**Q: How should RevOps leaders prioritize a never-ending to-do list?**

A: Stop chasing an empty queue and prioritize by business impact instead. James Kase identifies the few major 'pillars' or 'boulders' that matter most for the week, month, and quarter, aligns RevOps OKRs to the company roadmap, and asks what the revenue-generating teams need right now. Everything else queues behind those priorities.

**Q: How do you say no to requests without damaging relationships?**

A: Turn most no's into a soft no — 'not yet, not now.' Acknowledge the request as valid, log it into your OKRs and weekly planning, and sequence it behind higher-impact work. Framing refusal as sequencing rather than rejection keeps the requester bought in while protecting your focus, and pairing it with the 'why' and data makes it land as leadership rather than obstruction.

**Q: What is the Eisenhower Matrix and how does RevOps use it?**

A: The Eisenhower Matrix maps tasks by urgency and importance into four quadrants. Urgent-and-important is P0; not-urgent-and-not-important is 'don't do it.' The trap is the two mixed quadrants. The advice is to spend as much time as possible in the important-but-not-urgent quadrant — delegating or delaying the merely urgent — because that work compounds business and career progress fastest.

**Q: What does 'eat the frog' mean for prioritization?**

A: Eat the frog means doing your hardest, biggest task earliest in the day so the rest is easier. James Kase pairs it with a personal 'level of intensity' scale that rates each task by how difficult it is for him specifically, then tackles the highest-intensity item first so dread doesn't spread across the whole day.

**Q: How do you protect deep-work or focus time on your calendar?**

A: Block it publicly and defend it. James puts a visible 'heads-down' event on his calendar asking people to check before booking over it. Anthony leaves his house at 5:00 AM to work at a coffee shop so early-morning focus can't be interrupted. Both reserve at least an hour to ninety minutes; an unblocked slot just invites more meetings.

**Q: Why is saying no a power move in RevOps?**

A: Saying yes to everything erodes credibility and reads as weak. A credible no requires being opinionated, vocal, and right — a defensible stance, the courage to voice it, and good judgment backed by data and field experience. That combination earns RevOps a real seat at the table and the standing to steer the company in a better direction.

**Q: What does it mean to 'work yourself out of a job' in RevOps?**

A: It means designing systems and self-sufficient teams that run without you, reducing your role to maintenance rather than heroics. James's test is whether he could take a two-week trip and the team would survive. If you constantly have to jump into hero mode, you haven't built the systems well — the real job is designing them and empowering the company, not personally knocking out tasks.

**Q: How did James Kase end up in RevOps?**

A: By a winding, accidental path — the norm in operations. James earned a new-media-publishing degree at Rochester Institute of Technology, printed menus on cruise ships, worked around pro sports (Islanders, Mets, Yankees), then moved into customer service and sales at Livestream (acquired by Vimeo). After reading 40–50 business books in a year and stacking Salesforce certifications, he made the official switch into operations and is now a RevOps leader at Healthie, an EHR platform.


## Timeline

- **00:00** — The power of no: prioritizing a never-ending list
- **00:52** — Boulders first: fitting RevOps into the company roadmap
- **02:24** — The soft no: 'not yet, not now'
- **03:29** — Where the urgent requests come from: sales & marketing
- **04:17** — Protecting deep-work time on your calendar
- **07:14** — Prioritization systems: monday.com, the intensity scale, eat the frog
- **10:33** — The Eisenhower Matrix: important vs. urgent
- **13:22** — Getting things done that have purpose
- **14:04** — Working yourself out of a job
- **16:25** — The Suits lesson: design systems, don't play hero
- **17:50** — Don't let perfect be the enemy of good
- **18:36** — Saying no as a power move
- **19:45** — Backing your no with the 'why' and data
- **21:18** — Opinionated, vocal, and right
- **22:46** — Same team: say no to the plan, not the person
- **23:30** — Calculated risk and hypothesis-driven experiments
- **26:34** — Hard things are worth doing (and a first marathon)
- **28:55** — Leaning on community: RevOps Co-op, Wizards of Ops, Pavilion
- **30:14** — How people end up in RevOps
- **31:00** — James's winding path: RIT, cruise ships, sports, Livestream
- **35:16** — Where he is now: Healthie, an EHR platform
- **37:01** — Stepping back to see what you built


## Related episodes

- **Ep. 95: Why AI Means More RevOps Hires, Not Fewer** (Jimmy O'Halloran) — A fellow operator's playbook on earning influence and a seat at the table — the trust-and-credibility theme underneath James's 'saying no is a power move.' · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/jimmy-ohalloran-new-relic-revops-consumption-revenue/
- **Ep. 85: Why AI + GTM Engineers Can't Replace RevOps** (Tessa Whittaker) — Both defend the strategic value of the RevOps operating layer over pure task execution. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/tessa-whittaker-ai-gtm-engineers-revops/
- **Ep. 15: Where Should RevOps Report?** (LeanScale) — Org-design companion to James's discussion of RevOps influence, opinions, and pushing back on leadership. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/cameron-legge-where-revops-report/
- **Ep. 88: Why AI Won't Close Your Biggest Deals** (Michael Kiernan, CRO at Nextdoor) — A revenue leader's view on judgment and human decision-making that pairs with the opinionated-vocal-and-right framework. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/michael-kiernan-nextdoor-ai-wont-close-deals/
- **Ep. 6: Why Your Forecast Is Broken** (LeanScale) — Foundational RevOps rigor episode that complements this one's focus on prioritization and data-backed decisions. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/why-your-forecast-is-broken/


## Full transcript

_Machine-transcribed and not diarized; speaker attribution is inferred._  
_Transcript only, as a separate file: https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/james-kase-power-of-no/transcript.md_

### 00:00 — The power of no: prioritizing a never-ending list

**[0:00]** (logo whooshing) - James, thanks for being here. Really excited to go through this today. I think something that we run into a lot as RevOps professionals is the to-do list on our plate is literally never ending. So I think having aspirations of having a to-do list of zero everything's done is almost completely fruitless. And I'm wondering, how do you ruthlessly prioritize your day or your time and how do you say no to things? 'Cause I think there's a lot of power in having the ability to say no. - Great question. Regarding prioritizing my time, I attempt to walk out time on my calendar to ensure that when I need to focus on something,

### 00:52 — Boulders first: fitting RevOps into the company roadmap

**[0:52]** I'm focused on that particular task or item. To your point also that there is, it's a never ending request list that comes through to RevOps professionals from updating something in the CRM to creating a doc for training or a number of other items. You need to kind of think about what would create the biggest business impact and best support the team or teams that you're currently focused on. So you wanna think through what are the major pillars or boulders rather that you should be focused on for that given month or that week in that quarter. There's always a roadmap for the company and then you wanna figure out how RevOps fits into that.

**[1:42]** You also wanna figure out from that point on, what are the things that you need to do on a monthly, weekly, daily basis to get the job done. It doesn't always work out that you follow that to a tee, unfortunately, because there are things that come up, bugs or errors that you need to address or someone needs help with something. But at the end of the day, having a set amount of time on your calendar that you kind of just block off and just say, hey, I'm unreachable at this time just so you can focus on the work that needs to get done would be how I try to block out time to focus on it. When it comes to just general prioritizing

### 02:24 — The soft no: 'not yet, not now'

**[2:24]** or saying no to things, again, it comes back to,

**[2:30]** everyone in the company, I think, you're always looking at ways to help make more money or save money for the company. And so when it comes to saying no to things, it may not be a hard no, it may actually be just a not yet or not now kind of thing. So that is, a request comes in, that's a great request. We'll work it into our OKRs and our just weekly planning of what we need to get done as an organization and as a team. But really it's what do your revenue generating teams need right now? And then everything else kind of needs to fit in somewhere in between. - I think I use that same strategy with my kids when they want dessert, it's like, it's not no,

### 03:29 — Where the urgent requests come from: sales & marketing

**[3:29]** but maybe not now, or they want to watch another show. It's not no, but maybe later. Would you say, where do those urgent requests typically come from? They're coming from sales reps, managers, leadership, the urgent report, the urgent fix in Salesforce. Who's typically the squeaky wheel? - It varies between all the organizations that I've worked in. I would say things that are very timely would be on marketing and sales in particular, because there's always a contract that needs to go out or a deal that needs to just get done or get updated. So that way everyone's in the know. And then additionally on the marketing side,

### 04:17 — Protecting deep-work time on your calendar

**[4:17]** when it comes to events that we as an organization hold or a conference that we attend, getting those lists into the system. So then we can have tracking around those lists and those prospects. So I would say two biggest culprits in a number of organizations have been sales and marketing, which isn't to say that's a bad thing. It's just, you need to account for that in your daily and weekly planning. - No, makes a lot of sense. I wanna go back to when you said, you really like to block off time on your calendar. In theory, I love it because it means you have, oh, one, two, three hours, whatever you think is relevant to have some of that deep work time,

**[5:02]** spend time moving those big rocks, spend time analyzing data or getting into flow with something. The only way I've been able to do it. So I have my deep work time very early in the morning. It's like five to 7.30. And I literally leave my house. I go to a coffee shop to work there during that time. Just in case kids wake up or something else, I'm in a different environment too. How do you do that? Where do you put it in your calendar? How do you make sure you actually protect it versus people looking at that on your calendar and thinking, oh great, they're not in a meeting. Let me throw something on James' calendar.

**[5:37]** - Yeah, definitely by having a calendar event on my calendar and making it public saying, this is heads down time and I need to focus, please ask before booking anytime then. And then it depends on the particular projects or item that I need to focus on. So whether it be something that's due or an OKR for that particular quarter, that's something that I'll address, whether it's an ask that I received just kind of ad hoc that needs to be addressed. Or quite honestly, if there's any kind of enrichment that I would like to do for myself, so then I can then figure out the next move, whether it be reviewing documentation of a platform that we just started using

**[6:27]** or how to better use the platforms that we currently have a hold of. All of that needs to be designated and assigned and I wasn't always that kind of person. I kind of like to go with the flow, but as I've learned to be more productive in a shorter amount of time, you need to kind of really hone in on and block out time in your calendar to get things done. - Where do you put it? Is it in the morning, late afternoon, throw it in the middle of the day? - I throw out quite honestly. I would say in the morning is usually the better time for me, but I also spread it out regardless of time of day, but generally I would say in the morning for sure. - Makes sense.

### 07:14 — Prioritization systems: monday.com, the intensity scale, eat the frog

**[7:14]** And how much time do you carve out? - Depending on what needs to get done, at least an hour, hour and a half to focus for sure. - Nice. So then I think comes, how do you decide what's important, what's not important, what's urgent, what can wait? Do you have a system that you like to use that gives you some confidence that saying yes or no to something is the right decision in the time? - We do use monday.com and my current organization to prioritize what needs to be worked on. I also like using the James level of intensity scale, which is basically what is easier for me to address and what is more difficult. And if you've ever heard the term,

**[8:06]** I think it's swallowing the frog or something like, or eating the frog, that's like the biggest boulder to, or the hardest item I try to get done earlier in the day because then the rest of the day, everything else I can figure it out based off of my intensity effort level. What is easier or harder for me to work on? And then I just focus my time. Quite honestly, the way I look at everything is, everything is solvable to a degree, whether it's the answer you want or like or dislike is irrelevant. It's just, is it solvable to some, in some kind of fashion? So I try to prioritize based off of what we as a company have decided on.

**[8:55]** So looking at company level OKRs and how that relates to, RevOps OKRs relate to the rest of the company. And then what's the little, even if it's, what's a bit of that item or OKR that I can get done today right now, that would then get it 1% or 2% more complete than it was before is also where, how I prioritize because of course again, there's your to-dos that can take an enormous amount of time and will legitimately take you an entire quarter or more to accomplish. And then there are items that, you take 20 minutes to figure out and you got it done. So it's just trying to figure out what works the best for you and what needs to get done for the company.

**[9:48]** - Makes a lot of sense. I love monday.com. I think it's a great platform. We used it here at LeanScale for quite a long time, especially if you're using it for internal purposes. I think it's great. Do you add that complexity scale into Monday? Is that a column when you're looking at your tasks? - I haven't just because it's something I've created in my mind over the last number of years being in operations. So it's nothing I have formalized necessarily into a Monday column, but something that I think about or use when looking at everything that needs to get done. - No, I love it. I think we need rules in order to decide whether we work on something or not

### 10:33 — The Eisenhower Matrix: important vs. urgent

**[10:33]** 'cause you're going to have to say no to things. And I think one of the tools I've used in the past, I know a lot of people are pretty familiar with it, is the Eisenhower Matrix. So it's a quadrant, you map the urgency of something and the level of importance of something. And anything that's highly urgent, highly important, that's P zero, let's do those things. And then anything that is low urgency, low importance, I call that just don't do it. Don't do it until somebody's bringing up enough about it to make it important or make it urgent. And then where I think people get really, really, really stuck is what to do about the other two.

**[11:15]** So if you have something highly important, but it's not quite urgent, you have something highly urgent, but it's not quite important, where do you decide to spend your time? And my opinion is if you can spend more of your time in that highly important bucket, even if it's not super urgent, nobody's breathing down, you're not trying to get it, nobody's blowing you up on Slack or email to get that done. But if you can spend as much time as possible in that category, you're gonna move your business forward further, you're gonna move your career forward further in leaps and bounds further than if you spend time working on the urgent stuff.

**[11:57]** If you can delegate these other things, amazing, that way you can get both done. But I would give up on some of these things or at least delay them and do them later and make sure you're really carving out time to move that highly important initiative forward. - Absolutely, I think that's why it's important to have a game plan at an org level. And then it comes back to RevOps, how does RevOps assist with those things? And again, to your point, I love the Eisenhower matrix because you'll find or I find that I'm constantly asking, how soon do you need this? Which is helpful because then I can plan out my day, my week, my month based off of that.

**[12:37]** So, oh, you need this in two weeks? Okay, so I don't need to get to it today necessarily, but maybe the person that I am, I do like to get things done ahead of time. So maybe like the following week. So I got it to you done a week earlier than you needed it, which is great because then again, once I have, it's not about getting things done, it's about getting things done that have purpose. And as you figure out what works best for you and what the organization is or needs rather, and what those things are, then it's just a matter of again, setting up time to do those things because, okay, I got this thing done a week early.

### 13:22 — Getting things done that have purpose

**[13:22]** That means that time I can now use for a bigger item or larger item that is of high importance, but not necessarily urgent. - I love that line that you just said. It's about getting things done that have purpose, not just about getting things done. I think there are a lot of people who are sprinting really, really fast on a hamster wheel, and they're working really, really hard, and they're putting in a ton of effort. They're waking up early, they're staying up late, they're working on weekends, but they're not working on the things that are moving things forward and have a purpose like you said. And they're simply just burning themselves out

### 14:04 — Working yourself out of a job

**[14:04]** and the worst part, not adding as much value as it could be. - Right, I mean, I've been there. The important thing is, or what I've learned to do is start to question, okay, you want me to do X thing, why is that? Like, why is that important to you? Why is that important to the organization? And what kind of impact are we hoping for if I were to get that done? Now granted, my mindset is always in RevOps, I'm trying to work my way out of a job. Unfortunately for me, there's always something to get done, so I'll never work my way out of the job. But if I've done my job correctly, I've set up a particular department in a way where they can be self-sufficient,

**[14:50]** where it's more of maintenance at that point than any big boulders that I need to use that analogy. And there's no big ticket items that I need to adjust or work on for that department. So if I were to go on vacation to a number of places that I'd still like to go to, like Australia, for example, I can go do that and leave the team alone for a week or two, maybe longer, maybe I stay a little bit longer in Australia, but they'll be able to survive without me, which is kind of the goal. You're trying to set up your teams to not only be effective and efficient without you, but they can figure things out on their own, and you kind of show them a little bit of,

**[15:42]** okay, if this happens, this is how you want to address it, and try to make sure that they're able to grow and learn themselves. You're kind of like a muse for the whole company, you're trying to help everybody out and do the best that you can and make sure everyone's doing the best that they can, and hope that what you're doing leads to long-term success. - Yeah, your job really becomes about designing systems and ensuring you can empower the company, not necessarily about you knocking out tasks. And I think there's a line from a show that really, really sticks out to me, and I think about this a lot. Probably was insignificant for most people watching,

### 16:25 — The Suits lesson: design systems, don't play hero

**[16:25]** but a show I really like watching is Suits. I know they have a remake in LA, I don't know if it's gonna be as good, probably not. I think Harvey Specter makes a cameo or two. But in one of the episodes, so for those who don't know, it's about lawyers, it's about a law firm in New York. They have a new managing director come in, and the top lawyer, Harvey Specter, comes into the office, and the new managing director is just sitting down reading a newspaper in the middle of the day. It's probably late morning. And he says, "Don't you have any work to do?" And his response has stuck with me ever since I've seen that episode.

**[17:08]** He says, "If I have work to do, then I'm not doing my job." And I really thought that highlighted the importance of, your job is to design the systems so that the business can run smoothly. And if you need to go in and do hero mode on a lot of things, then you haven't done your job very well. So I don't know if we can all completely work to where we can just sit around in the middle of the day like reading and hanging out. But I do think there's something where it's like, yeah, if I can't take a step back, if I can't be out of the office for a week, then I haven't done a good enough job of setting this thing up. - Right, with RevOps, the job is never done,

### 17:50 — Don't let perfect be the enemy of good

**[17:50]** but also don't let perfect be the enemy of great or good. So don't try to architect a perfect process. You can stand something up that is good or great, and you can always iterate on it. That's the important part. That's the way I've started to look at making improvements within an organization. Just stand up a process, and then you can make tweaks to it, or pretend like it's a huge machine kind of thing, and you're just tightening up a bolt here, or tightening a screw somewhere else. And that's all you're trying to do at the end of the day, because once you have the framework in there, then it's just a matter of making sure it's running more efficiently.

### 18:36 — Saying no as a power move

**[18:36]** And again, if you need to tear the machine down and start all over again, at least you tried something, and you got to see what worked and didn't work. - No, that makes sense. I think for people in RevOps, being able to say no is an absolute power move. And I think if you're saying yes to every single thing that comes your way, you start to really lose credibility and can come off really weak to the rest of the team. - Yes, I would agree. Mostly because you do, as a human being, you want to help people, you want to do a good job, looking more internally of how you want to be looked at from everyone at an organization.

**[19:27]** But also, if you're constantly saying yes, or you don't have feedback, or you don't speak up, that could be detrimental as well, because that means that you're not leading the leadership,

### 19:45 — Backing your no with the 'why' and data

**[19:45]** or whoever you're speaking with, in a direction that they should consider. And a lot of folks that I've worked with in the past, they actually have asked me for feedback if at that particular moment I didn't provide it without it being initiated. So definitely something you want to consider is, does this make sense? And also, does it make sense for the business? So it's kind of funky where you're trying to think of it as, does it make sense for the organization that you're at to operate in that kind of manner, regardless of what kind of ask that you're getting? And then also from a RevOps perspective, does that make sense at all, like for operationally,

**[20:33]** to consider it the ask, whatever it is, to spend the time to do the thing that is being asked? Because there's, again, this kind of leads me back to what I had mentioned earlier, which is try to understand the why of what is being asked, and then you can provide feedback on, okay, this makes sense, but let's try to do it this way instead. Or that doesn't make sense because of XYZ reason. Something that'll help you on your way is also being able to include data in any kind of rebuttal that you have, because again, you wanna steer the company in the best direction possible, and being able to say no to certain things

### 21:18 — Opinionated, vocal, and right

**[21:18]** and why you're saying no is definitely helpful. - Yeah, it signals leadership. And I think anyone who wants to be a RevOps leader, you have to be opinionated. You have to be vocal about those opinions, and you have to have good opinions. So you have to really have a stance on why we should or shouldn't do something, and then be able to back it up with data, be able to back it up with experience in the field, be able to back it up with what's going on in the market or what new techniques there are, and then be able to communicate those and push back. If somebody's telling you to do something, that's not a good idea from a RevOps perspective.

**[22:03]** You have to have a strong enough opinion to tell them no, but maybe we do this instead, and those opinions have to be helpful. So I've seen, sometimes I see people who are very opinionated have good opinions, but they're not very vocal about it, and they lose a lot of influence. I see people who are really opinionated and vocal, but they have terrible opinions, and then they just lose credibility, and people roll their eyes every time they talk in a meeting. So you really have to have all three, I think, in order to have the confidence to say yes, we should be doing this and investing time in it, or no, this isn't aligned with our mission,

### 22:46 — Same team: say no to the plan, not the person

**[22:46]** and this isn't aligned with what's gonna help create a well-oiled revenue machine here. - Right, I would like to consider myself somewhere in between, but also the framing that I like to keep in mind, too, is you're all on the same team, so try not to take it as, if someone says no to something, or if you're saying no to something, you're not saying it to that person, you're saying it to the plan, or what is the best direction for the organization? It's not a game of who's right the most, because that's just a losing proposition. What all you wanna do, because I'm certainly not right all the time, and nor would I wanna be,

### 23:30 — Calculated risk and hypothesis-driven experiments

**[23:30]** but when you are wrong or when you're right, the idea is you learn from those things, and whatever direction you end up going, you have to think about what could go wrong here, what could go right here, and what happens if either happens. If you're right, okay, great, we go all in in that direction, and we move forward, and that particular item is trending well. If you're wrong, how do you have a plan B or plan C if something doesn't go the way that you do? For example, for an outbound campaign for a business development team, whether it's BDRs, SDRs, or whatever sales individuals that you have, if you want to go after a certain competitor,

**[24:21]** that could be an experiment of an outbound campaign that you have, that you're working on. It could be close lost opportunities from a certain timeframe, and then even if those experiments don't turn out the way that you think they would, doesn't mean that the experiment necessarily was a failure, it just means that you proved something. You proved, the hypothesis is, can we win any close lost opportunities from like two years ago? And if we can't, why? Same thing if we go after a certain competitor or a number of prospects within a certain ICP or a location rather, you want to think about, or rather just certain criteria,

**[25:10]** you want to think about, if that doesn't work, how do we tweak it? And why didn't we win? If we do get meetings with them, what happened to those meetings and opportunities, et cetera? So the whole point is like, just because you're wrong about something doesn't mean that you can't use it as a learning experience for yourself and for the organization. No, everything we do is a calculated risk. So inherently, things we do are not gonna work out. I think as long as you're hypothesis driven, and you, like you said, you have a fail safe if something starts to go off the rails, and you know your probability of it going well

**[25:47]** or going wrong, and if the outcome is worth it, then go for it. I think as long as everyone is aligned with what the risks are. So I don't spend too much time at a casino, but I've played roulette and blackjack before, and you know what your probabilities are. So before you ask for another card, or when you put money on red or black, like you know what the likelihood is to win. And if you lose, it's not because you made a bad decision. Well, maybe if you bet too many times it's a bad decision, but you were aligned with the risk you were taking. And I think people tend to be okay with that if they know the level of risk and the whole team is aligned.

### 26:34 — Hard things are worth doing (and a first marathon)

**[26:34]** I think it's when they didn't know what the level of risk was. Like, hey, you put money on green. I thought that was just as likely as red or black. Like, no, that was pretty risky. So I think making sure people are aligned with that helps give that comfort. And then if something doesn't go wrong, it's like, hey, we knew this could happen, but it was worth it because we could have won. And that's okay. Let's of course correct and do what we need to do. - From a RevOps perspective is, and any professional quite honestly is, my mantra is hard things are worth doing. And whether it be it's a difficult decision or not so easy decision for a company to make

**[27:20]** or for an individual to make. If you spend the time and develop yourself and work on yourself, you will, it will pay dividends in the future. For example, I've done a lot of self-learning on how to use the systems that I'm currently using on how businesses should, quote unquote, best operate. As long as you're developing yourself, challenging yourself and showing that, for example, I ran my first marathon last weekend. - Hey, congratulations. That's huge. - Thank you. That was not an easy thing, especially for someone that does not train as much as they should.

**[28:06]** But when I was in it, when I was running it, I just said, okay, I'm here. Like you just keep going. Like that's all you can really do. And so from how I think about that with revenue operations is if I can figure out something in this moment, it doesn't mean that it's not something that can't be figured out. It's something that I just need more time to figure out. So whether it be speaking with a colleague, whether it be reading literature or book, whether it be reaching out to a number of communities that I'm a part of, for example, RevOps Co-op or Wizards of Ops or even Pavilion, there's so many folks out there

### 28:55 — Leaning on community: RevOps Co-op, Wizards of Ops, Pavilion

**[28:55]** that are happy and willing to help you as well. I think the biggest piece there is just because you're running into a problem doesn't mean someone else hasn't run into it themselves before. So there's lots of other folks that are going through the same things that you're going through. You just need to find these people and ask them like grab a cup of coffee with them or just get on the call with them and ask them like how did you figure this out and what are some other things that I may not be thinking through that would be helpful. - I think leaning on community is huge. Leaning on your colleagues is massive. And there is a lot of research that's been done

**[29:33]** that you can learn from the mistakes of others. Take the baseline of what's out there today and take it a step forward and tailor it to where you are rather than trying to reinvent something that already works really well. I think that goes a long way. And congrats again on completing a marathon. I think one, doing itself is just amazing but two, as a metaphor for anything else you do in life, having the perseverance to make it to the finish line is big. - Appreciate that, thank you. - Well, I think that's a good segue. I think it's interesting how people end up in these particular roles of any of the jobs out there in tech right now.

### 30:14 — How people end up in RevOps

**[30:14]** I think this is the one where nobody expected to be sitting in RevOps. Engineers went to school to be engineers and they kind of went down a path and built into that way. People who are in sales probably wanted to go in that direction and they maybe had some innate extra version to them that led them there. But people who end up in RevOps never said, oh yeah, I was really hoping I'd be doing revenue operations for a tech startup one day. So I'm always curious. And one, just genuinely like, how did you end up where you are? But two, a lot of people listen to this or trying to get into these type of roles or are trying to grow into a leadership role.

### 31:00 — James's winding path: RIT, cruise ships, sports, Livestream

**[31:00]** So just love to hear the story, how you got to where you are. - How much time do we have? - So there's a lot of twists and turns, so. - Yeah, I'll start off with college. College went to Rochester Institute of Technology, graduated with a bachelor's in new media publishing, which funny enough doesn't exist at the college anymore. But with the publishing piece, if you couldn't tell, there's a printing part to that, which I actually took and used for a decent amount of time. I got to work on cruise ships, working in the print shop, got to travel around a bit, printed menus and daily programs for all the passengers aboard.

**[31:47]** Following college, worked at a print shop on Long Island. And from there, at that point, I honestly thought, wouldn't it be great if I got into professional sports, not as an athlete, I'm not that talented. - I think we all would have wished for that one, but that's okay. - Exactly. But just to work in professional sports would be fantastic. So I did spend some time with the New York Islanders, the Mets and the Yankees, which I truly enjoyed my time there because I got to go to a number of games, which is always cool, but also just seeing the atmosphere, seeing what it's all about and getting to see behind the scenes, which was really neat.

**[32:36]** But that all led me to a role in customer service and sales at a company called Livestream, which was acquired by Vimeo, so Vimeo now. And I got to say, that year, that first year of working in sales, I think I read, I don't know, somewhere of 40 or 50 business sales books and operations books just to devour anything I could that would help me better understand what are the things that I need to be doing or should be doing to help improve the business and how do I just get better at the role that I'm in. I got to sample what the ops world was like in that role, the role following that did more of the same, but it was still a sales role after Livestream.

**[33:33]** And then from there, I was actually able to make the official switch over to business operations. And that really got me fully into operations mode, learns everything I could about Salesforce. My role after that, spent a lot of time in Salesforce land as well. During the last four or five years of being officially in operations, even longer, I've spent a lot of time getting Salesforce certified, a lot of Salesforce certifications. So not only understanding the tools, but being somewhat of an expert in that particular tool set, learning a number of other platforms within the tech stack that any organization would use,

**[34:21]** but typically RevOps is the admin for or manages. And then from there, getting project management certification as well, or just reading up on what are best practices for an operations role. And funny enough, a lot of business books, because at the end of the day, everyone that works in an organization is responsible to a degree for how well that business performs. So having a general idea of how businesses operate and what good looks like is always good for anyone to read up on and to better understand. Where I am now is a company called Healthy, H-E-A-L-T-I-E. We're an EHR platform. I'm the Associate Director of Revenue Operations.

### 35:16 — Where he is now: Healthie, an EHR platform

**[35:16]** Definitely a mouthful when you try to tell someone in your family like what your job is. And so I usually just end up saying I'm in operations, but revenue operations in particular, I have to say, to your point, never thought I would have ended up in this role. Very appreciative of all the skills and experiences that I had in sales, since sales never really goes away, 'cause instead of trying to convince customers to purchase something, I am now trying to convince internal stakeholders why we need to do something or what it means if we did. And every day is like trying to solve a puzzle. How do I make this company better than it was yesterday?

**[36:08]** And whether that be systems related or process related, it's really cool when you do make changes and the folks that are impacted by those changes smile as opposed to any other reaction. Because if you're able to do that, now granted not every change is gonna be a good one for them necessarily, but as long as the good changes outweigh the not so great changes, you're doing your job. And that for me is very fulfilling, especially being in healthcare, it's already fulfilling. And then being in revenue operations in my particular role is fulfilling as well. So never thought I would have been in this role and at the organization that I'm at,

### 37:01 — Stepping back to see what you built

**[37:01]** but here I am and everything's going well. - That's great to hear. No, I think there is something special about RevOps where you get to take a step back and see what you've built. Not every role or job has something as tangible,

**[37:20]** but it is nice to take a step back and just see everything you've been able to accomplish. James, thank you so much. It's been a ton of fun. I appreciate you sharing everything you shared today. I think for anybody in RevOps, just the power and saying no, so you can focus on the things that actually move the needle, the things that move your organization forward. It not only will help your company, but it's gonna help your career. It's gonna give you the level of respect that you need to advance in RevOps, especially with a noisy crowd like sales and marketing. It's not always easy to push back against some pretty type A personalities

**[38:01]** that tend to gravitate there. But it's so essential. And you can end up working yourself completely towards burnout without ever even making an impact if you don't really, really focus on that. Love the frameworks you shared, love the tools you shared, loved all the advice. James, thank you so much. And as you continue to go throughout your career in RevOps, we hope to have you back again. Appreciate it, thank you. Thank you for having me.


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