The Cookbook: Phase 2. Strategy & Positioning
Phase 2 of the playbook: turn your topic list into a one-page strategy brief sharp enough to say no with — audience, differentiator, and how you'll know it works.
The Cookbook: Phase 1. Building The Next CRO
Phase 1 of the playbook for building a thought-leadership site with AI: how to find topics grounded in real demand — not a brainstorm you happen to like.
What it took to build The Next CRO
I built The Next CRO — brand, website, content, metrics, and launch plan — in about 38 hours of nights-and-weekends work spread across 20 days. Here's exactly where every hour went, and why the timeline looks the way it does.
Strategic Leadership
Coming Soon in Strategic Leadership
Strategic Leadership · Coming Up The CRO role is, at its core, a leadership role — one that requires a different kind of judgment than what got
Operational Excellence
Coming Soon in Operational Excellence
Most sales leaders are operators inside someone else's system. The CRO designs the system. This pillar covers how the revenue engine is built, measured, and tuned — from forecasting to GTM strategy to the decisions most revenue leaders never get close enough to the top to make.
Financial Literacy
Coming Soon in Financial Literacy
The CRO who speaks the language of the CFO earns a fundamentally different level of trust. This pillar covers the financial concepts every aspiring CRO needs to own — not just understand. Here's what's coming, and I want your input on what to cover first.
Strategic Leadership
VP of Sales vs. CRO: Running the Trains or Building the Tracks
The CRO role is not just a bigger VP of Sales job, it's different. Six dimensions that actually change — and a self-assessment to find out whether you're running the trains or building the tracks.
Gross Revenue Retention
The percentage of recurring revenue retained from existing customers before any expansion — the ceiling-free honesty check on churn.
LTV:CAC Ratio
How much lifetime gross profit a customer generates for every dollar spent acquiring them.
Burn Multiple
How many dollars of cash you burn for every dollar of net new ARR — the defining capital-efficiency metric of the post-ZIRP era.
Magic Number
How much annualized revenue each dollar of sales and marketing spend produces — the classic test of whether to step on the gas.
Rule of 40
Revenue growth rate plus profit margin should exceed 40 — the single score boards use to judge the growth-versus-profitability trade-off.