Revenue Mavericks

Dave Kranowitz was 18 years old, sitting in a lightweight boat, falling behind against Coast Guard in a college rowing race. He could feel the boat start to get lighter. He took the stroke rate up to 35, then 38. The crew was redlining, but something was happening. They started moving through the other boat. When it was over, the coach came over, shook their hands, and the losing team handed over...

Al Caravelli was sitting across from John Wooden at a Denny's in Encino. Not as a basketball player nor as a student. As a rugby coach who had just finished a 1-11-1 season leading the US Men's National Sevens team and was ready to quit. Twenty years earlier, Al had been a freshman on UCLA's 1985 NCAA soccer championship squad, the first team to win it and still the only one to go unde...

Andy Mowat was sitting in a room with a PE investor in 2008, trying to figure out whether to buy a background screening company. He wasn't sure if the market was any good. The investor got up, walked out, and came back with a whiteboard sketch of a classic S-curve. Then he told Andy to ask one question: of the last hundred customers you've added, how many are brand new to what you do versus switch...

Ed McDonnell was three weeks into ninth grade at an all-boys Catholic high school in New York when his mother told him they were moving to Denver. She'd taken a new role as director of nursing education. Ed left behind every friend he'd ever known, enrolled in another all-boys Catholic school in Colorado, and started over. He made new friends. He figured out a new culture. He found his footing. Th...

One of the most important lessons Peter Mahoney carries throughout his career was inspired by his daughter Marianne. She was born with significant special needs, and in that moment, everything Peter expected about his life shifted. But Marianne set a goal for herself when she was young: she wanted to live independently. It took ten years of work. And about two years ago, she got there. Watching th...

In his own words, Bryan Cox was just an average college tennis player. His record was roughly .500. But in his own mind, he was winning all the time. That disconnect wasn't delusion. It was a skill. Somewhere between the thousands of points lost and the matches that didn't go his way, Bryan had taught himself something most people never figure out: how to forget. Not how to ignore failure. How to...

Stephen Hamill grew up in South London in a neighborhood that was as diverse as it was tough. He was an immigrant kid from Ireland in a school full of immigrant kids from all over the world. It wasn't the kind of place where people sat you down and mapped out your future. But somewhere in the middle of all that, in 1981, a device called the ZX81 showed up. It was a 1K computer you plugged into you...

John Belle didn't grow up in the United States. When he was young, his father took a job overseas in the Philippines, and John spent his formative years moving through international communities before heading to university in Japan. At first, he did what any kid would do in a new environment. He leaned hard into being American. He memorized NFL quarterbacks. He learned to play hockey, which, as he...

Richard Petley wasn't supposed to end up in enterprise software. He comes from a family of academics. Teachers, educational psychologists, people who built careers in classrooms and lecture halls. He was studying English literature at university, surrounded by classmates headed toward journalism, creative writing, and law. But Richard had a secret. The summer before university, he needed work. Thr...

Carl Borsody was watching a doctor work under pressure when something clicked. The situation was tense. The stakes were real. And this doctor never flinched. Not because they didn't care, but because they understood something most people miss: the room was already filled with enough urgency. Adding more panic to it wouldn't help anyone. What the moment needed was someone steady enough to think cle...

Kiva Kolstein was sitting across from his CEO on his very first day as Head of Sales. He had spent the entire week before building a 30-slide deck. Business journal quotes. Leadership frameworks. Case studies from sports icons and Fortune 500 executives. Every slide was polished. Every slide was smart. Every slide was borrowed from someone else. After the presentation, the room applauded. Then his...

John Allen was a freshman at BYU when he walked into an open tryout with 300 other hopefuls for a spot on the basketball team. He wasn't recruited. He had no guarantee of playing time. He just knew he wanted to be there, and spent the first 60 to 90 days of his college career training like it was his only job. Sprints at the track. Shots in the field house. Early mornings before anyone else showed...

Navid Zolfaghari didn't learn his most important sales lesson in a boardroom. He learned it at a poker table in high school. Not the bluffing. Not the bravado. The math, the psychology, and what happens when you pair them together and commit to playing the long game. That early lesson became the operating system behind his entire career: if you make the right decisions consistently, variance sorts...

Jennifer Brannigan wasn't supposed to end up in a corner office. She grew up on the south side of Chicago—blue collar, Irish Catholic, tight-knit. Her dad was a homicide detective. Her mom worked as a physical therapist at a school. The path forward looked familiar: something service-oriented, something close to home. Maybe speech pathology. Then her grandparents took her into Manhattan. Suits. Br...

Evan Randall was sitting at his kitchen table as a kid when he started learning what real leadership looks like. His father—a Vietnam War veteran who'd served two tours before Harvard Business School—would come home with a briefcase full of papers and walk through the problems he'd faced that day. Who he talked to. What went wrong. How he thought it through. No laptop. No cell phone. Just strategy...

In this episode of Revenue Mavericks, Justin sat down with Jeff Perry, Chief Revenue Officer at Carta. Jeff was standing in his boss's office at Oracle when he was asked to sign an NDA. Young director. Managing database sales teams. Solid performer. But this moment? He had no idea if he was getting fired or promoted. Then Dan Freund told him about Oracle's plan to acquire Sun Microsystems—and aske...

Akira Mamizuka was in high school when he made a decision that would define everything that followed. While his friends coasted through private school with weekends free, Akira chose a brutal public technical program in Brazil—one that demanded Saturday classes, advanced physics, and a workload that left him exhausted and envious of everyone else's easier path. He didn't know it then, but choosing...

Mike Ogden was 10 years old when he got his first job delivering newspapers. Not because his family was desperate—but because he knew that if he wanted a car as a teenager, he'd have to buy it himself. Raised by a single mom with no safety net, Mike learned early: there was no room to fail. You figure it out. You don't lose. That mentality shaped everything about how he operates today as VP of Wor...

On this episode of Revenue Mavericks , Justin sat down with Esther Friend , VP of Revenue Operations at Udemy. What stood out wasn’t just her global experience or her track record of driving complex GTM transformations–it was the through-line behind it all: intentional learning, adaptability, and a marathoner’s mindset . Before Esther ever stepped into sales or RevOps, she lived abroad in Sevilla,...