Mental Health in the Revenue Race: your company's funding is your problem
Chris Walker says revenue leaders need to stop blaming themselves and start looking at the company's cap table, because unrealistic growth goals are a setup.
Chris Walker gets right to the point. He thinks the reason CRO and CMO tenure is under two years is not because the leaders suck, it is because their companies suck at planning. They take a bunch of VC money, get stuck with unrealistic growth targets like 400 percent year over year, and pass all that pressure down. His advice for revenue leaders is to look at the cap table and financing structure before you take a job, because it is probably a setup.
He used to work 80 hours a week and took pride in it. Now he has some serious boundaries. His routine is nonnegotiable: gym every morning for at least 50 minutes of cardio, no meetings before 10:30 AM, and zero meetings on Fridays. He says we have to take accountability for our own mental health instead of blaming our company. He even tracks his sleep and says it is the single biggest factor in how you handle stress.
I loved Chris's honesty about tying his self worth to his company's success, which meant it was a massive hit for him when revenue declined. He shared a great story about a series of supposedly bad things, like a delayed move, that led to him meeting the woman of his dreams. His point is that you cannot judge things in a short time window, because the downs often create the ups. That perspective helped him through a business failure that cost him at least 25 percent of his net worth.
“When you try to get something fast, you do the wrong things. Point blank.”
Notes
- He argues short CMO and CRO tenure is because companies, handcuffed by fundraising, are bad at planning, not because the leaders are bad at their jobs.
- He tied his past mental health struggles to his self worth being wrapped up in his company's growth, which took a massive hit when revenue declined.
- His daily routine includes zone four cardio for at least 50 minutes seven days a week, and no meetings before 10:30 AM or at all on Fridays.
- He tried to turn his services agency into a software company and considers it a major failure that caused his net worth to decline by at least 25 percent.