Kirsten Maitland — full transcript

Hello. Hello. Nice to meet you, Kirsten.

Good. Thanks. All right. Is it Kirsten? Kirsten.

It's Chris. So I made a typo. Did I put Kirsten? Apologies.

I did it right. Okay. Cool.

Great. Well, it's lovely to meet you.

I'm doing great. Happy Friday. Where. Where are you based out of?

Oh. Great. Cool.

I'm in Santa Monica, California. But I've spent quite a lot of time in Austin out there. I've got some close friends there.

And as you're in the. You're in the thick of the heat now, huh?

Good. That's. Good. That's great. Have you. Where. Where did you come from? Did you come from a colder climate?

Okay. You know, festivals. And. Stuff. Which I. Like. Well, it's. Hold on. Yeah, I heard that. I heard that they're going through crazy heat wave over there.

I know. So unnaturally just cooking there in a concrete jungle. Like, get me out of there. Yeah.

Totally. Well, it's super, super great to meet you. I've. I've. I've seen Rebel cheese for. For a while, so I was. I was pleased to be able to.

To. To put a face to the. To the. To the brand. It's very exciting. I'm. I'm looking forward to hearing a little bit more about. About you and where you're at right now. And thanks for submitting an amazing application as well. And. And then I'll happily share a little bit about what Mark is working on specifically with this backable CEO incubator. And I'll give you kind of all the full details there if I think it's something that makes sense and would be a good fit and can give you the results that you might be looking for, and then we can take the conversation from there. How does that sound? Awesome? And before I. Before we start, have you. Do you know, Mark personally? Have you guys connected?

Okay.

Gotcha through for potential ground force capital fund investment. Or personal.

Okay, sweet. Amazing. And did you. Did you watch the master class video that he did? Okay. Okay, cool. So how did you just out of curiosity? How did you come through or hear of this? Or get connected?

Cool. Awesome. Sweet. Well, let's go ahead and get started. So I would love if you can just kind of give me the high level overview.

Of your brand of where you're at right now, kind of where you're at in the trajectory. And I'll just ask you some questions to get some clarity, and then we can take it from there. Cool.

Yep. Yep. Okay, cool. Love it. And today we read somewhere that you were in the Navy as well, U.S. navy. Was that part of your story? Amazing. Amazing.

Yeah. Different lifetime.

Seriously. You were doing air traffic control. Yeah. It's so funny, but, like. One of my past mentors, like, we would always talk about in one of the past businesses that I ran, we would always be like, hey, guys, it's not that serious. We're not doing air traffic control. Like, it's not life or death. We're talking about a business, like, decision here, so it's very amazing to meet you literally was that that we were anchoring and comparing to in a way. So I can imagine.

Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. For sure. Wow. You. You need to write a book one day. Yeah. You sure? I can imagine. I can imagine. Well, I do have a great. I published a book back in January. I do have a great guy that I worked with. His business is called big idea to bestseller, and they, like, helps, like, with every step of the process from, like, the whole book writing thing. So if. If there's ever any interest, I'm happy to. Happy to support in that way.

Yep.

Cool. So. And now tell me a little bit. I remember from your application that you, right now you're focused. Are you focus? You're focused on raising actively right now? No, you were focused on looking towards strategic planning, exit planning, like, give me a little bit of heads up of, like, what are the areas of focus right now for your business that you are looking for support on?

Okay.

Cool.

Great. Amazing.

Yep. For sure.

Right. Totally. Yep. Makes. Makes sense. And. And how many years now you say you've been. You've been at this? Seven. Right, right.

Wow. I I've been in the start of space for pretty much my whole life, and my dad was involved in it, too, and he always said that he was like, the startup years are, like, dog years. It's like there's every year is really, like, seven years within the year. And one of the things that Mark talks about all the time, too, is that, like, especially as a, as a, as a founder, I mean, you've for sure seen this case of navigating from restaurant to where you're at now, too, is that it's like every six to 12 months your job is changing entirely. It's like your, your title on your business card is the same, but your job is constantly changing and you've got to be able to navigate those changes properly. And if you don't, it can be catastrophic. Right. And, like, and the degree in how you're able to navigate those dictates how the business impact is going to be. And especially as, and I know he talks about this all the time, too, especially as you get towards that, that stage of exit planning because he's navigated it through zico and through a bunch of his portfolio companies as well from a founder side to then also the, you know, the acquisition side. So he's got a really interesting POV there, but especially as you get towards there for both the business plan and then your personal plan with that too, and how those kind of connect and what your vision is and, and how that intersects with the business vision. So he's got a really good framework for, for how that all, strong perspectives on how that happens.

Yeah.

Seems amazing. That's what, what a cool little, little gift to receive of the, the, the crowdfunding. That's amazing. So it tells me you've got a real great customer base. I'm sure because you created something that, that didn't exist and that they've got to be die hard raving fans.

Gotcha. I was SPV. Amazing. Wow. Wow. That's very cool. I mean, and when you say we, you have a co-founder in this or. Okay. Your husband. Amazing. Love that. And then what are your kind of roles, responsibilities, splits with you and your husband and what you focus on in the business?

Yep.

Amazing. Amazing. And if is that from kind of your tech background, tech Consulting background, you're native in that. You're, you're with that. Great.

Whoa. Amazing. Yeah. No kidding. It's fantastic. I love it. Cool. All right, well, this is helpful for me. Let me see if I have another questions for you.

I guess, like, what are some of your, like. You know, what are some of your personal goals when it comes to this, when it comes towards the exit, like your relationship with the business, so you get a sense that you guys have been in the, you've been in the dog fight. Like, it's been a, it's been a bit of a grind. So tell me a little bit more about that, if you don't mind.

Sure.

Yeah. Yeah. Great.

Interesting.

Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. I definitely get it. And, and it sounds like getting you, getting you back to your zone of Genius. Because. Yeah. I, I can't remember. It's used so frequently. I can't remember where the original source was for that.

But it's, it's, it's something marked, Mark does talk about a lot as well and has strategic ways for doing that because oftentimes it's like.

That. It's kind of like the chicken and the egg situation, right, where it's like you need to be there. But in order to get there, you have to make moves to get there and, like, you know, when you get there, then it's going to have the right impact that you want. And so that's a very, especially when you're running a business at the scale that you're running with the complexities and the team and the responsibilities in the day-to-day management.

Like, that's a very, it's, it's, it's a complex puzzle, but it's there. It's solvable is the good part. And I've seen this time and time again with how market has helped founders and CEOs like yourself. But, like, it really is solvable with, with certain systems and exercises and tools to have in your, in your toolkit. And, and that's one of the coolest parts to see that it is like, it is solvable. But, like. There is that, like, dance and chicken and the egg kind of situation that you got to break through to be able to, to then see the results that follow from that.

Yep. Totally. Yep. Yep. Totally. And you got to, you got a, a tax, a tax bill from the state of Arizona that, like, keeps popping up or whatever reason. Like.

For sure. Yeah. Do, do you, and, and this might be a bit of a honest question, but do you feel, like, do you feel still connected and energized to, like, the initial vision and mission? Is that challenging at times because of the work that you're putting in? Like.

So cool. Yeah. So sweet. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Totally, totally. Yeah. Yep. Totally get that. That makes sense. Thanks for sharing that. One of the big shifts that, that mark that we take people through is from, we call it everyone, like a lot of, a lot of CEOs or CEOs Chief everything officer. It's like, how do you go from Chief everything officer to Chief Executive Officer? Because it's like, how do you go from scrappy in the weeds?

To being able to pop back out to that high level vision? Because the reality is it's like, and we see this time and time again, Mark sees us with all the thousands of Founders he works with and talks to, it's like, that is what's required for you to be truly backable and to be able to drive towards the vision of the exit and the outcome that you want. It's like that shift is across the board a necessary shift that we see. Yeah. So, yeah, well, listen, this is super helpful conversation, as we've been, I've really enjoyed this. This as well. And I, I feel 100 confident that Mark can help you exactly with what you're navigating right now and to make this jump to the next level. And I would love to share a little bit more about how that actually would work.

If you want me to run through some of the details. Okay, absolutely. And I'll send you all this after as well, but I'm gonna just run you through real quickly. I'm gonna share my screen. So, yeah, we, he's, he's done. We've done a, this is, this is like the second cohort, essentially, that we've done. We did, like, an earlier kind of beta version of this that was like 10 out of 10 across the board. Every single one had a, a five to 10x ROI because Mark is super big about ROI tracking and kind of demystifying a lot of this stuff, which is fantastic. And so this is, this is the, the second cohort that Mark is doing in this capacity, but he's been doing from his board positioning to just his mentorship. Like, he's been working with Founders in this way for, you know, for decades. But, but in this kind of. Cohort 90-day incubator that I'm going to share with you, this is, this is like the second version that we're doing of this. So I will share my screen. Real quickly here. Let me know when you can see this. Can you see this? Okay, so, so it's called the backable CEO, and it's really, everything is built around this shift of this 90-day transformation to take founders to get them from scrappy founder. To strategic backable CEO that is going to be. Capable of attracting institutional funding and, and building towards their, their biggest goals. And again, Mark is a very unique, he's got a very interesting perspective and a unique seat that he sits in that makes him, like, so, so good at this and makes this incredibly valuable because he's, he's navigated this from the founder CEO side of things multiple times, going from, you know, starting zico and building and scaling that to selling for, you know, $200 million exit to Coca-Cola to then buying it back and now doing it again with Zico and obviously starting ground force capital and doing it with, you know, his other portfolio companies. But from the institutional capital lens, he's got this really unique perspective around, like, what, because he sees and invests in talks to Founders all day of, like, what, what makes a founder and a company truly backable? And so he's been tired of seeing the same patterns over and over again that this is part of the reason why he created this, is because it's very doable and it's very, there's very simple shifts and simple tools that he's seen time and time again work to take that founder to make that transition. So what, what we're looking at here is like a 90-day container. It's a 90 day. We call it like a learning lab, really. It's not a course that you go through. It's not just like a mastermind or group calls, but it's like, it's this, this learning lab. And so over 12 weeks, you're going to have Mark personally guide you through and a small cohort of founders through these principles that he's learned. And so just to give you a little look at the arc here. So what happens when we, and we're getting ready to start in August. So what happens before that is there's this, and I think especially with your AI native background, you're going to love some of this because everything we've built here is, is AI powered with your kind of login dashboard, your assessment, your tools that you have that are all through to you. So there's this onboarding assessment where we get a comprehensive assessment of your strengths, your blind spots, your leadership habit styles, habits, business, personal objectives. And that kind of becomes the baseline for helping you drive your personal results and also understanding what does a, what does the kpi look like? What does, what does a 5x to 10x ROI on this? What does that on your, on your time and investment? What does that actually look like? Is that, you know, successful raise at a certain valuation or certain amount? Is that increasing the valuation that you're raising at with working through some of these things? Is that time back? Is that getting weekends back? Is that going from seven, seven days a week, 12 hours a day to five days a week? 10 hours a day? Right. What does that all look like? So this is the first thing that we start with and you have a one hour strategy session with mark to, like, dive into that and really Define what success looks like over the next 90 days and, and, and what the ROI is. And then there's kind of direct open access end. So you have a private WhatsApp channel with mark that you could be able to go back and forth and be held in that space as, as much as you need. And then when we start the actual cohort, there's a small group of people we're bringing together, very strategic Founders across different Industries in food and Bev, mostly, but other Industries as well, all really based on the fit. And every week, so it's 12 weeks. Each week is a live session. So it's a 90 minute live session with Mark where he's going to talk about one specific principle, one concept, one tool, one shift to make, and, and then there's obviously Q&A and real time to be able to work through some of these tools. And, and I was kind of alluding to earlier on the back end is that on the back end, you have the backable CEO operating system. So each week's lesson comes with these practical tools from this AI powered operating system that you get to have these tools plugged in to your workflow right away. And then there's weekly implementation. So you have one thing that you focus on for that week because we also know that this is built for founder like yourself who's working 12 hours a day, seven days a week. And so it's designed to be like as minimal amount of time and as clear in focused and actionable to get the results that you need and not something that you're like worried about falling behind on or that's like, oh, this is overwhelming. And I signed up for this thing and I wanted it to help me. And now this is too much time. So it's not, it's like very laser focused. And then you also get marked for bi-weekly coaching. So you get a 30 minute bi-weekly on the calendar with mark. So you have that touch point to, like, help to have his support and his guidance as you're moving through things. And then at the end, there's a final strategy strategy session that Mark does with everyone another hour long where we review the measurable results and, and, you know, continue to pave the path forward and whatever that looks like and you keep the operating system is all. The other thing I just want to highlight right now is that there's a 5x plus ROI guarantee. So this is an investment. And Mark knows, Mark treats it like one. So we Define what that is going to be like in the beginning. And if at the end of the 12 weeks, the 90 days, you don't feel like you've received that 5x ROI. That's very clear for you. Then mark will continue working with you until you do or just give you your money back. So, like, that's the stage and the confidence he has in this and, and how he wants to de-risk it to make sure we get the right Founders in to, to, to, to support them. So you get the support kind of from every angle that comes through from the weekly live coaching to the private one-on-one to the WhatsApp, peer accountability and your personal dashboard and system and, and all together more than 17 hours live with Mark, which, which that executive coaching rates that he typically charges, like, that alone is worth twice the investment before considering all the other tools and long-term operating systems and stuff like that. So that's, that's a high level. I know I just threw a lot your way, so I'll pause there and let you digest and answer any questions that you have. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. I'll send it to you. We're hard capping it at 20 Max. Probably we're going to end up somewhere around 10. So. That range. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Gotcha. Makes sense. Totally. And that, that's part of the reason why the group is just a part of it and it's not just like just the groups, because I've, we found the same thing from all the work that we've done and the coaches and coaching world that I come from as well. Like, that's not really enough, especially if you're working with more than, I would say, a handful of people. And so that's also why we do the one-on-one stuff with Mark. And you have that one-on-one channel. So it's like the bi-weekly calls, the inch, the, the strategy call before the call at the end and that one-on-one like, you have Mark in a one-on-one thread on WhatsApp for voice notes or, like, he's, he's committed to delivering that ROI. And so, like, he'll get on as many calls with you as you need, right, to navigate whatever you need. But he's, it's, it's not just like him delivering one to many. It's like he's involved one-on-one and each founder in each business and the, the group is the, the group is one element that helps the transformation, if that makes sense. Because I agree with you. Yeah? Yeah, I'm sure we, we can. We, we've got, like, some testimonials and some, some videos and some, like, written testimonials, stuff like that, for sure. That can send right away. I'm sure that there's someone that would be open. We typically haven't done that, but I'm sure, like, if, if talking to someone would be something that you want to do, I'm sure we can set that up. And, and also would love to set you up with a call with, with Mark as well before so you can talk to him and get a sense from him and he can, you know, walk you through anything else. So that's totally easy to do also. Yeah. I would say. Three, five hours, three to five hours. On the, on the low end. I would say that. S, let's say five hours a week, because if we got the group sesh and then it's another hour of that, I would say five, five hours a week. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So investment, like I said, it includes everything that we went over, and it's the 5x ROI guarantee on that as well. The full 90-day container is a 12K investment, and that's something that we also split up into monthly payments as well. So we do three month payments, 4K for cash flow. And, yeah, includes everything I went over. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Totally, totally. Yeah. And he, and his rates for just the one-on-one time would be double that, essentially. And so he's, like, really excited for this format for people. Yeah, tell me. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. You're Discerning. Great. Great. Yeah. For sure. Can we get him involved? Would he be open to being involved in this? Cool. Because what, what we. It's definitely an option and we can, I'll sync with Mark on this. Like, we wouldn't, we wouldn't charge, like, two full ticket prices for you, for sure there. It depends if he wants to do, like, it would be valuable for him to be involved also. And I would actually encourage that if you'd be open to that. And I think you both would get a lot out of it together. So if he wants to, let me sync with mark on this, but, and I'll let him talk to you about it, too. But, like, we could do it for, like, a small nominal, like additional fee. So it's like, maybe it's another, I don't know, 3K or something like that. So it's 15k all in for both of you. So seven and a half K each instead of 12K each. I'm sure he would be fine with that because that kind of covers the, the remaining cost for his additional time in that way. And I, I think that would be really, I think that'd be really valuable. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yes, for sure. For sure. Yeah. I would encourage that. Yep. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. So I would also love to, if you're open to it, I'd love to set you up for, like, a quick 30 minute chat with Mark at some point here. So you can just reconnect and you can just touch in on this stuff. I, I think I'll double check, but I think that he would be more than happy to, because we've done this with another Founder as well with the co-founder of 15k price point for the two. So five, you know, what is that 5k a month for the three months instead of 4K? So should be, you know, for, for being able to have both of you guys go through that. So two and a half K each a month, like, is, you know, with that ROI guarantee and all the things you're getting should be a slam dunk for sure. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Well, let me, I'll send, I'll send you an email. Just kind of recap here and then a link to that page as well. And that way you and your partner can go through it and take a look. And then I'm also happy to hop on with him together or separately, or you can have him join the call with Mark might probably be a good idea. That way you guys can both sink on that because, of course, we're going to want and need his buy-in as well and, and make sure that he's, he's, he's into this. But I think with Mark's like with where you guys are at specifically, and I would say even more so, especially because Q4 is a busy time period. Like, this is the time to do it. Like, this is the time to do the work. And, and, like, the, the most perfect opportunity to make these shifts happen. Cool. Yeah, of course. Really, really lovely connecting with you. And we'll, we'll be in touch over email, and I'll talk to you soon. Cool. Happy Friday. Talk to you later. Bye.