Scaling B2B from inside the CRO seat — Kyle Norton (Owner.com, ex-Shopify Director)
Kyle Norton shares his journey from a startup VP of Sales to scaling Shopify's point-of-sale team and eventually becoming the CRO at Owner.com. He breaks down the fundamental differences in building go-to-market engines across high-growth startups versus massive public companies with hundred-year horizons, highlighting the freedom and structure required to scale predictably. A major focal point of the conversation is the necessary mindset shift from being an 'additive' sales leader to a 'multiplier' executive. Kyle emphasizes that a true CRO must look past the short-term pipeline and closed-won metrics, deeply understanding the full P&L, customer churn, and unit economics to drive long-term enterprise value. To operationalize this scale, Kyle details his 'Revenue Operating System,' consisting of structured measurement, planning, and team rhythms. By utilizing frameworks like 'MAPLE' for weekly updates and establishing 'can't miss metrics,' he provides a blueprint for managing a rapidly scaling revenue organization with precision, alignment, and confidence.
Discussed in this episode
- Kyle's transition from startup sales leadership to a massive scaling mandate at Shopify.
- The concept of building a 100-year company and how it changes budget, hiring, and enablement investments.
- Why an executive is a 'multiplier' focused on enterprise value, whereas a senior leader is merely 'additive'.
- The critical need for revenue leaders to deeply understand churn, specifically the portion driven by sales and poor ICP fit.
- Balancing and triangulating NRR, NDR, and GRR instead of relying on a single retention metric.
- The components of Kyle's 'Revenue Operating System', including measurement, planning, and operating rhythms.
- Using the MAPLE acronym (Metrics, Advanced, Planned, Learnings, Emergencies) for efficient weekly senior leadership updates.
- The importance of establishing a common internal language and 'can't miss metrics' to cut through overwhelming data.
Episode highlights
- — Welcome Kyle Norton to the show
- — Moving to Shopify public scale
- — Building for a 100-year company
- — Fixing onboarding to combat early churn
- — Additive leader vs. multiplier executive
- — Turning off the competitive psychopath mode
- — Top metrics for new CROs
- — Triangulating NRR, NDR, and GRR
- — The Revenue Operating System
- — The MAPLE framework for updates
- — Rapid fire questions
Key takeaways
- Transition from an additive sales leader to a multiplier executive.
- Understand your P&L and sales-driven churn intimately.
- Build repeatable, predictable systems before scaling headcount rapidly.
- Establish structured measurement, planning, and operating rhythms.
- Use the MAPLE framework to align leadership weekly.
Transcript
So if you can have a good measurement rhythm, a lightweight planning rhythm, like a a routine by which you pause and take stock and plan for the next period, and then an operating rhythm. If you can get that stuff in place, like the engine will will work pretty well. Welcome back to another episode of the revenue reimagined podcast. We have with us today a legend in his own right in the space.
Kyle Nordon, who is the CRO of owner.com where he owns sales, partnerships, onboarding, success, support, revenue operations and enablement. You have a little small job over there. Uh, Kyle's also a limited partner at GTM Fund and Stage 2 Capital, advisor, Angel investor, spent a ton of time at Shopify.
Um, and he does a lot of work with SAS focus funds and startups where he shares insights and expertise on scaling, selling, and just as importantly, servicing SAS products. Kyle, thanks for joining, man. Yeah, thanks for the invite. Looking forward to it.
I'll try to live up. You have a you have a small little job at owner.com. You you run a department or two.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. How how do you how do you go from like a Shopify that had that you probably own a little bit of it to like owner where you own like a lot of it. And I think this will go into some of the conversations on frameworks and efficiencies, but you know, how do you how do you make that jump?
I was pretty it's funny, Adam and I were just talking about this before you jumped on, but um I was uh historically a startup guy. I had never worked for a public company. My first company was maybe 250 people. Then I went into a true startup of I was employee 26 for my first VP sales gig.
Um I did late stage late stage private and didn't think I could do a big public company. I was like, that's not for me. I don't want to work for a big company. Um and then was chatting with Jake Dunlap and just getting his advice and he was like, hey, we do this all the time as startup people.
We say it's like, oh no, startups the only real thing. This is like the this is the only uh career that matters and he was like, that's a silly way to think about it and you can learn a ton from seeing how uh big skilled company operates. And so I went into those conversations with a much more open mind and it was my boss from two jobs before that brought me into shop or made the introductions. Um and I loved it.
Like I I really I like learning new things and you learn a very different skill set. I learned how to operate in a very product centric context. I learned how to partner better with product and speak that language, deal with like a large matrix organization. So there was a ton of really interesting takeaways from that experience.
And now I'm back into startup, but like I feel very familiar with this. Um even the job at Shopify was to build a build a new go-to market engine within Shopify. My team was five people when I started and then we grew it to like 80 people in 18 months. And then we re-orged and I went from this point of sale group to a to a regional um mandate.
Um so yeah, I've I've bounced around. You you've seen a you've seen a little bit of change. So we were uh, we were talking before the show started. So fun fact for everyone.
Um, Kyle holds the job, the only job I've ever interviewed for, haven't gotten, um, and actually was upset about it. Um, having spent time at Toast, like that that's how much I believe in what you all are doing there. But when you started, um, it was, I think VP of Sales and partnerships, right? It certainly wasn't CRO.
SVP of Sales, we didn't have partnerships yet. Yeah, so so you were just startup world leading a sales team. Um, Oh, five reps plus a manager like a couple million bucks ARR. Yeah, we were, we were very small.
And and you are what now? I don't know if you're willing to share the ARR but how many, how many reps like how how how big's your team? 20 20 plus million, my team's about 100 now across sales and the other functions, partnerships, onboarding. So that that's a massive massive jump in a very short amount of time, right?
What is different specifically about the growth that you have contributed to at owner versus a similar growth at Shopify but in startup land versus like big company. So five to 80 versus two to, you know, where you are now. Yeah, Shopify was interesting because they were one of the one of the really interesting philosophies that they have is to operate as a hundred year company. We're here to build a hundred year company.
So they don't get caught up, even for a public company, they don't get caught up in the quarter, you're indoctrinated in the onboarding. We don't pay attention to the stock price. We're here to drive value for the customer and ultimately the market is a, you know, a weighing machine versus um, um, the market is a, oh, voting machine versus weighing machine. And like, if, you know, in the long term, it's a weighing machine because the the real value you're creating is is what will be um represented in the market cap.
And so, um, the mandate I was given is like, hey, you've got like, in my first year, like 80 head count. That's that's that's earmarked for you, do what you want with it. I was like, oh, okay, like just like I get that carte blanche. There's no gates, there's no this.
It's like, hey, yeah, like we're we know that the point of sale product is good. We we are confident that a sales motion is going to accelerate our growth based on some like early learnings. So go for it. And so, um, I could scale as fast as I thought we could, uh, go without things falling apart.
And I could make um upfront investments without needing to worry about the burn impact or, um, you know, overbuilding. And so I brought in enablement really early, uh, Rev Ops really early. We grew those teams. I hired leaders that were like, you know, not really stage appropriate.
So like, one of my first managers was a former VP of Sales, and she would have never taken the role if if I hadn't said, hey, look, like, the team is going to scale to this number in this period of time. The budget is committed. Come in to do the manager thing and then I'll slot you into um, the second line role. And then she became my head of sales for that group and in in like an instant.
And, um, I could just make I could make so many forward-looking decisions because the the budget was pre-committed. And startup, you know, we are still building with the future in mind and we're making investments ahead of time. But you have to play a much finer balancing game of you know, you don't want to over-hire, make the mistake that so many companies have made, over-hire compared to your pipeline production or compared to the product maturity and then you're doing like mini layoffs or riffs, like that or or you're in a like a tight burn situation. Like that that's not a fun place to be.
So you're you're slightly more staged and gated in terms of those investments. But now, you know, like we clearly have this extreme product market fit. We know like really closely the economics of we add this money to marketing, these people to to sales, these BDRs here and like the output is so consistent, um, over a 12-year time horizon. Now I can really like, now we're hitting the gas.
And and we can do that with a predictability that gives that um gives us a lot of financial confidence. Yeah, it's interesting. It's almost like every dollar you spend, you kind of know what that ROI is. So like, if I'm going to go hire a new head count, it's going to cost me $80,000, I know that return is going to be 240, 320, in revenue coming in the door.
And I think that's where a lot of people I've always had this thought like, everyone that you hire should have an ROI number attached to them, but how do you get to that place is is always a a tricky place. It just like going through the process. Um systems and structure. Yeah.
Like you need you need the systems and structure and the infrastructure built so that you can build up a track record of, hey, I've got a 12-month history of when we hire 10 BDRs, nine of them do really well. We promote a ton of them and they they produce a pretty consistent pipeline number. Yeah. And, um, what where many businesses find themselves, where where many startups find themselves is you hire a handful of people, one person is ripping it.
Right. Two people are doing nothing, three people Yep. And then it's hard to pile a bunch of extra head count into that system with a ton of confidence. Um, because you don't have repeatable playbooks and infrastructure and and I think that's like a thing that we've tried to do well here.
What's what's been the hardest thing you've had to overcome in that scale? Like, that scale is super quick. Like, the the amount that you scaled in that time frame is a bit probably unnatural to many people that would be listening to this. So, what was the most difficult thing that you overcame in that scale?
So, one of the most important things to fix early on was um onboarding. So, I inherited onboarding at some point and, um, it didn't have a lot of infrastructure. And yeah, it's great to be ripping in sales, but if, you know, if a material portion of these people don't activate, because we do month-to-month contracts, so they either don't activate or activate late or they're not set up properly, then this has like a pretty significant impact on the business. And and I think what I try to do as a revenue leader is is think really holistically about the business and and try to not get trapped into the sales number.
I think this is a trap that many people fall into is, you know, they they feel like they're successful because the sales number is great, but you know, the business isn't growing because churn is bad. Well, like, half or more of churn is probably customer quality. Certainly was for us. Or how they were set up for success with the expectations that were set or, you know, the features that were demoed and where did we emphasize.
And so, I think the biggest thing for me is to make sure that like, from top of funnel all the way through to customer value, um, we were running those parts of the business with the same intentional, um, approach and and proficiency. That that was probably the biggest thing that I've spent the most time on in the last little while. That's so funny because I think we see this everywhere, and what you just, excuse me, described is perfect. It it's what we see all the time.
The sales leader or the see the the the CRO, um, who only focuses on sales, has no idea about marketing, has no idea about customer success, and it's like, oh, you know, I we we signed a hundred deals, you know, in the past quarter, and that's great. Well, yeah, but 41 of them are still here. Like, that's not necessarily a good thing that you want to be proud of. When when you're scaling, Kyle, and when you're looking at, you know, stepping into that true CRO role and owning the entire revenue member, like, how do you determine where you're going to spend your time?
And I I want to piggyback that also with, how do you direct your CEO's time? Because a lot of, you know, sales leaders that we speak with have no idea, how do you get the CEO to focus where they need to focus instead of where what they think is important. So there's there's two questions there. So, one is sort of the difference between an executive and a senior leader.
Yep. And so I think, um, a sales leader thinks about their team first. They think about their team, the sales number, their compensation plan. It's relatively short-term oriented.
Um, and they are additive to the company. They're adding a lot, but you are additive. An executive is a multiplier. And so as opposed to thinking about their their sales team, they think about the company first.
Instead of thinking about their compensation plan, you're thinking about enterprise value. Instead of being short-term focused on the quarter, the pipeline you need, you're focused on long-term revenue quality. You have an understanding of the P&L. And that's what makes you a multiplier.
That's what makes you, um, a person that is able to create like real enterprise value. And this is the feedback that I get a lot from, uh, the board and my CEO is that that they appreciate the fact that I am like not just thinking about the closed one number. And, um, I think I get that feedback because it's not super common. And they they maybe don't see that all the time across the portfolio.
And so, that's the distinction. Is like, are you additive, you just are you like bringing in the sales number or are you a multiplier? You're like a productive contributor to product conversations. You're helping Who taught you who taught you to think that way?
Because that that's not normal, right? Like and you just said it like they don't see it all the time. Where where did you have this epiphany or who taught you that like, shit, man, it's not just about the closed one deals. Like I'm I'm not going to get where I want to go in my career that way.
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Yeah, there was two places, you know, when I became a first time VP of Sales, I really tried to learn about like building a SAS business. What what is this whole thing about and like not to be a total uh brown noser, but like Saster. Like I I like went so crazy deep on all things Saster and I learned so much from Lemkin before he was before owner and I was involved with them personally. But like really trying to understand the the the broader picture and like Lemkin was one of the first guys that really, really talked about the importance of CS and how to think about that as a revenue engine and and so, um, I started to try to educate myself there because my first VP of Sales job like I was not that well rounded.
I was really, I was like focused on the sales number and the thing I pushed product on were the things that like got me the sales number and it I didn't have like a like a churn oriented um view there. Um so just like general reading and then I worked with a really good executive coach. This guy Paulo de Silva here in Toronto. And, um, he pushed me to like, um, see the bigger picture.
And just, you know, like executive coaches do, it's like, how do you think like, what do you think that person thought about that? And how do you think they interpreted this? And and through this executive coaching work, I really came to understand I'm like, oh yeah, you know, that probably isn't the right approach. You know, as a sales person, you're a competitor.
Like I'm a competitive psychopath. And like, that's why I was good at the job. That's why I was good at the job because I want to win, but at the same time, you got to be able to turn that off when it comes to your teammates. And I had to learn how to create like win-win conversations as opposed to like debate.
Like when I had a thing, like when there was a strategic disagreement, I went into, as Adam Grant would talk about, like prosecutor and preacher mode. And I would just like, like hammer people with the data and my and the customer feedback and like try to beat them into submission. But like, you can't convince anybody of something in that scenario because now getting to the right answer or what I perceived to be the right answer means they have to lose the debate. And especially if you're this is a, you know, multi-time CEO or there's an age difference or, you know, there's just a power difference between VP of Sales and and CEO.
Like you're very unlikely to win that battle because you've created a win-lose argument. So I I had to learn to get better at like building a a more constructive way to like get to the right answer. It's okay, Adam. We can get you to multiplier.
We know you're an additive right now. We can get you over to multiplier. It's all good. We'll we'll we'll train you up.
We'll train you we'll show you the way. Yeah, listen. I'm I'm I'm good with it. Kyle, um, as the CRO, um, in your evolution from, you know, being the the VP of Sales into the CRO and now you see across the go-to-market motion from, you know, marketing through CS and and CRM product running.
What would you say are the top three things that new CROs should be looking at from a metrics perspective, um, that would help drive their business? So outside of the sales stuff, you mean? It could be anything. Like anything through the the go-to-market.
Like is it lead conversion, is it deal velocity? Like what are the metrics that you're really keen on right now? There's not three, there's more like 30. Sure.
So let me let me just highlight I know that, but I maybe the top 10. Yeah, let let me just highlight some of the things that I think people miss. Yep. Because I think we're all looking at our funnel and breaking it down by AQL to book, book to show, show to demo held, close rates.
Like that I think we do a pretty good job of, um, but I think where people could spend more time, if you want to position yourself to be like an executive. Like I'm a part of you even if you're just the even if you only own sales, but you want to be a C-suite contributor and seen in that light, I think the, if there were three things, like go deep on churn and understand what part of churn is driven by sales, either expectation setting, handoff quality, customer quality. Like are these the right people that have the right problem for us to solve? Because if you close a deal and it turns in 12 months, Not good.
It's better to like not have had that revenue at all. Yeah. It actually cost you money. Like the net the net gain is negative.
Like what's the return is something it's at least 18 months, right? If you're good, yeah. 18 months payback period, lots of companies would love. Yeah.
But it could be 24, 36 months and and so, let alone talking about like Well, if the 30 30 33 at Toast, Kyle, when I was there but who's counting? If if they and if they really if they really calculate CAC properly, I mean, who's calculating CAC properly? Yeah. And like it works for Toast because you've got this other suite of products and you're expanding and all this stuff.
But, um, so I think like revenue leaders if you want to be taken super seriously by your CEO and have your opinion valued, you have to be able to speak about the business broader than just sales. So a super deep understanding of churn and especially understanding what role sales plays in that churn. And then own it. Just be like, hey, I looked at a bunch of this stuff.
This is on me. My team is closing some like questionable deals or we need to do better and like go spend the time shoring that stuff up. Yep. Um, so a really deep understanding of churn would be number one.
Efficiency. I think like this was a again a big difference between first time VP of Sales me versus now is I'm like, yeah, more reps. Let's hire more reps. Let's like get my buddies in here.
We like all collectively built a model that was way too optimistic. And we ended up having to lay off like 25% of the sales team at some point because we just like didn't have the pipeline to to feed the that team. And so being more efficiency focused, understanding your unit economics, payback period, CAC LTV, how do all these things um play together and can you understand it by channel? So is your inbound channel really efficient but your outbound channel is a is a mess?
Okay, then how do you go um improve efficiency there? Um, And the final thing would just be like holistic P&L. Like holistic understanding of the P&L. Or just forecasting in general, right?
Like not from the top down but maybe more bottoms up like forecasting. Yeah. Yeah, and when I say P&L, I mean like the the profit and loss statement, the the income statement to really understand, all right, like how does this whole machine work and what are the levers that drive growth? Because what often times as revenue leaders, we don't understand is like the changing churn has such an exponential impact on the business and and maybe that is where you should spend an entire quarter versus something else.
Or maybe, you know, by understanding the P&L and and really looking at like the cost of the events that you've been running, like, well, we only generated this much revenue and this much revenue churned in this period. And so like the the return on those things. Like just I think it's just general financial and P&L fluency is like another place that if you want to like make that true C-suite jump is Yeah. is important.
Yeah. I was uh I I was typing notes. I I don't do that a lot during our our our shows, but I'm I'm I'm literally typing notes. This is recorded.
You can you can go back and listen to it. It'll I I I I understand but it's easier for me to remember if I take the notes at the same time. Yeah. Kyle, what's your um, real quick, what's your opinion on, and I and I totally agree with you.
I don't think enough people understand churn as it relates to sales or even one more step up marketing, like, is it really the right ICP that we're selling into? Because that drip down from marketing into sales, like there's you get into like a domino effect. If it's wrong at the top, then it's going to be wrong in the middle and it's going to be really wrong at the end. And cost you a lot of money.
But what's your opinion on looking at NRR or NDR versus churn from like a a metric to like pin your hat on? It's all important. Like you got to look at gross and net. If you only look at one, you're going to miss some of the picture because your net, your NRR could look good uh because you've got two or three customers that have like expanded like crazy, but then from a logo count perspective, you've bled 20% of of your customers and and that will give you different signals.
It's all about triangulation. Like you it's it's it's hard because you don't want to look at every single metric and get lost in it. But at the same time, you want to figure out like what are your what are your absolute like must move metrics? Um, my VP of Sales Brett, he he talks about with his team like biggest needle movers.
This week, this month, what is your number one biggest needle mover? And so we're we're combing through in our monthly business review process, everything. We look at like every piece of data across the team and, um, then go find the thing that we want to spend the most time on and then we go really deep on it. And so, by going through net versus gross churn, NRR versus NDR versus GRR, you you can start to pick up these patterns and then you just pick that one thing and then tackle it over some period of time.
So, you don't have to constantly juggle a hundred metrics. Yep. But it's in some cadence. And for us, it's monthly because we're SMB high velocity.
But for many businesses, it's like once a quarter. You really go through everything. And then and then let that direct you to the can't miss metrics. So like in my SLT, in my SLT meeting agenda, there's a section of it in Notion that stays there every week, which is like the can't miss metrics.
These are the things that we care about right now. So, I don't care about close rate right now. We feel great we feel good about close rate. We've moved close rate significantly, you know, a couple quarters ago.
But like the one thing is whatever. And like we look at that thing every single week to to track against that track against. And that's a good way to like take this um, pretty like overwhelming uh, cloud of data and try to like thin it down to something that's that's that drives more action. Love this.
Like if if memory serves me right, you actually shared, um, your business review template on LinkedIn like a week ago or two. Uh, I think you shared like a massive Notion document of like every metric that everyone looks at, Um, and that you have your teams report on. Yeah, I think I shared like six different Notion templates on my substack. So, I gave a talk at Saster, which should be up, um, the recording should be up in a in a week or two.
And I went through our what I call my revenue operating system. Revenue OS. Yeah. Um, thanks to Brandon Galey for that name.
But I shared this whole Revenue OS, which is a breakdown of like how I run the team, how I communicate the metrics and then I made template versions of everything. So, you can go to the substacks um, the Revenue Leadership Podcast. Um, I actually I I actually literally have it in a window on on my screen. Yeah.
Good. Nice. Like true true true true true story. And so everyone doesn't think that I'm lying.
And I'm writing a newsletter on this topic of the difference between executives and senior leaders. So, Now I got to figure out how to stop. All right, there we go. So, that that's super cool.
Um, I I love the giving back. It's something that's important to us as well and the fact that you're willing to share that and make other people better. Um, I think is huge. Kyle, we work with and we talk to a lot of founders, um, first-time, maybe second-time CROs.
With the passion you have for specifically for frameworks and infrastructure, when they're trying to build out for the very first time like a real go-to-market, you know, motion, where where would you tell them are the top things like you you got to start here. You you can't freaking go here unless you start here. Yeah. So, this is on my substack, my revenue operating system.
I wrote a whole like massive uh page on this. And so, you can get it in a lot more detail. But, um, it starts with the measurement cadence, like your your your ability to understand what's actually happening in the business. If you can't understand and you don't have the right infrastructure to capture, um, what's happening on the front lines, then you can't do anything really.
So, you need the right data collected in a light weight structured manner. You need a cadence to review that data. Then you need a, um, you need a planning rhythm, like a light planning rhythm. So, each month, how do you synthesize how do you synthesize what's happened and make sense of it and make decisions about what's going to happen in the next month?
Um, that's like the planning rhythm. Um, And then the final piece would be like your team rhythms. So, what how do you operate day to day? So, we do our weekly stand-up and we cover these things and here's the template for our meeting.
And then every week I want a written summary. And I use this thing called Maple. Metrics Advanced. So, what did you do that week?
Planned, what are you planning to do the next week? Learnings and emergencies. M A P L E. Um, and uh, my senior leaders all fill up a fill out a Maple update that I review on Sunday nights and it powers what what we do in our one-on-ones and what we want to talk about in team conversations.
And so if you can have a good measurement rhythm, a lightweight planning rhythm, like a a routine by which you pause and take stock and plan for the next period, and then an operating rhythm. So, how you want to engage as a team. So, a template for your one-on-ones, and there's a template linked in that page, a template for your team meetings, a template for your weekly update. If you can get that stuff in place, like the engine will will work pretty well.
What was uh what was the E in Maple? Emergencies. It's like emergencies are just stuff that's important, but stuff that's important didn't make Maple. So, E E might be like a little alarmist, but uh Yeah, it's like things Yeah, but sometimes sometimes alarmist is needed.
Like, listen, everything can't be an emergency and everything can't be a fire. Um, but there are things that like, yeah, hey, it it might not be and I I like Maple. It might not be in one of these categories, but, shit, dude, I got to discuss this with you before we we get off this Zoom. Um.
And I like I like these um mnemonics and anagrams and and like silly things like Maple or like our cant miss metrics or Kyle's top 10. Like I I name all of these things so that they're memorable. And when I say, hey, like we got to do this or we got to do that, like everybody knows what it is and we can sort of teach people around it. So, a common language.
Like, total common language. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Could be OKRs and you can call it whatever you want.
But like just having a common language makes things run a little more smoothly. Man, I wish we had 90 more minutes. Uh there there is so much. I I I would like to plug you in for another 90 minutes.
We are definitely going to have to find a time for a V2. Uh but in the interim, uh as we wrap it up, as we do with everyone, I I'd love it if you're game, uh to throw some rapid fire at you, man. Let's do it. All right, early bird and night owl.
I was a night owl, now I'm an early bird. Is that because of kids? Is that because of the hours of San Francisco? Mostly because of kids.
Yeah. Kids. Yeah. Yeah.
That'll get you every time. Then you just become a early bird the for the rest of your life, so. Yeah, exactly. Uh if you weren't in tech, what other industry what other industry or uh something else that you would be in?
Trade? I have no idea. You just sports person. I like what I do.
Yeah, I would love to say professional athlete but I'm not like not that physically gifted, so that's a that's a poor answer. I almost went to fine art school. I was like a Nice. I went to business school but I was a hair away from going into fine art school.
So, maybe I'd be a sculpture. Sculpture was like my thing. Okay. Nice.
Kyle, what's your favorite guilty pleasure snack, man? Oh, wings or salt and vinegar chips. Oh, my kid would love you, salt and vinegar chips. I can't.
The wings I'm with you on, man. Can't do the salt and vinegar. Oh, that's the best. What's the most used work emoji in Slack, text, etcetera?
Probably the handshake. There you go. Makes sense. Yeah.
Makes sense. All right, two more. Um, other than your iPhone or Android, I hope you use an iPhone. Um, but other than your phone, what's the one tech gadget you can't live without?
Oh, AirPods, for sure. I listen to according to my Spotify wrapped, I listened to 54,000 minutes of podcasts last year. Wow. Two hours a day.
Yeah. I I mean I when I work out, when I wash dishes, when I'm like doing chores, I got a podcast going or an audiobook. You so you're a true lifelong learner then. Like it's all about learning constantly.
I'm addicted. Yeah. That's awesome, man. Um, my life's like to tease me like, she's like, you love tidbits.
Just like tidbits about stuff, anything and everything. Uh, I like to learn about. And that's why I started my own podcast because I'm like, oh, I got to I think I can do something here. I've listened to enough.
I got to I got to Part of uh part of Topline and Pavilion, right? Mhm. Part of the shameless plug. I love that.
I love that. Uh last one as we wrap it up. Dream vacation destination. I like adventure vacations.
Japan was the best vacation I've ever been on, I would say. My wife and I did that right before having kids. But anything like, you know, like wilderness, adventure, far-flung places, um, yeah, probably like something mountaineering in the Alps would be would be up there for me right now. I've never done that.
Love that. Cool. That's awesome. We uh my my dream is an African safari.
Um, so I'm with you with uh with the That was our honeymoon and it was the second best trip we've ever done. It was It was so jealous. Yeah, it felt like you were in Jurassic Park. It was a crazy experience.
Kyle, thank you so much for joining, man. Go check Kyle out on LinkedIn. If you are a small medium uh restaurant owner, small medium business, restaurant owner, check out owner.com, the absolute best restaurant tech you can find.
Kyle, thanks for joining the show, man. Thanks for the invite.