Lesson from the wise

We’ve been making some all-star hires lately at Secfi. One of those hires is our new VP of Sales an Client Operations. It became evident to me starting last year that we would need to bring in someone who has experience scaling a sales org. It was a long search but we found the right person in Neha. She is smart, experienced and just a great person to have on this leadership team.

It was a difficult hire to make considering I have led this team from the start and I had to make sure that whoever was taking over was going to treat everyone right and actually be that person that could 10x this team. We instantly hit it off from our first time speaking and it was pretty evident early on that she was the right woman for the job.

Meeting with Neha yesterday, one thing I asked her was how it’s possible to go on vacation when you are in a high profile sales/business development role with many important leads. Your clients’ needs don’t go away and there are deadlines that don’t ever work with any sort of vacation time. It’s been a challenge for me this past year. I asked Neha for advice on this.

She mentioned that she has the same problem and her top staff always have the same problem. The reality is that you really can’t sideline your clients. Rather than trying to fight it, she said to embrace it and be okay with working with those important leads on vacation, but pass every other possible task.

It felt really great hearing that from her. I realized that I’m not the only one with this problem and that’s just part of being a leader at a startup. I’ve planned my entire week and half vacation based on her advice.