Speaker 1Welcome to Revenue Builders, hosted by John Kaplan and John McMahon. Today's Minnesota features Mark Thurmond, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Tenable, where he has helped lead one of cybersecurity's most significant platform transformations while guiding the company through a pivotal leadership transition. In this conversation, Mark shares why the strongest career trajectories aren't built by chasing titles or compensation. They're built through consistent performance, continuous learning, and earning the trust of people who want to build alongside you. People who want to build alongside you. If you're thinking about your next leadership move, this perspective offers a different way to measure progress and make career decisions that compound over time. Let's dive in.
Speaker 2And so, I tell a lot of people, don't get caught up. And saying, I've got to be at this certain level by this certain time period, with this certain salary, with this much equity. I am like, focus on the moment. Focus on execution. And if you are one of the number one, number two, number three, or top, you know, 5% performers, opportunities are going to come to you, right? They're going to find you, either internally within the company you're at, or externally, you know, folks are going to seek you out. So my advice to everyone, right, that I talk to in my network, and I've got, you know, a couple kids in college right now playing college sports, and I talk to a lot of their teammates, and I just say, stay in the moment. Focus on what you need to do. Focus on the next play. Focus on the next rep. And if you do that, right, with discipline, you're going to actually end up in a great spot. So those are some of the things that I do. I did not map this out to be a CEO of a publicly traded company. It just kind of happened in regards to focus on execution and being with the right people.
Speaker 3I love that. You know, basically, in the statement that you made, it all started with, it all starts with performance. So to even think about a career or trajectory in an arc like yours, you have to perform. If you want the next job, you know, there are ways to act like you already have it. One of the ways you can act like you already have it is to outperform the job, the current job that you're in. And that can't get lost in any of the messaging that we do. You performed at every single level. The other thing you did, and whether you did it consciously or not, you were able to perform at every single level. You are not only performing, but you are gathering followers. Like when I think about all those places where you move, Johnny's a great example of that. Well, it's that you are gathering followers. Are you aware of that as you're going through your career or how does that play out?
Speaker 2Yeah, it plays out, you know, well, A, you get to see the result. When you do make a move or you do go to another company, you know, you can actually very simply look at all the different people that you would want to reach out to, that you would want to communicate and you would want to work with. Again, and as I made these different moves, you know, there would always be a core group of people that I would reach out to and say, hey, listen, I've got this opportunity. I think it's going to be great. Let me kind of walk you through it. But then I really flip it to them and say, here's why I think it's great for you, right? Here's why I think this is going to be an amazing opportunity for you and your career, right? And when you're able to look at these opportunities, evaluate them correctly, and then be able to build your team and have your following, you know, to me, that's a great sign. of a phenomenal leader. You know, we all know this, it's super basic, but, you know, one of the biggest telltales of hiring the wrong person is once they've been in the seat for three, six, nine months, they don't have anyone from their past companies that have joined them. You know, that to me is like a massive red flag. Like we might've hired the wrong person because they don't do that, right? We've got examples, you know, we just actually just brought in Dino DiMarino as our new CRO. Yeah, total rockstar. But you look at Dino being on board 120, he's already brought in four or five people from his network, right? A lot of the folks that we've brought on board and retooled our executive staff have all brought in people, whether it's in product, whether it's in finance, whether it's in human resources, that to me is one of the biggest telltales of a phenomenal leader. And all you gotta do is look at John McMahon right there and look at all the companies that he's been involved in and all the different people that follow John, whether he's on the board or whether he was running it day to day. You know, that's it. That to me is one of the biggest things for a phenomenal leader as a grade.
Speaker 4What I wanted to add to what Mark was saying is like for me, and some of it's built into what he's saying, is you have to put yourself in learning and developing situations constantly. It's the times when I've left companies is when I feel like I'm not growing anymore. And when I'm not growing, I kind of get bored. And in a funny way, I like to put myself in situations where I'm not growing anymore. Where I'm comfortable being uncomfortable. Yeah, absolutely. And that's where the growth is. That's where the, as Johnny, as you always say, the learning is in the struggle. That's where the learning is. That's where the struggle is. That's where you have to learn how to be comfortable in uncomfortable situations because that's where you grow. Without a doubt. The other thing too is, everybody always asks me like, who's your mentor? I'm like, I don't really have a mentor. Like everybody to me is a mentor. So no matter what level, they ever were at or who they were, I was always listening to what they said. And if they said something or they had a certain skill set, I always thought, wow, that's really interesting. Like I need to incorporate that into what I do. So think of the fact that you can always learn from everybody around you if you have that mindset and that developing mindset for what Mark said is that's what's going to get you to the next level. And, you know, Mark, you know, with the internet, going international and dealing with the crisis, those were all learning and developing situations. He didn't run away from them. He was very, tried to be as uncomfortable as possible. Yeah, no question.
Speaker 2Yeah, and you look at some of the-
Speaker 4That's really what he's saying. So I want to just, you know, add some-
Speaker 2No, I think it's an awesome point, John. And if you look at, you know, just use myself as the example, you look at some of those roles I ended up moving into, you know, coming out of EMC after 15 years, you know, they were chief operating officers type roles, right? Well, really at EMC, it was such a machine. I was really, even though I had general manager titles and things like that, where I'd learned different aspects of the business, you know, when I left EMC and then went to Click, it was running professional services and, you know, running all the renewals business and involved in tech support and then going to Turbonomic as a COO with even more role responsibility with marketing and then, you know, going to a public company as a COO, right? Now learning how the, you know, the street and being able to work with Wall Street, work with, you know, work with all of the different folks that you need to work with in a public trade company. Every one of those moves, it was a really big challenge, but that honestly, you know, the money was second. It's like, if I can learn something and I can benefit, I think I can impact this org a little bit. That was always the compelling reason for me to kind of make those jumps. And there were with people, you know, especially when the Turbonomic and with Hannibal, the folks that I knew, right? And the network that I knew.
Speaker 3So I want to just summarize a couple of things that I heard from both of you, which I think, are really, really important. You have to have performance to even have any kind of arc at all. So if you're not performing right now, focus more on performance than the arc and trajectory of your career. Focus on performing where you're at and being, you know, making a name for yourself that way. Also building, you know, I think it is a big red flag when leaders, you won't have an arc like this if you do not, if you have not built a relationships and a communication path and style that would get others to want to join you and follow you, just like they would show up in a crisis like you guys had early on in that RSA situation. And then the other thing is what I really have been most impressed about you, Mark, is the number of years that I've known you. Invariably, I talk to you at least once a year. Well, you know, where you will ask me a question for feedback. You'll say, hey, based upon what we're talking about, how do you think we're doing against that or XYZ or ABC? And you're constantly, I've never talked to you where you thought like you had it all, you got it all buttoned up and you got it written down and you're just running a playbook. That's always been something I've always been most impressed with.
Speaker 4The day you think you got it all locked up and you have all the knowledge in the world or in sales. Or in sales operations, you're done. You're done. Everybody realizes at that moment, you're a dinosaur now. Without a doubt. It's only a matter of time before they find a way to get you out.
Speaker 2100%. It is one of the biggest things I always, you know, whether I'm talking to my marketing director or I'm talking to our CMO, I'm talking to our product people, I'm talking to our renewals team. I always ask, how do we benchmark against the competition? Who is first in class and how are we competing and how are we going against them? I always want that. I want that third party validation and I want that stack ranking. Because to me, simplistically, right, there's all sorts of creative ways to get better. But if there is a playbook and it's all about execution and you can learn something, not that you're going to take every single step because that might not work for your company. But if there are people that are out there doing it, understanding how they do it, how you compare, what you can benefit from, that to me is like a calling card. You know, you can talk to my people and they can say, Thurman is always asking, how does this compare? Again, against our competition and has compare against folks that are doing it world class yes i want to add
Speaker 4one other thing that mark said before because a lot of people especially these days younger people think they need to get promoted really quick and they're quick to to grab on to a position quick to grab on to money but not quick to grab on to opportunity so i get calls all the time from people that have been around and they'll label out you know a couple different opportunities that they're looking for they'll name they'll name a company where they got the better title and more money and more stock but when they tell you about the situation and they know it's going nowhere it's literally going nowhere sure and then they talk about another one where there's a really good opportunity the title is less and the money is less and what do they choose even though you tell them you go for the opportunity because three years from now if you work your ass off you'll be at a much bigger title with more money working around people you want to work around you know with the stock that you want and the company's going somewhere and then the next place you go you have a whole bunch of other people you've been around that you can go with but guess what they always do they always choose the position or the money and then two years later they call me and say yeah john you were right i made a mistake you know okay dude but you lost two years of your life yeah you weren't challenged you didn't learn anything you took a break and you're like okay i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do this big title you didn't work around anybody you really wanted to you could learn from yeah now you're stuck and you got a big black mark on your resume good luck could not agree more you know and
Speaker 2listen all i can do you are 100 accurate thanks
Speaker 5for listening to today's episode if you enjoy the content please subscribe rate and review the show to help us reach more people this show is brought to you by force management where we help companies improve sales performance executing the growth strategy at the point of sale check out forcemanagement.com for more information
PodcastTranscript AI