35. From Founder to CEO…Not So Fast! With Trevor Grace

“As a founder you are the one who brings the idea to market and proves product-market fit. But at some point between then and the growth stage, you need to do some self-assessment.”

You’ve brought a product to market that works, you’ve started building a team, and you’re entering the growth stage of your business. As a founder, it’s time for you to do some self reflection. What is your core skill set? What do you enjoy doing? What motivates you?

Founder and now Chief Product Officer of dbaPlatform, Trevor Grace joins Jim Barnish on this episode to share what he learned from shifting himself into a different role he finds more fulfilling than just head of the company. They also discuss product development, pricing, and boosting local retail stores by plugging your inventory online.

3 Key Takeaways

• Being CEO is not all that it is cracked up to be if that’s not what your passion is. Shift yourself out of that role if your core skills and motivations lie elsewhere.
• Prove the value of your product. It’s okay if you don’t have the exact price point right away, but you’ll never know its value until you start somewhere.
• Know your customer. KYC isn’t an acronym just for regulation in the financial sector. If you don’t know your customer, you don’t know your monetization model or how to improve your product.

Resources

trevor@dbaplatform.com

Trevor's LinkedIn

The End of the World is Just the Beginning by Peter Zeihan

About

With 20+ years’ entrepreneurial experience, Trevor Grace is part technology expert, part market strategist, thought-leader, innovator, and big-time adrenaline junkie.

Trevor thrives on turning chaos into order.

He is revered for his ability to organize a myriad of disparate marketing campaigns into a predictable, producing, well-oiled sales machine. An extraordinary leader, Trevor strips complex plans into clear, actionable strategies that get everyone in the organization nodding and contributing.

Trevor pioneered Buycabinets.com, the first online catalog in the megalithic cabinet industry and lifted it to $1MM/month in three years. He brokered the first-ever e-commerce product platform for broadcast networks with Univision. He was instrumental in bringing a government sector software company into the commercial sector growing revenue from $70MM to $100MM in three years. Trevor has worked with Fortune 500 giants such as MasterBrand where he integrated backend systems with front-end analytics; Eldridge’s capital equipment division where he built the loan processing platform; and Norcraftcompanies whom he helped grow to $600MM by digitizing the dealer program.

Since 1998, Trevor has successfully built over 100 enterprise-level web applications.

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