♖ My First Week at Pricing I/O

Hey Friends,

I thought I would share an inside look during my first official week at Pricing I/O.

I've always been obsessed with transitions. The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins is a book I gift to every new senior leader.

I re-read it recently for inspiration before I kicked off, and it reinforced the importance of building relationships.

So I flew to San Diego a week or so ago to get a head start. I had dinner with Marcos (CEO) and had drinks with other team members.

Here's me hanging with Eric, one of our sales leaders, in his neighborhood in Ocean Beach. We chatted about work, fishing, frisbee golf, and more.

Here's my approach to setting the right foundation. Perhaps it will also help your next transition, too.

P.S. Navigating a new role? Hit reply with 'First 90' and I'll send my personal PDF notes that others have found to be extremely helpful.

The Five Traps I'm Working to Avoid

Watkins mentions in the book a Harvard study that 40% of executives fail in new roles within 18 months. Yikes.

He identifies 5 key reasons why new leaders fail. I keep these in my iPhone notes:

1. The Action Imperative: Rushing to 'fix' before understanding why things exist.
   

2. Sticking with What You Know: Assuming your last playbook works here.
   

3. Coming in with "The Answer": Reaching conclusions before gathering data.
   

4. Neglecting Horizontal Relationships: Only focusing on boss and direct reports.
   

5. Wrong Type of Learning: Studying technical stuff while ignoring culture and politics.

As a former advisor now operator, I have a deep fear of hitting trap #1 hard.

I'm forcing myself to slow down.

What My Discovery Revealed

To avoid the traps above, over the last two weeks, I’ve had 1on1 conversations with nearly half the organization.

I asked the same 3 questions to all.

1. "What makes us unique in your words?"
   

2. "What would you focus on in my shoes?"
   

3. "What can I do to help you?"

The patterns surprised me and revealed opportunities I didn’t fully appreciate. Key takeaways:

1. Deep belief in our core offering: Nearly all shared their pride in our Pricing Design Program (PDP), our flagship offering. Over five years, the team has evolved to make it better, faster, and stronger across 400+ companies. The pride in their voices and stories of impact was inspiring.
   

2. Massive expansion growth opportunity: Teams confirmed my hunch. There is a growing desire from clients to do more post-PDP. I call these “dessert offers”. Pricing rollout, sales training, packaging iteration. We are offering these ad-hoc, and certain team members have great ideas on how to formalize this. I am really excited about it.
   

3. Team ready to level up: Here's what I didn’t expect. The breadth of ambition from individual team members. They asked about sales training, career development, content creation, and more. The energy & ambition across the team is infectious. Several are now readers of The Moat, and reinforced my desire to keep writing.

SPONSOR

What I'm Tackling Next

My next 30-60 days focus on what came out of these conversations:

• Deepening Relationships: With Marcos, partners, clients and everyone else.

• Positioning & Messaging: Clarifying our unique value and offer mix.

• KPI Alignment: Ensuring my team measures what matters for growth.

• Execution: Content strategy, sales enablement, team management, etc.

If you're navigating a similar transition: resist the urge to fix, invest in relationships first, let real priorities emerge from systematic discovery.

'Til next time,

Ali

P.S. What part of this transition story resonates most? Hit reply and tell me what you'd like me to go deeper on. Your responses often spark my best issues.

About Me: I'm Ali, the new VP of Growth at Pricing I/O and so happy the NFL season kicked off. Go Texans! Come follow my journey on LinkedIn.