Closing the Competency Gap: Helping Founders Build Credibility to Raise Funding feat. Shayna Davis

gm, gm welcome to what's going to be another fantastic episode of Devantel so if you didn't know Devantel is a 30-minute podcast held every week allowing founders hackers and anyone in between the opportunity to come on the show and showcase their products so today I'm ecstatic to welcome Shaina Davis who is the founder of Executive Signals Group so if you didn't know Executive Signals Group helps you turn executive presence into executive influence making external credibility your greatest asset to win categories and close rounds so if you stick around for today's episode you'll get to meet Shaina learn all about the competency gap that exists for many technical leaders and a little bit more all right let's get into it

hello hello welcome to the show Sheena i'm excited to have you on today yes i feel like we've been talking about this for months i've been looking forward to it yes yes there's quite a uh quite a backlog of people who want to uh uh get a piece of the Devontel action and uh yes uh this was months in the making but I'm ecstatic we're finally here um and uh yeah the as this is a um founder builder driven show uh I think a lot of insights that you'll share today are going to be very very valuable for a lot of folks especially in this day and age where everyone is it's so much easier to become a founder things are changing for sure yes very rapidly uh but I guess before we get into all that uh would you like to give a introduction about yourself

absolutely so I own an executive credibility firm and tech companies they hire me when either the founder and or the leadership team are becoming more visible to like investors the customers or media and the work that I do with them it helps to make them fundable and it also helps to make sure that they're winning categories because like I said things are changing and nowadays having a strong product and the right team is no longer enough to get you there and so I think it's really important that founders are paying attention to the fact that that era is actually dead there was a time where it's like if you had a great product and you had a brilliant team that was behind it like that's all it took to be successful and the reason why I exist is because I recognize that that's just not all that it takes to win in this modern day

yeah yeah there's a lot of nuances and subtleties a lot of people don't understand um especially um today uh like like we mentioned earlier it's very easy to just build something but to actually get it beyond that is very tough and if you want to raise rounds on that as well that's a whole new whole new ball game so to speak um but um uh off air you mentioned uh you you used to work um in the tech scene as well at a at the startup scene um just curious uh what was your experience like there and and how did that kind of propel you to what you do now

yeah well if you would have asked me four or five years ago if I would be doing anything in tech I would have been like probably not like heck no hell no just because I don't consider myself I mean I I know my way around tech i I wouldn't consider myself to be you know a dev person but I'm not technologically challenged or anything but I I'd never had any exposure to how tech companies run i'd never been part of a tech startup before and what ended up happening was in 2022 I lost my dad my grandmother and my boyfriend back to back in three months and I took a sabbatical and I was single at the time and so I sold a house that I lived in so that I wouldn't actually like starve to death during the time that I was on my sbatical and I said you know what I don't have any idea who I'm going to be when I get on the other side of this I may have reinvented myself and I don't know what that person is going to need and I said um I've got enough money to get me through March of the upcoming year so by January I will figure out like will I just go back into my consulting practice that I've been running since the late 90s or will I get a job i didn't really know what that was going to look like and I was contacted by the attorney of a um tech legend if you will that was coming out of retirement to build something and he was looking for who was going to be on his founding team and I met with him for about three and a half hours and we went back and forth and he was like I was like I've never done this you know what I mean like I've done the things that you need but I've never done them like in this sphere or whatever you know and we decided to take the chance on one another and um I was I was the second person to be hired in that tech startup and I was there for two years and um it had become like my identity i I was so involved in everything because you can imagine being second person there even though I wasn't on the product team and I wasn't on the engineering team I was very deeply involved in what everything that that everyone was doing and I learned a lot during that time and to fast forward to kind of what got me here when that time there ended I recognized that I can remember when the founder said to like the head of engineering and the the head of CTO like "You guys are going to have to start having conversations with these Wall Street exe executives about how what we're building is like going to revolutionize their industry." And they turned like ghostly white and I said "Oh wow." When I went back into business for myself I picked up what it is that I had been doing in business prior to my sbatical but I just decided to go all in on tech because I recognized um the void well you know you've got this title the competency gap i realized the competency gap that was there and I decided to go all in on tech but I was taking a gamble Nar because I had no idea i was like I know they need it but I have no idea whether or not they recognize that they have this gap and that these are the types of things that they need to invest in to close the gap but I didn't have anything to lose because I had paused my business for the whole two years that I was part of this company so I was like let's just roll the dice and see what these tech people think about what I have to say

yeah yeah and I I mean that that's that's how many many successful people end up being successful right you you have to take a bet on yourself you have to take a risk right get out of your comfort zone and um I I'm so sorry you had to go through that um that period where where you lost so many people close to you early on um but the the common factor I've seen a lot of very successful people kind of start out with is is is some sort of a struggle early on in their life somehow someway it's very unfortunate um but I I guess the human nature is to kind of just get yourself out of the hole somehow and and and eventually all all that hard work leads to luck and and I

normally wouldn't have done that though normally when I was faced with some form of disruption which is what I consider this to be I would have just pushed through but I thought you know what this one is probably a little heavier that I probably should not just push through it's probably not going to be good for everyone especially because like my father raised me i when my parents separated I moved in with my dad and he had custody of me and he raised me so that that was a really really big loss and I thought to myself normal Shaya would probably just forge through but this is not the scenario that I need to do that so I need to take a pause and kind of you know let things naturally resolve themselves the the the best that they can andrew like you said you know even though it's a very unfortunate situation it led me I believe like in life we have to be open to the zigzag and if we're attached to where we're going but not attached to how we get there I think is when we end up exactly where it is that we're supposed to be so I would have never been led to tech um if it weren't for that level of disruption i would have never had the opportunity to work closely with one of the most magnificent founders to ever step a toe in tech um if it weren't for a a rough period so I'm grateful for it

yes yes and I I'm if I was in your situation I I would be as well uh just curious uh c can you can you do a name drop of

I wish I could do a name drop but unfortunately even though I haven't been there in almost two years i'm still under that strict of an NDA i don't even know i don't even know if they've launched yet um okay they should have launched by now and I should know because I actually own shares in the company but I don't know and so to air on the safe side I will not get sued

yes fair enough fair enough

i would love to name drop but let me just say if I said the name you would know who I'm talking about he's old tech i mean like he's still friends with Steve Jobs wife to this day so he's like old tech

gotcha gotcha gotcha it's okay some some things uh leaving as a mystery are fine yeah um but uh I guess pivoting a bit um uh as you're explaining you you mentioned uh the competency gap and and um in uh on your website and in your work you mentioned this a lot uh so I guess uh for our audience can you I guess unpack uh what the competency gap is what that means and and why it's something that people should uh be aware of

yeah I first want to say that tech people are brilliant and they don't think they have any gaps but what I recognized was is that tech people are really good at building the thing and leading their teams but they're usually not great when they have to start engaging outside of the company with non- tech people and those roles are evolving when you think back to IBM unless you had a reason to know who the founder was and the leadership team was you had no idea who it was you know Steve Jobs comes on the scene and then it's kind of like the founder is the brand and then you look at companies like Nvidia today and I mess up every time so Jansen Wong or whatever his name is I get it wrong every single time and I swear that the next time I have to say it I'm going to get it right and I probably don't but he makes sure that everyone on his core leadership team is actually good at influencing externally and I believe that that's where we're going and I believe that that's what it takes now to be super successful but usually you take a tech person that's used to having their head down and building the thing and leading their team and talking in tech and talking in code and you now have to put them in front of an investor or the media or on an industry panel or perhaps in the situation that I was in they have to start talking to a potential enterprise company about what it is that they're building and not only is there a competency gap it's usually something that they're not comfortable with as well and here's the thing that I don't understand you don't have to be brilliant at everything like it doesn't take anything away from how great you are at the things that you're great at if you're now being expected to build a muscle that you've never had to use before and you're not good at that like I haven't been to the gym in forever and I promise my husband that I'm going to start going back next week i don't expect to operate as well in the gym next week as I was however long ago it was when I was there or if I'm having to build a muscle that I've never built before I don't expect to be good at that but for some reason or another y'all think that just because you're so great in these other areas that it's like a sign of weakness to not be great in another area and I recognize you haven't had to be on industry panels you haven't had the media in your face maybe you haven't had conversations with investors or executives of of big enterprise companies and that's okay but there's a gap and that gap can cost you a lot

and uh yeah I I I've seen I've seen this many times before as well uh I worked at startups uh I've worked in enterprise and I I I've had the pleasure of hosting many many many founders on this show as well um oftent times uh we uh as as nerds tech nerds uh we get lost in the sauce uh so to speak um really really engaged and and really giddy about um the tech um but oftentimes we end up building something so overly complicated um that we don't actually uh we don't actually get users because it it's so hard for us to articulate to a non-technical person what we've built and oftent times people some people are like I I just I'll just let my product speak for itself and and uh oftentimes you don't really you don't really get too far uh um if if you do that

well now nowadays Narb you you you think you're going to rest on the laurels of letting the product speak for itself but nowadays there's so many products on the marketplace that on the surface they look like they are the exact same thing that they look like they accomplish the exact same thing i mean you take something as simple as an um you know an online calendar scheduler there's dozens at least dozens of them out there and so if you're just going to let the product speak for yourself speak for itself and you think that just talking about the features of the product alone is going to be enough to get an investor to pay attention to you or get a user to want to use your product or not have people just constantly looking to the left and the right every time something new comes out like you talk to me in six months you're going to you're going to regret that

yeah and uh I guess uh on that on the investor front I guess uh from your experience of of helping many many founders and and uh startup CEOs CTO's I guess uh when it comes to raising around and and speaking to investors what is something that um often investors look for or or notice um notice is missing when somebody's pitching to them yeah um and uh yeah u just curious to get your uh your insight on that

one of the biggest mistakes that founders make when it comes to raising rounds and I I post I recorded a YouTube video about this yesterday i think I published it yesterday and I was talking about you know very rarely are they funding your tech i had a conversation because not only am I in conversation with a lot of tech companies I'm in conversations and have relationships with a lot of investors as well and they're like "Listen this day and age almost every tech that comes to us is a great idea." And 3 months from now the tech is not going to look the same as what it does when we first start having conversations with them so they're not necessarily founding the product as much as they are found as they are funding the founder and the founding you know the team that that is part of that and so one of the things that I think that we get wrong is just like we think that when we're communicating about what it is that we're building we think that we can rely just on the product there there are no there are very few bad ideas that are being brought to funders these days and just like you're not going to win users if you rely on your product only you have to think about what are some of the other ways that you can build credibility because these investors they're actually auditing your credibility before you ever even get in the room and so it's like the first mistake is my product is alone is enough and the next thing is that my pitch deck is enough and so you think that those are the only two things that you have to have and then you're just going to have these millions and billions of dollars that are poured into you not recognizing that when they're auditing you before you ever even get in the room you can actually prohibit yourself from being able to get in the room if they don't see the right things when they're auditing you before they even give you the opportunity to pitch them

wow yeah that like you you you don't know who who's who's scouting you who's watching you um as as you're doing your thing maybe building in public but yeah that that's uh yeah I'm sure a lot of a lot of folks kind of miss that um so so lost lost in just building the thing and um I guess uh from the standpoint of um I guess first impressions uh so to speak there I I I kind of see this from two angles one is like your actual product right um having a really good landing page with like a one-s sentence kind of um uh hero on one sentence kind of pitch of in your hero section kind of explaining what the thing is but um coming coming at it from an angle of like if you were to pitch this to your mom or your grandparent or something would they understand right a lot of a lot of people miss that don't don't get don't get that right so you already get dock some points um for I don't know what your product does so and I've seen it I've seen it so much right um and then the other side of this coin is kind of uh I think what you were alluding to is kind of how you present yourself um and and kind of post that credibility behind you i I guess um I'm curious did do you have a recent example um of a company or somebody you kind of um took through this process and um like what they were before and and after you got through with them uh what they looked after

absolutely because I think that what's more important than you describing what the product does is you talking about why it matters now more than ever because that's what people need to hear whether it is how why it matters now more than ever in their own lives or business or whatever the exact use case is or why it matters more than ever where the industry is headed or where the the the the country is headed or the world is headed or whatever your ecosystem is that's what's even more important because the button in the upper right hand corner or the you know whatever the you know you have the UI and you have the UX and so whatever is actually happening with the button that where the button is located or what happens after I push the button really doesn't matter as much i I I take every when I take people through this exercise I always use this analogy first i say if you have a broken hip and you go to the surgeon you don't really care that the surgeon is going to lay you down supine on the table and they're going to make a transverse cut that's 2 in like you don't really care about any of that what you do care about though is when this surgery is over maybe I have to have a little bit of rehab but we're not going to get into the nuts and bolts of that but when this surgery is over am I going to walk without pain and without a limp but so often when we're talking about our tech we talk about the process we talk about the buttons we talk about what happens on the back end and that's not what people really care about what they really care about are the outcomes and so I say whether you're talking about the product whether you're talking about yourself whether you're talking about the company don't rely on the three bullet points that the comm's people told you to memorize don't rely on what it is that we can probably find on your website what I really want to hear is what is your unique point of view i take this is the exercise that I want everyone to go through right now i want you to go through this if you're listening as the founder and I want you to ask everyone on at least your core leadership team hopefully everybody in the company but at least your core leadership team i want you to ask them what is your unique point of view about what it is that we are building and if they can't answer that in 30 seconds or less and they can't do it without mentioning the product or the company we've got work to do because when you are in a conversation with any of the stakeholders that we've talked about so far the investors the potential customers the media the industry panel that's what's going to cause people to lean in that's what's going to cause people to trust you sooner and that's what's going to cause people to bet on you because out of every tech that I've heard of in the last 3 days I could not tell you about the buttons and what happens on the back end that's not what I remember i don't even hear that anymore it becomes white noise but when I can hear someone tell great stories about why what they're building matters and why it matters now um I can remember um when I got hired at this tech startup he said "Listen I know that I'm bringing somebody like you in way too early my investors don't like it everybody thinks I'm crazy but I want to do something differently uh different." And it was like 30 days into it and they were like "We were right we kind of brought a lot of y'all in way too soon but we really value what we bring to you bring to the table and we want to know will you help us out with some of these other things and eventually we'll get back to what it is that we hired you for." And the reason that I was there to begin with because I still I was probably there four or five months before I really understood what it was that they were building and really understood the industry that they were in but I believed in the founder i believed in why he was building what it is that he was building i believed in how it was going to democratize investing for everyday Americans and I said "Listen unless you're asking me to hang outside of this big building over here and clean the windows I'm here because I believe in you." And that level and it was because of the vision that he had explained to me it was because of his unique point of view it was because of how he was able to share this is where the industry is headed and if we miss this then this is going to be the train wreck that is going to happen for everyday Americans as it relates to where the industry is heading those are the things that you want to highlight on your landing page those are the things that you want to highlight in your pitch to your investors that's what's going to help you attract top talent like there isn't any piece of the company that you're building that the success of that individual sliver is not going to be amplified more in a positive way if you lead with those types of things i call it your leadership identity and it has nothing to do with the product it has everything to do with who you are what you stand for and where this industry is headed and that's the foundational work that has to exist before any communication and media training before any positioning language before any marketing any you know product market fit that foundational work has to live or or you're built you know like you're building your house on sinking sand instead of concrete

yeah yeah and that wonderfully said and uh hopefully uh this resonates with a lot of founders that are watching today and at least one or two of them go through this exercise um at le one or two of them kind of go through it and uh get over that hurdle I I I think that that's worthwhile and um you mentioned it um you mentioned identity and this is part of uh your executive influence framework if I'm not mistaken as one one pillar of it um and the other pillars as I understand are branding and messaging you kind of uh touched on them as you were kind of going through that story but more uh concretely I guess do you want to give uh a strict definition of them so this is

so first of all I hate the word executive presence i think it needs a major reframe i like executive influence better and I have a three-pronged approach it's leadership identity leadership branding and leadership messaging most people want to skip straight to the messaging because they think that that's the only thing that matters right like the actual words that are on the page the words that come out of your mouth but I believe that you have to do that foundational work of the leadership identity first or else the messaging is never going to land so we talked about at Nauseium the leadership identity that's who you are what you stand for where the industry is headed and like what are you willing to die what hill are you willing to die on like what are you willing to say that other people aren't willing to say like all of that stuff is your is your leadership identity your leadership branding are the visible cues that demonstrate it's the perception if you will like it's the visible cues that are the perception that people find like I see a lot of tech people and I'm like if we just look at your headsh shot that you have on your LinkedIn profile it looks like it was taken at a backyard barbecue i can or I can like see the the shoulder of the person that you tried to crop out i don't think that that's the credibility that you really want you know putting out there for yourself you know your bio reads like a resume instead of taking the opportunity to really talk about some of those leadership identity pieces um it is your actual presence of how you show up but it doesn't have anything to do with how you dress because one of the first things that I tell people is that this is not about being performative this is not about you being someone that you're not i just want you to be more intentional about who you are because who you are as the leader and as the individual person is so buried in the tech talk and in the code talk and in the features that we don't even know you know who you are and then obviously the leadership messaging is the crux of what everybody wants to jump to and those are how you clearly articulate your values and how you clearly articulate your ideas in a way that like you said your grandmother or or a 10-year-old can understand

amazing and uh I guess um we're we're basically the kind of the theme I'm getting out of this beyond just um how to kind of represent yourself is essentially storytelling um story like telling the story behind you telling the story behind the company its mission what they do and um yeah we've spoken about it but a lot of technical people just aren't good storytellers or at least at the start I guess

people like the story is the reason why you're there to begin with like maybe you're the founder and you're saying to yourself as someone who I'm making this up as someone who always found themselves in this particular scenario you knew that there had to be a better way like that's the reason that you're building the thing to begin with and that's so much more potent than the individual you know features and and the tech that go that that goes into it um and so the storytelling doesn't have to be this big grandiose thing that you know that you're thinking about the pros and like you know how does it start and what's in the middle like there are people out there that will teach you all of the different story parts that have to be there i say it's not that deep i say just be a real person and think about why you're building what you're building and why it matters that in and of itself is the storytelling like let's not get so complicated in our messaging that we think that this is something that we have to go off and workshop for 90 days and perfect it and have a whole story bank of these are all of the 10 different stories you can tell because I've been I I I thought at one point that that's how how um complicated we need to make it but you really just have to think about talking like a person um and and that in in of itself is is the story

yeah yeah exactly i I I totally agree um and uh as as we live in this world of AI um we're kind of uh drifting away from the authenticity to more of this cookie cutter kind of you you can tell like I I've seen so much uh I've seen I'm very deep in the AI space i've seen um I I can like spot when somebody has used AI either for an image or or or just for their text i guess for the person out there uh that pushes back and says I can just get AI to do my storytelling for me what would you what would you tell that person

i would say that the way to use AI in general is you give it your thoughts and ask it to make you more productive or to refine your thoughts if you're using AI to give you your thought leadership I think that that is a a big mistake so I think that you should use AI i use it in lots of ways um I'm I'm amazed at what I can do now that I couldn't do even you know 18 months ago but um I don't ever allow AI to tell me what to say i tell it what I want to say and then I ask it you know to pressure test it or whatever and then I I I refine it from there but what I will say is is that um the value of human presence is going up and that human presence is the one thing that technology cannot replicate and if you are wanting to outsource and completely replace human presence with technology I think that you are going to struggle as an individual and I think that you're going to struggle as a company because you're going to be just swimming in the sea of sameness and it's only it's only it's only going to get worse and so I think we have to you know I was part of human tech week in San Francisco last month and we have to really look at how humans are continuing to thrive and how we can really continue to maximize human potential you know being integrated alongside of technology look at the companies that got rid of all these people because they thought technology was going to replace them and they had to bring half of them back you know your human presence is still going to matter technology is not going anywhere it's going to continue to advance it's going to continue to get easier i think I said on one of my recent pod podcast episodes if you have a credit card and a weekend you can usually replicate what some people are you know are building who are a heck of a lot more brilliant than the people who have the credit card in a weekend but you cannot ignore the value of human presence or it's going to be very difficult to stand out it's going to be very difficult to close rounds and it's definitely going to be difficult to win categories

absolutely well well said and if an AI is basically doing your marketing for you when it comes to you actually pitching an investor the AI is the one that's speaking for you don't know how to tell your own story so Right and they're going to through that exactly yeah exactly exactly um well Sha uh 30 minutes has flown by uh so quick uh yeah this is a wonderful conversation and I'm so happy um you were able to come on on the podcast and share this uh wonderful knowledge with all our viewers today um just want to give you a chance uh to kind of plug your own podcast and and how people can follow along with you and and how they can get in touch with you if they um they want to get your expertise in

absolutely so my podcast is called the influence economy it drops every Monday and I talk a lot about the things that we're talking about here like how do you actually lead with influence especially as a technical leader um and I would say the best place to find me is on LinkedIn i'm Shaina Rattler Davis on LinkedIn um and not only do I just produce content there but any questions that you have or if you're like "Oh wow we need some of this in our organization." You can DM me i don't have an assistant that is checking you know like my DMs and responding i you know I I respond to every single message myself so if you've heard something here that has pricricked something for you and you want to find out you know how I can help you and your company in this way just send me a message and I I will be happy to to have a conversation with you to see if us working together makes sense

excellent and uh all that information can be found in the description of this podcast below uh so definitely uh check that out and get in touch with Shaina if uh if you so desire um and uh with that uh Shaya again thank you so much uh for taking the time out of your day to uh come chat with us today thank you for having me my pleasure my pleasure and uh I want to wish everybody a happy Friday happy weekend wherever you may be and we will catch you back here for another great episode of Devontail next week till then have a good one folks cheers bye