Mary Grothe is the founder and CEO of House of Revenue® and Fractional CRO of Spotz. She is a faith-based leader, entrepreneur, global keynote speaker and the host of two podcasts: ‘Revenue Radio’ and ‘Destination Remarkable’.

Mary began her sales career at a Fortune 1000 company where she quickly advanced from an admin role to being the number one sales representative. By following her natural instincts to always put the customers first and listen to their needs, she was able to drive success for her clients and herself and brought in millions of dollars in revenue.

Driven to help others achieve success, Mary founded her first company at the age of 28 and became a business strategist for startups. Over a three-year period, she was instrumental in helping 36 startups reach profitability. Her passion for scaling companies grew and she founded Sales BQ® to expand her reach from startups to companies with $1 million to $3 million in annual recurring revenue.

Mary recognized that focusing on the sales process alone was no longer enough to successfully scale a company, so she evolved Sales BQ® to House of Revenue® and developed a holistic revenue strategy that integrates sales, marketing, branding, customer success and revenue operations. House of Revenue® builds unshakeable revenue foundations set for scale by focusing on all aspects of the revenue engine, essentially creating a Chief Revenue Officer service. In the past year, Mary has helped multiple second-stage growth companies, between $1 million and $10 million in annual recurring revenue, double their monthly recurring revenue within 10 months.

As a faith-based leader, Mary inspires and empowers others to commit themselves to “do remarkable work”, to structure their lives so that they can truly honor their values, and to ask the questions, “What is most important in my life? Do I want to be successful, or do I want to be significant?” She is a global keynote speaker on entrepreneurship and faith-based leadership, and is working on two upcoming books to be published under Forbes. Ahead of Inbound 2022, where she is one of the speakers, she opens up to Eventible about House of revenue, the challenges she faces, her next milestone and much more.

• Tell me a little about House of Revenue, its work, and projects…   

We have hit a revenue plateau and is ready to invest in their entire revenue ecosystem to level up on their journey of scaling between $2M – $10M+. Our comprehensive 12-month revenue scaling program engrains competitive go-to-market and brand strategies and builds up the processes and people required to scale revenue across branding, marketing, sales, customer success, and RevOps.

Led by a Fractional CRO and 5-7 person revenue growth support team, your revenue engine is built inside of your company; nothing is rented – you own it, it works, and you take it over in 10-12 months once the new engine gains repeatable traction. We are not meant to be long-term, but the engine we build for you is!

Most companies struggle to gain alignment between marketing, sales, and customer success. Their mid-funnel and post-purchase activities become inefficient, the division of labor becomes blurred, and the cost to acquire customers increases. Plus, this lack of alignment bleeds into the sales to customer support handoff, retaining customers, and expanding revenue.

We, on the contrary, focus on alignment throughout the entire customer lifecycle, including the buyer’s journey and customer’s journey, so you consistently attract, engage, and delight your customers and holistically scale revenue. No silo approaches here.

As a Fractional CRO with a 5-person revenue growth support team, we work with your team to build a strategic and holistic revenue approach where all revenue departments work together. All of our revenue engines are built on HubSpot; we serve B2B technology, SaaS, professional services, manufacturing, and distribution clients, who have a starting annual revenue between $2M – $10M.

Some consultants might promise “tons of leads” or “expert sales training” to fix your underperforming sales team. That silo approach doesn’t work. You need a growth team that understands all facets of revenue, including branding, marketing, sales, customer success, and RevOps and House of Revenue focuses on that!

• What are the challenges you have been or are constantly facing in your industry today?

Successful revenue leaders are always in high demand. Nearly every company wants more revenue and it takes a talented crew of revenue professionals to make it happen. With that, we typically find ourselves with more opportunities than we can handle and only take on a select few projects that align with our perfect patron-client. That leaves dozens of 2nd stage scaling companies on their own to solve one of the biggest challenges inside their business, which is, ‘how to approach holistic revenue scale?’

Gone are the days of silo band aids. Companies that wish to achieve a holistic scale must invest in all parts of the revenue engine if they’re to succeed, and usually, they’re not desiring to do so. There is still a belief that all their problems can be solved with a new website, a new marketing strategy or a new VP of Sales or sales trainer. 

As a company, the greatest challenge we face is the war for talent. We sell one thing that is our people! In order to consistently win, we must have the most passionate and brilliant people on staff and this labor market isn’t doing us many favors.

• How has the COVID-19 pandemic changed the way you go about business? 

During the pandemic, we lost 60% MRR in 3 days when the shutdown began. To stabilize, we canceled our office lease, reduced headcount by one role that wasn’t performing, cut ancillary expenses, and brainstormed how to provide such an immense amount of value to our remaining clients that they couldn’t fathom cutting us.

We spent one day reworking our offerings (augmenting services from just sales consulting & training to building full revenue engines for our clients including branding, marketing, sales, customer success, and RevOps), and immediately implemented them, resulting in significant revenue growth for our clients in the midst of a pandemic. In 2020, we helped 9 small businesses between $1M – $15M, on average, double their MRR within 10 months, resulting in an ROI of 1,454% and average annual revenue growth eclipsing $3.2 million. 

Then came the CEO Wake-Up Call. After 2.5 years of being the harda$$ CEO, 100-hour workweeks, neglecting my family, and running a cut-throat, ‘make it happen at all costs’ culture, I shifted my internal compass towards creating a calm and loving culture, redefining our core values to serve first (serve ourselves, serve our teammates, then our clients), scale second, and succeed always. With 9 am – 4 pm workdays, unlimited PTO, and 25+ paid company holidays, our company has never been more profitable, and more successful, and our clients have never yielded greater returns. 

• What trends do you see coming into force after the pandemic? 

The greatest trend I’ve seen that impacts us and our clients’ teams is a remote-first and hybrid or office-optional work culture, which has been the most difficult for me to embrace, as we thrive as a team when we are together. As far as the impact on the economy is concerned, the labor shortages and supply issues have affected nearly every aspect of our revenue scaling plans for our clients but we’ve had to adapt.

• What is your biggest objective as a speaker at Inbound 2022?

Spread the love and light! I’m here to engage with Directors, VPs, and C-levels who are ready to refresh their GTM strategy and set their company for scale. As a faith-based leader, my goal is first to always bring a loving and serve-first attitude to the stage and empower everyone in the audience to walk away with real strategies to impact their companies, teams, and clients.

• As a leader, what are the factors, both professional and personal, that drive you? What keeps you going?

I am passionate about one thing, being a good and faithful servant. I rebuilt my life 5 years ago after learning that being a #1 sales rep and earning hundreds of thousands of dollars per year wasn’t the key to happiness. I gave up a very successful career to start learning what I was really put on this planet to do, which is learning about my purpose. Through my journey, I rewrote my definition of success. Boiled down, I had 8 years as a top performer and made a lot of money. Now, I am dedicating my life’s work to serving others.

Soon, I will be publishing a memoir-style book under Forbes and relaunching into the speaking circuit as a faith-based CEO, challenging other executives to lead with heart and create impact, not just bottom-line profit.

• What is the next milestone that you’ve set for your company? As an entrepreneur, what’s the one thing you want to share with those who aspire to become an entrepreneur?

Our immediate milestone is to add two revenue teams to our company by the end of January 2023, two Fractional CROs and two Fractional CMOs. Looking out 5 years, my hope and prayer are that we stayed committed to the path that was being built for us and we honored God while we got to do the work that our team LOVES to do. It may not be the answer you’re looking for, but it seems to be working out for us and our clients. The results from our work in 2021 were off the charts, and we are committed to shining bright and yielding significant revenue growth for our clients.

The one thing that I will share with those who aspire to become an entrepreneur is to understand who you are and what you were created for. What can you do in a loving and powerful way that serves the people of this world? Build a business around that, and your success will come.

• In your opinion, do digital events give you a similar level of feedback/result vis-à-vis the live versions? What would you say are the biggest pros and cons of both formats? Which do you prefer?   

I 100% prefer live events. Nothing compares to the feeling and interaction of a live audience. I have become used to digital events and also love them, but nothing compares to in-person events.

Pros of live events, live audience, interaction, that ‘OMG’ feeling seeing a packed room, and the conversations afterward.

Pros of digital events, no travel! 

• This year we are seeing the comeback of many in-person events. What is your take on in-person events? Do you prefer them over hybrid or virtual?

In-person events… all the way! Digital and hybrid are so convenient for my busy schedule. As a speaker, I prefer in-person events. As an attendee, I prefer the option of hybrid!

• In your opinion, what are the top 3 challenges to returning to ‘In-Person’ events? How could we mitigate risks?

The top three challenges of returning to in-person events are:

1. Ensuring everyone is healthy and not spreading sickness.
2. Ensuring the timing of the event and agenda allows for travel from various areas.
3. Ensuring the speaker has everything they need from a tech/AV setup and ability to dry run or prep before presenting, to avoid hiccups (which drive attendees crazy!)

• Eventible.com is a review platform catering to B2B events. Given how review-driven our lives have become today, do you think reviews will bring in a level of transparency to the events industry? Would you rely on event reviews from other speakers if you had to make a speaking decision?   

I love reading reviews and yes, I believe this is valuable.

• As a speaker on the events circuit, would it be helpful for you to have access to a community that sent you notifications regarding entry calls from multiple events without having to search for them or would you rather sit back and wait for the event organizers to find you?    

100% YES. Sign me up!