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Behind the CXO Title: Shaping Mark Larsen’s Path to CEO
In this episode, we sit down with Mark Larsen, a CXO alumnus who now serves as the CEO of Connexure, to discuss his remarkable career growth. Mark reflects on his early days as a CXO, explaining why he chose this career path, how failure contributed to his professional development, and the importance of building relationships in the microcap space. He also offers advice for aspiring CXOs on how to optimize their time in the program.
Transcript
Introduction
Anderson Williams: Welcome to Bigger. Stronger. Faster. the podcast exploring how Shore Capital Partners brings billion-dollar resources to the microcap space. This episode is part of a series in which we interview participants in Shore Capital's CXO Fellows Program about their experiences as a young executive in the microcap space and the role the CXO Program has played in their growth and development.
In this episode, I talk with Mark Larsen, CEO of Connexure and a CXO alumnus. Mark is the first of certainly many future CXOs to make the transition into the CEO role at a Shore portfolio company, so he's in a unique position to offer some hard-won wisdom on his CXO experience. Mark talks about what it's like to step out of consulting and into the CXO role, where you have what he calls skin in the game, a whole new level of both accountability and opportunity.
He shares his key mistakes as well as advice for what ultimately has made him successful. Including leaning on and learning from his fellow CXOs.
Welcome, Mark. I really appreciate you being here and sharing a little bit more about your CXO experience. When you joined the CXO Program back in 2020, you were almost certainly exploring a lot of different opportunities coming out of business school.
What were other things you were looking at and why did the CXO Program seem like the right fit for you at the time?
Mark Larsen: When I was leaving school, I was looking at a couple options, search funds, early-stage startups, private equity portfolio operations at the fund level. And I always had the backup plan of going back into consulting.
What my dad told me was when you leave school, think of it. as getting paid to continue your education. And so I was thinking, in the context of the options that I had, what would be the best role for me to learn, for me to grow, and for me to develop in a holistic way? And the CXO role was really that for me.
I believed it was going to be, that I would get broad based experience across a lot of different business functional hats. It's been that and more.
Anderson Williams: When joining the CXO Program, you were obviously, So you're obviously smart and talented and coming from a good business school and all the other things or else you wouldn't have been looking at the CXO Program and certainly wouldn't have been accepted.
But despite all of that, what did you need to develop in those early days to position you to be a successful CXO? What were some things despite your credentials, despite your consulting background, despite your education. That you weren't quite ready for yet.
Mark Larsen: I have to say, I don't think I'd be hired as a CXO today.
It has gotten way more competitive and we were only the second class of CXOs. There were only, you know, four or so at the time. And so to think of where it's at now and the rigor, I probably wouldn't even get hired today. And so I'm, I feel very fortunate that I snuck in, in the early days of the program.
Anderson Williams: Timing is a big part of life.
Mark Larsen: Timing is a huge part of life. Timing is everything, especially when you're young. So when you think about what are the things that you're ready for versus what you're not ready for, there's a lot that you are not ready for. And you need that power of repetition. One of the things that's really challenging in a small business environment is that every functional area has needs, and you probably have not seen the full breadth of all of the requirements to run a business.
From HR, to finance, to operations, to sales. You might have worked in one of those areas, especially if you worked at a larger company, and you might have even worked in a really particular role or piece of that functional area. Well, now you have to do all of it, and you have to do all of it really fast, and you have to do it right.
So repetition becomes really powerful. I've seen this HR issue before. I know what to do. I don't have to think about it again. I don't have to learn the rules that are going to not get me sued, right? I have a point of view on what makes a good salesperson. I know what I need to do operationally from a process standpoint to organize myself so that my people are productive and they know what to do.
You to experience new things all of the time, but those new things are muscle memory that you've started to develop over the course of your CXO experience.
Anderson Williams: And how, when you think about that, you had a consulting background as a lot of folks do prior to business school or prior to becoming a CXO. What's the difference in that experience of seeing those things as a CXO within a company versus maybe some experiences you had seeing some of those things as a consultant, but being a third party, just what's the difference when you're actually in it?
Mark Larsen: Well, first of all, I have to apologize to all the consultants that I hire because I've seen the inner workings of a consulting firm and I know the tricks and I know the challenges. So I'm a pain in the butt as a, as a buyer of consulting services.
What are the major differences? As a consultant, you're not actually doing anything. Okay. And I know that sounds harsh, but you're providing advice, but you don't actually have to make a decision. And most consulting firms do not have skin in the game.
They're not contingent fee. Well, when you are the owner, I put in hard dollars to this business, right? When I am the owner of the business, I think about it differently. This decision not only impacts my professional career and my development, it also impacts my career. direct return on the business, which impacts my family and the opportunities that I'm going to have.
So I think from a practical standpoint, you have to think like an owner. And as a consultant, you can't do that because you're not one. It doesn't mean that you can't have good intentions, but until your money is at risk, you are not an owner.
Learning from Mistakes
Anderson Williams: You have talked about your challenges early in your career and in your role as a CXO, and I'd like to hear you talk a little bit about those for any other CXOs or people who may be interested in being a CXO listening.
How did you grow and how did you invest in yourself to get beyond some of those early struggles?
Mark Larsen: You have to learn the hard way. And for me, that was making a lot of mistakes. Unfortunately, I wish that I could have made less, but they become really poignant when you make mistakes and you learn from them and you face yourself in the mirror and you recognize, I, that was so bad. That was so painful. That was so embarrassing that I am never going to do that again. I'm not going to fall into that trap again.
So here's some examples, just practical examples. Hiring. Overall, I feel like I've done okay at hiring, but I've made some really bad hires. And when you make a bad hire, it is severely disruptive, severely disruptive.
And one of the biggest learnings that I had is that if you have a doubt in your mind during the hiring process, don't hire the person. You will be better off not bringing someone on than bringing on someone that's the wrong fit. And that was a hard lesson learned because sometimes there's so much pressure to get things done.
And that's when you think anybody can help. And that's when you think anybody can help. Any person that can help. can just come in and be extra hands will be beneficial to this business. That's not the case. You have to find the right people and get the right people in the right seat.
Another thing that was a big learning is when you have a bias for action and you really like to build like I do, you say yes to a lot of things and sometimes you got to try a lot of things, but you got to try those things very quickly.
Fail fast, stick with the things that are working. For me, I learned how to ruthlessly prioritize. My team knows that they could not get a hold of me via email. Now, that's not because I'm non responsive, because I'm doing other stuff that's not important. It's because I'm focusing on what is important. I do email at night when I'm not bothered.
When I'm during the day, I'm on the phone with people. I'm focusing on the type of work that's going to have the highest value add. And so my team knows that when something's important and they need to get a hold of me, it's a phone call or it's a text message. It's not an email. The other thing about ruthlessly prioritizing is you have to focus on what's gonna move the needle.
There's only two levers in a business. This is very simple. You can grow revenue, and you can reduce cost. That's it. That's the only way that you can improve the business. And you want to pull both levers, cost and revenue, in ways that will be most palatable to clients because in the end you are serving a client.
So how do you serve a client? Delight a customer in a way that builds rapport, that builds a relationship, that builds stickiness. And if you're not doing the things that are client centric, that business will struggle to survive in the long term.
Anderson Williams: I can't help but think that most of the people who are accepted into the CXO Program, of course, they are high achievers.
They are such high achievers, they probably haven't failed a lot in their life to get to where they are. And talk more about how, when you're in that position as sort of the youngest executive in the room, how do you manage failure, both in terms of your own self esteem? psyche, but also in terms of keeping and building the confidence of your other team members, your CEO, your board, whoever else is involved.
Just talk a little bit about that because I think that's an important thing to recognize in these early stage companies. You're figuring out a lot of stuff. So how do you deal with failure?
Mark Larsen: I think the very first thing with failure is to own it. You have to say the words, I messed up. I did this wrong.
This was not the outcome I had hoped for, but this is on me. I'm taking responsibility. That is the first step. When you do that, it will help you build empathy. Empathy for yourself and empathy for others who may face that similar scenario down the road. Everyone makes mistakes. Most of the time they're well intentioned.
Managing a business is really managing people. And if you are beating yourself up so much about making mistakes and failing, guess what's happening to your employee when they do that? And you have to be cognizant of that. And as you talk to them, instead of berating them, why, how, why did you do that wrong? How could, why couldn't you have figured that outright the first time?
No, you say, look, that was wrong. What you did was wrong. That's okay. I understand why you did it. I understand how it happened. How can we keep this from happening again? What can we learn from it? Failure is acceptable as long as we learn from it, we grow from it, we develop it.
So creating a culture of failure normalizes it in such a way that instead of beating ourselves up for it, we can use it as a competitive advantage. And that's one thing that I wouldn't say I'm perfect at, but that I'm always striving for. How can I utilize failure as a competitive advantage?
Career Growth
Anderson Williams: So through the CXO Program, you've met with your cohort. You've met with cohorts from other years that have joined the CXO Program along the way.
How has the program itself helped you expedite your growth into your current CEO role?
Mark Larsen: I think one of the things that the CXO Program does really well today is bring in curriculum that is relevant to what you're experiencing in your role at the business.
Every CXO has a totally different experience. No two CXOs are alike in their experience, because you're in different industries, different companies, different people, different deals teams, different titles and roles and progression. And that's fine. It doesn't matter that you're very different from each other.
When you come together, you're learning from leaders who have been through so much that whatever they're talking about is relevant to something you experienced. Whether you're a Chief of Staff or a CFO or a COO or a VP of Development, whatever your role or your title is, you can take the nuggets of wisdom that are functionally valuable and apply it to you and your business.
Anderson Williams: So it's not just academic study. It's not just about leadership, sort of generally speaking. It's really tailored, knowing a lot of patterns that are consistent. You're young, you're hungry, you got new and growing platforms. You've got acquisitions, you've got organic growth, you've got dynamics in the C-suite.
You've got all of these things. It's very much applied as you think of the term curriculum to what each of you is experiencing, despite all of those differences. Right?
Mark Larsen: And one of the most valuable parts of the CXO Program, even if you put aside the curriculum, it's the cohort of people you learn from. We get to come together and talk together as fellow CXOs.
What are you experiencing? Well, I'm experiencing this. I ran into this issue in my company. Oh, I ran into this one. And all of a sudden you are doing two things simultaneously. You are seeing ahead what someone has experienced and what you could experience. And you're also sharing. Your insight, and as you're sharing your insight, you're learning from others.
Oh, you approached it this way and had that result. I approached it this way and had this result. Interesting. Which one makes more sense? You know, well, maybe both are okay. Or maybe, Hey, I'm going to take this little nugget that you did and I'm going to apply it over here. And so when you're going through a similar journey with other people in a totally different environment, you can still learn an immense amount from them.
And so I really enjoy going to my CXO cohort sessions and learning from my peers.
Becoming an Executive
Anderson Williams: As you look at your experience, is there an anecdote or a story that for you really captures the essence of what the CXO Program is and means?
Mark Larsen: So maybe this is less an anecdote and more an example of where I think some CXOs can skew and where I think you want to skew as a CXO.
When you go into any role, you can be strategic or you can be operational. You could be a strategic CFO that instead of just getting the numbers out every month, and having them right, and making sure that you have the right controls in place, you're also talking to the rest of the business and saying, Well, why, why operationally does it cost this?
Why can't we do it this way? Talking to the sales organization. Why is it this way? What if we did that? Thinking cross functionally. Same thing with a Chief Operating Officer. Well, it's easy to say no to stuff. That's hard. Salesperson, right? I don't want to do that thing that the client wants to do. This is how we do things.
Well, maybe the client's right. Maybe this is a broader opportunity. Maybe this is something that we should think about. So my anecdote or my example is, when you hear what a client needs, when you hear what an employee needs, think about it cross functionally. How can I best serve the business, which is a service for clients, such that they, the clients, they, the employees, will keep coming back.
That they'll be excited about the partnership because they're choosing to be here. And an example of that is creating new products and services. Clients and employees want innovation. They don't want things to be stagnant forever. They want to see growth. And focusing on how you can add value to your staff, add value to your clients, is where you can unlock the most potential for CXO.
So whatever you're asked to do, always think what is it that we could be doing cross functionally that will add value to our clients first and our staff second.
Anderson Williams: And as you think about that, I just want to come back to something you said earlier, and thinking about the things you're asked to do as a CXO.
Say a little bit more about what you spoke to about ruthlessly prioritizing, because it seems to me that in a growing company, and as someone who is a junior level executive, that it would be easy for all the stuff to run downhill, as they say, to the lowest level of the C-suite.
How do you ruthlessly prioritize when you're in this position? Is there any practical or tactical advice from your lessons learned?
Mark Larsen: So, first of all, you're gonna be working a lot of hours. You're right, everything rolls downhill. And when you're the first major executive hire in a business, When you're a CXO, the expectation is you're going to sprint and get a lot of work done.
But you're not a superhuman. You only have so many hours in a day. You only have so many hours in a week. You only have so many hours in a weekend. And you only have so many weekends a year that you can actually work before you're burnt out. So, there's a point where you have to say no. And it's knowing that how to do that and when to do that.
For me, it was, I'm going to, Always have my list of initiatives and when I have my one on ones with my CEO, I'm going to go over that list of initiatives with him or her and I'm going to say, this is what I am doing and this is why I'm doing it. And they then know exactly where I'm focusing my time. And whatever is on the bottom of that pile, they know the likelihood of that getting done is low.
And so if they want it done, they'll tell me they want it done, and they'll move it up. But I'm telling them this is what I'm doing, and then I'm giving an opportunity for them to correct the prioritization based on what they view as most important.
Anderson Williams: I love that. And just maintaining alignment, but also making it clear, having it documented, being able to use that time in person to say, here's what I think the priorities are, correct me, adjust as you see fit. And then you can align when you say no or yes, I can do that. But that means this other thing can't get done. Is that what we want to do? It's all been sort of discussed and agreed upon, at least at the outset.
Mark Larsen: You got it.
Anderson Williams: Yeah.
Lessons Learned
Anderson Williams: So as you look back, what advice would you give the version of yourself in 2020 that joined in the CXO Program?
What advice do you give that version of you?
Mark Larsen: The advice I'd give myself in 2020 is it's okay to go slow at first. So early on in my CXO experience, I completely fell on my face very early on. It was so bad that I was put on a performance improvement plan. I was on the chopping block to be let go. It wasn't because I was not performing, it was because I had ruffled the feathers of important relationships with the business.
And that was a really important learning early on for me, is it's okay to go slow. You don't have to accomplish everything at once. People need time to process. They need time to get aligned. And if you try to push an agenda that others are not on board with, it will create friction that is detrimental for the business.
So for me, the biggest feedback that I would give is you're going to be hungry. You're going to be excited. You're going to be exuberant. Those are all really positive things. Take those things and use them to fuel your energy towards productive outcomes. But don't push where you're sensing friction.
Wait, give it time, align, slow down, have conversations. And through that, you'll know what it is you need to prioritize so that you don't make the same mistakes that I did.
Anderson Williams: So what do you know now about the microcap space that you wish you had known when you signed up as a CXO back in 2020?
Mark Larsen: I don't think I knew the microcap space existed in 2020.
I didn't know there were this many cool little businesses out there with 20 employees, 50 employees, 100 employees that are doing very interesting things that have great cultures that are in unique areas and unique positions. I love this space. This is so much more fun than big company nonsense. I'm sorry, but it's just, it's,
Anderson Williams: I'm with you man.
Mark Larsen: It is so much fun to be in a small environment where, you know, people, you care about people, you have community and a job is more than the work.
Your career are the people that you're putting yourselves around. Your career is not the name on your resume or the title that you have at a big company. And that is thrilling. It is fun that you can build relationships in this space. That is what microcap is all about, relationships.
Anderson Williams: So what do you know now about business that you wish you knew back in 2020 when you joined the CXO Program?
Mark Larsen: I think one of the biggest things that I wish I had learned prior to this is you want to be in the businesses where there's naturally the highest margins and the highest moats, the highest barriers to entry. And it turns out that there's some businesses that are just really, really hard to operate. A TPA was one of them.
It is so hard to run and I learned that the hard way going into it. I think there's tons of business opportunities out there that you can delight customers, that you're close to the customer. You're adding value to the customer in a way that's really impactful and really visible.
Those types of businesses. are ones that I'm more excited about today than I've ever been.
Anderson Williams: And what do you know now about leadership that you wish you had known back when you started the CXO Program?
Mark Larsen: I think one of the things that I learned about leadership is that it's not just how you're perceived, it's also how people feel about you.
Do they believe you? Do they believe that you have their back? Do they believe that you will be there for them to help them grow and develop and meet their needs? And are you doing those things? Are you actually there to support them and to help them grow? And that's been an interesting lesson for me.
You being in a, one, being in a executive role, a COO chair, or a CEO chair, or CFO chair, or whatever. That does not make you a leader. Having people that say, this person will go to bat for me. I would work for this person in a heartbeat that makes you a leader. And that's something that for me has completely changed my perspective on how I'm progressing in my career and want to progress in my career.
I want to work with people that I love working with and that hopefully will want to continue to work for me.
Advice for CXOs
Anderson Williams: So if you had advice for any current or aspiring CXOs, What pieces of advice would you give to them to optimize the CXO experience?
Mark Larsen: So the first and probably most important advice I would give is create the micro CEO experience.
What do I mean by that? The role of a CEO is three parts to set the vision, to hire the team, to hold the team accountable. The great news about that is that you can do that in almost any role. You can create a vision for your functional area. If you're in a CXO role, you probably are going to hire people.
So you will have the opportunity to bring in your own team, to coach your own team, and to hold that team accountable. And then, your results will not be yours. They will be your team's. And you're going to be judged off of how you set that vision, How you hired that team and how you held them accountable to drive results.
So create that micro CEO experience as soon as you possibly can as a CXO, whether that's owning a small P&L, creating a new product, something that will allow you the light version of sitting in the CEO chair.
The second thing I'd say is, this is growth equity. In growth equity, we really don't care about cost, right? We do, in that we want, you know, to have a reasonable margin. But what we care about is growth. How do we move the needle from a revenue perspective in a profitable way? So always be thinking about, what are the honeycomb opportunities? Where could we go? How could we pivot such that, We can grab more wallet share or we could attract a new type of customer base or a new sales channel. And if you're thinking that way and you're testing things and trying things and you get a good hit or two, you will be well positioned to have success as a CXO.
And the third thing I'd say is become an industry expert. In order to effectively grow the business, you have to understand the business in a really deep and meaningful way. You have to be connecting the dots. You have to see the future. You have to be planning and pivoting. And so you need to become an industry expert. Even if you'd never heard of the industry before, you step foot in there like I had never heard of self funded medical benefits for small and medium sized employers.
Doesn't matter what the industry is, you are there in that business. You need to become an expert. Go to the industry conferences. Talk to all the salespeople that you can. Talk to your teams, to founders. Participate in M&A where you're learning from other founders from other businesses, even ones that you don't buy. Become an industry expert and that will make you better in your role
Anderson Williams: Mark, this has been incredible. And I know that your hard won wisdom will benefit current and future CXOs alike. So, really appreciate your time and best of luck in the CEO seat.
Mark Larsen: Thanks. Appreciate it.
Anderson Williams: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure and check out our Microcap Moments episode featuring Mark that focuses more broadly on his journey to the C-suite, inclusive of but beyond the CXO Fellows Program. This and other episodes can be found at www.shorecp.university/podcasts or anywhere you get your podcasts.
This podcast was produced by Shore Capital Partners and recorded in the Andrew Malone Podcast Studio with story and narration by Anderson Williams, recording by Austin Johnson, editing by Reel Audiobooks, recording, sound design, mixing, and mastering by Mark Galup of Reel Audiobooks.
Special thanks to Mark Larsen.
This podcast is the property of Shore Capital Partners, LLC. None of the content herein is investment advice, an offer of investment advisory services, nor a recommendation or offer relating to any security. See the Terms of Use page on the Shore Capital website for other important information.