Five years of the CTO Advisor - Melissa Townsend

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All right, you're listening to another episode of the CTO Advisor podcast. I have a truly special guest this week. Can you introduce yourself? Yes. I am Melissa Townsend, the one and only CTO, wife of the CTO Advisor. Yeah, I only have one wife. That is, people are shocked by that actually. You are Mrs. CTO on Twitter? That's what I meant to say. I am Mrs. CTO, the one and only. All right, so we've got to get you verified on Twitter somehow, because I don't want there to be some mystery Mrs.

CTO. Oh, they don't want the smoke. All right, so why am I having Mrs. CTO on the podcast this week? It is because this month is the fifth year anniversary of the CTO Advisor. Pop the champagne, woo, yay. We want to give you a behind the scenes look about, walk back in history of how this craziness all got started, how we pivoted, and how did we end up where we're at now, which is literally in Granby, Colorado, recording inside of our Flying Cloud Airstream on our way to VMworld 2020, I'm sorry, VMware Explorer 2022.

So Melissa, let's not rely on my memory. How did this whole idea of the CTO Advisor come about? How did it come about? I would have to say the idea came longer than five years. I want to say it probably began maybe in 2010, and at that time I was so resistant in starting any type of business, because we still had young children at that time, and so a business was not on, at least my type priority. And then once our children got of age, I guess you decided to move with the caution of wind with it five years ago.

Yes, I want to say it started in 2010, the vision and the thought of being in business for yourself, and it manifests in 2019, 2017, that would be five years, 2017. So I can give a little insight and color behind that. In 2010, I had this idea of starting a consulting company, traditional tech consulting, like someone would pay me $150 an hour and I installed VMware vSphere for them, and basically independent. I really didn't have a really solid business plan on how I would grow beyond a one-person IT shop.

But you was contracting at that time as well. Yeah, I was contracting. I was doing a little contracting. You were doing a little contracting at that time. We were coming out of the recession, and I was doing a little contracting, and I thought to myself, well, maybe I can make a goal of this. I'm making a decent amount of money on individual contracts, but it wasn't enough to, I didn't have enough pipeline to sustain a business. And I don't think you were part of the community as well at that time, as far as vSphere, vMug, all those communities that's floating out there.

So I don't think the community aspects of having the community be a part of your journey in this walk that we've been on so far existed at that time. And I think that without that, we probably wouldn't have been where we're at now, because they played a big role in becoming who you are right now. Yes. Back then, I was Virtualized Geek. Actually, I wasn't even Virtualized Geek yet. I think that's when that started, because you was more into the engineering part during that time versus the CTO advisor and the cloud and all those things.

So yes, that's when you began, that's when that baby was formed. Yeah. So that's when I started blogging, 2010, I went to work for Lockheed Martin. We moved to the East Coast. I went to work for Lockheed Martin. I learned what it meant to be a proper engineer. I was super excited about like, wow, I was just an IT guy before then. You were excited about it. I was excited about it. We needed a job. Lockheed Martin relocated us from Chicago to Maryland.

You loved it there, right? That was a good opportunity. As far as opportunity was, I think that was a great move for you. Like you said, that was the beginning of molding who you were going to become in the future. I think without that move and branching out into a different era, you'd never know what we would be at this point. But fast forwarding with the business the way it is now, I think that hindsight looking back, I'm still happy that we started the business 2017 because we met a lot of great deal of people that was influenced in our life for the business.

Yeah, because without a doubt, I've worked with some great brands before Lockheed Martin. I was at the Chicago Tribune. I was at Deutsche Bank. I've worked with some really great brands. Lockheed Martin, combined with my undergrad degree, and then a couple of years later, my master's really put me on the radar. I started to get recruited by big fours, PwC recruited me, and we took the opportunity to go back home to Chicago. I spent a couple of years on the road with PwC.

I got burnt out, and I came to you and said, hey, I got this crazy idea that I'm going to quit my job without having a job because I've started to do this community thing. I'm a well-known influencer. I think I had a total of 2,000 or 3,000 Twitter followers at that point, and I thought I could find a job. Create a business around your brand. Yeah, I could eventually create a business around the brand. Looking back and being honest, I thought then I had an opportunity to create a job.

I was looking at the VMware. Actually, you're right about that. Even when you applied at several companies, you were hoping that you have created a job that the industry saw as an influencer, but an influence from within a corporation. I thought it was a really great ideal for the industry, and I still think that it's a great ideal that we ... I don't know if I want to brand us as influencers, though. Well, you've used the word several times up to this point.

At that time, yes, because when you're trying to start a business in this market, you are going to influence someone along the way, or you are going to be an influence for someone along the way if you are using the general public as a part of your brand. That's why I use that word influence. At the beginning, we were influencing the industry. Now, I look at us as a consulting company versus an influence company because we are steady looking for ways to innovate, if I'm pronouncing that word correctly.

Yeah, you're using it correctly. The business, and it's not so much just as influences, but as content creators, marketing. Analysts. Analysts is another one. The business has thrived to become what we set out for it to be, and it's continued to thrive, and I'm really encouraged by the work that we have done along the way and the people we have helped along the way to bring aboard as a part of our team. Yeah, so let's continue the walk and how, again, how we get to this point because this wasn't, to your point, this wasn't always clear.

Back in 2017, when we, so I had spent the time at PwC. I went from PwC to one of our clients at V, managed the SAP infrastructure there for a few years, and then I just said, you know what? It's time. It's time to start this thing. I came to you and said, hey, I'm making about 30%, 30, 40%, was it? 30, 40, 50% of our income that we needed to survive at that point on the side. Well, you know what?

When you came to me, I actually thought she was having a midlife crisis, but without the age. So, because in my head at that time, I wanted a corporate leader in my, as my husband. I wanted you to be a corporate leader. I wanted you to be the next CFO or director of whatever industry you was in because I knew you had that potential. I had no desire to be a CFO, maybe CIO. So, coming to me, I was like, okay, this guy is definitely having some type of midlife crisis.

People go through changes in their career. Why mess with your career when you're doing so well far as connection with the industry? Yeah, you get a little bumps along the way, you get a little slap on the hands, but I still in my heart of heart wanted you to elevate not from a private sector as a business, as your own business owner, but within the corporate industry as well. So, I was not on board with the ideal. I was mainly not on board because you have already made your mind up at that time that you wanted to do, you wanted to start your own business.

And you're always two steps ahead of me in your thinking when it comes to the business. Even today, you're always two steps ahead of me in the business. And that's something that at that time, I was like, wait a minute, hold on. You already manifest this. You just need me to manifest this. And I'm like, okay, I've already manifest what I wanted you to be. And it was not starting a business at that time. And then you were looking for my help.

And I say, okay, what does that look for me? Do I stop thinking about what I want to do as far as my career? So, we went down that pipeline. How do we get me to the point to believe in your vision for the business? So, this is, again, some introspection. And we're kind of opening the closet behind our thoughts early days. And I have this philosophy in our relationship that I don't make a major move that, even if I, in my heart of hearts, believe it's absolutely right, I don't make that move without you being on board with the move.

So, you're correct. I made the decision. This is what I wanted to do. But I would have stayed working at AbbVie. Great job. Pension. Decent salary. Pretty secure. A company that had a $15, $20, $30, $40 billion a year drug. Company with a bright future and still has a bright future. I still have a lot of great colleagues that work there. And it took me some convincing you to get there. So, what eventually convinced you to say, Okay, we're going to take this leap of, not just leap of faith, but completely different course of action that has impacted our life.

We didn't know how it was going to impact our life back then, but it has definitely impacted our life. What was the deciding factor for you to give me the green light? I think you just said it. I think you just said it best. That with your thought processes, you're not going to take a leap of faith in this business without me being on board. And I think that was the number one thing that you were considering me. It wasn't an ego thing.

It wasn't a selfish thing that you're taking ownership of your career and that I just needed to get aboard. I think that was the biggest thing that I see in you and that I continue to see in you, that you are an individual who thinks of everyone else before yourself. You'll ultimately make a decision about something, and it won't just be about just you. It'll have so many other people in mind. You might not know the full direction of how you're going to play it out, but your decision and your thinking is always connected to somebody else.

And that's something that you don't see a lot in the industry that when people are starting to start their careers or start a business, it's usually about them. When it's with you, it's not that. And I think that was my main thumbs up, that not only in our relationship you're thinking about me, even as you're going to start this new company, you're thinking about me. And that just really showed me the type of character you was from a business, not as a husband.

So let's talk about kind of the guardrails we set up at the time. I came to you with a proper business plan. I said, hey, this is where our revenues are today. Here's where I project those revenues will be in the future. And here are some guardrails around savings, pipeline, etc. We were hitting on all of those metrics when at the beginning, at the beginning. And I decided, well, not just I, we decided to pivot and stop the business.

The reason why we decided to pivot and not just stop the business, maybe put it on pause and for me to take a job was because the business became that influencer business that you talked about. But that's not what we envisioned. What we envisioned was a business in which I primarily be doing advisory work and I do influencer work kind of on the side, content creation and sponsored content, what our business is today. But we noted that we needed something like 30, 40, $50,000 more of investment in order to pivot the business because the two businesses were completely different.

And we said, oh, well, you know what? Yeah, it's a decent business, but we weren't. That's not the business model I bought to you. So we, we paused. I went to work for VMware and I actually really like it. It was always a dream of mine to go work for VMware and six months late. I mean, not even six months, what, two, two and a half months later, I got laid off a little bit longer than maybe three months because I was on shadow payroll for about three months.

So three months later I got laid off. Talk about our decision process to restart up the CTO advisor versus me going back and looking at some of those other jobs that were available to me outside of VMware with some of the other industries. Why did we decide that? So I think again, this is just shows, it just shows who you are as an individual on something I just talked about, just who your character is. And I feel like at that time that we didn't give the business enough time to manifest.

And just like with any business, capital plays a big, a big role. And if you, if people know me, I'm not really a risk taker when it comes to my money. Hmm. Hmm. I know. So that was, that was really, that was a really tough conversation for us is how do we give the business enough lead way to do what it needs to do? Because it wasn't never about, can we do it? That was never a thought in my mind because if it was, we wouldn't have not had the business.

So it was more about how do we give the business the opportunity to have enough leeway to financial is itself. So once we understood that part of the business, we just needed to come up with the capital. All right. So let's, let's, let's bring this, let's land this plane. We went from you being cautious financially, which you still are to last year. Let me, let me check my math. We're, we're spending about 80 to $83,000. Yes. That's a lot to bring our Airstream.

One, we bought Airstream, we bought our Airstream onto the show floor. It's your, all your idea. Why are we doing this? Why are we doing this? Because in this whole conversation, we have been talking about, it's been your business. And at some point alone, the way that change, it no longer became your business. It became our business. And I didn't feel intimidated anymore. Owning the ownership of owning that thought. So for me, if I'm going to own the ownership of being a part of my husband's vision, then I fully had to believe in it.

And to help him to believe in it and to be successful with that vision. And so I think once I owned it and understood it, and just getting some great advice from one of my dear friend, Kat, I call her Kat. Kat Troyer. And just every time I'm with her, just having those one-on-one conversations about how do I stay independent as a woman? Or how do I be more, or how do I be more independent as a owner in the business?

Has helped me along the way a great deal. So I appreciate, again, just having people there that see the vision with us. That has helped me to see that this is no longer Keith Townsend, CTO business. This is Keith and Melissa Townsend. And we have been on this road together, and we will continue to be on this road together. So I think that's played a major role in why I'm okay with moving forward with you. So let's leave the audience with a teaser.

Any big vision plans? Are we going to put on a conference or something one day? This is pretty big. Bringing the trailer onto the show floor of VMware Explorer is you. So, again, I am not the... I'm like the person that, once you get me on the ice, I like to just go very slow. And you are the person, once you're on that ice, you like to glide through it very fastly. And so being on the conference floor is so scary, but so exciting because I can see it in my head.

And see how it's going to play out. But at the same time, I'm a numbers person. Show you the numbers. So if I want to put on this conference... So I'm a numbers person. We can go fast as we want to if you show me the numbers. So to me, I'm keeping it real. I'm all about the numbers. That's my job, CFO. Chief Financial Operation. If you show me the numbers, I'm there with you. All right.

So we had a behind-the-scenes look at the CTO Advisor. The history of it. How did we get here as both a married couple and business partners? How do we run the business? How do we interact with our partners, our mentors, our community? com. Melissa is MrsCTO on Twitter. She doesn't tweet too much. I'm getting there. She at least has a Twitter account. And I'm at CTO Advisor. Talk to you next CTO Advisor podcast. Oh, and visit us in booth 704 at VMworld, where it's floor.

Come by and see the Airstream.