[00:00:28] Jay: Hi everyone. Welcome to the First Customer Podcast. My name's Jay Aigner. Today I am lucky enough to be joined by Mark Wormgoor. He is the tech coach and CEO at the Maverick CTO. Mark. How are you buddy?

[00:00:40] Mark: I am good. Very good. How are you?

[00:00:42] Jay: I am great. As I told you, I lined up all of my company's reviews in a matter of a couple days, and these have been nonstop meetings, but it's very nice to have a break to talk to a successful business owner. where are you based out of my friend. 'cause it's not America, that's for

[00:00:57] Mark: It is, no, it's evening here already. I'm based in the Netherlands, Europe, and now we're six hours ahead of you guys.

[00:01:05] Jay: Six hours ahead. and we talked about this a little bit on our pre-call. just, very briefly, can you, kind of tell us the tech landscape over there? Like what does it look like for a dumb American like me who has no idea what the tech scene or even just the business environment over there?

[00:01:23] Mark: So Netherlands, actually quite a small country with about 18 million people, yet it is extremely international. So we have a lot of really big international headquarters here. We have shells here. AOLs, which is also, big in us. ING, Ava Amro. So we have a KLM, a lot of very big international companies here, headquarters here.

I think historically the Netherlands, because it's so small, is extremely internationally oriented, and that also means we have quite a big tech scene, big startup scene. And yeah, I think it's quite cool. So I'd say the Netherlands is quite advanced in terms of startups, technology, but also big corporates.

It's quite a business oriented country.

[00:02:02] Jay: So tell me about growing up. Did you, you know, did your environment or your family or anything else kinda lead you to being an entrepreneur later in life?

Not at all. Love that answer.

[00:02:13] Mark: no. Both of my parents are in like regular or were in regular jobs. I would say, so not at all. I actually have, when I. after studying, I actually went to go to work. I had a regular tech career, so the first, I'd say 25 years of my life I spent in, in corporate life. So only four years ago did I decide to make that switch and actually become an entrepreneur.

I.

[00:02:35] Jay: What in the world made you do that?

[00:02:39] Mark: That's a very good question. So, I had a really cool career, when, back in the day in my career, I had this vision when I'm like 55, 60, I want this cool corporate job. I want to be head of IT operations. I want to be this big SVP role at a company. That was my vision for my career, and that's where I was gonna end my career.

I turned 40 and I got this job actually given to me. Almost in my lap, which was really cool, but that was about 15 to 20 years early. So I did that job for the, for about five, six years, which was incredibly cool. And there I was 45 thinking, what am I gonna do next? What's next for me? Am I gonna go CIO and continue my career or am I gonna do something completely different?

It actually took me almost a year to figure that out and I decided that I wasn't gonna work for someone else anymore. I didn't want a new boss, somebody else to please. I was gonna do this on my own and either be very successful or fail on my own.

[00:03:32] Jay: Well, you're living in a house with electricity in a computer, so I'm guessing it didn't fail miserably. who was your first customer when you stepped out? Like, tell me. Well, I guess, let's take a step back. That what I will call, maybe ignorantly, a sabbatical, which a lot of people seem to take after they have kind of worked through the ringer and they go, oh, I can't work with anybody else.

I've heard that a lot. what really like came out of that? To cause you to start a company, right? Because I mean, you could have just sat around, I don't wanna work with anybody. and then you end up going right back because it's easier and it's, you know, you had opportunities. what really drew you to starting your own business?

[00:04:09] Mark: Yeah, so I was in, in that year. I had already decided that I was gonna quit. I hadn't told my boss yet, but I already knew that I was gonna resign. I wanted to do something else. I spoke to a number of different recruiters. I actually got different job interviews and at one point I got the actual job.

that was really cool. and it's Dutch tech company. They actually have a location in San Diego and they needed somebody to lead. Department in San Diego and I was interviewing for the job. I had an interview here, and I was driving home from the interview and the only thing I could think was, this is gonna be my boss.

He's gonna be the guy that's gonna be talking to me every week and wants to know how I'm doing and is gonna ask me about the sales and gonna ask me about everything else. And I just couldn't do it. That, and

[00:04:52] Jay: gonna guess you didn't like him. You didn't like him very much,

[00:04:56] Mark: So he felt to be well. I have to be nice, but let's not give any names. He felt like he was too hands on.

Like I was really gonna be looking over my fingers, what I was doing, that's what it felt like from the interview. That didn't help, but it was also just the feeling I'm gonna have another boss, and even though I'm gonna be in, on the West Coast and I'm gonna be doing my thing. This guy still wants to call me every day, every morning and just talk to me and figure out how I'm doing.

and no, that, that was a no go for me at that point. And then I figured I'm not gonna go there again. Every company, I'm gonna have a boss that I need to report to, and I'm not gonna go there. it's done.

[00:05:29] Jay: So what was step one when you went out to start your own business? What did you do?

[00:05:33] Mark: So, step one, and I was very lucky that I mean, I had a really good job. I had some savings lined up. so I didn't have to make money from day one, which was really good for me. The first thing I actually did was I joined a. I found somebody else and we were gonna do a startup like, and it was gonna be of course, extremely successful.

And thinking with my background, I would make that extremely successful. So we paired up the two of us. I found somebody else, I found a co-founder. She was also a bit, right, not 25, but she was my age. Real cool background in marketing. And we started this together and we started working on this cool startup.

It was a really cool marketing platform for freelancers. Cool idea, but it never got off the ground. So we never found our launching customers. We never really made money. We developed something cool, but we couldn't get an audience. so that was my

[00:06:19] Jay: can we, let's pause right there. One second. I have a great, I have a question about that, and don't take this the wrong way, but why would you build it if you and I see this trap over and over again, but why would you build it if you didn't know who you were selling it to? Well, what were you thinking when you were building?

You were thinking we're gonna find the people that we know. It's such a good idea that people are gonna like it.

[00:06:41] Mark: Absolutely. So, and I and I realized, right? I mean, I've read all the startup books and I've read so many blogs and seen so, or so many podcasts since, but I was ignorant. I came from a business life and I wasn't listening to any startup podcast or anything else, right? So I came into this completely new, I fell into the trap.

So we figured we'd build something and we needed to build something to actually show it to people and to be actually, to be able to engage them and get them onboarded. and if they would see it, they would come, right? that was our. Idea I've learned from there, right? So don't get me wrong, but that was, I fell into the trap.

[00:07:12] Jay: Got it. No, that's fair. I mean, look, you didn't have the first customer podcast to listen to back then, so that's, I mean, we could have saved you, some years, but, all right, so you tried the startup, and then what I.

[00:07:24] Mark: that went absolutely nowhere. so in order to do make some money, I did take an interim job at the time. And, about a year later, I decided that I was gonna go and. That's when I started the agency that I have Tyre, it's a software development agency and we started out doing software development for startups.

So we build a team of software developers from the Philippines and we do software development, for startups.

[00:07:48] Jay: I do QA outta the Philippines, so we should chat sometime. very cool. So, But now the business you run today is CTO focused. Tell me more about it. What is Maverick CTO?

[00:08:00] Mark: So this summer I decided, I've been on a coaching program with a really cool Canadian coach, Dan Martel, since last year. and I love how he does coaching 'cause it's both coaching and mentoring and it's somewhere in between the two. And I really love that and I have so much experience in technology myself.

not just in technology, but also in the leadership and building a team, hiring team, motivating stakeholder management and all of those leadership skills. And what I really enjoy is to share that with others. I didn't really have a cool name for that yet. And then I was thinking just before the summer, I think it was around June, what am I gonna call that?

And what really resonates with me? And I got to the Maverick CTO and it's cool to me because it stands for somebody that is yes, in technology, right? The CTO part. But he's also bold vision and really goes out there to make a difference in the business that it works for. And that's what I really like and that's how we started in, in June, seven months ago.

[00:08:57] Jay: Another Dan Martel protege on the show. I think you're the th no. he is, no, he's, he is made a lot of impact. I do like Dan, I'm trying to get him on the show eventually, but yes, we've had several people that are friends or mentors or, you know, have been coached or part of his network,on the show, so very cool guy.

and what is it, what's the company? He runs? SaaS Academy. Is that it? I think it's SaaS Academy, right? Yeah. Yeah. Very

[00:09:21] Mark: He is no longer, well, he is still on Size Academy. I think he's less involved in that now, and he just runs Dan Martel Media Coaching, and yeah, that's what he does these

[00:09:30] Jay: When you have like four Maseratis, I think you can go do whatever you wanna do. so, how did you start being a coach from being a tech founder? And like, did you just need to get a customer and figure it out? Like, how do you make that switch?

[00:09:48] Mark: it's been a, it's been a slightly longer journey. so back when I was still in my corporate career, I frequently had people come to me and ask me for advice, and they asked me questions like Mark, and it wasn't my own team, but it was people in other teams. And I said, mark, I. I've had this feedback from my manager and I just don't know what to do.

Could you give me some advice? Or Mark, I'm in this project and I have these people that I'm dealing with and they're extremely difficult and I don't know what my next step is, and can you help me? So, and I love those conversations. I really love helping people that are in difficult situations and that are trying to figure out the next step.

After I, left my corporate career and started doing my own thing, I knew that I wanted to learn more about coaching. So I did a formal coaching training for the first year in addition to my startup, I did a coaching training, not with the intent of ever becoming a coach, but because I thought the skills that I could learn there were really cool.

So I did that. That was a couple of years ago, so I already had the skills and the knowledge of what it means to, to be a coach, and I had all the training already, so that made it a lot easier for me to start.

[00:10:51] Jay: I see so many business coaches. Well, just in general, I see lots of business coaches just 'cause I'm on LinkedIn, so I of course see them all day every day and being on pod match, I see them all day every day. but, I am curious, like I. I, for example, I'm in the same boat as a business owner, as like a, you know guy that's all over LinkedIn.

Like people ask me all the time stuff. How do you make the transition from doing that for free to making a business around it? And is it like, does it make you think differently? Do you have to, I mean, I guess you have to approach it differently, but like. How do you keep that human character in there where like people still want to seek you out and trust you and work with you, but also making like, oh, by the way, it's X number per hour.

Right? Because like that's the big elephant in the room. Like when somebody's coming in for help, like they're usually just, you're not charging them, you're just like, Hey, here's some great advice. 'cause I'm a, I like helping people. how do you. yourself for that to be monetized and prepare people who come to you or may come to you as gonna be monetized.

Did you talk to, you know, previously that you're like, Hey, I'm a coach now. Maybe we should engage together. Like what's that transformation like from a, just a guy giving advice to a coach?

[00:12:05] Mark: Yeah, so I think there's a couple of things. So first of all, I still do this to help people, right? I mean, I love helping people. I love giving advice, I love mentoring. I sometimes do pro bono. So for example, we have some startup incubators here in the Netherlands, and I sometimes mentor for free there, but that's a startup incubator.

and I. Those early startups have no money. I just love doing that and I love doing that for free, but I also need to make a living like everyone else. I do need to make a living, and I'm more than willing to help people also in their career, to give advice,and to really coach them. I. But of course that comes at a cost.

I mean, I'm happy to do like a 30 minute conversation to help other friends. Absolutely. Right? and I do that for a lot of people, but if we actually are gonna be serious about it, and we're gonna talk about serious next step for you as the person being coached and you want to take some serious steps in your career, I think it's worthwhile that you make an investment in yourself and your own career development.

Right? that's one. Two, if people actually pay for something, they take it a lot more serious. So if you pay, let's say if you pay 5,000 for coaching, for a coaching trajectory of like six months, you're gonna take it a lot more serious than if you have a friend who gives you some advice. So it also helps the person that you're coaching because they're gonna take it so much more seriously.

They're gonna invest in themselves and they're really gonna do all the work because in the end, they need to do the work. So if they actually pay for it, they will do the work. They'll be committed, and they will do the work to themselves and be a lot more successful.

[00:13:33] Jay: What a great sales pitch. What a great answer. I'm kidding. I know. You're being serious. But yes, that is a great pain point and,addressing of that pain point. Never stop selling, man. well, very cool. who was your first. Customer. How did you get your first customer? How did, was it somebody you knew?

Did you have to make the transition of that conversation we just talked about? Where it was like somebody you knew and then you had to say, Hey, now I'm actually doing this for, you know, a fee. Like, what, how did that happen?

[00:13:54] Mark: So first customer was actually a friend of mine. or actually, so this summer I've been doing some interim work for a company. and, I said I will do the interim work. However, I also now do coaching. So as part of that interim work, and I was more advisory work, I also want to do coaching. So I actually coached a number of people in that organization as part of my engagement.

So I think that was my start. It came through a friend, it was in my network and that was really cool. and at the moment, I mean, it's slowly starting to grow. In October, we did a really cool, or I organized a round table here in Amsterdam. We had, about 25, 30 people there come, we had a really cool US startup come.

And from there even I get people that now ask me for coaching. I do a lot of online content, so it's slowly starting to grow. Now, I get some people from my past as well that reach out and say, mark. I mean, I do a lot of posting on LinkedIn, like you said, like all the other coaches. I do post on LinkedIn and sometimes there's people that I speak to and that have never liked my posts, that have never responded to my posts, but then I meet them in person and they have all seen it.

So even though they don't do anything on LinkedIn. They do see my posts, and they do see that I coach and they all really like it. So it is getting out there and people are seeing the content that I put out.

[00:15:08] Jay: so who did you think you were going to coach when you first started versus who are you actually finding are your customers today?

[00:15:19] Mark: So initially, I had this idea, which was I. Absolutely wrong. that in startups or especially later stage startups that have funding or that have grown, that have a formal CTO on board and that now need to start building their teams. That those CTOs could really deal with some leadership coaching because they were, initially, they were a senior developer and now suddenly they're in a CTO role, which is a completely different role.

You need to build a team. You have all these other responsibilities. You have like board level responsibilities, and instead of three people, you're now 20 people or 30 people and those are the people that could really deal with leadership coaching. I'm not, I don't think I'm wrong still there. but it's really hard to convince those people and find those people and actually to get people to pay for that.

so I've actually stepped back from that a little and never got, I've had conversations with those types of people, but never got anyone convinced to actually get on board. now I do coaching with also corporate leaders, like middle managements in tech organizations and even up to two senior managements in tech organizations.

It's a lot easier. and of course there's more money there. but it also is a, it's a far easier sell. They're a lot more used to having training budgets. They're okay with spending money on a coach and yeah, it's a lot easier. So

[00:16:36] Jay: What would you do if you had to start over tomorrow? If you had to start again tomorrow? Step one for the coaching business. On the stuff you've learned, what's step one?

[00:16:46] Mark: So I, if I had to start over, I think for me, step one was still getting the training and that certification. So I'm really happy that I did that. I learned so many things there about what I do and what I shouldn't do. so that would be absolutely my step one. I wouldn't get into coaching without any training, without knowing what I was doing.

so that, that would be still my step one. I think step two really is. The personal brand, right. Putting yourself out there. And for me, that's also been a journey. When I left my, my job, I remember I was putting my first blog post on the internet, and it was so, absolutely, I was horrified. It was so scary to put a blog post out there to put myself out there, to put myself on LinkedIn.

And I hated it, but I did it. And right now, I mean, I post blogs regularly and it doesn't, I mean, I love doing it. Same thing with video. I know that, if you wanna get out there and you want to go on Instagram or LinkedIn, that video on podcasts video really helps. Right? also something I hated doing.

I hated seeing myself on camera. I hated hearing myself and also just steps to get over. So, building a personal brand, putting yourself out there with videos, with all of the. The thought material that you have built up over the years, I think is incredibly useful and something you just need to do.

and I met a couple of other people that are also running businesses yesterday, and they're even more on it than I am. They just do so much in, in LinkedIn outreach and building their presence on X or on Instagram or on LinkedIn. I think you can't do it enough. the important thing there is to be authentic, right?

So I, I do everything that I put out there. Everything that I say that I do is me, and it really is who I am and what I stand for, and that is important.

[00:18:31] Jay: People can tell the difference.

[00:18:32] Mark: Yes. Really there's no ai. I mean, I use chat GPT for brainstorming 'cause I don't always have great ideas. But after that it's like I do the content, I write the content, I revise the content, I record myself.

it's me that you'll see out there. I.

[00:18:48] Jay: No, I like that. I, when chat, TBT first kind of took over, somebody said, you know, biggest change is that nobody has to sit down with a blank canvas anymore. And I thought that was a very. Albeit probably rosy glasses. Look at, you know, using chat GPTI do, I mean that's what I use it for is ideation a lot of times.

Or just like kind of continuing down a line of thought that you're like, just need some extra ideas that pull something like, oh yeah, like why didn't I think of this one side of this thing? So I, that's how I think you can continue to be authentic, but using the technology to kind of. Enhance your presence online.

I do have two more questions. One is the fractional CTO thing, or the t the tech coaching thing, and the, you know, CTO coaching, exploded. I think last year. I've never, I mean, I don't even remember fractional CTO, you know, maybe a couple years, like really just explode over last. So how have you, and how will you, and I hate.

I don't hate it. I've just kind of gotten tired of the phrase niche down. But how do you really find a thread that you can pull on that's like relevant to your past experience, something you can speak super intelligently about and something that's you stands out from the crowd of, you know, ballooning.

Tech coaching ecosystem that's explo Like how what? What are you leaning towards picking? Have you picked something from your past? Are you looking to pick something? Like, what does that look like? Otherwise, you definitely are just noise with all the other stuff going on. If you are Mr. Generic, you know, Hey, I can help you.

I can help coach your, so tell me what is your angle? How do you go after

[00:20:41] Mark: Yeah, so, My career has been in leadership, in tech, and I could be, I see so many people that are just generic business coaches. I can help you get your business off the ground. I can help you with demand generation and I can help you like, life coaches, right? and there are so many coaches in everything, and I.

I think that's cool, but I think it really helps if you've been there, if you've lived what they are living through. and I think that for me, that is leadership in tech. I, the last team that I led, I had my internal team of about 80 people and I had, we outsourced so much, we probably had over a thousand people all over the world indirectly working for us and a budget of like tens of millions.

That's where I come from. That's what I know. That's where my experience is, and I feel that I can really help. People that are getting up that ladder and that are on that same ladder. So that's where I can really help and coach people. 'cause I've been there and I've lived that life for 10, 20 years.

so that, for me, that's my niche. I can talk about business, growing a business and marketing and sales and finance and everything else, but I. I just don't have that in-depth knowledge like I have on tech leadership. So, and that's why this is my niche. it's what I know. It's what I live.

I've been there all my life.

[00:21:55] Jay: I do. Coaching related. Maybe it is coaching related, but I would just mark for Mark, if you could do anything on earth and he knew you wouldn't fail, what would it be?

[00:22:10] Mark: Oh, wow. that's a big question. A very

[00:22:12] Jay: Big one. It's a big one. it's my favorite pregnant pause in every episode. 'cause people think of, unless they've seen the show before, which rarely happens. But it's typically the mystery question. I like to give people the chance to think.

[00:22:24] Mark: I think there's so many challenges on this earth, but let me take one thing. this is my passion and this is what I also try to do with the work that I have is I love, for me, the world is a really small place. Over my career. I've worked with people from South America, from North America, from Africa, from Asia, from Europe.

in my past team, we had over 30 different nationalities. And to me, the world is a really small place. If I work with people from Brazil or I work with people from Australia or with people from Germany or the us. The big, the differences aren't all that big. so that's really what I would like to change is that people start seeing the world that I do, that people are all the same no matter where they live and no matter what they believe in, and no matter the background or their culture, or whether they're in the Philippines or in the US or in Europe.

Just to give people that feeling that we really are all that close together and that we really aren't all that different, in the families that we come from, the homes that we live in, and the families that we have today.

[00:23:25] Jay: a great one, and I totally agree. mark, if people wanna find you, or find more about Maverick CTO, where do they do that?

[00:23:34] Mark: So the maverick cto.com is the best website. and of course you can follow me, personally on, on LinkedIn and Instagram. I'm there. All my content goes there, but best website is the maverick cto.com. There's also some free stuff on there. We have our CTO com, which we give out free to anyone.

It's a lot of the learnings for me over the years I put out there for free so people can download it there. And, lots of other stuff.

[00:23:59] Jay: Love it. Is there any other Mark Wormgoors on LinkedIn or are you the only one?

[00:24:05] Mark: There's one other guy here in the Netherlands, but trust me just by the profile, you will be able to tell the difference.

[00:24:10] Jay: I'm gonna have to go look and find the other guy. Mark. You're awesome dude. Thank you very much for being on, the best of luck. Have happy holidays, happy New Year, et cetera, and best of luck. We'll keep in touch, brother. Thank you, man. I'll talk to you. See you, mark.

[00:24:24] Mark: Cheers. 

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