Playbook Academy

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Writer

Saucey

Saucey is the leading e-commerce, compliance and logistics provider to regulated retailers. Powering safer and more convenient experiences for customers and retailers. 

We work with regulated retailers across 1,200+ cities to drive additional revenues, customers and provide insights/tools to help them manage their store online. 

Saucey also powers some of the world's largest brands to connect with and understand their end consumers, including Diageo, AB-InBev, Bacardi, Coca Cola, Constellation and more.

Highlights:
-Millions of happy customers across the U.S.
-Grown from $0 to hundreds of millions in sales
-Sent customers to the Super Bowl, Olympics, Adult Summer Camp and more
-Driven hundred of millions in incremental revenue to independent retailers 
-Built smart appliances that auto re-order beer
-Channing Tatum, Nick Jonas and more have all been delivery drivers
-Launched dozens of new brands into target markets

Founder & CEO

ROARKE

Roarke is an unlimited Design & Web Development subscription for the world's most ambitious brands.

Used by SaaS companies, Startups, DTC brands, Agencies, Franchises, and high-growth businesses to unlock their potential online. Roarke supercharges the design and development process, helping companies move faster and bring big ideas to life seemingly overnight.

Partner

Hampton

Hampton is a private, highly vetted community of high growth founders, entrepreneurs, and CEO’s.

Founding Member

Emjay

Emjay is a leading omni-channel cannabis technology platform.

In it’s first two years:
-Hundreds of thousands of customers served
-6 M&A transactions
-Grew from $0 to 7-figures/month in 6 months
-First native iOS application to sell cannabis in the app-store

textPlus, Inc.

textPlus is one of the largest texting & calling apps with over 70M users.

I oversaw US marketing/growth, user acquisition and CRM through digital and traditional channels. Including being one of the first/largest advertisers on Facebook's native ads platform (brand new at the time). Acquired millions of new users/month, tracking performance, executing & reporting against key KPI’s, and identifying channels that brought in higher LTV customers.

Helped plan our international launch. Oversaw all creative for advertising, marketing campaigns, and the textPlus brand.

Lead our ad sales platform, securing $millions in ad revenue from some of the world's largest brands.

Separately split out a small 6-person team to build an ultra low-cost international calling platform. Took it from concept / design / telco contracts to launch in 2.5 months.

Marketing Director & Head of Partnerships

Jarvus (Acquired by textPlus)

(Acquired by TextPlus) Jarvus was an iOS app that let people capture life's moments with their friends and family. It would analyze the geo-tags and time-stamps in your iPhone's photo album, match you with Facebook friends that were in the same places at the same time, and easily create group albums using you and your friend's photos. 

You could apply beautiful filters, effects and stickers to your content, and upload/share the collective "memories" / albums on Jarvus or across your social accounts. 

Featured on Jimmy Fallon. Celebrities shared moments with their friends and fans. TextPlus tagged us in a post on Jarvus that they wanted to acquire the platform. The rest is history.

Coupeez Inc

Coupeez was an early online deals platform unlocking customer savings across local businesses.  

-Lead product design and built the iOS and Android applications (very early app-store days). This is what opened my eyes to how mobile was going to change every business in the world.
-Designed our UI & UX for web, iOS, and Android from scratch. 
-Curated categories of deals and onboarded thousands of local businesses throughout California to our marketplace.

Head of Product

Over the past decade, I've built three multimillion-dollar businesses while growing a family and raising four children.

I started with no resources, no connections, and didn’t have access to the playbooks that would have made the journey 10X easier. 

As a kid, I made money garden landscaping for families at church, manufacturing merchandise for private clubs, and then developing websites and running ad campaigns for local companies.

By 21, I was founding companies. In the decade since, I've:

➤ Generated $300M+ in revenue
➤ Built operations in 1,000+ U.S. cities
➤ Served over 3 million customers globally
➤ Helped grow hundreds of small businesses
➤ Raised $30M+ in capital from Angels, VCs, Private Equity, and Family Offices
➤ Successfully navigated both successful and failed multimillion-dollar acquisitions
➤ Been featured in leading publications like Forbes, Bloomberg, Entrepreneur, USA Today and more
➤ Worked with and advised the world's most iconic brands, including Diageo, Mars, Tesco, 7-Eleven, AB-InBev, Molson Coors, and Constellation

BUT, the journey was hard (harder than it needed to be).

I’ve faced many of the things you don't think about when starting a company:

→ Fought off (and won) predatory lawsuits
→ Closed a Seed round days after my wedding
→ Negotiated with demanding government agencies
→ Worked with lobbyists to introduce or change legislation
→ Raised a Series A while in the hospital for my first son's birth
→ Navigated a failed multi-million dollar merger while my daughter was born
→ Survived near-extinction events where we had single-digit weeks or days to save the company

Personal interests: Boxing, strength training, being in the ocean, spending quality time with my wife Danielle and our four little ones.

———

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Chris Vaughn

EBITDA Catalyst

★ Established, grew, and managed a successful advisory/consulting firm focusing on pricing strategy and analytics, go-to-market optimization, and revenue management for middle-market corporate and private equity portfolio (PE) clients in diverse industry verticals. 

★ Delivered on our 𝗖𝗮𝘁𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘀𝘁 𝗢𝗯𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲: Material improvement in EBITDA (2-5%+ margin gain), within 6-12 months, with time- and resource-efficient execution for clients, against a 10x minimum ROI hurdle.

★ Provided C-level value-creation consulting for clients such as L Catterton, Birkenstock, Kodiak Cakes, General Mills, Providence Equity, Vector Solutions, Virtual Radiologic, Klarna, Vista Equity Partners, PSG Equity. 

★ Built a 4-pillared service approach: EBITDA Catalyst® (focus on value creation) Pricing Power Clarity® (prioritizing value creation ideas), Mission Driven Pricing® (values-driven approach), and Pricing as a System® (integrating pricing into team culture). 

★ Assumed interim VP, functional leader and Divisional President roles to successfully execute client projects, leading global cross-functional teams of up to 150 employees and gaining significant P&L management and operating leadership experience.

Managing Partner

University of Minnesota - Carlson School of Management

Teaching & guest lecturing on Marketing Analytics, Pricing & Data Decision-Making.

Adjunct Faculty

Disability:IN Minnesota

Disability:IN MN has been promoting best employment practices and enhancing employment opportunities for skilled candidates with disabilities in MN and beyond for over 20 years.  It provides its member MN-based or MN-operating companies with resources for recruiting candidates with disabilities, information on disability topics, recognition for best disability employment practices, and connection with the disability community and its underserved market for goods and services.  

DI-MN has no employees and relies on a working Board.  Its work earned it recognition as the 2022 Affiliate of the Year of @Disability:IN.

Board Member

Rangam

Advisory Board Member

Revology Analytics

Consulting Partner

Movens Advisory

Resideo

★ Served in a multi-faceted leadership role with responsibility for strategic planning, tactical execution, and day-to-day management of the global pricing policies, processes, and analytics for a $5B smart home, IoT, and SaaS technology spin-off from Honeywell.

★ Directed all strategic, operational, and analytical aspects of the pricing function across multiple lines of business spanning key global regions while managing a 15-member global pricing team, generating $100M+ in annual YoY price-related revenue impact. 

★ Restructured an underperforming pricing team by establishing clearly defined roles and responsibilities, integrating robust analytics capabilities, and providing personalized mentoring and coaching, resulting in team members winning 8 Bravo awards.

★ Oversaw the planning, execution, and continuous improvement of offering design, 10+ new product (NPI) monetization launches, 15+ annual price updates across multiple regions, discount management, rebates, and B2B deal approval activities.

★ Led cross-enterprise selection and pricing software transformation & implementation with Vendavo & PROS, high-priority SaaS transformation projects and a first-ever pricing analytics initiative that aligned pricing KPIs with globally visible finance KPIs.

Head Of Pricing

Honeywell

Klarna

Led the Pricing, Analytics & Forecasting, and Collections Analysis global functions.

Vice President - Credit & Pricing

CarVal Investors

CarVal is a $12+ billion AUM hedge fund manager and a global market leader in credit asset, real estate and corporate securities investments.

★ Provided strategic direction, operational leadership, and analytical expertise for the management of 6 joint ventures (JVs) and multiple global strategic partnerships, involving the deployment of ~$450M in CVI credit assets. 

★ Led a team of 10-15 investment, analytics, legal, and operations staff to underwrite, price, negotiate, and close 120+ transactions while managing a total of 200+ contracts across 10+ categories of legal agreements.

★ Spearheaded all strategic planning, due diligence, and negotiation of JVs, financing facilities, and equity investments to drive effective investment of CVI assets, resulting in an $80M P&L, 12% IRR, and 90% deal success during the US financial crisis.

★ Secured CVI’s first JV and its first investment in South Africa (generating 25%+ IRR) while generating the highest IRR (106%) and Cash-on-Cash (>10x) in the entire CVI Value Fund through innovative structured investment in undermanaged railroad assets.

Vice President

Pricing & value creation for private equity, consumer & software, nonprofits | Speaker, trainer, educator | CFA, CPP, NACD.DC | DOBE

I help companies "get a raise" from the marketplace, typically a 7- or 8-figure profit or valuation gain within 12 months. 

How do we do it? Is it for you? At EBITDA Catalyst®, we drive value creation with the drivers of Pricing and Revenue Management, a.k.a. the fastest acting drivers of profitability. 

Every company has pricing opportunities! We find and size the prize, then design the strategy and execution plan to capture it. We deploy top-flight analytics tools, and frameworks and processes honed leading pricing functions at Fortune 100 companies, unicorns, and learning the craft by doing as operators and P&L owners.

Our client service approach rests on four pillars:

1. EBITDA Catalyst® - Delivering value creation and consistently outstanding ROI comes first. 

2. Pricing Power Clarity®- Identifying and prioritizing pragmatically the top 2-3 ideas for value creation that can be executed now, to elevate both conviction to act and ROI when you do. 

3. Mission Driven Pricing®- Pricing for profit cannot be a single-minded pursuit. Our clients' broader mission must also serve their own customers, communities, and more. We advise clients with a balanced, long-term view to value creation. We walk the walk by investing and paying it forward in our own community.

4. Pricing as a System®- Pricing is not an event. It is a process, and it succeeds best when it becomes part of a client's "operating system" and culture. We seek to support this process too, not just a strategy sprint.

As part of Mission Driven Pricing®, we also help (pro-bono, when warranted) nonprofits that need pricing and monetization strategy for their fundraising events, programs, subscriptions, etc. 

📧To connect (on LinkedIn or directly): robert@ebitdacatalyst.com ⌖🎯⌖

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The Battle

Chris Vaughn

Robert Ribciuc

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