In this episode of The Revenue Room™ Podcast, Heather Holst-Knudsen sits down with Laura Taylor, Chief Operating Officer at Naylor Association Solutions, to explore what it takes to turn strategy into measurable results. Grounded in Naylor's 2026 Association Benchmarking Report, Laura shares how leaders can build confidence in their data, assign clear ownership, test new revenue streams quickly, and use AI to grow capacity so costs rise slower than revenue.

Why Listen:

• Learn how a COO operationalizes a CEO's data-driven vision with agreed metrics, one source of truth, and named KPI owners
• Understand why non-dues revenue is more critical than ever, and where to find monetizable engagement you already have
• Hear how to separate quick-win revenue plays from multi-year builds, and run both at the same time
• Discover why AI should be treated as a capacity multiplier, not just a cost-cutting lever, and why cutting client value is a losing model

About Heather Holst-Knudsen
Heather Holst-Knudsen is the founder and CEO of H2K Labs and Revenue Room™ Connect. A seasoned executive and operator across media, marketplaces, events, and technology, she specializes in digital transformation, data-driven growth, and customer-centric value creation. Heather shares her insights on multisided business models through The Revenue Room™.

About Revenue Room™ CXO
Revenue Room™ CXO is a private executive community for CEOs and revenue-critical C-Suite leaders navigating growth in the data and AI economy. Through curated peer discussions and strategy sprints, members tackle real-world challenges in revenue transformation, customer intelligence, and business model innovation.

Learn more or apply for membership at https://www.revenueroomcxo.com/apply

In this episode of The Revenue Room™ Podcast, Heather Holst-Knudsen welcomes back Matt Yorke, CEO of The Channel Company (parent of CRN), for his third appearance and a candid progress report on the company's mandate to become AI-native within two years. Since his RevvedUP session in March, The Channel Company has grown from a small pilot group to 27 deployed AI agents, embedded AI into revenue-facing products like CRN Answers and Aurora, and begun a "once-in-a-lifetime pivot" to transform nearly 50 years of proprietary channel data into a predictive growth platform that matches buyer demand to the partners best suited to serve it.

Why Listen:

• Hear how the Aurora awards agent drove a 400% increase in completion rates and boosted table sales
• Learn the governance-first rollout model: training agents, sign-offs, an AI review studio, and quarterly innovation awards
• Understand how Matt measures adoption—weekly dashboards, board reporting, and 6.5 hours saved per employee per week
• Discover the new hiring gate: "Prove to me why AI can't do this specific role"
• Get Matt's rule for the human-AI line: outsource the work, never the decision
• See why the website may not be the destination in five years, and how trusted content becomes a product layer

CONNECT WITH MATT: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattyorke/

About Heather Holst-Knudsen
Heather Holst-Knudsen is the founder and CEO of H2K Labs and Revenue Room™ Connect. A seasoned executive and operator across media, marketplaces, events, and technology, she specializes in digital transformation, data-driven growth, and customer-centric value creation. Heather shares her insights on multisided business models through The Revenue Room™.

About Revenue Room™ CXO
Revenue Room™ CXO is a private executive community for CEOs and revenue-critical C-Suite leaders navigating growth in the data and AI economy. Through curated peer discussions and strategy sprints, members tackle real-world challenges in revenue transformation, customer intelligence, and business model innovation.

Learn more or apply for membership at https://www.revenueroomcxo.com/apply

In this episode of The Revenue Room™ Podcast, Heather Holst-Knudsen sits down with Jon Howland, CEO of Life Science Connect, who took on private equity backing after three decades of family-owned operation — then closed two acquisitions in roughly 30 days. Jon explains why his integration philosophy is "first do no harm," why the founders he acquires matter more than the products they built, and how a lifelong "follow your reader" discipline is now powering a single source of audience truth, purchase-intent data, and an AI-ready growth strategy spanning content, events, and technology.

Why Listen:

• Learn the "first do no harm" approach to integrating acquisitions without destroying culture, systems, or audience trust
• Understand why founder talent — not product — is the real prize in B2B media M&A
• Hear how "follow your reader" protects editorial discipline and long-term revenue under PE ownership
• Discover how unified audience data and engaged content ecosystems unlock purchase-intent revenue in the AI economy
• Get practical advice on choosing the right private equity partner and building an operator-heavy board

CONNECT WITH JON: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-howland-5a080214

About Heather Holst-Knudsen
Heather Holst-Knudsen is the founder and CEO of H2K Labs and Revenue Room™ Connect. A seasoned executive and operator across media, marketplaces, events, and technology, she specializes in digital transformation, data-driven growth, and customer-centric value creation. Heather shares her insights on multisided business models through The Revenue Room™.

About Revenue Room™ CXO
Revenue Room™ CXO is a private executive community for CEOs and revenue-critical C-Suite leaders navigating growth in the data and AI economy. Through curated peer discussions and strategy sprints, members tackle real-world challenges in revenue transformation, customer intelligence, and business model innovation.

Learn more or apply for membership at https://www.revenueroomcxo.com/apply

A customer spends $100,000 this year and $100,000 next year. Most event businesses call that retention. Indiya Okam calls it a question worth asking.

Heather Holst-Knudsen speaks with Indiya Okam, Group Vice President of Sales at RX USA, about bringing healthcare-grade operating rigor into a relationship-driven events business. Indiya's background in mathematics and engineering shaped how she reads revenue, and she uses it to show why flat year-over-year spend often conceals contraction in the product mix.

In this conversation:

• How to calculate net revenue retention in an events environment, and why product mix penetration matters more than the top-line number
• Why pipeline health is a strategic asset for sellers rather than an administrative task
• Moving sponsorship from a production function to a co-selling function, and the effect on average customer value
• The leaky bucket problem, and why acquisition without retention puts teams on an expensive treadmill
• Early churn signals that surface long before the show floor
• Treating event engagement data the way a media company would, and what that unlocks
• Where to start when you are facing fragmented data, long-standing habits, and multiple revenue streams

Connect with Indiya Okam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/indiya-okam/

The conversation continues inside Revenue Room™ CXO, where CEOs and their revenue-critical teams come together to tackle growth, transformation, data strategy, and the evolving impact of AI on business performance. Learn more and apply: [link]

Register for RevvedUP 2027, March 14-16 at The Vinoy in St. Petersburg, FL where 250+ CEOs and revenue-critical CXOs, like Indiya, will convene to discuss AI, Data & The Race to Enduring Enterprise Value.

Subscribe for new episodes of The Revenue Room™, where revenue leaders come to grow.

The Revenue Room™ is the show where CEOs and revenue-critical leaders in media, events, and data and information businesses share how they are acquiring, keeping, and growing customers more profitably and predictably.

About Heather Holst-Knudsen
Heather Holst-Knudsen is the founder and CEO of H2K Labs and Revenue Room™ Connect. A seasoned executive and operator across media, marketplaces, events, and technology, she specializes in digital transformation, data-driven growth, and customer-centric value creation. Heather shares her insights on multisided business models through The Revenue Room™.

About Revenue Room™ CXO
Revenue Room™ CXO is a private executive community for CEOs and revenue-critical C-Suite leaders navigating growth in the data and AI economy. Through curated peer discussions and strategy sprints, members tackle real-world challenges in revenue transformation, customer intelligence, and business model innovation.

Learn more or apply for membership at https://www.revenueroomcxo.com/apply

In this episode of The Revenue Room™ Podcast, Heather Holst-Knudsen speaks with Sharon Roessen, Chief Operating Officer at Terrapinn, about what disciplined AI transformation looks like once you strip away the hype and keep only the receipts. Sharon walks through the "Terrapinn Brain" — a three-layered knowledge architecture built to give Claude full business context — and the hard numbers behind it: £470,000 in SaaS renewals cut, 13 working Claude skills shipped in five weeks, and 100% adoption where previous AI rollouts stalled at 50%.

Why Listen:

• Learn how to structure a company "brain" (core, functional, and brand layers) so AI produces credible, on-voice work instead of hallucinations
• Hear which SaaS tools Terrapinn eliminated and how renewal cycles drove the replacement roadmap
• Understand why AI exposes weak processes before it improves them — and how 18,000 analyzed sales calls triggered a full pricing overhaul
• Discover the use-case-first rollout strategy that turned dormant users into builders
• See how AI fluency is becoming a non-negotiable hiring bar for new graduates — while making people more valuable, not redundant

CONNECT WITH SHARON: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharonroessen/

About Heather Holst-Knudsen
Heather Holst-Knudsen is the founder and CEO of H2K Labs and Revenue Room™ Connect. A seasoned executive and operator across media, marketplaces, events, and technology, she specializes in digital transformation, data-driven growth, and customer-centric value creation. Heather shares her insights on multisided business models through The Revenue Room™.

About Revenue Room™ CXO
Revenue Room™ CXO is a private executive community for CEOs and revenue-critical C-Suite leaders navigating growth in the data and AI economy. Through curated peer discussions and strategy sprints, members tackle real-world challenges in revenue transformation, customer intelligence, and business model innovation.

Learn more or apply for membership at https://www.revenueroomcxo.com/apply

In this episode of The Revenue Room™ Podcast, Heather Holst-Knudsen sits down with Tim Huelskamp, Co-Founder and CEO of 1440, the daily newsletter serving nearly five million intellectually curious readers. After a decade in private equity, Tim built one of the most profitable media businesses in America—27 employees, $1 million in revenue per person, a $101 million valuation, and not a dollar of venture capital. He breaks down the flywheel behind it: a product readers love, advertising that delivers measurable ROI, and disciplined reinvestment into growth.

Why Listen:

• Learn the unit economics of a profitable newsletter: $3–$4 subscriber acquisition, payback within quarters, and stacked profitable cohorts
• Understand why talent is the single biggest ROI in business—and how 1440 achieved 90%+ retention over five years
• Hear how reader feedback became the roadmap for 1440 Topics, a human-curated, AI-enabled knowledge discovery product
• Discover how to build a durable, founder-controlled company with non-dilutive financing and lean operations
• Get Tim's contrarian take on AI: why human curiosity can't be outsourced to agents

CONNECT WITH TIM: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timhuelskamp/

About Heather Holst-Knudsen
Heather Holst-Knudsen is the founder and CEO of H2K Labs and Revenue Room™ Connect. A seasoned executive and operator across media, marketplaces, events, and technology, she specializes in digital transformation, data-driven growth, and customer-centric value creation. Heather shares her insights on multisided business models through The Revenue Room™.

About Revenue Room™ CXO
Revenue Room™ CXO is a private executive community for CEOs and revenue-critical C-Suite leaders navigating growth in the data and AI economy. Through curated peer discussions and strategy sprints, members tackle real-world challenges in revenue transformation, customer intelligence, and business model innovation.

Learn more or apply for membership at https://www.revenueroomcxo.com/apply

In this episode of The Revenue Room™ Podcast, Heather Holst-Knudsen sits down with Jay Lauf, Co-Founder of Charter and former founding publisher of Quartz. With two successful media exits under his belt and decades leading iconic brands like The Atlantic and WIRED, Jay shares why the biggest AI opportunity isn't buying more tools—it's redesigning how people work. From building indispensable media businesses to creating sustainable high-performance cultures, he offers practical lessons for CEOs navigating AI, leadership, and the future of work.

Why Listen:

• Learn why 93% of AI investment goes into tools while only 7% goes into training, and why that imbalance is holding companies back.
• Discover how AI can increase productivity without increasing burnout by giving employees time back to focus on higher-value work.
• Hear why the future belongs to businesses that become indispensable, not just interesting, by earning meaningful, recurring attention.
• Explore practical leadership strategies from Charter, including no-meeting Fridays, manager user manuals, and using AI to improve quality rather than simply increasing output.
• Understand why founders often underestimate the human side of acquisitions, and how vision, leadership, and storytelling influence successful exits.

CONNECT WITH JAY: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jay-lauf-b7452724/

About Heather Holst-Knudsen
Heather Holst-Knudsen is the founder and CEO of H2K Labs and Revenue Room™ Connect. A seasoned executive and operator across media, marketplaces, events, and technology, she specializes in digital transformation, data-driven growth, and customer-centric value creation. Heather shares her insights on multisided business models through The Revenue Room™.

About Revenue Room™ CXO
Revenue Room™ CXO is a private executive community for CEOs and revenue-critical C-Suite leaders navigating growth in the data and AI economy. Through curated peer discussions and strategy sprints, members tackle real-world challenges in revenue transformation, customer intelligence, and business model innovation.

Learn more or apply for membership at https://www.revenueroomcxo.com/apply

In this episode of The Revenue Room™ Podcast, Heather Holst-Knudsen and David Newcorn, President of PMMI Media Group explore how B2B media companies can shift from chasing volume to delivering efficiency. Instead of overwhelming audiences with endless information, the winning strategy is helping professionals find the right insights faster and make better decisions with less friction.

Why Listen:

• Learn why audience time is the most valuable currency in media
• Understand how B2B media companies can shift from content volume to decision value
• Hear how media platforms and trade shows work together to build stronger industry ecosystems
• Discover how trusted industry brands can create new revenue by reducing complexity for their audience

CONNECT WITH DAVID: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidnewcorn/

About Heather Holst-Knudsen
Heather Holst-Knudsen is the founder and CEO of H2K Labs and Revenue Room™ Connect. A seasoned executive and operator across media, marketplaces, events, and technology, she specializes in digital transformation, data-driven growth, and customer-centric value creation. Heather shares her insights on multisided business models through The Revenue Room™.

About Revenue Room™ CXO
Revenue Room™ CXO is a private executive community for CEOs and revenue-critical C-Suite leaders navigating growth in the data and AI economy. Through curated peer discussions and strategy sprints, members tackle real-world challenges in revenue transformation, customer intelligence, and business model innovation.

Learn more or apply for membership at https://www.revenueroomcxo.com/apply