Taylor Thomson sits in front of his computer each morning before most meetings begin, scanning through roughly 15 newsletters. He’s hunting for signals—patterns in retail bankruptcies, shifts in consumer spending, indicators that might affect his company’s Fortune 500 clients.
This daily ritual, which takes him about 20 minutes, represents something more than due diligence. For Thomson, who serves as Head of Finance at WITHIN, a Denver-based performance branding agency, the practice embodies his philosophy about modern finance leadership: synthesis matters more than raw data.
“I probably read 15 different morning newsletters, and then I do this for my team actually,” Thomson explained in a recent podcast interview. “I take those newsletters. I find the most interesting or the most relevant articles, and I put them into a Google sheet.”
From Political Economy to Performance Marketing
Thomson’s path to finance leadership began far from spreadsheets and P&L statements. At Davidson College, he studied political science, economics, and Spanish—a combination that might seem scattered until you understand his motivation.
“I studied subjects that I thought were interesting to me and that I thought actually really played well together,” Thomson said. “You can’t talk about supply side economics without thinking about the political factors that play into different economic theories.”
After graduating in 2015, he spent three and a half years at Ridgetop Research, a firm that connected institutional investors with industry experts. The role required developing quick, conversational expertise across wildly different sectors—from California wildfire investigation to retail dynamics.
“I could have a 10 minute conversation with you about how fire investigators in California investigate wildfires and make decisions about who is at fault,” he noted. “I can’t have an 11 minute conversation, but I can go 10 minutes.”
That ability to synthesize information across domains would prove valuable. Thomson moved through roles at Custora (later acquired by Amperity) and eventually landed at WITHIN in March 2021, initially as Director of Revenue Operations and Business Development.
Rebuilding the Revenue Engine
Thomson joined WITHIN at a pivotal moment. The agency, which works with brands like Nike, The North Face, and Ben & Jerry’s, was transitioning from a transactional model to an enterprise approach.
Under Thomson’s leadership, average annual contract values jumped 620%—from $250,000 to $1.8 million—within 24 months. More impressive than the numbers was the transformation of internal systems. He revamped the client onboarding process, boosting trial-to-term conversion rates by 33 percentage points, which translated to $7.6 million in incremental annual revenue.
“We polled clients and asked them, ‘How was your experience?’ and realized we needed to systematize how we bring people into our ecosystem,” Thomson explained. “We’re not a tech company, but we still have to bring people into the ecosystem and get into their platforms and introduce ourselves to them as their new strategic thought leader partner.”
He developed the company’s first comprehensive revenue model and dashboard, giving executive leadership visibility into business performance. He implemented Service Level Agreements across departments to improve collaboration. He even led cross-functional projects with data science teams to build internal databases using GPT-4 and Bard.
A Different Kind of Finance Leader
Thomson was promoted to Head of Revenue Strategy and Operations in January 2024, then to Head of Finance in June 2024. The progression reflects an uncommon trajectory—one where operations expertise informs financial planning rather than the other way around.
His approach to the finance function prioritizes people and process over pure number-crunching. He manages company-wide P&L reporting and analytics, oversees accounting operations, develops forecasting strategies across business units, and orchestrates annual compensation planning. But he also spearheads client satisfaction survey initiatives that achieve over 50% quarterly response rates and designs company-wide dashboards for analyzing that feedback.
“I exist in a lot of different places,” Thomson said, describing how his role bridges business development, sales, marketing, and client success. The team he built reflects that breadth: three people currently work in revenue operations, with plans to expand quickly over the next several months.
The expansion will cover everything from enablement to technology to analytics and performance to operational workflows. “How do we get these people in and what’s the lead flow and what’s the sales process?” Thomson asked, outlining the questions his team tackles. “I spent a month redesigning our sales process. We’ve spent time redesigning our onboarding process.”
The Morning Intelligence Brief
Thomson’s daily newsletter curation stems from a belief that context drives decisions. He reads Modern Retail, Glossy, Morning Brew, and industry-specific publications, extracting articles about competitor movements, market shifts, and client challenges.
“I think you can just pull so much interesting information from how people are thinking, what they’re doing, what their challenges and pain points are, what a lot of big companies are seeing,” he explained. “If I see that a startup is IPOing, I know that that’s not only going to affect that startup, but also every one of their competitors.”
That intelligence-gathering feeds directly into how his business development team approaches prospects. Rather than relying on generic pitches, the team can reference recent funding rounds, supply chain disruptions, or competitive pressures specific to each potential client.
“It makes it easier to put myself and my team to put themselves in their position,” Thomson said. “Your problems are not just that everybody is struggling in retail. That’s not a hot take. Everybody is struggling and people are making moves to not struggle.”
Technology as Enabler, Not Solution
Despite his embrace of AI tools and modern tech stacks—WITHIN uses Salesforce, Outreach, and a tool called Pathmatics for tracking social media spend—Thomson maintains skepticism about automation replacing human judgment.
“I’m a huge fan of automation,” he said. “But there’s temptation when you get to that point of, oh, I’ve got to triple my outbound outreach because I don’t have anybody driving me interest.”
He’s watched email open rates drop from 50% to 20% or lower when teams prioritize volume over personalization. The solution, in his view, isn’t better automation but better targeting supported by that morning intelligence work.
“The more marketing you get, the wider a birth you have to swing as a BDR team,” he explained. “The less your emails sound good, the less your phone calls matter. You run out of bandwidth.”
The Stakes of Getting It Right
Thomson earned his MBA from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business between 2022 and 2024, finishing in the top 15% of his class while working full-time. The dual commitment reflected his conviction that business fundamentals still matter even as technology transforms how work gets done.
His personal website lists his interests as sports analytics, crossword puzzles, economics and politics, and investment management—pursuits that blend pattern recognition with disciplined thinking.
“At the end of the day, as we all know, all anybody cares about is new clients and profit,” Thomson said, describing what unites marketing, sales, and client success. “The revenue org is there to make the company money. It’s not a secret. And so if what we’re all doing isn’t aligned to drive revenue, then we’re all kind of wasting our time.”
That clarity of purpose, combined with his systematic approach to information synthesis, may explain why companies like WITHIN trust him to guide not just finance but the entire revenue operation. In an industry where agencies often struggle to demonstrate ROI, Thomson brings receipts—along with the morning’s most important headlines.