106: Sam Jacobs - Founder of Revenue Collective

I'm doing something I've never done before, which is the first open Filling the Funnel program. July 19th in San Francisco, in partnership with SalesLoft, LeadIQ, and Costello, I'm going to be hosting a full-day workshop bringing my Filling the Funnel program to you. If you've wanted to attend my program in person, or you have a small three-to-five member sales team, this is a great opportunity to access the same training companies like Salesforce, Slack, Dropbox, and many others have made a part of their coaching. Let's make it happen. Good afternoon, everybody. This is John Barrows with Make It Happen Monday. Hopefully, you're all doing well. I have the privilege of having a fantastic guest on today, my good friend Sam Jacobs.

Sam, say hi to the audience. Tell them what you're up to these days. Hello, everybody. This is Sam Jacobs. I am reporting to you live from Austin, Texas. That is where this is happening. So what else can I tell you, John? What are you doing? So we met back when you were at, what, Alteryx? Alteryx. Axial. Axial. Axial. And we met through, I was on a conference call with Doug Landis. He was at Box. And I said, who is the one person that we should hire to make our sales team stop sucking? And he said, you've got to call Tom Barrows. And so that was how we met. And so you came in and you did, you're filling the funnel session and it blew everybody away. And everybody said it was the best single day of sales training they've ever received.

And we've been fast friends ever since. And I think I brought you into live stream and I brought you into the muse as well. Yeah. And so I appreciate all those. And, you know, this is a testament to everybody out there as far as champions, building champions and long playing the long ball game here as far as doing good work, because that shit matters, right? Absolutely. And now you're at, you're doing some really cool stuff to explain to the audience what you're doing now, because I think this is going to dovetail into our conversations about the executive suite here, but talk a little bit about what you're working on these days. I am. So for the first time I am, well, it's actually the second or third time, but I'm running my own thing.

So last year I spent a year as the chief revenue officer of a company called Behavox. And meanwhile, I had started this membership organization called Revenue Collective. And Revenue Collective is basically an exclusive community for VP and above, chief revenue officer, chief marketing officer, VPs of sales, marketing, and operations. So basically commercial operators. It's a private community for those folks to come together, share best practices, find a new job, negotiate better for their job, and just improve and accelerate their career and hopefully make more money. Love it. And we were talking before we jumped on here. And this was, I mean, I think I kind of knew this, but the stats are, you know them better than I do.

It's almost like this, like a help group for C-level executives. Because you were saying, what's the average tenure of a C-level executive these days? It's under 18 months. So Gong put out something about a year ago that said it was 19 months. And the latest research I've seen is that the average, now that's an average, right? So that includes in the average, one of our new members who got fired before he even joined. So that affects the average. But it's under 18 months. And basically executives, and I'm talking about operating executives, right? There's a group of people that are, I think, super well supported. And those are the founders of companies. You know, they've got YPO, Young Presidents Org, and they've got EO, and they've got Venwise, and they've got lots of places where they can go and get help from each other.

And then, of course, there's investors, and they're famous, and everybody knows who they are. But the operating executives, the level below the CEO, I think, has been underserved. And it's a pretty lonely position. And so that's why we created the group to help those people. Yeah. You know, as you talk about that, it was funny because my first real entree into startups, right, was a couple of buddies of mine from high school started Thrive Networks, right? And they were the three. So two of the three were friends of mine from high school, and they were the founders. And I came in. I was number four, right? And they had started the company. They had taken the big risk. And they retained, like, 90% ownership of the business.

Absolutely. Literally. Exactly. And look, I was a 25-year-old kid. And I remember I called up my uncle, who was out in San Francisco. He's the only one I knew about, like, startups, right? That was for the weirdos out in the West Coast, not the East Coast. We didn't do that. And so I called up my uncle. And I was like, hey, I was working at Xerox at the time. And I was like, I've got this opportunity to do a startup. What do you think? He's like, yeah, but get equity. I'm like, oh, what's equity? You know, I literally didn't even know what it was. And so he was like, well, where are you coming in? You know, you're not going to get much. Ask for two. Expect 1%, right? And so I was like, OK. And so that's exactly what I did.

I got my 1%. And then I went my merry way. And what happened was, like, literally, you know, probably after the first two or three years, after that, it was me and the other directors that legit put the company on our backs and took this thing to get it sold to Staples. And I remember vividly, like, we all could kind of sense it that when we knew we were going to go for a buyout and we knew it was going to be so bittersweet because the founders who had really started it, like, they, you know, they were still involved in that type of stuff. But we were doing the massive heavy lifting and we were going to get a fraction of what they got. And so we were going to be pissed because we didn't have the support.

We didn't have any coaching. We didn't have the YEO stuff. And so I can feel the need for this pretty big. So let's talk about why. Why is the average, why is it going from 19 to 18 to 17 right now? Here's my opinion. And walk with me on this journey. So if you look at, I mean, the short answer is there's too much money and not enough good companies. But the longer answer is that if you look at stock market returns over the last 30 years, yes, since, like, 2008, 2009, 2010. Since the crash, yes, the market is up big. But if you look at equity returns over a longer time period, the reality is that the stock market actually hasn't performed that well. It really depends on when you pick, you know, when you pick the beginning moments.

What does that mean? That at the same time, you know, technology links the world and capital is truly global. And so you've got all of these people with all of this money and they're looking for returns. And the only way you can get returns is if you take on risk. And they're looking at the equity markets and they're saying traditional stock market returns are not sufficient for what I'm trying to do. And so they want to say, where can I go to get 30, 40, 50% returns? Well, the answer to that is, of course, early stage companies. So all of this money floods into VCs. And that's why, you know, when you look at the SoftBank Vision Fund and, you know, you're asking, why is the Saudi money in there?

And, you know, where does all this money come from? Where's the China money? That's because all of these sovereign wealth funds and all of these institutions and these entities have billions and billions of dollars of capital. And they're trying to figure out where to put it. And the only place they can go to put it is early stage companies. So all of a sudden, you know, you've got Andreessen and you've got, you know, Sequoia. You've got these VCs that are raising massive funds. And you've got, and just being a VC is like the sexy job, right? Fred Wilson started blogging about it 20 years ago. And now he's famous and Marc Andreessen's famous and Ben Horowitz is famous. And so everybody, all of this money floods into VCs.

Their business model is pretty simple, right? Their business model is place 10 bets, have one or two of them return the fund, have five or six of them, you know, not do very much but stick around as companies. They call them zombie companies because they don't go out of business and they don't sell. And then have the rest fail. So their business model is pretty simple, which is place a shitload of bets and then figure out who, and the consequence of those bets is that you're supposed to take that money and put the fucking pedal to the metal, pardon my French. So you are supposed to, they do not want a company to fail or not achieve an opportunity because it didn't try hard enough, right? They want everybody to leave everything they have out on the field, which means burning shitloads of capital.

And then from there, they will figure out who wins and who loses. They never want you to, they never want you to fail because you didn't try hard enough, you didn't spend enough money. That's why every board meeting, the VC says, thanks for that plan, Sam. That's fantastic. Now, what would it take? What would you need from us to add $5 million in new business to that forecast? I don't, I don't know. It's like a check for $5 million, please. Thanks. Yeah, exactly. I'll put it in my personal account and I'll come back to you with another great PowerPoint. So, so, so, so the bottom line is that they, their incentives are not quite aligned with the natural growth rate of most companies. You know, Josh Koppelman at first round says, I sell jet fuel.

Not every company needs jet fuel. How does that relate to the, the original question that you asked of the 18 months? What it means is that all of these early stage founders have a tremendous amount of money and tremendous amount of pressure. And they are trying to push growth as quickly as they can. And they're reading all the blog posts. And the reason that they're trying to push growth and the reason they have so much money is because of the forces that I talked about earlier. And they don't feel like they have any time to evaluate these decisions. And so you get, they feel immediate pressure to deliver and they place that pressure back onto the revenue leaders and the commercial operators that they hire.

And so you get in there and, you know, they say, oh, we're going to give you the right amount of time. I mean, most of the time, you know, they spend more, they spend longer interviewing you than, and screening you and recruiting you than you actually end up working at the company. Certainly that was the case for me at the Muse where, you know, I got to know those founders very, very well over many, many months and then ended up only working there for nine months. So, um, so that's kind of a little bit of the context, which is, there's just a tremendous amount of pressure based on the amount of money that's in the system. And that pressure is finding itself into the executives. And the other thing, I think just another random comment is that, um, you know, investors, I think their biggest fear or a very big fear that they have on behalf of their founders is that they are soft and that they're not going to fire aggressively enough.

And so almost from the moment, and you can read this, you know, in the blogs, even like the famous bloggers, the famous thought leaders that, that are ostensibly on the side of the salespeople, like a Jason Lumpkin, they're all, they're always talking about when you should fire your VP of sales. And they're always, they're always saying, is she the zero to 10 woman or she'd the 10 to 30 woman? Oh, we need, um, you know, we need to attend the 10 to 30 woman because, you know, the woman that got us to zero to 10, she's not really good at scaling past the stage. Now, if you talk to a lot of folks, or at least, you know, I helped take a company GLG from 25 million when I joined to 300 million when I left.

Now I helped, it wasn't just me, but what's the point? The point is I wasn't like smarter back then. Uh, and I didn't have scale experience. What I had was I had crack cocaine and I was selling it to crack heads, which I was selling access to very valuable information to head funds. And when you have a great product, a lot, you know, that papers over a lot of the inexperience. So long story short is that, um, they are telling founders, you know, get over your fear of being liked and get over it. You got to make the tough calls and the tough calls are that, you know, you fire people when, uh, when it's not working out or when they're not right for the right stage. And so I think that is also a contributing factor and the consequence of it is that, you know, we're in an era where it's pretty dangerous actually to be a commercial executive because, you know, our equity is given on, and I can get off the soapbox, you know, you can ask me a different question, but, um, our, you know, the equity is given on a four-year vest, one-year cliff.

Right. And it's common equity. And if, uh, your listeners out there, you know, aren't diving deep, and this is part of what we're going to talk about on my podcast, the sales hacker podcast as well. But the common equity sits at the very, very bottom of the stack, right? Everybody gets their money out before the common equity and the founders typically have founder shares or some kind of preferred equity. The investors have liquidation preferences. So we're there. We joined these startups. We joined these, we didn't go to work at Salesforce. We went to work at this early stage company because, you know, we want to get rich. Partially, I mean, we all want to have an impact, of course, and we want to love what we do, but we want that, we want that lottery ticket.

And the reality is how the lottery ticket plays out. Most of the time does not work out the way that we think it will. You create a tremendous amount of value, and then you leave the company. I don't know if you all have seen the tax bill that comes along with exercising your equity, but they treat the difference between the strike price and the most recent valuation as income. And so you pay income tax on an unrealized gain. Just the reality of the current environment is that they're neat, that, you know, it's, it's a volatile, dangerous situation for, for commercial operators. And that's why we started the group. And that's, you know, that's one of the reasons that I do what I do, which is to help these people out.

So that's the man, that's my situation. Oh, there's a lot of unpack there. Cause, cause I know, no, because, you know, I get my head spinning. Cause there's so many examples that I have of that, you know, the, um, yeah, I mean the, the fall, I think the big falsity of, of, of startups, if you will, is, you know, thinking that you're going to get rich, thinking you're going to get that FU money. Right. And really the only people who ever really get rich and startups are the founders period. Right. And I learned that, you know, the hard way, like I said, but then I also learned that with, with equity. Like, you know, I, my level of education on equity and options and all that is so minimal. And I remember there was a couple of startups that I had helped, right.

Because I was using their technology or whatever it is. And I put it in my slide deck and all of a sudden it was like, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. I was, I was 50% of the revenues for, for some of these small tech companies, right. Early state. And they would call me and they say, look, we can't, you know, we can't pay you for this, but thank you. Could you want to, you know, do you want shares? Yeah. Shares. That's fantastic. And then they would sell and I'd be like, ding, ding, ding. Yay. Where's my money. And they'd be like, yeah, sorry. Uh, I, we think you owe us money actually. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I thought I had like a hundred shares or a thousand or a percentage of this.

And they're like, yeah, sorry, John, you're, you know, common stock basically. So eat shit. I'm like, oh, thanks. So like, I've basically, now anybody who offers me shares of their startup, I'm basically like, fuck you. Like I didn't know. I'll take the shares, but I will also take $2,000 a month to put me on my slide deck and go fuck yourself. Exactly. So that's just cautionary tale for anybody out there that thinks that like that shares are awesome when a company gives them to you, just be, go talk to somebody like Sam who knows what the hell they're talking about so that you can at least understand what the expectation should be. One of those, one of the things you said there, is there something, so she is a zero to 10 million.

She is a 10 to 50 million, right? You mentioned that earlier. I, I believe that there is eventually, as you get to a point where you are in your career, after you learn and all this other stuff that there is a place where you fit better, zero to 10, 10 to 50, 50 to IPO, that type of thing. Do you, do you, do you agree? And second of all, how do you figure that out along the way without just making a bunch of failures and getting fired a bunch of times? Like, should people be looking at that a little bit more to say where, cause I'll give you an example and you probably know like Brian Remington, right? Do you know Brian Remington? I don't know Brian Remington. Brian's a good friend of mine. He's an SDR leader.

Okay. He's over at, uh, Tanium now. And, and what he's doing is I'm sorry, uh, one logic he's over at one logic and he just, he builds SDR teams, right? He comes in at a certain stage of a business when they're really starting to expand and they need to really build up. And he's like three years in two to three years, he crushes it. And then they go past where, you know, he gets, you know, and then it's kind of not interesting anymore. And there's another one. So should people look at their careers like that as they grow? When should you start to understand that? Is that a thing? Can we explore that a little bit? Yeah. I, um, I mean, it's a great question. So the short answer or my belief is you may, I think there's a, it's sort of, um, it's, it's, it's like a gray picture, right?

There's yes, there are different stages where people fit better. I think that the compensation around that is not set up the right way to your point, right? Which is that it's, everybody's paid the same way, which is you're given equity, uh, over, over the, the vesting period that I mentioned. And oftentimes if you leave too early, there's a bunch of factors that happen between when you created significant enterprise value and when that enterprise value is realized. Now, putting the money aside, is there, are there benefits to being focused on a certain stage? I think there are, but again, all the money is made at the end, you know, like all of the money is made at the acquisition or at the IPO.

So if you're, if, and frankly, maybe I'm one of those people, maybe I'm like really, really good at the beginning of just like harnessing raw chaos and turning it into something that can turn into something. But that doesn't mean I'm great at managing like a 2000 person global org with, you know, 15 different mechanisms for generating revenue. But, um, if I were to pigeonhole myself, but the incentives are not aligned for me to describe myself that way because, uh, it's hard to make the money that's that, you know, it's hard to be compensated and to generate the right amount of, uh, of, of return for the value that you create at that stage. You can create massive value. If you take a company from, you know, a million or 2 million ARR to 10 million ARR, and you're getting 12 times multiples on revenue for enterprise valuation, basically saying, if you do it quickly enough, 10 million ARR can be a hundred million dollars, if not more in enterprise value.

And, you know, one or two is obviously like maybe 10 million. And so you've created $90 million in value for the shareholders, but you leave, they raise money at that hundred million dollar round. The people that come in with the money have liquidation preferences or kind of any kind of preferences so that the company sells for 200 million exactly to your point. You're like, oh shit, you know, I have my options that, you know, have valued at 10 million. The Delta between it's 200 minus 10 is $190 million gain times my percent of the company. It's like, well, not really, because they structured it in such a way that the investors got all of their money out first. And now there's only, you know, $10 million left pro rata for everybody else, which is, I don't mean to, you know, always bring money into the situation or how you're paid, but your expertise has to align with that compensation, which is why I think, you know, a lot of the structures around, frankly, how, how work works is changing.

I think, you know, to the point of your, your, your, your, your buddy, who's an SDR manager and SDR builder, I think that that is an incredibly valuable skill. And for him to want to do that over and over, there needs to be a structure that pays him the right, that, that compensates him appropriately. Cause otherwise he's just coming in and building and leaving and then, you know, and then it doesn't work. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think there's consulting frameworks, there's different kinds of ways of, if you want to focus on that scale and that stage. But again, the reason that people are averse to saying, oh, I'm, I'm an early stage person is because the money's made at the end. And you, you're worried that you're going to be pigeonholed into something where you do all of this work and, uh, and don't see any of the return from it.

Yeah. I mean, it's, uh, it's kind of sad because I watch it. I use the, uh, I use the marketing, uh, uh, person as, as the perfect quintessential piece of this, or no, I'm sorry, the enablement person, which is, you know, enablement's finally starting to be, it's not enablement. It's now whatever. I, I, Landis hates calling it an enablement. I forget what he calls it now. It's like, uh, Oh, he hates that word. I talked to him about that. But whatever he calls it, you know, but you know, that's finally a department that people are looking at as a strategic part of the initiative. But what happens inevitably is companies are, are, they grow crazy. Right. And then they're like, oh shit, we need somebody to kind of control like onboarding and doing some training.

So, hey, Sally, um, uh, you want, you want to come over and do this. Right. And they take somebody who might, you know, might've been in sales or something like that, who looks at themselves as a better teacher than anything else. They come in, they beat them over the head. They tell them that they got to build while running on this rocket ship, give them very limited budget. And then they get to a certain point where they're like, you know, and that usually lasts about a year and a half, two years. They literally beat the shit out of this poor person with no resources. Then they get to a point where like, you know what, we need somebody who kind of knows what they're talking about here. So we're going to go hire a VP who's been there, done that.

And they're going to be your boss. And then basically that's firing the, that person. Right. I don't know about you, but I always tell people, if you're a VP of something and all of a sudden your company hires an SVP of whatever that is, that's a company basically saying, fuck you, you're fired without firing you. That's what happened to me. That's exactly, that is exactly right. And that happens all the time. And I think, you know, back to the point of your question about like, are there people for stages? I think that the thing that people underestimate, I think some people are getting religion about this now, but the thing people are underestimating is the institutional knowledge, the value of having come up through the company and understanding where the bodies are buried, understanding the product really in depth and understanding the culture of how to get shit done in an organization.

And that is why, you know, I think Travis Bryant, who is, you know, who used to be a SVP of sales at Optimizely, and he was there from like the first sales hire, Chris Degman at Snowflake Computing is like chief revenue officer. He was the first sales hire. I really, really love companies where the founders can tell, because it's not the founders. I think it's more the investors. The investors are like, I just need, I have this muscle memory and, you know, I need the person that to me feels it's like, you know, it's like baseball pre. Yeah, pretty money ball. You know, I need the look and feel. I need this person that looks like a sales leader because that makes me comfortable when I want to take this company public.

And those people don't work out that often. That's part of that 18 month turnover, which is you bring this person that doesn't really understand the organization, the product, the technology. And I found a lot more success in just believing in the people, take those people that you think have massive potential and just keep investing in them, surround them with resources like you, right? Give them the sales training budget, give them the enablement budget, give them the peer to peer mentoring budget and, and then get the most out of those people. And you can go so much further than constantly thinking that, you know, some new chief level, whatever. The hilarious thing is when they hire the C-level person who works remotely.

Is that not just like fucking what? We're based, we're based in Pittsburgh or wherever city. We hired our new CMO. She's based in San Francisco. I'm like, okay, how does, how the fuck is that going to work? Exactly. And, and I mean, to your point, I think culture makes, it really makes a difference. You know, I, and, and I'm just looking at it from my, I mean, it's very rare that I've seen kind of like the baller, whatever, come into a situation and make it that much better. I've seen the baller come in and blow the whole thing up and burn it to the ground way more often, right? I mean, even, even me, I'll go back to thrive. You know, I was a 25 year old kid, right? So I'm just, I'm, I was grinding and I was the quote unquote VP of sales, which was a joke, right?

This is why titles are a joke, but, but, and I remember, I actually proactively went to my founders and I said, look guys, I know we want to grow faster. I'm doing everything I can with what I know here. I got to be honest though. I don't know what I don't know at this point. So if you guys wanted to go higher of an SVP of sales that I could learn from, I'd be open for it. Right? So what they did was they went and got, they went to our number one competitor and who was growing crazy. And they, they hired their VP of sales from them. And the guy came over. And when I tell you he couldn't have been a worse culture fit, I mean, it was, it was appalling. The first thing he walks in the door and says is, all right, we're all wearing suits and ties to every meeting that we're going on to.

Like that's the first thing I'm like, dude, fuck really? We smell, we sell outsourced IT services, SMB market. I'm going into, I met John Barrows. He's like, I'm like, like, no. Right. And so, and, and sure. And all he did was he brought his list of all their customers. Cause that was his value in his mind. He sat behind a desk and told everybody what to do. And it was a disaster. Now, thankfully I didn't quit and keep, we fired him. And then I ended up taking over and taking it to that next level. But then the same thing happened to me when I got at Staples, I was like, when we got acquired by Staples, I was like, oh, cool. New, interesting thing. And then they fired me because they weren't giving me the resources.

They weren't giving me anything. And they were, well, we got to hire somebody who's kind of learned how to scale a global team. And I'm like, you got to give me a chance here first. Right. But that, but I think their mentality was, I didn't look the role. I didn't fit the role of what they were expecting from a global, you know, sales leader type of thing. Yeah. And the, you know, the flip side is just as dangerous, which is they spent all this time recruiting, you know, this, this important, this famous, you know, this, this savior. And then what happens is you join the company and you start making changes, you know, and from, from this guy's perspective, like you can't close a deal without a suit and tie.

I don't know. I don't know what he believes, but whatever it was that he believes, you know, they've got a, at that point, the founder's got to stand behind that person. And that's the other thing that happens because they just, they get this, they get, they get nervous and they get insecure about this decision. They're like, wait a minute, was this a huge fucking mistake? And all of a sudden, you know, the junior people that have the ear of the founder that are, you know, in the modern era, everybody has this feeling of entitlement to have a meeting with the CEO, which is fine. So they all start, they start bitching about it. They started, you know, they hired this guy, Sam, he doesn't know what he's doing.

You know, he wants to make us come in at nine. And I was, you know, I have my yoga class at nine and blah, blah, blah. And like, the point is the minute that you start entertaining those conversations, you are undermining this person that you just paid all this money to, you just paid all this money to some recruiter. And so it's like, if you're going to make this hire, if you're going to make this decision, you've got to, that's why it's a big deal, right? That's why you should consider it because you've got to stand behind them. It's a two year, three year journey. You know, you can't bring them in after spending six months recruiting them, give them two months, watch everybody start complaining.

Well, of course they're going to start complaining. They're going to do it differently. That's the point. That's why you hired some new person. So at any rate. A couple of questions. Yeah. One is macro, others micro. Macro is, do you see this getting worse? Or do you see that there's eventually going to be a breaking point where people realize there's, there's got to be a better way. And I preface it with this, which really depressed me a little while ago. And I don't want to talk politics, but this, this one very specific thing. I remember Hillary, when she was going for the presidency, right? She was interviewed and she was quoting this interview, this study that was done of the 50, the top 50 CEOs.

Okay. The top 50 CEOs in the world of the top 50 companies. And they were asked if you could do something today that, that benefited your company, the environment, your employees and everything. But it was, you couldn't realize it until five years out. If you could do something today that five years out, you knew was going to be a huge benefit to the world, including your employees, but it meant one penny off of your stock price today. Would you do it? And 50 out of 50 of them said no. Because what their point was, was if I did that, if I did something that negatively affected our stock price today, I wouldn't get to five years. So that's why. And I'm just, and I look at companies that I work with and you've worked with, it's monthly numbers.

We've got to hit them, you know, which drives such bad behavior. I personally feel like we're in a little bit of a transition phase here where Gen Xers like you and I, we grew up as a numbers game. Like that was it. Give me my territory, get the fuck out of my way, make a hundred dials and go. Right. And, and so everybody, but everybody understands now that quality is the answer, right? Account-based marketing, account-based selling, you know, the personalization at scale, blah, blah, blah. But, but yet we're still the quote unquote leaders right now. And so it's hard to coach on quality. It's easy to coach. It's easy to manage towards numbers, right? Make your $50. You didn't hit them. You're fired.

Right. I, I hope we're in a transition phase that, that even though like our brains are kind of caught in two directions, right? We're like, oh, we know quality, but fuck it. We got to go hit the numbers. Right. Are we moving to, are we moving towards a breaking point or do you see this just getting worse as far as the pressure to drive results? I do think it's changing actually, exactly to your point, because listen, there's a lot of information out there now, right? You know, would it have changed so quickly if, you know, every person that hears this podcast is probably going to think a little differently about their equity than they did yesterday. So, but definitionally, and I think, you know, again, I'm not trying to talk to my book, but the reason that I do revenue collective is we represent, you know, I have this blog post in my head, like Newtonian physics and like the startup ecosystem, which is, you know, one of Newton's laws is for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction and revenue collective is essentially an equal and opposite reaction to this, to this dynamic.

What's, and what do, what do, you know, what are we trying to do with this group of people that we hope to be, we hope to build a global movement, you know, and the global movement is about recalibrating the risk reward relationship between founders, investors, and then all of the people that work at the companies. And, you know, like whatever, whatever is industry standard today might very well change. I'll give you a specific example. So we have this concept in revenue collective around the bill of rights, which is like, these are the five pillars that, that C-level executives should negotiate for when they go into a company. They are the right to due diligence, the right to aligned comp, the right to liquidity, the right to severance, and the right to consult.

And so let's pick one of those, which is the right to severance. So my belief, right. And this is going to, you know, cause certain founders to tell me to go fuck myself, but I think there's no other, like on the elliptical or whatever. Exactly. So I apologize in advance, but like a series B or later company, right, which has just raised, you know, 20, $30 million. I believe that any operating executive that you hire should get 12 months severance, 12 months of their base pay paid one lump sum upon any kind of termination or early departure. And if it's series B earlier, it should be six months. Now, I also happen to know, of course, cause I have a network of people that we share information that market is three months, right?

And if you go into a negotiation and frankly, most people don't even offer it at first, you have to ask for it. So what's going to happen if we get, if we get our way and you know, all of these C-level executives start saying, fuck you, I want 12 months severance. Well, I'll tell you what's going to happen. The founders are going to think along and hard before making that hire. Well, good. So on the margin, will it mean that like, there's a re there's an equalizing force where maybe a few people don't get that VP of sales or that CRO job or CMO job because they negotiated because the companies are saying, you know what, if it's going to be this expensive to hire this person, let's see how far we can go with consultants.

Let's see how far we can go with some advisors. Let's see if we can take this 25 year old rockstar, you know, SDR manager and turn her into the VP of sales. But I think that's the right approach. I don't, you know, I've, when I was consulting and I still do some consulting and the number one type of client that I got was a client, a startup that had just fired their VP of sales and needed an interim sales leader while they searched for their next VP of sales. And in one of those cases, the person had moved his family, including his kids from LA where he was kicking ass at a fast growing company, but had one specific playbook and one specific sales motion. He picks everybody up and he moves them to New York for this great new job.

And he lasted six months and then is out on the street on his ass. And I can tell you that he didn't get 12 months severance because he probably didn't know to ask for it. I doubt that he got six months. I bet that, you know, the rationale is listen, he's only been here for a couple of months and I'm really sorry, but here's eight weeks. And I think that's very generous because normally our policy is X. And so, you know, the long, this is a long answer to your question, but the point is, I do think that there will be a rebalancing. I think that the consequence of all of this will be more education for founders and executives on what type of capital is really the right capital for their business.

Because the other thing people don't understand is there's a lot of flavors of money besides just venture capital, right? You can, there's lots of people that don't expect 40% annualized returns. And so, and there's lots of ways to fund a business, including to the point of your business and my business, John, which is getting your customers to fund your business. The old way. Sell, right? Yeah. Delivering something that's super valuable and getting people to pay for it. Like, hello. So, so I do think, I do think it'll change. I do think it's in the middle of changing. And, but I think, you know, all of us represent the, that change. We represent like the new information that we're bringing to the market.

So let's, let's finish up with some stuff on a first for the sales reps out there trying to help those executives. Okay. Cause I think the, and I'm going to put myself in this bucket as a, as a, as an inexperienced sales rep, uh, earlier in my career, whenever I saw, and this is like, you know, when LinkedIn first came out with the job movements, Hey, so-and-so point from this company to that company. Right. That was like, Oh, great. Hey, Sam, what's up? I see you're the CRO of XYZ company. And I want to help you. You know, this is what we do. Right. And, and, you know, rarely successful. So what can I, what I tell reps is look, when you see somebody go into a new executive role, there's two things that executive has to figure out immediately when they come on board and correct me if I'm wrong on this one, but one is they got to like, yes, they did their due diligence on the business, but now once they're behind the curtains, they got to really now see what the hell they're working with.

Right. So they got to get a lay of the land pretty quick as far as where are the holes, where the gaps, SWOT, whatever you want to call it, that type of thing. And then as soon as they really get their hands around what the fuck is going on, then they have to make an impact almost immediately. Right. Because we're no longer in the world where you can enact a five-year plan and hopefully it comes through. Like if you're, I hired you to drive in, to drive results immediately. And if I don't see those results in three months, six months, whatever it is, I'm cutting your head off. Right. So I tell reps, look, if you can help an executive either figure out what they're going, you know, what they have really fast or make an impact really fast, those are the only two times that you should actually say, I want to talk to you as a new executive.

Otherwise, just send them an email saying, congratulations, let me know if the dust settles, here's some information type of scenario. Right. So, so that's kind of a dummy way of looking at it, but is it even feasible to, to, to talk to a new leader? Um, because most of them bring in their, their, like, you know, I was a benefit, I'm the benefactor of it. You've gone from company to company and I'm a known commodity for you. Right. So you know exactly what I do. So another, some other trainer calling you and saying, Hey, Sam, what's up? I see you just landed at X. You know, I'd love to talk to you about my sales training needs. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, you know what? I, devil, I know better than devil, I don't.

So what chance do we have as sales reps and engaging with new leaders and helping them succeed? And what approach should those reps take so that they don't sound like the douchebag sales rep that just says, Hey, congrats on the new job. I want to sell you something. Well, I think it's a great question. And I think you're general. So, I mean, this is general sales advice that every person is giving out in every, in every context these days, which is do not send, first of all, you know, I just spoke to Keenan and he, you know, he's focused on problem centric versus product centric and like, do not, you just got to get the, the, the S the predictable revenue style, like cadence or sequence, you know, out of your, uh, out of your arsenal that is just telling me about your features and like the, the gobbledygook jargon that I don't even know what the fuck they're saying half the time from SDRs and from account executives that doesn't resonate.

The second thing that doesn't resonate for me personally, but again, it depends on the buyer. I really don't care if you went to UVA where I went to undergrad, you know, like go who's like, that doesn't help. You know, I'm trying to hit a number. And so all people, it's just wild that all you have to do, first of all, please cold call, because, you know, I understand that, um, I pick up the phone, especially with local presence. I pick it up more often than I should, because I'm just like, who the fuck is this? So, um, if you can help me hit my number, uh, I'll take a, I'll take a conversation with you. The other thing I would say is exactly your point about like the point of the turnover, the point of the 18 month thing is like, don't worry.

You know, you don't, you play a longer game than just trying to get me to buy right here, right now. And if you can build a deep relationship with me and over time, if you can convince me that, you know, chorus is better than gong or, you know, uh, pipe drive is better than Salesforce. It doesn't have to be, it may not be feasible for me to rip something out right now in this particular organization. But if you can build a relationship with me, I can take that to the next organization where I have a different opportunity. But the thing I would say, and the advice I'd give is the same advice I give any salesperson selling to anybody, which is bring empathy and curiosity and speak to me in English.

And you have to understand if I'm a new CRO or CMO, it's very simple. Why did they hire me? They hired me to hit some number. They hired me because for some reason they wanted to up level or they weren't satisfied with their performance. And there's a tremendous amount of pressure, exactly as you said, to deliver quickly. So if you tell me, Hey, I can get you leads. I can help you build pipeline. Let me tell you how I don't need the gobbledygook. I don't need like the 50 different things that your product marketing person wrote. I'll take a call based on that. And by the way, I don't need a demo. Like, I don't, I don't need to see the thing. Walk me through the business case for how your solution is going to help me make more money.

And I will take that conversation. Could you, is there a, just for, again, probably the less experienced reps out there, is there kind of a general 30, 60, 90 that executives go through? Because I remember when I, when Jack, well, like I actually had the pleasure of, and privilege of working for Jack Welch for, for a couple of months to get his online program, which was insane. And what Susie asked me was, Hey, like she said, you know, give me your 30, 60, 90. And I, and I have a pretty standard 30, 60, 90. First month is all about learning the business. Second month is figuring out what systems third month is putting those systems and executing right. General. Is there a, um, cause I, cause I'll give you another thing, like mergers and acquisitions as a trigger, like reps use mergers and acquisitions.

And I say, okay, yes, but understand the life cycle of a merger and acquisition, right? There's everything that happens up until that merger and acquisition, like the announcement, right? That you don't know about. Then there's the announcement. And really when that announcement happens, nothing's happening internally as a business, that's a pure PR thing. And then there's about six months out where they start to look at the systems and try to figure out where's there's overlap. And then they're about a year out is when they start to really make the changes, right? So if you can time your, like, I actually avoid the, the initial, Hey, I saw you merged with, I want to talk, right? Because that's when every rep goes.

I usually wait till three, six, 12 months out. And I speak the language of where they are in that acquisition, right? So can, is there a language that if a rep saw a, Hey, this person just got hired, right? 30 days in, this is what they're focused on 60 days in. This is what there's 90 days. Is there kind of a standard that you would suggest that reps think about as it relates to that? Yeah. I mean, first, well, first of all, I would suggest there's a standard that, uh, that new C-level executives think about, because most of them don't know how to do it either. But first of all, there's a book called the first 90 days. And that's, you know, that's like the template. Every exec reads that or will get recommended that book as soon as they start a new job.

And the point of that book is look for a few quick wins. But what I tell everybody in your first 30, and I, and I also think 30, 60, 90 is like a kind of a, I really think it should be like 30, 90, 180 because you know, like that's, but you're right that everybody else is saying 30, 60, 90. The first thing that you're doing in the first 30 days is you're, is you're meeting the team and you're meeting the customers. And most people over, uh, they skew towards meeting the team and they don't spend enough time with customers. And the way you always get nailed in the first board meeting is that if you go into that board meeting and you haven't ever talked to any, you don't have a point of view on the business itself.

You have a point of view and like, which are your reps are really good, but you don't, you haven't talked to Disney or, or, or Pixar or whomever the big customer is of your business. So the first 30 days are typically spent listening. And that's something that that's just something for a rep to know. Like, I'm sure you're out there meeting with your customers and gathering feedback and we help with this or we help with that or blah, blah, blah. But, um, and then the 60 and the 90 is beginning to make changes and beginning to look for quick wins, medium wins and long-term wins. And quick wins might be like, Hey, the comp plan's cap, let's uncap it. Or it might, you know, it might be, we don't have any SDRs.

We're going to build an SDR team. That's probably a medium term, but that's, that's something to know that like the first part of your, of your experience as an executive is just ingesting information and the ingest and the information is about the company and how it functions, the team that you're responsible for, and then your customers and what they think of the product. Awesome. Very cool. And you mentioned that, but what was that book again? The first 90 days, first 90 days. Yeah. It's a great book. I gotta throw that on my list. Are there any other books that you would recommend a sales rep read to understand the mindset of an executive, uh, so that they could maybe have, cause I, I always say like, read the books executive.

If you want to, if you want to have conversations with executives, read the books executives read, right? Are there, they're like, what are your like top two or three that you would say, Hey, if you're a sales rep and you want to connect with set executive in that mindset, you should probably read this book. Cause they're all reading that book. That is a great question. Um, everybody's reading shoe dog right now about full night, you know, the history of Nike. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, I, you know, there, there's a, I don't know if this is that helpful, but, but a few of them, uh, you know, this guy, Lencioni, Pat Lencioni, he wrote this book, the five dysfunctions of a team. He just wrote this book, the advantage.

That's a book that a lot of people are reading. I mean, a lot, a lot of people are reading the classic texts by like Michael Porter. Um, I think, uh, I mean, here's a random book, but, uh, Disney Wars about the history of Disney, uh, uh, related to Michael Eisner when he became CEO. I mean, I would read books about CEOs and about building businesses and then get yourself in the heads of people that make decisions with limited information, which is what executives do and what humans do. Cool. And, and I'm sure you guys are putting out some stuff too, right. I mean, like talk to now talk to us a little bit about really what you're working on and, and, and, and, and how, first of all, how people can find out more information about you and what are you working on these days that you want people to pay attention to or how you could help.

So, uh, you know, what I'm, first of all, if you want to get in touch, please do. Uh, I'm on LinkedIn, linkedin.com forward slash the word in, and then forward slash Sam F. Jacobs revenue collective. We, you know, I'm in Austin to figure out is there demand? I mean, I think there, I'm almost, you know, I'm 99% sure across the world, there's demand. Cause I get so many inbounds, but, but what we're working on is building the group and building the community and making it super, super valuable. You know, our NPS is 70. We've never had anyone churn in a year and a half and it is a dues paying organization. So, you know, what I'm trying to do is meet people in all the different cities all over the world and the country and figure out how, how, you know, where do people need help and how can we help them?

The organization is specifically about how do we take executives and how do we help them and how do we help them succeed? So if you're interested, if you're out there and you've achieved a VP level title, we don't let in founders or CEOs and we don't let in anybody that's not a VP. So it's really an exclusive community for commercial operators. And if you want to learn more, if you want to join, uh, you know, it's pretty cool. Uh, the, I think the favorite thing that we do is we have this global Slack workspace where there's 200 people from all over the world. And you see the little, uh, letters like LDN for London and, you know, AMS for Amsterdam. And you'll ask a question about, you know, uh, how do you manage a weighted probability forecasting at the enterprise level when it's seven figure deals?

And you'll get five answers from people all over the world in five seconds, which is really fucking cool. So get in touch with me if you want. You can also email me at sam.f.jacobs at Gmail and, uh, happy to tell you more. Awesome. And I, I, you know, I, I, I wish I had a resource like what you, early days, cause it's almost like you need a support group. You know what I mean? Of course. Because, because you think you're the only one out there. I mean, that's why the entrepreneurs, right. The YEOs and are so successful because the entrepreneurial mindset's different, right. And your friends just don't get it. Like my friends think I live this fucking glamorous lifestyle of flying all over the world, all these cool places.

I'm like, really, you think this is glamorous? It's occasionally glamorous, right? It's okay. Occasionally, very occasionally. Right. But then when I jump on a red eye and I have to then have, you know, 10 phone calls and then stay up until three o'clock in the morning, writing all these fucking con, you know, and all that stuff, it's not as glamorous as you think it is. So, so having that, that sounding board of people who are like you or who are going through those same things or who have been through those same things and can give you some just advice to maybe skip a few steps. You know what I mean? Like that's, that's what I think desperately need. And I love the gap that you're filling right now.

Cause it seems like there's a big one in the marketplace for that level. Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, we're salespeople, right? So we're great at getting the job cause we can sell our way into it. But then what happens when you get the job and you don't, you're not supposed to ask the CEO. I mean, you're going to, how do I do this? They're like, I thought I hired you to do that. So I'm the revenue collective. We'll figure it out for you. Awesome. Sam, it's been a pleasure as always. Appreciate you coming on here. And, uh, and yeah, for anybody out there, if you, if you know somebody who's a VP, who's, who's been struggling for whatever reason, or, you know, if they might've gotten letting go or they got a new job and they're trying to fuck, like, holy shit, I caught a whale by a, you know, by the tail here, what do I do with it?

You should go check out the revenue collective over at Sam. All right. John, thanks so much for having me on the show. Uh, you should know that your episode of the sales hacker podcast is the most downloaded episode. No shit. Yeah. So, uh, you know, I appreciate your support. You're, you're doing amazing things and thanks for having me. No, I appreciate it. Thank you, Sam. I, you know, I think we've had a great relationship. I'm looking forward to keeping this one going. So, and everybody out there, uh, as I usually say, go make somebody smile today. There's too much negativity and bullshit out there. So go make somebody smile and it'll make it yourself a better day. So have a great one and, uh, let's make it happen.

All right. Thanks. All right. Thanks. Bye. Cheers. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.