247: The JB Sales Executive Team on Why We're Looking Forward to 2022

Hey everybody, so this is basically a JBSales executive meeting that you're going to listen to here. Myself, my chief growth officer Chris Merrill and my chief operating officer Megan got together and just really kind of recapped on this past year and some of the learning lessons and things we're excited about coming into next year and some of our plans as well. So really just an open forum conversation here, but hopefully you'll kind of get a sense. One of the things we try to do with this podcast and all of us here at JBSales is get you in on the journey, right? And that includes decisions that we make, structural from an organization, because the goal is to really help you, not just from a sales standpoint, but also from a business standpoint, business acumen, how decisions are made and everything else.

So hopefully you get some of that out of this conversation and you get excited for what we got coming up here because we're going to do some cool shit. So I'll see you in a bit. What's popping y'all? Welcome back to another make it happen Monday's episode. This one here is about to be special. JB sales annual executive meeting is about to happen publicly for all of our listeners today. John, our chief growth officer, Mr. Chris Merrill and our rudder, the lady that keeps us moving forward. Our COO Megan for John are all going to dive into a reflective conversation about 2021, as well as give you a look into the future of what's to come in 2022. I want to give a big shout out to our partners, Sales Loft, Proposify, Zoom Info, Chili Piper, Prelay, Sendoso, and Prolific.

Without these teams, we cannot bring this program to the masses. They will help your sellers sell, they will help your team grow, and they'll help you achieve the goals that you aim to achieve. These are great people to work with as well, and believe it or not, that is the number one checkbox that has to get checked before you can become a JB sales partner. These guys are the best in the business, and they show us every single day that they care about who they help. We're going to mention it throughout the show, but as always, we invite you to join us through your 2022 selling year by becoming a member at JB sales. Take your growth and development into your own hands at joinjbsales.com. This is where you're going to gain access to all of our training tips, techniques, tactics, and takeaways.

We're also now providing weekly live Ask Me Anything sessions for members only, and those are really starting to take off. Whether you're a team or an individual contributor looking to learn with us, this is the answer to getting your sales game to that next level. So become a member today, that URL again, joinjbsales.com. Let's get into this conversation with our leaders so you can learn about what's coming and what we've learned through 2021. Good afternoon, everybody, it's Jon Barrows making up on Monday, hopefully at a fantastic weekend. Mine was good. I went up a Christmas tree cutting down and didn't cut down a Christmas tree, as Chris well knows. Yeah, you forgot something, didn't you, Jon?

So anyways, look, this is going to be a little bit of a different podcast for everybody listening here. This is every year the executive team here at JB sales gets together and just kind of has an open conversation about how the year went and what we're looking forward to for next year and stuff. And so I thought this would be a good opportunity to get Chris and Megan on the call here and just have kind of a conversation about how things, how they're seeing things these days and where we're going. Because I think what we're dealing with here at JB sales is a lot of what other organizations are dealing with as far as how do they adjust to this new normal, if you will, and everything else. So let's dive into it.

So actually, you know what, I'm going to start with Chris. Chris, I think, I don't know if you've changed your title yet on LinkedIn, but chief growth officer, right? Because you were chief, I don't know, for whatever we make up titles. It's a few different titles in a few different places. It has to suit the conversation, but I would say we're sticking with the growth. Yeah. Cool. So yeah. Talk to me about like, what were your kind of bigger takeaways from this year? As you, I mean, and for everybody who does, isn't familiar, Chris is the one you get the emails from. He's the one who coordinates the entire on-demand side of the house and the memberships and everything else while being chief growth officer here and connecting the dots.

But, you know, Chris has been building now for at least a couple of, well, for fucking whatever, however many years we've been together, but really building our on-demand platform here for a while. And I've given him a lot of autonomy to do that. And so you've seen a lot of stuff with sponsors and kind of just market trends here. So anything in particular stand out for you this year, Chris? Yeah, I would say two things. One, coming up, I think 2020 was like, obviously, you know, we'll, you continue to see the memes making 2020 to be kind of like the chaos that it was, how fast coming back in, everyone adjusted one to the work from home, the remote function. What was going to happen when we lost the in-person events, obviously that was taken off.

We try, we did one in Atlanta, it went well, but the rate at which everybody is still kind of signing up and coming to all of the events, we were able to hold our attendance rate and registration and show rate all the way through, if not increase over a period of time. And as much as we went, I think last year we did, you know, 20, 30 events this year, we'll do 50 to 60 and, you know, obviously worried about any type of, you know, you know, are we overdoing it? How can we keep it fresh? People want to learn. And I don't even know if it's just about learning. I think it's, they also want to, they just want to be involved. And we are really excited to have seen that this year. We're doubling down again next year as well.

So from a standpoint of the, um, the content and I think one of the biggest takeaways for me this year was to, we finally just stopped trying to come up with what we thought was interesting content. I think that works for a while, but now that we have such an engaged audience, I was just amazed at all we had to do. And it was almost like a duh, why didn't we do this earlier, which was just ask. And one of the benefits of a live events versus doing courses or in the can is our ability to, you know, the heat map. If we can go and just ask on a Tuesday, you know, what are you interested? Where's your pain point? We can turn around an event in a couple of weeks to, to answer to that. So I think it's one, uh, just amazed at the resiliency of this community.

Uh, the fact that, you know, showing up to these events and the other piece too, is just from our side of, uh, we're actually feeling that this community is starting to like take its own form, right? Like they're starting to drive the content, uh, and just thankful. I mean, just super thankful for the year. Yeah. And I, and before we get to you, Megan, for a second, like Chris, from your, like personally, right. I mean, we're all on this kind of growth trajectory here for ourselves on our own journeys and stuff. Um, a lot of fucked up things have happened over the past couple of years. I mean, like hopeful concerns, uh, optimistic, pragmatic, like where, where, I guess, what did you learn from this year?

Like for you personally, resiliency, resiliency, like I was concerned that we were going to take a little bit of, you know, this space would feel a little bit of retraction. Um, I think the exact opposite. I think sometimes working in this space, you consume the news, which you try to do less of nowadays, you consume the news and you kind of take that with you. And we walk into this space we plan and the capital markets are on fire. Uh, growth is out of control. The roll-ups, uh, you know, next year is going to be super interesting. There's, you know, for the major categories within our space, there's just such amazing kind of battles for, you know, domination there. And yeah, I mean, it's, uh, optimistic beyond optimistic.

I think is I, my team will tell you, like, I haven't felt this like amped up about moving forward and kind of like digging for five, 10 years. I mean, I feel like this is, this is, I keep telling our team, like there, there's opportunity here. And as much as again, you know, you just gotta be careful on the news side of it. And we can only like, you always say, it's only let's focus on what we can control. But, um, yeah, I think, uh, optimistic to the point where I probably have to be taken down a few notches, but, you know, ignorance is bliss and I'll just, you know, until I get punched in the face there with it, but yeah, I'm ready. I love it. Megan, what do you, what do you think from your perspective?

I mean, I know like you're a great balance between Chris and I, like, I think I'm a little bit more of the pragmatic. Chris is more of the out there, like totally. Everything's fine. Everything's great. Everything's great. Megan's definitely the risk assessment. Like, okay, stop the fucking, you know, train here, assholes. We got to pay attention to this stuff. But from your perspective of what you're seeing with what we're doing and also the, the space itself, kind of what were your take, what were your biggest learning lessons and takeaways from 2021? Um, I'm just like, so my biggest takeaway, I think was just the ability for the professional services team to execute. I still am blown away by, I mean, we hired two new trainers, brand new, um, and, and ramped them faster than we anticipated, mostly out of need to service our clients.

And, and because of that, a lot of things came away. So my biggest like achievement, I feel like I'm just really proud of the team. I'm proud of the execution that people did. Um, you know, I think our training team, you know, we have, we have people who want to get it right. Um, and as much as we have to balance that getting it right, they, they were able to execute and weren't worried about making it perfect. Um, and seeing the evolution of themselves over time, um, finding their own groove, finding their own style of what worked for them. Um, you know, I think it's very tough for them to come in after, you know, training, John, you, you've trained a lot of the accounts or Morgan. Those are sort of known people, you guys have brands and I'm just super pumped at what, um, the new trainers have been able to do in such a short period of time and looking forward to what they, um, can deliver next year.

Yeah, I think, I mean, on that note, you know, if we macro that out, I think the, the importance of hiring, uh, the right people, I can't, is it's, it can't be understated. I mean, I watch, you know, for us, we've been pretty selective, I think with who we hire and we have a really strict hiring process and, you know, I just, um, uh, similar in the sense that getting people who give a shit, you know what I mean? Like it would bigger picture, give a shit about their careers about, but, but also what they're doing and the passion for, for what they're doing. I mean, that, that came through in spades this year for everybody, as far as their, their, their not only just appreciation for working here, but also their love for what they're doing.

Right. And, and how it does make a difference. I mean, I think we're pretty unique in the sense I've never had a job where, you know, you get unsolicited feedback from people that you've impacted two, three, four, five years ago. You know what I mean? I mean, think about, I think about like Xerox and I think about my job Black and Decker, like nobody ever reaches back out to me after, you know, zip my Xerox days and says, Hey John, you know, thank you so much for fucking, you know, selling that copier to me, man. Like it made a huge difference in my career. You know what I mean? Like it just doesn't, I mean, maybe if you're a manager, you know, you know what I mean? Like, you know, a few years later, you might get a rep calling you back that says, Hey, thank you.

And that was actually one of my, I'll be honest. That was one of my highlights this year was, um, as you guys know, you know, obviously dad passed and I was down in Aruba and I went after, and I'll tie that to something else about this year. But you know, when I came back, um, I got to, and Chris, I think we'd do, I talked to you about this. Like I got a call from Kevin. So I'm, you know, still trying to wrap my head around this shit about what's going to happen with me and my dad and all that other stuff. And I get this call out of nowhere from Kevin Ellis, who's this, this kid that I, you know, gave a chance at thrive networks back when Chris started thrive. And we were, you know, 10 people.

And I hired this one kid and nobody else wanted to hire him. Like Nate didn't want him. Jimmy didn't want him. Nothing. And I was like, no, I fucking like this kid for some reason. Right. And gave him a shot, you know, came on board, the kid crushed it. And he calls me out of nowhere. And he goes, I just want to say thank you. And I'm like, for what? He goes, uh, thrive is recapped private equity three, four, five, six times. I've stayed with it. He's like, now I'm a multimillionaire and my family will never have to worry about anything ever again. And it's because of the chance that you gave me. And I was like, I can't tell you, Kevin, how much that means. Um, because those are the type of things that I think make what we do rewarding and, and, and to the point where that's, you know, for me this year, it's like the, the bigger impact is what I'm looking for here is, is we have a platform now that we got a voice.

I mean, Chris, how many, how many, what, what's our reach at this point? Probably about 700,000, um, revenue professionals under our reach. And, uh, we, and internally we keep a very, very healthy, um, opt in, you know, our, our database and, um, that's like at 50 or 55,000 and growing exponentially. And to realize that you, I mean, even if you just have an impact on one fucking person, you know what I mean? Like it's worth everything, but I think the, the unsolicited feedback that we get, the, the messages that we get from the team, um, you know, like Megan, like when Leslie called up and said she was able to pay off her debt, she fucking, you know, bought a car. She's never been happy. You know what I mean?

Like that, I, that that's the type of stuff that I want to start gearing this company more towards making that type of an impact for people. You know, and I think we, we impact people from a sales standpoint all day long, right? Hey, here's a technique that helped you close a deal. They helped you get a meeting. But when you start to macro it out as far as what we're doing here and all this shit that happened over the past two years too, with mental health and all these, I mean, if you're not paying attention to this point, if you're not trying to figure out a way to help address that both internally and externally, I think you're missing, missing the mark coming, moving forward here in every way.

So, I mean, I don't know about you guys, but I am overly thankful for the crew that we have, uh, you know, the, the audience that, that we work with, cause they just seem to give a shit to like the ones that, you know, they, they care as well. They're trying to do good things. They're trying to do other stuff. Um, and I just, you know, I'm excited about the, the level of impact I think we can have moving forward with that crew around us on the, on Megan, on the training side, the thing that I was probably the most impressed with, and I would consider it a massive milestone over the last 10 years is when, um, and I, I would, I believe it was Leslie where she sourced, sold, delivered, and got the unsolicited positive feedback without John or yourself a Morgan.

I don't even, I think it was one of those things, John, where you were like, oh, that happened. It's like, oh my gosh, from a, from a group 10, 10, 12 years ago that swore that we would never have one FTE to the exact opposite of two, basically two operating companies. That was, that's amazing because coming from, you know, the consulting world, professional services, um, displacing someone like a John to the point where someone will, you built it both by reputation, by the product or what you're delivering and the processes that where it transferred over to the rest of the team. So we can scale this. That was a, that was a massive win. And that, that was no small feat. And I think that goes to, uh, the hiring profile, uh, building better processes.

I think, you know, Megan, I'm sure you'll talk about is us acknowledging that like we are professional services organization. And if we do want to have, and I don't necessarily know if it's about just about scale, cause it's not like we're looking at that side of the business saying, we're going to have a hundred trainers, but to at least understand that, uh, you know, John Barrows, um, you know, can't train for the rest of his life. And, you know, like I, I, I think it was been great to, you know, obviously it got forced about getting you off a plane a little bit and giving you some of your life back, but there's only so many days a year. Uh, if our true North here is the most amount of impact possible, that this is one of the catalysts to doing that, which is better processes where, you know, you, you still have your hand in affecting the actual content, our values, what we deliver, how we deliver, but then having, um, processes where Megan can actually scale and bring in, you know, new trainers to kind of that and getting the feedback loop as well from new trainers, different ways of approaching it.

Well, and that's where like, I, I, I go back to, you know, my focus, I mean, and Megan and Chris, like both of you guys, like hiring profile, trust and values, right? Like those, those, and not in no real order, like I would actually say values first, trust second, and then hiring profile and that, how that builds because, you know, I've been talking a lot about like, you know, defining your core values. I'm going through a keynote exercise right now with, with Brian Burkhart, where I'm really excited to try to kind of level myself up. And a lot of it comes down, you know, we've having these conversations about what are your values? What do you believe in? And, and once you really identify those, and it's, it's interesting to me how few people actually go through the exercise of what are their core values, right?

Because once they do, you can start looking at things from a completely different lens and you could start hiring on that lens. You can start finding customers on that lens. And, and with that, you know, like Megan, for instance, Chris, you brought it up. Like I never wanted to, I just wanted to be me. I did. I literally just wanted my own fucking company to like, live my own little life, make a few hundred G's a year and, you know, fucking do my thing. Right. And, but I did say, I did say there was the, you know, Megan, if there is one person I would ever hire, it's going to be you. I can't afford you right now. But yet, you know, when I can, and when Megan came on board, it was easy for me to effectively hand over that entire side of the business.

And I did the same with you, Chris, from a, from a operations. And it was because values and trust were at the core of that. Right. I mean, Megan, do I ever ask you about like anything that it like, as far as what you're doing or like how you're doing it? Do I at all? No, no, not at all. In fact, if I want to, if I feel like I need to tell you, I have to call you to say, Hey, just wanted to let you know, here's what I'm doing. And you're like, right. Nine times out of 10, my answer is, I don't know. Are you doing it? Do you, have you gone? Yes. Okay. Then yes. Whatever the fuck it is, Megan, if you think it's a good idea, then just do it. Right. And Chris, like how often have I, I bugged you about like, Oh, you know, what are you spending your money on over there on the, on the on-demand side of that?

I mean, I don't think I've even looked at your fucking budget since like we started for crying out loud. That's why Megan's there, but. Oh shit. Does this, does this mean you're going to start looking? Yeah. No, no. I have zero fucking interest. It's funny you say that though, because I couldn't agree more. And one of the things that we've been going through, I think one of, one of the bigger concepts is us this year is, is an understanding. We've always been rooted in, in the sales training, which is the, you know, it is professional services. It's, it's human capital. And obviously we've taken what you've built and then, you know, brought on Morgan and we had to train that process for him to train.

Obviously he knocks it out of the park. And then we added more and more. And as we, we did that professional services started to unpack a little, but then on the other side, I was given this opportunity to kind of experiment with the media side of the business. That is, we have talent that creates events or content and we monetize both by sponsors and by this, this concept of, of paid membership. And then I think, you know, early, early this year, realizing we take a look at it. I mean, we were sharing resources. We were trying to run both sides of these businesses using kind of similar logic, whereas professional services is professional services. What we're building is more can, what we're realizing is a product.

And so I think mid-year acknowledging that and one, recognizing that we needed to build the processes that got John out of day to day so that it's not as dependent and puts you in the position more of the thinking and developing out new content and new training. Megan has done such an amazing job of actually creating a real professional services organization. One that has standard operating procedures that there's, you know, peer reviews of each other so that they can help to improve the training together. And what I've seen on that side is just like what I would call an individual sport, sales training as an individual sport before it's starting to turn, it's starting to be more of a team. I know that there's, you know, if, if, if one company is getting training from Leslie and the other is getting from Shelly, I can almost ensure that they're getting a very similar experience.

And that's, I think it must've been hard, like giving up that control to Megan to help to drive this. But from that standpoint, now when we hire that fifth, that sixth sales trainer, and we have these systems to plug it into, you look at it and say something that's not known for scale, human capital, professional services. And actually, as long as you get that, you know, you have the values in the, the, the kind of these plans, then it just comes down to that hiring profile, which we do take obviously very soon. So I think Megan, you've done an outstanding job. And I know, you know, our background is building professional services organization and, you know, it's herding cats. It's, it's, it's, it's personalities.

It's, you know, you know, Jane is not, Kim is not Charlie, you know, people are different and, and, and typically we're dealing with very smart people. And, you know, and, and so that's, that's, that's a huge feat in itself of just being able to wrangle this. And I feel like we're in a great position to, you know, if we wanted to spool up quickly and hire, we could, it doesn't mean we're going to, but we have that capability. Yeah. I mean, the, I, probably the biggest, one of the biggest challenges that we've had to overcome is just the difference in style, right? There's an expectation of John. John is not the same as Leslie. Leslie's not the same as Meg. Meg's not the same as Shelly. No one's the same as Morgan, right?

So that has been one of the challenges we've just had to figure out and to, you know, make sure that we set appropriate expectations, make sure we understand who the audience is, all those questions and things that kind of come down to the client experience. And what are we doing to make sure that we deliver the best value to them and the client has the best experience with us. And a lot of that comes down to one of John's core values, which is making sure you're set appropriate expectations with people about what they're getting, what they're responsible for, what we're responsible for, what they should expect after, what the follow-up process looks like, you know, all those things come down to making sure that we communicate clearly to the client, which is kind of a focus that we have, we've been working on, but we will continue to work on, is just that whole experience with the client, the onboarding, the post-training follow-up.

You know, do they want this to be an event or program where it continues, you know, throughout the year? What does that look like? How can our team help? Ultimately, how can we provide the best value for the team without breaking the, I'll call it scalability, but it's really scalability only because people only have so much time in a week and a day to be able to follow through on the stuff that they need to do for training itself, but also for all the preparation and follow-up to the training sessions. So really the last couple of months have all been all about getting everybody on the same page and understanding what those things look like so that we can optimize everyone's time. But again, really comes down to making sure everybody has the great client experience.

Megan, I'm curious how the team took it because I was, I kind of did it and then, then walked away and let you deal with the, the aftermath of it, of, of me, you know, during that team meeting during the summertime, when do we, when do we have that in August or August where I basically just, you know, to the, to the three women who were in the room, right? So it's, it was you and cause every, no, cause Morgan wasn't in there. So it was you, Leslie, Shelly and Meg were all, yeah. So all four of you were there where I was basically just like, all right, I've effectively taken this training as far as I can take it from a content and a delivery standpoint. And I genuinely do believe that. Um, all right, ladies, it's yours.

Like, you know, I'm handing this off to the officially handing this off to the team. What, how was, how was their reaction to that? Like behind the scenes, were they like, what the fuck, what is John doing? Or, or were they like excited? Like how did that, cause I, from a communication standpoint, I think I just kind of dropped that one and was like, all right, peace. Good luck. Yeah. But I knew you had it. So I'm just curious how they came. You were like, yeah, I got this. Like no problem. But for them, like, did, did they take that as a positive, as a negative? Like, what do you think? Well, um, you know, Shelly was probably a little scared cause you know, she had started two days prior to that and you're like, okay, peace out.

Um, but no, I think, uh, you know, collectively as a team, everybody actually saw it as really empowering. Um, you know, um, you know, let's go back to the hiring profile. We hired the, the, these individuals because of not only, you know, who they are and, and, and the personalities and how they clicked with the team, but for their knowledge, they're smart women. Um, and they, they've done this before they've been in charge of things and process and teams. And I think, um, all of them saw it as an opportunity to say, how can we make this less, um, focused on John being the deliverer, um, and make this really more about the content and what the team need, the teams need to get out of it. And, and it allowed them to have some, you know, creativity with regard to the structure of how the flow worked with delivering the same exact content, but what works for them.

So we went through a lot of exercises of, um, you know, Hey, when you're delivering that training, the way that we think it should be followed, like, where are those moments that you're like, Oh, this is uncomfortable. I need to just skip past this slide because it's just not connecting with the story that I have. And so, you know, we looked at those things and, and gave people to say the content, you know, core content competency is all still there, but the flow of it, does it make sense for you versus, you know, John, how you were delivering it or her or how Morgan was delivering it because even you and Morgan delivered differently. So, I mean, I can't, I've said it before and I'll say it again.

I can't watch Morgan deliver. I honestly can't because he delivers in such a different style, but I think this gets to something that to, to, you know, hopefully people who are listening to us to think about, which is, you know, this whole talk track I have around structure versus scripts. Right. And, and giving people autonomy. I do genuinely believe right now moving forward that if we overstructure, if we over script things and don't allow people to have their autonomy for coming up with their own approach and like, you're going to lose people. Right. I mean, the great, you know, resignation or whatever, if people don't feel like they have any ability to impact or, or address, you know, change something within what they're doing, I don't think they're going to last very long, but, but we can't just give out like, oh, just good luck, do whatever you want to do.

Like if they don't have one of the things that, you know, the keynote that I'm working on is the original title was around like, Hey, stop doing what you're supposed to do. Right. And the whole idea was like, you know, we, we were a lot of us do what we're supposed to do. You know, you go to school from, you know, until this age and then you work this hard and then you get a promotion and then you get married and then you buy a house and then you have kids. But the funny thing was, is as I was going through that and thinking, yeah, fuck that, you know, stop doing what you're supposed to do. There was a post by some millennial who said, yeah. Um, and it was told, I didn't post anything about it, but they had said, you know, there's a comfort to knowing what you're supposed to do in the sense that our generation generation, yeah, there were guidelines.

Okay. You get this job, you do this. So it was kind of like, okay, like if I don't know if I'm not an entrepreneur, if I'm not one who just inherently breaks the rules in the first place, there's a, there's a process for me to fit in here. And what the millennial was saying is like, there's no blueprint anymore. Like, I don't know what the fuck to do. And I don't, so therefore like, I'm a, I'm a mess because there's like, I can now do infinite amount of things. I can get married to 15 different types of people. If I want to, I can have 75 jobs. By the time I, you know what I mean? I could be homeless. It doesn't matter. Nobody cares anymore. And so that brought me to this, like, that kind of goes back to the structure scripts.

Like you can't just leave it willing to, you know, let anybody do whatever the hell they want to do without any guidance here because it falls apart. So, but you can't be so strict in what you're telling them to do that there's no autonomy there. All right, y'all. These three are completely divulging their trains of thought as we grow here at JB sales. And as leaders, it's the strategic moves that we make that impact everything from the people that we employ to the contacts that those people serve. As we navigate these waters, it defines the success that we see in the future. And these conversations help us learn and adjust in the moment to achieve the greatness that we all deserve so much. This is an enlightening conversation, but now it's time for a shout out.

Today, I want to highlight Joey Callahan and the team at Neon One. Joey and Morgan chatted about getting his team some learning resources and they all became members at JB sales. We are amped to have you guys coming on board and learning the techniques needed to hit meeting goals and close more deals. Big ups to Neon One for providing learning resources for your team so they can grow and develop into the truly well-rounded sales professionals that they need to be. Way to go, Neon One. You're one of us now, so let's go. Sign your team up alongside me, Morgan, Meg, Leslie, and JB at joinjbsales.com where you can get all of the training and tips and techniques that you need and you can learn and be a part of everything that we do.

From the tips to the webinars to the podcast episodes and more, we've got it all packed into a nonstop learning experience that lasts the whole year through. Become a 2022 member and let's get you where you deserve to be with JB sales in your corner. The URL that you need to visit once again, joinjbsales.com. Let's get back to the show. I mean, Chris, from your standpoint, with the team that you're working on, how do you, how are you seeing that manifest itself in guidance versus allowance, if you will? It's interesting that you mentioned that somebody posted saying they like having a plan of what they're supposed to do. I think that's the expectation. Okay, there's the financial part of, we show up, we do our job, there's their comp.

But the other part of it is knowing that you're contributing and doing a good job. And I think it's some of larger organizations that gets a little bit lost of outside of just what I quote or what I'm like, am I, am I doing a good, good job? Is that that clear expectation setting of, of what is, you know, what is expected of me that pat on the back? So I can feel like I actually contributed what I'm seeing. And one of our mantras on this side for the kind of the media side that we're running is as much as we trust our gut, we rely on data as the punctuation mark. And so when we, everything for us is an experiment and we take a look and say, what do we believe? What's our thesis? But then we say, okay, now go get the data.

So it's, it's like, it's actually kind of fun because sometimes we're on point and sometimes we're, we're, we're caught off guard by the results. But one thing that we absolutely have learned is this whole concept of no fluff, actionable, direct, all we're ever hearing from revenue, individual contributors is time. I would probably say this year, all the feedback that we got was about time. And to your point of like the structure and things, they, they just want the playbook. They don't want the long narrative. They don't want the story. And we've done this. We've tried this. We've watched how people go, like, if it's an hour long content, you know, watching things on two X, three X, they just want to, they want the blinkers.

They want the cliff notes. And so within that, I think what we're seeing is it's not that they, that individual contributors aren't looking for perfect structure. They want the fastest path to, to moving forward. So within that, as much as we could put out these long playbooks of how to do every part of your job, what we're realizing is that they're really just looking for like actual things they can put in play today to experiment and then just kind of move on. It's no longer this long, like narrative of building things out. But, but does that, I mean, this is what always feared I get afraid of is the silver bullet question, right? Like it's like what percentage of people right now from your standpoint are looking for the silver bullet so that they don't actually have to do the fucking work versus looking for something they can use to test, to turn, to learn from it.

Right. Cause those are the people I give a shit about the ones who are looking for the silver bullet. I could honestly, like, I could give a fuck about because what they're saying there is, Hey, like anybody, like I always get this, does anybody have a template that, you know, a good, you know, Jay Barrows or why you, why you now, or ADA email that I could send to the financial services clients. And what they're asking there is, do they have one fucking email that works for every financial services company that I can send out to a thousand fucking people? And I just refuse to provide that. So where, where are we right now? Well, I think there's, there's a little bit of Darwinism at play there.

Those, I think anybody who's just Googling, you know, best subject line or Googling, they're just, you know, can I have that template and repurposing it? We know how effective that's going to be. I mean, maybe, maybe it works for the first couple of times they do something. But what I always say in this space is, you know, something works until it doesn't. It works, everyone does it, and then it falls off. And so what I do think, John, is I do think that there's a lot of, you know, sales, specifically sales reps, individual contributors, where they value their time. They look at it and say, I'm going to try this. If it lands, I'll keep doing it. If not, I'll find something else to do. And as much as it's about a single silver bullet, I also think that to your point of you saying, you know, you could, there's 10 different types of people to marry.

You can, you're living arrangement, anything. It's got to be analysis paralysis when they walk in and say, okay, what can I do with my time today? Everything is, there's so many options of how you approach it. I mean, that's what we get asked all the time. Like, okay, stop telling me all the options, which one should I use? And that's not a fair way for us to answer it. And so unfortunately, John, I will tell you, I think a lot are looking for the silver bullet. But they're looking for consensus of what's working right now. And I think that's the primary, one of the primary drivers. We are hyper-focused on live events and live experiences. And the reason for that is it allows us faster turnaround times for that content.

Because like that, again, that feedback loop of tell us what you're looking for. We'll go produce that content. If we wait six months, it's already going to change. And so within that, you know, I will say there is that it exists. The need for the silver bullet is there. And again, the danger there is do you give people a template or you give them the structure that you're going to play within? I mean, like I'm going to say it, I'll say it again and I'll say it again and again and again, you know, 10, 60, 30, 10% and everybody's listening, you know, I did this keynote and somebody asked, John, you train everybody else, you know, how can we differentiate? And I said, 10, 60, 30. I said, 10% in this room are going to take the content and run with it and excel.

60% are going to do something different because it's easy and it makes sense. And 30% ain't going to do shit different. So the question isn't how many people can I train? Question is what percentage? And for me, the only percentage I care about 30%, if you're, if you're in the bucket of you don't give a shit, then fuck off. Literally, like I could literally give a shit about you. That's 60%. I think the 10%, the top 10%, they're always going to be the top 10% because they're always hungry. They're genuinely curious. They're always trying new stuff. So yeah, give them resources, let them run. Right. But it's the top 50% of that 60%, like that middle group. It's the ones of that group that care, that care enough to try new things, to do others.

You know, the ones who are B players and are always going to be players. I don't even want to shit on it. Like I used to be like, oh, fuck you. You don't care about, no, no, no, no, no. If you are comfortable at that level and you are happy, because that is the goal for everything is happiness, right? So if you are happy making 60, 70 grand a year, pushing some buttons, waking up, going nine to five, coming home, being with your kids, then God bless you. You, you've won. Okay. But those aren't necessarily the people I care about as far as what we're doing either. I care about the people that care. Right. And I think those are the ones that I'm most excited to engage with next year is finding the ones that really want to get better and get better with us.

To your point, like we're trying to get better every day. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Megan, like from your, like, what are you looking for? Like macro, micro here, like big picture wise next year, what are you excited about? And then for us, what are you excited about? I mean, for us as a, as an overall organization, I am like super pumped to see the execution on both sides for next year. I mean, based on, you know, the changes that Chris has made on the better side, um, and just, you know, all of the event stuff that's happening, I just, it's impacting so many people and the feedback that we get on that is, is like, it, it really is life-changing. You've said it before and we continue to see it, like knowing that we have an impact on people like that is, is pretty, um, impactful just, you know, to know that you're, you're actually making a difference in the world.

Um, I'm just really personally work with working with the rest of the professional services team. Um, I am just really psyched about working with them on just the development of the continue, the evolution of the content, how we're, how we're engaging with clients, um, both by the way, pre and post training, but also like during the sessions, like what matters to them. And it kind of goes back to your point, John, of our people just asking for the several boats, the team sees it, the team sees saying, I don't want to go through the exercise. I just want you to tell me what the messaging is. And the whole communication strategy around that is, well, but it's going to work until it doesn't. Um, and when it doesn't, you're going to be really upset and, and like your pipeline is going to go away.

So wouldn't it be better to do this? And so just the opportunity that I think is, that is there for the team with the companies that we're working with is just something that I don't like too much to Chris's point about being excited about something. Like, I don't know that I've been this excited about where we're going coming off of, by the way, a fantastic year for us where we accomplished a lot of awesome stuff to have to, to see that even more as possible. Like that is, is really rewarding for me right now. Chris, what about you looking forward to next year? Uh, when we created the, this, the marketing or the media side of what we're, we're building here, uh, very much an experiment and, uh, coming from the agency space, uh, coming over and working, you know, I've worked with John for 22 years, but in different capacities for a long time, as John spooled up, um, Jay Barrows, uh, was more of a agency function.

So my team was your, your team. And I always said, I'm never going to run another fucking agency ever again. Um, to which I've done four times and, uh, within that we started to unroll this and everything was an experiment. And because, you know, obviously John, you don't, um, corral me too much. I said yes to everything. So we were in the studio doing long form content with you. I was producing other courses. We're putting on live events, in-person events, building apps, doing third-party collaborations, saying yes to everything. I have five contractors, four designers, like it just grew. And then all of a sudden, I think it was in January, February, we were doing well, but I looked up and said, I created another fucking agency.

Like it literally functioned. It was hard to measure. Um, there was too many things going on. I didn't know. Yes. We were like lifting like the brand and we were getting the region. Yes. We were driving some revenue, but I couldn't look at it and say, how is this good? What are the levers to grow this thing? Like, um, what is the, as a business, like what, what is it? That are, that we're actually selling and what are the core metrics? What are the knobs I can turn to do that? And one, it wasn't personally, it didn't feel that great because I said I wasn't going to build an agency and congratulations, John, I built you an agency. Um, but I did, I did have an opportunity to say, okay, um, we'll call this a proven point that there is value in what we're doing.

Is there a real business here? And to really roll up my sleeves and to investigate and say, well, what is a media business? How do they function? What are their challenges? And within that, um, we made a decision to actually reboot this as a product. And in doing that, we even brought in like real product through Richard Banfield brought in real product, you know, literally wrote the book on developing and bringing products to market. And so within that, we put in a good, you know, three to four months of, um, asking a lot of questions, polling our audience, and then looking deep inside of what we're trying to do and what that comes down to is for next year, we really are launching as a media company, more akin to a software product.

Um, we're traction. We, you know, like a very complex tech stack. We now have very simple. And so what I'm excited for next year is something that's elegantly simple, that is easy to understand and follow as a business. What do we do and what do we do is we are going to go out and we're going to, through John and through Morgan and through James, we're going to curate and put together the best stable of talent and thought leaders. And we're going to produce the best and the biggest events specifically for revenue professionals. We're going to doing that, that earns us the right for amazing sponsors. And then it gives us a pool for which we can provide value via our paid membership. And so what was a very complex kind of all over the place agency, I now can look at and say, here are the four or five things that we're doing.

Here's how we affect and growth, uh, and, and how we grow it. And for me, it's actually a lot clearer. Like, I feel like I can come in and I know where to channel my energy. I know how we can actually, and start treating this less of this kind of loose collection of awesome people into an actual business that we're moving forward. And so for me, I feel like I'm back 19, 20, and we're doing a startup again, except for this time I have 22 years of experience within this and I know my limitations. I know who to bring in. And so I think that we, by timing and timing being everything, I was just watching, there's an older blog post by, uh, the CEO of idea labs. And he evaluated like every, every company out there and basically looked at it and said, what's the number one attribute for success and probability.

Wasn't ideas. It wasn't a tech stack. It wasn't your engineers. It wasn't your salespeople. It was timing. And so within that, um, one, we know that the capital markets and SAS are crazy. And a lot of the money needs to be deployed for top line growth. We're in that space. We know that this is a highly competitive, you know, uh, sales in tech is, is highly competitive and, uh, you know, within that arming people so that they have the tools for a great career path and to, to motivate them. Um, I, I just feel as though, and now with the change of the generally accepted that remote can be just as good. I mean, don't get me wrong. We're going to get back to in real life. And that's a big part of what we're doing next year.

I'm just excited to have this opportunity where we had a running start. We have great sponsors. We have a huge audience and now it's on us to listen and to develop out like a content and editorial calendar that, that, that really, um, will help us get that growth we're looking for. And the last piece is, um, starting to evolve and going deeper about, whereas Megan, you serve in professional services. You serve the organization. You serve the companies by providing this training on our side, our customer is the individual. And within that, we were really, you know, this is something Morgan's leading the charge on is really starting talking about not just your quota and, you know, your tactics and things like that.

But what about you as a human being? Like, okay, you're young and all of a sudden you, you're now have this big income. What do you do with it? How do you sell, you set yourself up financially, um, uh, things like just risk and insurance or, you know, navigating crypto and how that's like really just collect. Collecting the consensus of this big audience and saying, what's important to you and letting us and trusting us to go out and to provide content around that. And so for me, I think it is, uh, one, we have, um, uh, again, that running start and we have this critical mass and now we have this opportunity to do something with it. And I just, again, back to the timing piece. I just, I'm very thankful that this is the time that we're choosing to do it.

Yeah, I definitely, I think timing is, I mean, obviously the amount of things that you and I have done that have fucking failed miserably just because it wasn't the right time. Right. And or focus, right. We put it, we were like, ah, good enough. Good. Let it go. And then it didn't hit. And we're like, all right, fuck. We got other things to do. Um, but I think right now with where we are, I mean, COVID, I think couldn't happen for me personally, couldn't happen at a better time because it automatically got me off of an airplane and forced us to enter this model. It took a pan. Are you saying it took a pandemic to finally get you off of a plane? So we had no, we had no chance of making that happen.

No. And Megan knows this. I mean, for years I've been like, oh, I'm going to do it. I'm getting off of a fucking airplane and I'm my worst enemy as far as that is concerned. And that's kind of what I'm, you know, going back to excited and how we started this is, is the bigger impact. Right. I mean, if anything, I've learned anything over the past year or two, it's how, you know, well, look, at least I hope that COVID has given everybody an opportunity to kind of take a step back and realize what's really important to them, you know, and reassess, and they've reassessed their priorities, they've reassessed their values and, and, you know, just trying to be a better person. You know, that's why I love better in general, um, for our, uh, for our membership and everything else, because it's not about just being better at sales.

Right. I mean, sales done right. There's, there's something about that, like our quote unquote, why, right. Is sales done right. And it's not, and it, yes, that is our opinion of sales done right. Other people have different opinions of it, but it's really about being ethical, being a good person, right. Like not being a douche. You know, I say this all the time that, you know, I, I don't sell people anything. I help you achieve your goals or solve your problems. That's fucking it. And if you're, and if I'm trying to convince you of something, I've done something wrong. And that's where next year for me, like, yeah, I was, I mean, for, you know, I was putting a weird spot this year in a lot of ways.

I mean, last year was the pandemic. So it was like, all right, cool. Like, this is actually something that I was somewhat energized by it because it was something new to figure out. Right. Um, but then this year with my dad passing in early February and then unplugging for four fucking weeks and coming back and having the company running, you know what I mean? Like without me, without me being the number one revenue generator, but dead serious, you know what I mean? Like clients were happy. I mean, Megan, how much do we lose revenue wise with me being ripped out of four fucking days and basically a month? I think two kickoff sessions. So maybe $10,000, $20,000, $15,000, you know, something like that.

So that kind of put me in a weird, cause you know, Megan knows I've always talked about this proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, right? Oh no, I see it. I see it. And that was just me trying to convince myself and make myself feel better. I never really saw a light at the end of the fucking tunnel. I always sell myself, you know, flying all over the world and to try to make the money that I wanted to make to be able to do this. But this was like a legit, like, holy shit, wait a minute. And you know, we've talked about this. Like I, you know, I've been a CEO of this company for the past 10 years, but that's a joke. And you might as well call me a chief training officer. Cause it's all I fucking done.

I mean, Chris, Chris knows my, my CEO, the extent of my CEO abilities of me being stoned in my hot tub at six 30 in the, you know, at night calling Chris up with an idea, being like, Hey, try this out. What do you think about this? And let me see, let me know how it works. I'll call you, I'll call you. I've kept a journal of all those calls. That actually, that's something. I'm going to play them back to you eventually. That could be something we could package up and sell. But, you know, now moving to this model of, of trying to impact more people, like two things for my focal point next year. One is kind of the keynote, right? Like trying to get to that next level. And it's funny as I go through the process of keynotes, you know, I've always done keynotes obviously, but they're mostly training keynotes, right?

Cause I divert down to, if you're going to listen to my dumb ass talk for half an hour to an hour, I hope you, you can walk away with something, not just a good idea, but that's not a keynote, right? That's training wrapped in a keynote package. Like the keynote is, is getting people to think differently, right? And, and trying to, to, to have a bigger impact on the way that people look at things. And so going through that process and trying to figure out what that is and try to break into that next level is something I'm extremely excited about. Cause I, you know, conversations I had with Brian, I've always been, and you guys know this too, is, you know, I always question like, do you have to be a raging asshole to be the, like the pinnacle of quote unquote success?

You know, you think of the douchebags out there, like, you know, like the Larry Ellison's, the, you know, I mean, look, Zuckerberg, great, super successful, raging fucking asshole. Steve Jobs, unbelievable, but raging fucking asshole. Grant fuckbag Cardone, fuck him, but raging quote unquote successful, depending on how you, you define success. And I've always wondered, like, do you have to sell your soul to get to that level of exposure and success, right? The viral cohort here. And I refuse to, to give up my, you know, my soul to get there, but the journey of getting there without having to give up your soul is, is actually one of the ones I'm most excited to try to figure out here. So, um, you know, between that and then the open model that I'm doing next year, where more people than just, you know, 30 reps at a time can go through my training.

And I can still kind of have that masterclass effect here of, of as many people as we can without having to do the stuff that I don't like, cause I still love the training. You know, I still love the aha moments specifically on those top 50% of the 60% and the 10%. Uh, what I really, what drags me down and takes away from my abilities as a CEO, if you will, is really just time is all the prep, all the followup, all the individual stuff that I've been doing. And that's just been sucking time. So if I can offload that and just deliver and then do kind of off stuff, you know, customize things that, that way, then to me, uh, next year is going to be a raging success for me personally, if I can figure those two pieces out while you guys run the rest of the show here.

And hopefully the whole concept of, you know, rising tide lifts all boats here. I think on all three phases here of me trying to do what I'm doing, you know, getting higher exposure with those types of things with the professional services team, fucking crushing it and getting more, you know, delivery there. And then the, the membership side of the house, really getting as many people into that, into that as possible. I think we, we got a chance to do some special shit next year, which I'm really excited about. The concept of positively impacting the most amount of revenue facing professionals is kind of our, our true North. It's actually really hard for individuals to get access to John Barrows doing, filling the funnel.

You have to be a part of one of these enterprise organizations to get that experience. And I think what I'm excited about is for the individual is once again, opening that up. I think a couple of years ago, we did a few in-person workshops and versions of it, but that obviously got taken away. And that's, that was not a very efficient way. I mean, I think the most we ever got there was 50, 75 people under this new model, knowing that every, you know, first week of every month, you're teaching John Barrows, not a stand-in, not, you know, like it's John Barrows doing, filling the funnel, um, that's impact. And I think, um, both, you know, it's a good way for organizations that are, have growing teams because that's always been that process as well.

Okay. You go in, there's 30 sellers of those same 30 sellers there in two months. No, like there's churn, there's new people, there's growth. I just think that that's going to be interesting and, uh, a little bit calmer of a schedule on, on your side as we go through. So I'm excited for that. Cool. Anything else that we should chat about, uh, that, that you think would be interesting for the audience, give or take. Yeah. Like I think just clarification, just on, on, you know, our side, like I do think that the delineation and recognizing that there's two parts to this business, there's professional services serving the organization. And that's been happening for 12 years. We have amazing customers.

I probably would say, you know, I don't know, Megan, you probably know the number 30% for our, you know, our recurring customers, the same customer base we've been working with, um, since John, you know, hung this shingle. And then on our side, which was one, I think we had two very successful years under this kind of media side. And it's, it's time, it's time for us to, to, to, to treat them differently. And, um, for next year, again, I think what, you know, people can expect from us is an insane amount of varied types of experiences and events and just know that, um, we want feedback. We want people to come to us and say that that's the, you know, everyone else is talking about cold email.

Like, like, let's talk about what are the challenges. And we have a system where if we get enough groundswell around ideas, if we hear it, we can produce content around it. And so I'm just excited to have this kind of machine, this content machine that we, but I, I want to deploy it the right way. So I think the big thing for next year is one on the professional services side that we continue down this path of just reliable, actionable, and a great ROI on training time. And on our side, I'm hell bent on just creating, it's not about largest. I mean, obviously I want to use the word largest, but I would say the most engaged, uh, just community and, uh, just of, of, of people who are, are continuously investing time to themselves.

And hopefully now by us opening up beyond just sales tactics and a little bit about what it's like to be a seller in 2022, that should be some interesting content as well. So. Yeah. I actually want, I almost want us to like, when you come to our homepage, our, our, our website, the, a big button shows up before you can, you know, access anything that says, do you give a shit, right? And if the answer is yes, then fucking a man, let's go. But if the answer is no, then fuck off. You're not allowed in. So, uh, Megan, anything else you want to share with people that you're excited or we should kind of be paying attention to? No, I mean, I just, you know, I, like I said before, I mean, we're just really psyched about the evolution of kind of how we're doing the training, the experience that people are having trying to drive engagement in those remote sessions, um, which we will likely continue to be the majority of our delivery, um, going into next year.

And, you know, nobody wants, no trainer wants to stand up or, um, because most of them stand when they train or sit in front of a group of people that is not engaging with them. So, you know, let's bring, you know, the engagement into our, even our professional services environments to take some of those engaging individuals that are over on the membership side and haul them over to professional services. Really? It only takes a couple of people in each session for it to kind of turn to be able to, to make that a really great experience and continue to bring value to them. Yeah. Yeah. I think lastly, I am, I am curious that because I do think that we are in a transition phase from a sales standpoint.

I do, uh, you know, I've been saying it for a while that death of the average sales rep and sales reps are going to get replaced, but I, I, I feel like it's coming sooner rather than later. I think the, the next two to three years are going to, there's going to be a lot of shake out in this space. And I, and I think for those, you know, when I start all my trainings off, say death of the average sales rep, I mean that I think the average sales rep who's going through the motions and looking for what we had said earlier, the silver bullets and all that other stuff, they're going to get replaced. And I don't, I don't really feel all that bad about that, but man, for the ones that give a shit, uh, the opportunity to make a difference, uh, I think is, is going to be significant, not just, not for us.

I mean, I think the opportunity for us to make a difference for those people who will then make a difference, uh, for the economy, for their job, for their companies, for their, their, their families. I mean, the reason I wrote, you know, I want to be in sales when I grew up with Charlotte was because I genuinely believe if we think about, I mean, you know, I, I call like artificial intelligence, the eye of Sauron, right? It's like when the eye of Sauron points its eye on you, you're fucked, right? So it's like, you know, if, if you went and got your job and you went to school for four or five years and whatever profession you decided to go in, and then all of a sudden artificial intelligence really turns its eye on you and upends your market, you're screwed.

You have to go back and learn something new, or you have to learn how to deal with that artificial intelligence thing, right? Um, in sales though, if, if, if your market gets fundamentally disrupted, go fucking sell something else. It's the most, it's, it's the most transferable job. It's the most flexible job. It's the most agile job. It's the one that you can make the most money. And to me have the highest rewarding career because when you do it right, there's an opportunity to make a real difference here. And that's what I, I really hope that we can instill that on, on the crew that's coming in, but also have impact on, you know, kids who are, who are toying around with the idea, jumping into this profession for a career.

So awesome. Well, cool. Anything else before we tie it up? Nope. All right. I'm sure I'll think of something like, um, awesome. Well, look, uh, I mean, you, you know, follow, follow all of us for everybody's listening, you know, follow JV sales. Uh, what's the handle for the, for the Instagram one, Chris, is it JV? Um, JV, it's, uh, JV sales training. Yeah. JV sales training. Uh, cause that's where we put out all the events and everything else. But, you know, just to, for everybody listening, first of all, thank you, um, for listening in the first place. I mean, we hit the million download this year, which I mean, holy shit, uh, it's humbling. I, I honestly had no idea that that was, we'd ever have that type of reach.

So the fact that you're listening, uh, and thank you, um, and, and, you know, the more we hear from you, the better we can be. So feedback, feedback, feedback, we do pay attention. We do listen. We do react. We do respond. Absolutely. All right. So just wrapping things up. Look, uh, I say this all the time and I, I, I mean it now more than ever, um, you know, no matter how bad your day goes, right. Uh, or how bad things are going for you, uh, go out there and make somebody smile today. Cause if you make somebody smile today, you know, you had a good day, no matter how shitty it was in the world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all again, sincerely. Thank you for listening and the support that you've shown us over the years.

And, uh, hopefully, hopefully you're excited about what we're about to do. Cause, uh, it's going to be a fun ride. So join us. Cheers. All right, y'all this conversation was lit all the way up. I am so pleased to be working with the team here at JB sales. And this conversation only scratches the surface of how well we all really work together. I think there's a lot to be learned about how teams hire work together and ultimately win together expectation settings, execution, and what people want from you all play roles in our successes, failures, and lessons. As always, we never like to close our broadcast without giving you a chance to join us. As you learn to sell better every day, visit join JB sales.com to sign up today and become a member at JB sales.

We'll be there for you as you learn to sell in today's selling environment, we will be right at your side as you win, lose, and learn invest in yourself. That URL again is join JB sales.com and we will see you there. Have a great week, everybody get out there and make somebody smile. We'll see you next week.