50: Owning Your Career Path With Chris Pepin

hey everybody this is john barrows with make it happen monday happy monday hopefully you all had a fantastic weekend i'm on today with chris pepin from magnico and we're going to talk today about owning your career path so chris want to give everybody a quick little intro and background on you and kind of where you're coming from and what magneto is all about sure so uh my name is chris pepin i'm the founder and managing partner here at magnanimous consulting or magnico for short uh if you have any other questions you can reach me by my initial cp at magnico.com uh but i've been a career salesperson really passionate about the industry found my way into the coolest job i never knew existed which is selling sales people to sales people so we recruit sales people for software companies and uh it's it's really great we we absolutely enjoy uh the dynamic and the characters we get to work with we uh we really enjoy uh being you know taking a little part of that silicon valley dream and plugging people into the right place and our specialty really is we deal with the top 10 companies and we deal with the top 10 of people so uh we've really found this good layer where our job basically is to qualify the right companies uh qualify the right people and then remove the barriers so it's really just like any good sale um it's 90 of the way there by the time you pick up the phone and then we just remove the constraints to uh to a good match happening and help people accelerate their career path love it man yeah it's funny when i my first well when i when i sold my company and then we started a basho which was the originators of this training you know when i similar to you when i realized i could sell sales training to sales reps i was like wait a minute this is kind of like being a crackhead selling crack to crackheads i'm like this is fantastic i'm like there's no problem right so yeah it's yeah it's it's it's way fun because there's that um there's just that bond that sales people have one with one another there's that whole you know i've gotten my ass kicked relentlessly since i got in and still have a sense of humor about it kind of people that we just we enjoy it and and and frankly you know we we play it ourselves as well so there's there's definitely a good bit of rejection even on even in our end of the world yes indeed cool we you know we had met up at rainmaker right i think it was yeah well actually we did both there was the san francisco weekend before and then yeah we had back-to-back weekends together there yeah and i think that's what kind of prompted this discussion which was you know just career paths right because i get a lot of uh kids asking me questions hey john you know what should i do with my career like where should i go and you know and and i'd love to talk to you kind of from from your side of the house what you're seeing on on a bunch of different topics because you know one of the things i keep noticing is that people are in a big rush to get to that next step and they're using kind of the str or kind of that entry level position as a as a stepping stone but it's almost like yeah yeah yeah next and a stat that really stuck out to me recently um trish bertuzzi over at the bridge group they do some awesome reporting and stuff and um they came out with one that said recently that you know if you get promoted from an sdr to an ae right if you get promoted in less than six months the stats were something like there was like a 57 or 53 failure rate on sdr to ae whereas if the sdr stood in for 18 months right year and a half it was the failure rate was something like six percent so the difference was absolutely astounding to me and it makes all the sense in the world but talk to me about you know how you see specifically the sdr role and the in the power of patience and and really how realistically how long should a rep be sitting in that role and what their what should their mentality be in that role um before getting to that next one let's start there well i'll tell you another similar stat uh as a company founder the majority of successful companies are founded by people between like 28 and 32 who are coming from a company they've worked together with their co-founders and they build it from there so surprisingly enough there's a lot of places where the unicorn story you hear about is actually you know just the the path of death for for most people you've got to have those fundamentals and i think what's important to look at especially coming into sdr the sdr world is i i would focus on your fundamental traits more than anything else so you know there's certain core traits that make a good salesperson that really attract you in and i think feeding those traits and really understanding those traits through training through practice um it builds this this core strength so to speak around your skill set uh that is that is very difficult to stop and these are the things that you know we we hammer our people on relentlessly which is you know the prospecting you know the the really fine tuning figuring out what you do and just kind of at least reaching a level of unconscious competence before you even consider anything else you better be unconsciously competent as opposed to looking at the clock which is like oh it's been six months it's time to promote um where you know really what is it what makes a great vp of sales you know what what would they say you know what i mean look at the people a level of two ahead of where you want to be and they'll all back what trish pertuzzi is talking about and frankly you know we were talking earlier i did the same thing with a you know i was a salesperson for six years knocking doors relentlessly um until i really allowed myself to launch into this kind of world and kind of brings an interesting thing that i always take a look at or at least i recommend to kids who are asking me about there because they always you know hey john i'm in this role i'm not happy with it right i'm looking for my next role and my my question to them is always well what's your plan you know i always used to roll my eyes at that question you know what you know five years you know in the interview like where do you want to be in five years and i used to kind of roll my eyes at that you know and obviously that question is geared towards the company like where do you want to be at this company but now at 42 years old you know i think that five-year question is actually a really important question but not necessarily at that company i say where do you like what do you want your lifestyle to look like in five years right and then based on that lifestyle what kind of you know family house car those type of things and then back into it and say okay well then how much money do i need to be able to make to get there and then based on that what job do i need to get to be able to help me to get to that point right because inevitably for me like look i'll eat a shit sandwich for a year or two in a really shitty job if it's gonna get me and build my skill sets or get me to learn something or get me to that next stage that's gonna help me reach my ultimate goal but if i don't have kind of a big picture long-term goal i i then i'm just gonna kind of bounce from job to job to job and be unhappy and keep searching for that happiness if you will without a plan and so right what's your advice to that 22 like 22 23 24 25 year old kid because i didn't really have that perspective until i was in my 40s right i mean i just kind of grinded it out and did my job and i think my dad really kind of instilled upon me like hey earn it you know make sure you earn it before asking for anything and to your point like over exceed your role and then you'll get the promotion but i think today's generation's a lot uh less patient if you will because they've seen kind of to your point the unicorn the success of that person who was on youtube and so it's like hey i want to get to that next level so so how do you coach kids who are kind of 22 to 26 years old on their careers not just this job yeah and that goes back to uh frankly like there there's a lot of the the jim roan kind of stuff that i listened to early on and i know a lot of those those kind of those core fundamentals um and a principle that's really important is you'll you'll find that your best days weren't the days where everything went your way it was where you gave it everything you had and at the end of the day regardless of the outcome you can just say man look at what i built and it's kind of that way with your career too happiness uh is not you know sometimes just sometimes you don't get good by being happy let's face it right but it's an investment so we have something here in our company that we call the suck somewhere between two to six months in everything will suck um it it just it just will and and we call it that and it's kind of like a baptism point where you just go through uh just nothing works and you're you're giving it your all and it's and and once you get on the other side of that just things start clicking coming together um but if you're not willing to endure the suck you're not able to earn the next level um so i think the challenge is when you're early on you haven't been through enough of those kind of cycles of suck uh that we all go through and so i think it's really important to understand it's it's really important to have enough patience with yourself and enough awareness that hey is this the cycle will suck or does this really suck you know what i mean and and and that's kind of that bounce point where people tend to go through i mean it can take two to three sales development roles because you don't really know what you don't like you don't know what a good manager a good leader is or looks like that's where you really you know you don't know what good training looks like um until you've been through enough of it so i think it's about do you like the people you're with do you like their ethics do you like do they do you share the same values do they do they care enough about your results and do you care most importantly enough about your results to really put it in and and understand that sometimes uh happiness and progression uh don't don't align together and that's okay well and that actually so because there's i think there's a point in almost everybody's career where at first you're you're looking for a job you're asking for somebody else else's permission and you're interviewing for all these jobs hoping that somebody but then after you get some of that experience you start to flip it around and you start interviewing companies right where you know i recommend like to your point like their morals their ethics like go and look in their mission and vision statement go follow some of their stuff and see you know especially after you've learned a little bit maybe in your 20s like you know close to your 30s that's when you start selectively going after companies and don't submit your resume right literally almost you know what i train which is you know prospecting fire off an email to the ceo and say hey i'm looking for the next challenge in my career i was on your website i know your mission is to blah blah blah and it really aligns with a lot of my you know who can i have that conversation with about your business like that that approach when does that tend to happen when do you see that tending to happen with all the people that you interview is there kind of a a point where they do that or or should they be doing that sooner rather than later kind of what are your thoughts on that so it it can take you know one or two roles to figure out what works and what doesn't and then there's also frankly in software a lot of factors you can come in at a 50 person series a company as one of the first couple sdrs and the the whole thing can grow or blow up on you and you don't even you just again it's it's really uh it's really really difficult and that's what makes it awesome and that's what makes these guys heroes right um so there there isn't like uh uh there's no cheat sheet on this uh you've got to have this will and that's what i'm saying it's a trait you can't train it you've got to have this will to really want to make your mark within the software industry and and i think it's it's also about it's kind of like a mental side of you want to pull the results to you you know through your actions as opposed to pursuing or leaning into it or always you know wanting more i think having a solid solid stance in your work base and just pull that next opportunity to you whatever it may be this is a the jim ron thing was that you will always get paid what you're worth so if you're in a job and you're working your butt off and you're doubling everybody and you know for whatever reason there's a manager issue or there's a non-reward issue or somebody gets promoted around you because they've been there longer and they shouldn't have you will still find a way to earn what you're worth maybe not in that company maybe that is the next move but by standing on hey even if you're in a place that just you know there's some some very large companies where it's just a it's just a meat grinder and they just grind people out and run them through uh and we love to find the guys that that were successful anyway and everybody knows it's a meat grinder uh but they did it anyway and here's what i want next and here's here's these expectations i have for management and we can kick them up 20 30 percent in terms of their base salary just on that second move if they're the right guy so it's kind of it's one of those funny things where it's like winning first place isn't necessarily the key to success i forget who i was talking to this weekend but like the person that wins american idol isn't necessarily the one that goes on with the biggest career right so there's there's kind of that i've got this goal to be the number one in my division it doesn't work but you put it all in and you get the skills and you you put in those hours and you put up the numbers and you just move right on into something completely awesome that nobody else was looking at so we do that all the time with folks i love it and it actually brings up something you brought up earlier which is the the whole consciously or unconsciously competent right and for those who don't i forget who came up with it but it's like at first you start you're unconsciously incompetent you don't know what you don't know then you're consciously incompetent you know what you don't know then you're consciously i'm sorry you're unconscious you're consciously incompetent and then you're consciously competent you know what you know and then you're unconsciously competent yeah then you go back into it again right and you cycle through that and it's funny because i i always said that you know the best sales or the best managers not necessarily the best sales reps the best managers are always aren't necessarily the unconsciously competent ones they're they're actually the consciously competent ones they're not maybe the best sales rep who just wakes up and knows how to have that conversation or you know has that internal drive that you can't teach but it's that that maybe b plus a minus sales rep that can tell you hey this is exactly why i missed my number or here's where i lost you know and they have a process that they can define and again maybe they're not the most you know charismatic person on the planet but they can explain it to you right so right how much do you look for in that like when when you when you're or when clients are asking questions how much do they look for your attitude compared to your process so winning is a habit and it starts long before your first sales quota and our clients specifically look for this i i don't want to name names but we've got you know some some very substantial clientele and they're looking for for the run-up i mean they they don't even you know they'll hire a school teacher and turn them into an incredible sdr if that school teacher knows how they want to win why they want to win how to hold themselves accountable the process of why they want to go into sales which isn't i like people it's i i want to win this thing this is you know what i mean this is what i want to do i want to be very tactical about it um so those those kinds of things i think that winning ahead of it it's really important playing competitive sport i just talked to an ae we're recruiting the other day who's uh i asked him okay so what are some competitive things you do he totally lit up he it turns out he's a weekend race car driver and wrenches on his own mr2 and like i'm like oh you know for one it was fun to geek out on cars with somebody but for two like this is a real competitor he wants to go out and cross things right and so that that has nothing to do with the fact that he's been in a role for maybe four or five months and it it may not you know what i mean like that that winning attitude it's just that's a habit uh that's a trait same thing with excuses are a habit and a trait man and we can find them in a heartbeat we know what they look like you know that the people that uh i think tony robbins calls it the the shooting you just should all over yourself you're shooting constantly uh so yeah we don't want we don't want anybody with a bad case of the shoulds so you know these are things that are a players hire a players so you know when you're surrounded by b players hire c players because they need to keep their place uh so we just we we know that mentality uh and we know the aspiration for that mentality and and frankly it doesn't um it doesn't always show itself as quota so we're always looking past that you know for okay where are you dominating elsewhere like tell me what's going on yeah it's actually that's what i write in line man i my um one of my favorite questions to ask in interviews is what are you passionate about and and it and by the way i don't care what you're passionate about you know i mean i i care on how you explain what you're passionate about right because if you're like oh i really enjoy customers and i want to make sure they're you know get the best services it's like what that's no you're dead versus holy shit are you kidding me right now the bruins are going into the playoffs right now they just lost four out of five if they don't get their shit together they're going to lose in the first round it's going to be embarrassing because they picked up nash this year and they were supposed to go all the way i had no expectations you know what i mean and if they you know even if the bruins has nothing to do with what we're here to talk about as far as your career is concerned the way that you explain that to me tells me everything i know because i can teach skill i can teach process i can teach technique what i cannot teach is drive and passion right it defies logic sports fan there's no logic in sport you know what i mean i i'm just not ever going to convince somebody from forgive me you lovable math holes to root for anything out of florida ever never never never going to happen this is this you know but that's the separation of church and state like they should have some kind of church level this is this is it and and you know what i mean like and it actually be able to turn that into something fun and productive and useful like that's that's the trait versus the skill and the talk track and all those other things which we can teach exactly um some tactical things here we chatted real brief a real brief before we got on here which was what's the threshold these days right because i've been out of the recruiting game i've been out of the hiring game for quite a while i mean i just picked up morgan but i think that was a little bit of a different situation but um you know what's the threshold these days as an employer uh specifically in the sass world because i think we're there a little bit more open to okay i get it you know you've had a few jobs here but when do people start paying attention to how many jobs you've had in how many years and that start that start being a negative and i know there's a lot of variables involved here but is there kind of a where you all of a sudden you're like oh man this guy i'm not gonna be able to place this guy anywhere because right he's been at five jobs in the past two years i mean that's extreme but it's so early you know when we're talking early on it's actually it's okay to have you know you got a you're four monther out of college and that didn't work or you did you know one of these um fortune 1000 tech companies that you know was it was a grinder and really really spit you out so there there can be a couple of those if you're willing to stay within that sdr realm until you get like a really good meaty 18 months you know hitting kind of thing it's okay to have two or three i think from there um and some people go career inside sales too there's nothing wrong with that at all i i know a really really great guy out in san francisco that we've worked with who's just he's probably in his 40s and he's just killer at it and he loves it and like so there's nothing wrong with that either um because he he makes himself a wonderful living doing it um but i would say you know the average tenure in software is 2.7 years okay so we look for better than that so if you've had three three jobs in the last five years uh i i it's it's kind of iffy right especially if if those three jobs are all at you know under 200 person startups and then the the long tenures were at you know seven years at an ibm or something like that so we really it there is a difference where we want depending on our client which is you know those specs range all over the place but for our smaller companies they want people that have worked in the startup world and we understand that hey you know they missed around but i was you know we were talking to a guy the other day who he was one of the last guys to leave so we knew that his company uh was was failing out but he absolutely believed in the tech and stayed until so you know what i mean the fact that that only lasted two years but he was the last guy at the door so there's like a lot a lot of variables there but generally speaking we want averages of more than of three years plus so if you look over the last 10 years we would expect to see that and if you're in like a lot of change then really i mean that that career step is it's a it's a big responsibility on on the candidate it's your career this is your this is your value so you have to make these steps carefully and frankly it takes a couple missteps to get there so everybody you know everybody understands everybody's been through it yeah and you got to figure it out and and that kind of that leads me to another question which is say you are that rep say and you know because shit happens right you you get a job they paint this beautiful picture for you you walk in the manager's an asshole they have no processes like they switch their comp plans on a monthly basis right and it's a meat grinder and you can tell right so look you know a couple times you take a few swings and misses right so you do have those three years what um i always found this interesting because i'm always a transparency honest guy but i also am not an excuse guy right i always want to so when you're asking that kid who has two three four jobs in a relatively short period of time how do they answer those questions like like say say your boss was a dick like legitimately a dick and you tried to work with them right what's the answer that satisfies you when you asked me john why'd you leave your most recent position you're only there six seven eight months and my my gut you know if you and i were drinking a beer i'd be like well because my manager was a straight up asshole they flat out lied to me but as a person interviewing you i i could easily see that as this is an excuse this is a kid who's who's whining about shit so what's the answer you want to see or employers you they want to see when that real bad shit actually happens well so there's there's the massachusetts answer and then there's the diplomatic answer i expect from everybody else outside of massachusetts so i'll give you a little leeway there you know what i mean like there is a certain uh i think amount there's there's that diplomatic language that it takes a little bit in your career to be able to learn so i like to look for that on how are they able to tell me that well actually you know that's that's kind of a really good soft skill that you know doesn't necessarily show up in quota so we look for i do pay attention to the soft skills around that yeah um in terms of that language but outside of that uh it's really it's about what did you learn and being able to articulate that so i don't care that you know the first one was a family friend that introduced you and they weren't really going and then you got recruited in the second one and the manager that recruited you didn't tell you that they already were in the process of being acquired and acquiring you know what i mean like there's stuff like that right but hey here's what happened and here's what i really want so there's a great rep that we hired three years ago who had had like three jobs in three years um and he's been in his same job that we put him in now for the last three years in boston of all places but uh he he was like a competitive soccer coach he had all this great competitive stuff he put up the big numbers but he said here's the deal this is what i learned at this company this is what i learned this is what i'm looking for this is the kind of organization i want to walk these are the kinds of questions i need to talk to the others on the team and sniff it out so they this guy really got smart about it where hey i need to talk to some other reps that are doing this so i can sniff out what's happening so i don't think getting burned or having a couple of you know a couple of those short experiences is the problem it's more a matter of i want to make sure this never happens again and these are the things that and there's that confidence there there's that step that they've got right where they just say here's what here's what's required here's why i'm not talking to the you know here and they start really drilling me on the value of the client i love that we we absolutely because then you're at that point of professionalism again where we're talking about soft skills things outside of your quota that they really need and they've got that savvy managers love that because managers want somebody who knows how they how to be managed they know hey this works this doesn't you know this is we need some process but i i also don't need you know the micromanagement style or actually i really like you know the micromanagement style and there's great companies for people that want to like geek out on metrics and details and things so uh we're able to tailor the right job opportunity for for that very cool yeah i think it's you know it's also important to kind of i think eventually and this doesn't happen i don't think until later either but really understand where you fit you know it's like you know to your point some career sdrs like there are some people that just really enjoy that role and it doesn't have to be that stepping stone role it's like hey i'm great at inside you know qualifying and doing that type of stuff and you know i just put a post out there on um you know the downside of an acquisition when when my company was purchased by staples and and it was one of those things where you know i thought so i i knew i wasn't a corporate guy i went corporate because that's what i was supposed to do first couple years you know for you know i was black and decker than xerox and i got into startups but not because i wanted to be in startups it's because a friend of mine had started a company and that's when i kind of caught the bug and i and i've always said like i'm not the risk taker in the sense of drop everything live in mom's basement eat ramen noodles and see what happens like i'm a i'm a calculated risk guy so there needs to be at least something in place there for me to make that jump but i'll tell you i'll make that jump more than most people will right but you know once and i'm a second i'm a second guy right in the sense that if you're the first guy that comes up with that idea i'm the second guy that'll come in and help you execute the shit out of it but then once it reaches a point of like all right now we're this big i i don't i don't like that anymore you know what i mean so what do you see people kind of what stage of their career do you start people seeing people who understand kind of where they fit like i'm a vp of sales for companies between 10 and 50 million but once they get 50 i'm out right or i'm an ipo guy or whatever like where do people start to really understand that 12 to 14 years okay yeah yeah we we see it really happen there because by then we're on like job number you know four to six something like that and that's really where somebody says look i you know i'll find somebody at like take a horton works and they're like yeah i was employee number 127 well you know i want to do it again or i was actually really happy when we were this size or whatever so you have to have uh a couple ones and yeah it takes you know maybe maybe four to six maybe not the other the other uh downside john is you could have it and not know it because you haven't had enough so you could be at the best you know one of the best companies ever and you don't know it and and so that's the other scary part frankly um that takes them takes them getting beaten up and i don't know i was kind of thinking as you were describing this do you remember that that phase early in your career where you were very very relentless about setting goals and you could not hit or figure out a goal to save your life like there's that period you have to go through right where you're where you're always setting goals and you've got these goals i mean vision boards you're detailed on your goals and you just i mean you're just all over the board but that process right of setting goals eventually over five to ten years you're like you get really good at you know what not to set what you know what works for you and then you're able to kind of really steer a lot better um so that's kind of something to consider as well is that look your job is to get good your job is to get experience respect the team you're on and give it every single bit you've got you know if you leave the job and you've you've laid it all out on the line and you know you've got nothing left to get move on it's totally fine but you know what i mean if you're still saving it if you still got something in the tank every time you bounce it's going to catch up to you right but if you just if you run the tank all the way to e and you give it all you got man there's then you can confidently have that breakup and move forward or you know what i mean or if you're finding what's really missing and you know you're not being you you've got this unquenchable thirst for knowledge and managing and coaching and you're not getting it absolutely move on if you're not getting guided and coached and you know that you're putting it in and they just don't have time for you because i've i had an sdr role like that where they just they didn't have any time for me right i left and wound up the next company i went to we got like number three on the inc 500 so you know what i mean like it was kind of like hey give this all i could there wasn't much left i'm just gonna bounce and see what happens and boom it just you know we had something that blew up wonderfully nice awesome man well this has been a great conversation i think i think um you know my takeaways are definitely you know still be be be long-term focused on your career right i mean it always blows me away you know you got you got a 40 50 year career ahead of you you know don't be in such a rush to get to that next step because eventually you do reach a plateau and you know all of a sudden you stay in that plateau for too long and it starts to get itchy and boring so master it you know do everything that you can to exceed that and then have the right attitude right and be and be driven to be successful as opposed to always looking for what's next at the end of the day that's it so if you take sales as a profession as a you know what i mean as a real vocation uh you can understand sales is the highest paid job in the world the highest paid people in the world all possesses sales skills and it's probably one of the lowest average incomes in the world too because the difference is so wide right so you know your average salesperson income you look on a list it's it's it sucks but you look at the highest people in the world they've all got that why is that because man if you get it right and you get those fundamentals down and you don't have acid in the early phase no matter what the results are just so much fun and the toys are so cool and the things you get to do with other sales guys when you're at the top of your company just those experiences john you know it is we can't talk about these things publicly but man is there's some fun stuff that you know accounting may or may not know about so it's uh it is it is a just a blast and the difference between first and second place isn't that big in terms of effort it's just it just requires everything you got yeah i think sales is i have always said sales is the greatest profession in the world for a lot of reasons but may you know big one is because if you do it right you know you have a lot more control over your career than other professions you know what i mean like if you like once you really get sales right you can start to dictate the path more than just waiting for your merit raise and being there for five years and that type of shit um you know the opportunity is pretty much limitless if you're great at it but you got to put the work in up front if you do it it's also one of the lowest stress positions out there if you look in terms of job stress there's a very very low stress position once you've got those fundamentals done and once once you've really handled it because again it once you've been punched every way you can be punched six 16 times it doesn't really affect you anymore and just stuff that would crush your day is kind of like all right can we get this out of the way before breakfast like you know and so it's it's really man just the level of confidence and mastery you get to obtain over your whole life uh is uh is really really something i mean you know we always focus on quality of life in every position we work and uh and there's definitely heaps of it for those that are willing to work for it awesome so dude i'm glad to make it happen with you this monday this was super fun i really appreciate it yeah i think we could have this conversation for another couple hours here but we do have to cut it short because we all got jobs to do and stuff to get back to but uh chris tell me tell everybody um how they can get in touch with i know you got some incredible opportunities going on right now you know no names of companies or not but i know there's there's a lot of hiring going on on your side so how do people get in touch with you how do people follow you that type of stuff so so directly just cp at magnico.com um you can go to magnanimous consulting.com or magnico.com and that'll get you to our website we don't have a lot of jobs posted because they come and go really fast and frankly uh we our recruiting is so outbound i just don't have the socials in place frankly we haven't needed them because you know we're just yeah we're we're working our list and we're really dug into our niche but yes cp at magnico.com that's chris for chris pepin and uh m-a-g-n-a-c-o uh is the is the short i think that'll that'll pretty much get you hit me on the on the inbox and uh and we'll figure out the rest from there so i'll get people routed into the right person on the team here awesome chris well i'm sure i'll put that in what's that yeah don't forget linkedin yeah we're all over that definitely and i'll put those links in the in the facebook chat thing here but also for those of you on the on the podcast listening and um and again join us every friday we also do this uh on a facebook group uh on the j barrows make it happen page where we do actually a friday happy hour so similar situation to this so make sure you join us there if you have uh you know reps who are looking for jobs it's a great way to collaborate and communicate with uh people so awesome talking to you chris really appreciate it and uh until next time everybody make it happen so so so so so you