86: Henry Schuck Discover Org

This March, Morgan and I are headed to Atlanta for Rainmaker 2019. I'll be running a level-up session giving a talk around sales-ready messaging and also doing a keynote around the state of sales and how we need to evolve to stay relevant. Morgan's going to be on a panel about how to do social selling right, and the entire Jay Barrows team is going to be at the Jay Barrows Lounge. Head to salesloft.com slash rainmaker for tickets. Make it happen. Hey, good morning, everybody. This is John Barrows with Make It Happen Monday. Hopefully, you're doing all fantastic today. I'm a little bit worse for work, but I'm excited for today because I have somebody, a very interesting guest on, Henry Shuck from Discover.org, and I wanted to have him on the podcast for a bunch of reasons.

First of all, he's the CEO and co-founder of Discover.org, and I've been through a lot over his career. So, Henry, you want to say hi to everybody, kind of give them a little sense of where you're coming from and what you're all up to these days? Sure. Hey, John, thanks for having me. My name is Henry Shuck. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Discover.org. We're a sales intelligence platform. I've been in business since 2007. I'm one of the co-founders. Founded the company in my law school apartment in 2007 and grew it in a bootstrapped way with no outside funding to almost a $30 million run rate in 2014. We brought in some private equity owners then, continued to grow the business, made a bunch of acquisitions on the way.

Today, we're about a $170 million ARR company. We have about 500 employees across the country. And the sort of biggest, if you look at Discover.org, we're a data company, but underneath that data company, we're an incredibly effective and efficient go-to-market engine that really drives all of our success. Love it. So let's talk, because, again, we were chatting before this, but I think some of the topics we're going to hit on are mergers and acquisitions, both from an internal and an external standpoint, what to look for, growth of businesses and culture and those type of things. But let me ask you, you know, makeup of an entrepreneur, if you will. What drove, in 2007, you said dorm room, whatever, you know, grunt work, just saying, screw it, I want to do this.

What drove you to start your own business at that? And how old were you when you did that? I was 23. 23. So what was that driver for you? I'm always curious when somebody decides to say, I'm not going to go into the corporate world and do that, you know, shit. I'm going to go do my own thing. So what was that inside you that said you wanted to do something on your own? Yeah, so I was lucky enough to have worked at a company while I was an undergrad from the end of my freshman year until a year past my senior year. That was sort of the precursor to Discover.org. They did something similar, but really didn't grow the business. So we went from like $300,000 in revenue to almost $5 million in revenue, and we grew like headcount three people.

So there wasn't this – I saw that there was huge potential in this space, but the business that I was sitting in wasn't one that was investing in that potential. And so I left, and I went to law school, and then a year in, started talking to a friend of mine who I had recruited at that past company, and he said, hey, I want to start something that's like this but doesn't directly compete. And so in my mind, I had just seen the roadmap from $300,000 to $5 million. I was like, okay, well, I know I can build a business to $5 million. I know exactly what that looks like. And that sounds a lot more fun than pushing paper in a law firm. So I'll finish my law degree. That'll be a valuable thing to have.

But let's start this business, and I think I can get us to $5 million in revenue. I love it. I love it. Yeah, because I think it took me a little while longer. I was anti – where did you grow up? I grew up in Los Angeles. Los Angeles. So I think there's an East Coast, West Coast thing here, right? Because East Coast, when I was growing up, entrepreneurship was for you weirdos out on the West Coast, right? So us, it was a little bit more of a traditional get a job, spend two years doing this, two years doing that. And I remember just getting into that, Black & Decker, which was cool, but then Xerox. I'm just like, this doesn't feel right. Like, there's something about this that doesn't feel right to me.

And thankfully, a buddy of mine has started a company, and he's the one who took that original risk. And I jumped on board with him as one of the second or third people on board. But, yeah, we all have our different journeys of how we get here and just start trying to make a difference, right? Yeah, totally. And for me, it was like – I always felt like – I was 23, so there wasn't a lot of risk. I wasn't married. I didn't have kids. It was like I could live off $2,000 a month pretty easily. And so it was like, okay, well, if I'm going to do something, right now is the best opportunity. And what's the real downside? You know, like if it all blows up in two years, I'm going to be a lawyer. I'll get another job.

It'll be fine. I love that. You know, because I tell kids from a career standpoint, now that I'm 42, right? I'm starting to get fucking career advice, which drives me crazy. You know, it's like I say in your 20s, fucking do everything, right? Because to your point, what's the risk? You don't have a wife. You don't have kids. You don't have a significant other. You don't have kids. You don't have any of that stuff. So worst case scenario, you live on your parents' couch, your friends. You know, that type of thing. Who cares? 30s, you kind of have to start figuring it out in your 30s. And by the time if you're in your 40s, you haven't figured it out. You're kind of fucked. But, you know, those buckets there.

It's like do everything in your 20s. You want to take a risk, do it then. So you fail a bunch of times. So when you're in your 30s, you can look back and start to apply some of that stuff, right? Also, just from a regret perspective, like you want to get that out of your system, right? You want that like if you're going to fail at being an entrepreneur, you don't want to you want to get that out of your system at 20. And so that if you're 30, you want to be a VP of sales somewhere. You at least have that part of your regret, that regret part of your mind like set aside. I did it. I tried. It didn't work great. I'm doing this other thing. You figure out what you like and what you don't like. So I love it.

So let's talk a little bit about it because one of the things that fascinates me, you know, we both are in the world of helping sales reps build pipeline and look for ultimately look for reasons to reach out to people, right? I mean, that's the key. Instead of doing the, hey, we're the leading provider of crap, you want to find indicators of what people are doing from a business standpoint, reach out to them at the right time with the right message, right? That's the whole key. So one of the things that we talk about a lot is, you know, you look for triggers. And one of the easy ones that reps tend to grab a hold of are funding and mergers and acquisitions. And I try to coach them a little bit on, look, those are all great.

You know, and obviously you need to know what you're going to do to help somebody as they're going through a merger and acquisition. But you also have to understand what happens in a merger and acquisition. And I don't think, you know, I had the benefit of going through a merger and acquisition. So I could kind of see what happened when my little company got purchased by a huge company. But I think there's this assumption by a lot of reps in a lot of ways that one is when that merger and acquisition happens, that's when the time is to pounce. And let's talk about that. But then the other thing is, is that every other rep is pouncing. And one of the things you pushed, you know, you told me early on was, hey, we bought ranking and, you know, I was expecting to be inundated with a bunch of reps reaching out to me and not many did.

So, so, so walk us through from an owner, from an ownership and a leadership standpoint. First of all, when you decide, hey, we're going to, we're going to go look to acquire or bring on another business from there to the acquisition, then let's talk a year out. And when is the optimal time for a sales rep that, that isn't already in the ecosystem, right? When is the optimal time for them to reach out? And you broke it into two different categories. You want to talk about that a little bit? Yeah, absolutely. So just to give you sort of a sense of a timeline, we acquired sort of our closest next competitor is a company called Rain King. We acquired them in August of 2017. We had started conversations with them in February of 2017.

We probably, I think we signed a letter of intent with them probably two months from then. So in May, and then we closed the deal in August and there's sort of 60 days of, we actually had to go through antitrust review with the FTC and get cleared from a monopoly perspective. But in that period of time, sort of May to August was we were doing all of our sort of integration planning. We're trying to understand the business. How is it structured? How does it compare to the way we're structured? One of the things we knew looking at that business was that it was run in a less efficient way than our business. And so we're trying to figure out why, what are the drivers to that, that lack of efficiency?

Are the sales reps structured in a different way? Is their customer success organized differently? Why is it costing them twice as much to run the same business? And so you're spending a lot of time understanding that and then putting plans together for how do I make that business as efficient as this business? And not all mergers are like that, right? Some mergers are like, you're buying a company that's actually more efficient than yours. And you're trying to figure out how to get that. Or you're buying a company that you're not going to really do anything with, except for bolted on as an offering to your business. This was a real overlapping business. They were our closest competitor. And so we were trying to make two things become one.

And so we're doing all that planning. And because it's competitive, right? They're our closest competitor. You should think about mergers and acquisitions in two buckets. One where you're buying a really close competitor. And then a second where you're buying sort of a bolt on to your core offering. And this was one where we were buying our closest competitor, which meant you don't share that much information in the planning stages. Because it's super competitive. And if for some reason, the deal doesn't go through, you don't want to have told your competitor, like, the roadmap to how you run your business. And so if you see an M&A, if you see M&A happening, you see a merger acquisition happening, and it's two competitors coming together, there's planning that took place up to the moment of that acquisition.

But there isn't, but there isn't, like, detailed sharing of information. And so the executives are still trying to figure stuff out post-announcement. In an announcement where you're buying a non-competitor, you're bolting on sort of an additional product or service, you've probably shared a lot more information. So you're much further along the planning cycle when you make that announcement. But when we made the announcement – yeah, go ahead, John. I was going to ask, so what are some of the – let's talk about – let's pause there for a second as far as before the acquisition. Because I know a big thing that you guys are getting into right now is not just the trigger, like, hey, they opened up a new office, they launched a new product, but the intent, right?

So, you know, historically, the lead scoring system is, oh, they were on my website, so they get scored an eight. You know, they downloaded this white paper, those type of things, so that's fine. You know, marry that to an ICP, that gets a little bit better, right? But talk a little bit about what should a sales rep look, and let's take the fact that maybe they don't have Discover Org yet. You know what I mean? A ranking yet. Are there indicators that a rep can look for that show that a company is setting themselves up for that so that they can actually, you know, address it before as opposed to waiting for the actual announcement? Are there things – well, let's talk about what Discover Org shows you, but then let's talk about what are some other things that a sales rep could look for that would show that, hey, wait a minute, something's going on here.

Yeah, so what Discover Org will show you – I'll do that one quick – is we have an intent product where you can just go into Discover Org and say, show me all the companies that are trending in the last six months on antitrust as a – That means they're searching for those type of things, right? So, like, that company is Google searching, like, I want to see something on antitrust, I want to see something on mergers and acquisitions. Exactly, and in a non-standard way. So, they're, like, three standard deviations away from what a normal – what they normally search on those topics. Okay. And that's a great leading indicator, and we've gone back and looked at, like, what topics sort of bubble up when, like, three months before an acquisition.

And you could just look for mergers and acquisition and antitrust and due diligence is a topic that you might look for. So, those are just, like – those are direct triggers. You're almost certain something's happening in there when you see that. Now, like, Oracle is always going to be really high for that because they're always doing an M&A. But other companies are where you want to focus. If you're outside of – if you're outside of Discover Org, what I would say is you probably want to think about companies that are private equity-backed. Because there is a clear playbook when a company gets acquired by a private equity company to go do M&A. And so, you're almost certain sort of six months post-acquisition of a private equity firm that they're going to go look for companies to buy.

And you can look at a Marketo when they got acquired by Vista. They went out and bought Pout. They went out and bought Visible. Like, that is the playbook. So, if I'm owned by Vista Equity as a private equity firm or the Carlyle Group or TA Associates or Toma Bravo, M&A is absolutely part of the strategic playbook. And so, you know those companies are going to be looking for that. And so, again, from an education standpoint here for the audience, you know, because there's difference about being backed by a private equity versus a VC, right? VC is about grow, grow, grow, grow, grow as fast as you can, whereas private equity is more consolidation, acquisition, and flip, right? Yep. From a general standpoint, what people are looking at?

Yeah, that's pretty directionally accurate, yes. Yep. And so, Anne, I think to your point of like when you look at who's getting funding from what source, right? That helps you understand how fast they're going to be on an acquisition path versus a growth path, right? That's right. Cool. Cool. So, there's some indicators that lead up to it. Then the announcement's made. And I think this is where, again, this is where Crunchbase hits. This is where all those kind of, you know, anything that tells you something's happening with it, you know, it's the easiest one to throw out there. Owler, you know, that type of stuff. Yeah. So, what should a rep be? What should a message be from a rep? So, you got these two scenarios, right?

You got one, we're buying a competitor, which you said I think is a little bit of an easier, hey, we can help because you still haven't figured out your plans yet. Where if you're buying an add-on, you've probably already mapped out your strategy and you got some pretty direct plans in place. So, you as a CEO, right, what should reps reach out to? Who should reps reach out to? I mean, obviously, depending on what they're selling, but what should the message be at that moment? At that moment, let me just tell you the things we're trying to figure out. Number one is how are we bringing two sales teams together? And so, that also means I've got to bring two disparate sales systems together. And so, I have to integrate their sales force with my sales force.

I have to integrate their CPQ with my CPQ. There is an integration and technical lift that happens with every competitive acquisition. And so, if you're talking to me about, if you're MuleSoft, for example, would be a perfect candidate in that moment. They would call me and say, hey, we have a product that helps you integrate systems and has an API that connects disparate systems into one. That is absolutely happening in every M&A deal. How do I bring two different systems together in one? The companies that do sales force consulting or provide sales force developers, we need that. If there's companies that sort of specialize in retraining the sales force post-acquisition, we're thinking about that.

From a systems perspective, we're also putting two systems together. So, we're taking two platforms and making them one platform. And so, if you're selling development services or integration tools, everybody's thinking about that at the M&A point. And then you're probably also thinking about how you grow teams in new geographies. And so, we're based in Vancouver, Washington, Rankings based in Bethesda, Maryland, which is outside of Washington, D.C. I don't really know D.C. very well. And so, hiring there is different. Someone who comes in and goes, hey, I know the market in D.C. We've staffed for fast-growing technology companies. Like, if you're looking for hiring employees, we're somebody you want to talk to.

Those things are happening, I think, in every M&A transaction. I love it. And so, it kind of transitions to culture, right? Because, you know, now there's a lot of these, you know, achievers and all these other ones that kind of help with employee morale and that type of stuff. And I know one of the things that I faced a big challenge with when we got acquired was maintaining that company culture, right? And it's funny, we got acquired by Staples, which is, you know, our little $10 million company got bought by $20 billion, right? So, there's a little bit of a different story there. But it's, you know, you just got a broad brushstrokes here. It's funny to me how every acquiring company says to the acquired company, oh, no, no, no, we bought you for you.

And we're just going to, you know, we're going to make sure that, you know, we love you, da, da, da, da. And they promise that they're going to leave them alone. You know what I mean? We bought you for you. But then inevitably, less than a year out, they're assimilation to the mothership, right? Like, it just has to, right? You have to create these systems. And so, what were some of the things that you saw from a culture as a leader, a culture, like the challenge of integrating two cultures from, I mean, from your perspective, two very direct competitors? You know what I mean? I've got to imagine that there was some baggage that you had to deal with there. So, what was the strategy on the integration?

And then what were some of the challenges that you saw in making that culture shift for this new org? Yeah. So, this was pretty, this was complicated for us because, first of all, right, we're direct competitors. And so, we had basically hated each other for 10 years. We had lost deals to each other. We had deals to each other. We had taken clients away from each other for 10 years. Like, I woke up every day, like, almost literally thinking about these guys, looking at what they were posting on Twitter, what was going on on LinkedIn, what our pipeline looked like in relation to them. And they were doing the same thing. And so, you walk into this company. And then, you know, you buy a company that looks exactly like your company, and that means that there's redundancies.

And so, you go in on day one, and there are people who you let go because it doesn't make sense to have two people doing the same things. It's on two different coasts once you're one company. I think, and so, now we let go of your friends. We're direct competitors. And somehow, we have to figure out how to be one company, basically, in, like, 12 hours. And so, we did a lot of planning on this. And so, we knew, sort of, like, going in on day one, we said, look, first of all, their model was different. So, they went to market in a different way, where we have an account executive who just sells new business. They had an account executive that sold new business, renewed business, upsold business, and offered support to those clients.

And so, we had to come in and say, okay, who are the account executives we're going to keep specialized in just a sales role? Who are the account executives we're going to move into a customer success and just renewal role? But we came in on day one and said, okay, here are these people, here are these people, this is how the org's going to look. And we didn't, you know, we didn't tiptoe around the idea that, look, it's going to be different tomorrow. Like, we didn't come in. We're not just going to, like, keep everything the same. The idea behind this acquisition was, we do things in a way that's significantly more efficient than the way you guys do, and we're going to make you more efficient.

In the process, we're all going to make more money, but just, like, here's how we do things. We're going to start doing things that way. And we just didn't dance around that at all. That was really clear on day one. So what was really exciting about that was you go in at, like, 3 o'clock on a Monday, and you sort of take this company that was your competitor. You tell 200 people what's going on. You tell a group of them that, like, we're giving you a severance and a package, and you don't come to work tomorrow. And you take the remaining group of them and say, hey, like, we're now one company, and we need you to, like, come in tomorrow and crank out the next 60 days for us together while we sort of, like, put the two companies together.

And I remember walking in in the morning, and the sales floor was just, like, people were on their feet calling their customers. It was loud. It was full of energy. And you were like, okay, like, this thing is actually working. People are buying into this concept. And then we started putting in our systems. And so one of the things you saw at that company was, at Rain King, was there was a lot being spent on, like, catering three times a week and unlimited snacks and full soda fridges, which is very different from what we, who we are and who we were in Vancouver, Washington, which brings up, like, a number of issues, right? On one hand, you don't want to, like, just yank everything out of there.

But on the other hand, like, you don't want the people in Vancouver who've helped you grow your core business be like, well, that's, like, ridiculous. Like, why do they get that? And we don't. So we went in there, and we said, look, second day. Hey, I know you guys get catering three days a week and unlimited snacks. That's going away. But let me tell you why it's going away. At DiscoverOrg, we invest that money back into systems like Outreach or Sales Loft and appointment setting firms who helped us get appointments and SDRs who we're going to map one-to-one to you so that you're filling your pipe every single month. We're investing those catering dollars back into making you more successful as a sales rep.

And as long as you, like, buy into that concept, we're all going to be okay. You don't really need fried chicken three days a week anyway. Yeah. It's probably not good for anybody, right? Yeah. It's not good for anybody. And it worked. And they got it. So the biggest thing we learned was, even though we were on different sides of the country and selling sort of different products, we really were the same type of people. And so culturally, we weren't really that different. You could have taken any one of the employees at ranking and dropped them right into Vancouver, and they would have been successful. And so I think once you make that realization, oh, these are just, like, people running the same business that we're running that also, you know, they fit culturally in a number of different ways, and they understand our market, we can do a lot with that asset.

Yeah. And I think one of the things that's loud and clear to me is the transparency, right? And just to your point, not beating around the bush about stuff. It's like we were saying before we got on here, you know, one of the big fails I think we did when our company got acquired, you know, again, little $10 million company, $20 billion company, and we kept telling the line, like, the company was Thrive Networks. It was like, no, no, no, we're still Thrive, we're still Thrive, we're still Thrive. And we fought it, you know what I mean? And me particularly. I fought it. I'm like, no, like, because I didn't like the way that they ran their business, and I couldn't have any impact on their business.

So I was like, you know what, I'm just going to control us, and we're just going to put our head down and make this happen, right? And what we should have done, and then I got fired, and my parting words to my CEO were, look, you need to stand up right now and say, look, everybody, we're Staples now. We're not Thrive anymore. We're Staples. And look, here's the new vision. Here's where we're going. And here's how we're going to get there. And, A, if you're not on board with that, we totally understand you didn't make this decision to sell the company we did as leaders. So let's figure out a nice transition for everybody where you keep your job, but, you know, maybe half and half, you go look for a job and then transition on, whatever.

But for those of you who don't want to leave and are on board with this new vision, shut the fuck up, stop complaining about shit, and let's just get this done. And I told him he had to do that or else it was just going to be this middle ground of purgatory, and he didn't. You know, he didn't stand up and say, this is the new thing, and it ended up being purgatory and then wound down and, you know, split off in a private equity cut from bottom, and they've been, you know, transitioned like five times since then. But I think there's a lack of appreciation for candor and transparency throughout the whole process, right? I mean, from a leadership standpoint, like, how, are there any learning lessons where you kind of were a little bit, you didn't say everything, and it kind of bit you in the ass, and then you decide to say, fuck it, we're going to tell everybody everything?

Was there something? Actually, on the snacks and food point, I remember going in to the meeting to tell them that. And I was telling my chief revenue officer, like, how are they going to take this? Like, is it a good idea? Should we wait? And he was like, no, we should not wait. And we just need to tell them we're going to reinvest that money into tools that they're going to need. It's like, okay, that makes sense. Like, and so let's just go explain why we're making that decision. And people are pretty, like, rational when you can explain your perspective. Here's actually the biggest problem with not explaining the vision and not being transparent is that you don't get the opportunity to frame the discussion in the way that you want to.

And so if you just have a bunch of people questioning your decision and you never get an opportunity to explain, like, why you came to that decision, that's the worst place to be. Like, at the very minimum, you want to put the bug in their ear that this is the right decision, these were the reasons why, and this is the vision, so that when they have those thoughts about how dumb we are as leaders to have made this, like, really stupid decision, at least that that's sort of, like, balanced with, here are all the reasons why we made that decision. And they're actually not that dumb. You put a bunch of smart people in a room who made the call, like, there are differing perspectives on what you should or shouldn't have done, but it's not totally illogical.

I couldn't agree with that more as far as, and I think this rules for everything. Forget about mergers and acquisitions, but to your point, like, difficult business decisions, comp plans, you know, anything that you have to roll out, the more chitter-chatter there is on the back end because you didn't include the reasoning behind it. And I think that's a good, you know, I just look at, like, when people, like, let's just pick on CRM for a second in general. Like, one of the big failures of CRM and rollouts of CRM is they're seen as a management oversight tool, right, because I'll track my activities so that you can yell at me that my pipeline isn't updated. You know, I didn't do my activities, but it's rare that a company or leadership comes back and says, look, if you track these things, this is what we're going to be able to show you on the back end.

And we're going to actually help make you more efficient by telling you, stop doing these activities, start doing these, or start focusing on these deals instead of these deals, right? That's right. We were that closed loop of this is why we're doing this, why we're asking. It's always a hammer down type of thing. So it's the same thing with ripping, you know, the foosball table in the weekly, it's like, yeah, yeah, we're ripping those out because we're Discover right now. It's like, no, no, no, we're ripping them out for a reason so we can be more investing in the stuff that matters. Right. And do you see that coming down, being from where you're from, you know, you know, because there's the Silicon Valley, you know, oh, we need the food and all that other stuff, right?

And then there's reality. How much are you seeing kids coming in these days with an expectation that that food and that all that stuff's going to be there versus them genuinely seeing it as a really cool perk that's not necessary? But do you see a lot of kids? I'm just, this is just more be curious. Totally. I think people have an expectation. And like in Portland, in the Portland area, there is a startup community that's full of foosball tables and unlimited food and beer and kombucha on tap. And so they may come in here with that expectation and it like, but that gets ferreted out right away. So like in like your first interview, we're just telling you, like, that's not here. Straight up. Yeah.

If you want that, go somewhere else. If you want like the, the sort of the best sales development account executive program in the Northwest, like this is the place to be. You're just making that trade. If you want foosball tables and Xboxes in the break room, like that's just not us. Don't come here. If you're going to feel like all pissy about the fact that we don't have that, just don't come here. Yeah. And are you seeing the hiring profile change? Cause like, you know, 42 years old, you know, when I was coming into sales, it was give me my territory, give me my quota, get the fuck out of my way. And just tell me how much money I can make, right? I don't need a badge. I don't need to, you know, party during the office.

Like, just we'll do that on Fridays and we'll go get bagged up then. Right. You know, are you seeing, I'm seeing a shift, but I'm not hiring, but I'm seeing a shift a lot more away from comps a part of it. Right. Commission and that type of thing, but more towards, uh, continuous learning, the tools and resources that are, you know, the investment that the company, forget about the cash for a second, but the actual investment the company is making from in me. Are you seeing a shift in that where kids are really, those are the important things, um, or, or what is, what is attracting the, the, the, the right kind of rep these days, I guess. I think what attracts the right kind of rep is like, uh, number one, you have to, we have to be in the realm of the same comp as they'd get in sort of an entry level or account executive type role.

And then two, I think them feeling that you're investing in making sure they're going to be successful. And so for, for, for there, that sometimes means training that sometimes means systems that sometimes means investment in tools that have made them successful before. But I think a rep coming into a new role. And like, one of the things I appreciate so much more now than when we were a smaller company is people are betting their careers on discover org. There's so many times, especially at the executive level where we go out and recruit and we look for, you know, a number of different people. And if they came from a company that just like exploded, our private equity guys and the recruiting team here will go like, yeah, they haven't really seen success.

Like, why did he go there? Why did he stay? That was about, you know, like there's all these questions. And so you are making a big bet when you come to discover org. And so you have to feel really good about the fact that we're going to make sure that that that you're successful in your role and that the company is really successful. So that that is a very positive thing on your career track record. And so our reps want to know, like, hey, I'm green. I don't know. I've never done phone sales. I just want to know, like, when I sit down, there's a there's I'm clearly going to be successful. Yeah, I like it. And I think one of the other we'll finish up on this piece, because I know a huge part of what you do is giving back.

Right. I mean, I was watching that video of every year you get the reps to do some really cool, unique things to raise funds and double it. Right. So, you know, from a culture standpoint, is first of all, was that, you know, Benioff, right, came up with one one one before you even started Salesforce. He said one percent of profits, one percent of product and one percent of time. Right. Yeah. Was that something early on for you when you decided to start that you really wanted to give back? Or was that something that evolved when you said, you know what, now we got to give back? Yeah, I think it evolved from it evolved from us being like, look, it's me and my wife and I just sort of bought presents.

We'd sponsor like a classroom of underprivileged kids. We did that for like a year. And then we sort of started bringing that into Discover Org. And that is from a changing demographic or changing how things that are changing from your employee base, feeling like the company gives back to the community or has like a social mission of some kind is really important. And look, we sell software to salespeople. So it's like, I'm not really like there's all sorts of ways to logic your way to us changing the world for people. But it's sort of like a roundabout, like we're making companies successful. So then the reps are successful. So it's hard to get there. We're not like a green energy company. And then as we grew, you sort of realize like we're in we're a big part of this community.

And we can't just like be here using up the resources and sucking in employees and not giving back. And it's a great lesson to teach young people, too, which is, you know, you should give back. My mom, I had a single mom. She was a nurse. She worked three jobs. And every year you'd get like the Salvation Army stickers in the mail. And she was just like giving hundreds of dollars away every year. And I think that's a lesson that we can all learn that, you know, we're lucky to be in the positions that we're in. And we should be giving back and being thankful for for that success. Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. And I mean, I think it's it's more apparent now than ever. Right. I mean, all you got to do is flip on the news for two minutes to realize, you know, I try not to watch the news anymore right now just because I get too pissed off.

But but in the past, I would watch the news for one very specific reason, and it was to remind myself that no matter how bad my day went, I could literally have the worst days of my life. I turn on the TV and it ain't that bad, you know, like, I'm not worried about bombs over my head. I'm not worried about water in my in my glass here. So, you know, every person, John, that you talk to today that your listeners see and interact with today are far, far more privileged than the vast majority of the people in our country. And once you sort of make that realization, like I'm only seeing a small sliver of the most successful people in America. And there's this whole world of people out there who are not as lucky as we are.

It's, you know, it's a powerful reminder. Great. So, you know, I always end with, you know, go make somebody smile today because you never know what people are going through. Right. And try. Right. So, Henry, it's been awesome talking to you. How do people find out more about Discover Org and what you're doing these days as far as, you know, hiring the product, you know, follow you? Tell them where to find you. Yeah, absolutely. DiscoverOrg.com is our website. You can email anybody at Discover Org. It's just firstname.lastname at DiscoverOrg.com. So, I'm Henry.Shuck at DiscoverOrg.com. I'm on Twitter and LinkedIn. So, you can follow us there. And we're doing great things. Well, again, I really appreciate everything you're doing, especially giving back to the community and everything else.

And I appreciate you coming on board here and sharing some insights with everybody on, you know, that M&A growth and just culturally what you need to do. Because I think that's some insights that a lot of reps don't get. And the last thing I'll say here is for everybody, and I told you this when we were starting here, you know, one of the things I didn't do enough of early in my career was pay attention. You know, I was just there. I did my job and I had my head down and I really wish I'd lifted my head up every once in a while to pay attention to how companies were doing things, how they were rolling out commission plans, how they were integrating companies. Because if I had done that, instead of trying to learn through osmosis, I've been able to more proactively pick when I was older and in my 30s saying, okay, you know what?

I remember how bad that was. I'm not going to do it that way. Or I remember how great that was and this is how I'm going to do it. So for everybody out there who's sitting in a job that they might not love or some bad things potentially are going on because leadership, whatever, just pay attention. Right? Yeah. Because eventually, if you want to be a leader, eventually, if you want to start making those decisions, you're going to have to pull from some experience somewhere. Right? That's right. Learn as much as you can. Awesome. Well, Henry, thank you very much and have a fantastic holiday and hopefully you close out the year strong here with Discover Oregon and start the new year off pretty strong.

Right? Enjoy the... Thanks, John. Good talking with you. Bye, guys. I wanted to give you a heads up that on February 20th, I'm joining Frank and Rod from Costello for a webinar on high impact sales questions. See you there. See you there. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.