Adam Robinson: Bootstrapping Retention.com to $22 Million ARR

I think there's no question that being able to amplify things through distribution is the way you break through. To me, LinkedIn has given me the ability to just do that at light speed and at a scale that was never before possible. Hey everyone, welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. Now, today's conversation is with Adam Robinson. He is the CEO and founder of retention.com and RB2B, one of my favorite new technologies here. Adam's a ride. He got my attention at a golden hour presentation that he did in New York City when I was there talking about his growth and how he bootstrapped his startup to $22 million in ARR, which is absolutely bananas.

And he is rushing it on LinkedIn from a organic post standpoint. I would highly recommend everybody check out what he's doing. And he picked a few fights along the way, which really boosted his credibility. I'll let you go find out who they are. We talk about that in this podcast, but we talk a lot about a lot of his strategy on social and how it is just unbelievable what you can do right now to build your own personal brands for startups without grabbing VC money and all the different nuances of what's going on in the industry right now. He's had to rebuild a bunch of times, good times, bad times. He gave away his stuff for free and expected to upgrade. People would upgrade to paid version and nobody did.

So we had to restructure things and take a different approach. So he's such a thoughtful entrepreneur and has such a great background and is just a straight up hustler. So him and I connected it on a lot of levels and I think there's a lot to learn from what he's doing on social and with his solution. And quick little plug here, I don't get paid for this. Go check out RB2B. It's going to blow you away. So I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Let's make it happen. Adam Robinson, welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend. How are you doing? I'm great to be. Thanks for having me. Yeah, man. I'm looking forward to this conversation. I've been following the shit you've been doing on social, man.

It's cracking me up. First of all, it's super educational, but the fights you're picking, man, I was like, I was a fan when I saw you at, um, uh, what was it? Golden Hour? Uh, just a few weeks back in New York. I think that was the first time I saw you and you were just super transparent, like with your journey and what you were doing. Uh, then I saw the shit going with Sixth Sense and I fucking lost it. I was hysterical looking at it. Yeah. I, you know, I, so like I was going to show up, I was on, uh, I was on Gerhart's podcast on Thursday and that's like totally the Sixth Sense audience. Um, and I was going to show up dressed as Latane in a pink suit and a wig and his earrings and like whatever.

And my wife was like, cause like she and I, when I launched this, this, the retention.com, which was called get emails like four or five years ago, I did some Facebook ads that were hilarious. And they were like, they were kind of like inflammatory to the privacy people. And they'd like, they'd write all this hate, which would make the ad work better. So I just like take the comments and I'd make another video about what they were saying. I was scumbag about it or whatever. And they got hilarious. I was dressed up in costumes and everything. And she was like, you're above that now. You know, she's like, what kind of example are you trying to set for our daughter or whatever? And she really made me feel bad about it.

Um, and to some extent, I agree. One of the things that I like about, you know, 95% of the stuff I put out is it actually is like just incredibly positive and like inspiring and like whatever else, which I think, um, a lot of the influencer brands on social media, not necessarily LinkedIn. I think it's less on LinkedIn, but it's kind of like, I'm better than you. You suck. If you give me all your money, I'll tell you the one thing that will make you as good as almost as good as me. You know, exactly. Like that's the pitch, right? And it's the envy inducing machine. So it just works. I think that's why those models, uh, work so well, you know? And, and I just like that how I fell into this is not that it's very much just like, you know, I'm the humble servant of all the SAS founders.

Like I was five years ago. I'm just telling you how it is. Like, you know, I'm getting my, I'm taking the, I think there's something liberating about taking the filter off. Right. I mean, I, uh, you know, for me, I've never really had a filter, but when, you know, when you've got 20 people working for you and you get sponsors and that type of stuff, you kind of tend to be like, all right, I can't really be. And just recently, you know, everything fell apart early 2023, went back out on my own. And the, the liberating fact of me just being able to now say what everybody else is thinking, you know what I mean? I think, I don't know if you feel it, but like everybody else knows how, what a shit show we're in right now, but nobody's like willing to talk about it.

Nobody's willing to say what the, like how bad fucking things are right now. And I'm just out there being like, if you like, I did a post recently and was like, Hey, are you okay? Like, cause I, you know, I talked about my journey and how fucked up things were. And I got so many people reaching out to me being like, dude, thank you. Because I thought I was the only one. And I'm like, you thought you were the only one, like, who the fuck do you know right now that is killing it? Like, and if their perception is, I promise you they're not. So I guess let me start here. Cause we'll start with the background and everything, but I wanted to go back to that little thread you talked about with your wife and that type of, what is the line these days for you of too much versus not enough?

And I'll give you a context of why I'm asking this question. There's a couple of people out there where at first it's kind of funny. You're like, Oh, they're picking fights with giants. You know what I mean? They're, they're kind of throwing jabs on social, but then it's just like, dude, to your point, like, like grow up, you know what I mean? Like now you're hurting your brain. I'm not going to name names and it's not you, but there's a couple of people that I know that have done really well picking fights. And now it's just like, everybody I talked to about them is like, yeah, like they've gone too far. Yeah. It's not cool anymore. Like, and now you're really hurting your brand because you, you kind of look like an asshole.

What do you, what, in your opinion, what is that line? So, so I think I actually found it for, for this fight that I'm picking. So like, I kind of just wrote something funny about how they tried to three XR pricing and it was, it was a shit post, but it was like kind of written in a funny way. You're like, who writes their data is terrible. You're reading is just, I've never seen anything like this in my life. And then the season it's, this thing was just so awesome. And then I'm, I'm, I'm sitting, I'm like, I wonder if these guys, some, some idiot over there actually created an RB2B account. Cause if, if they did, that's an even better, you know, it's like, Oh, they're suing me for the same thing they did.

And some AE did right. It wasn't even their, their product people, but just some random as a, but it gave me the ability to say like, Oh, they're doing the same thing or whatever. Um, and then man, like, I like, I'm sure you've gotten like this before. I like, so I started learning more about them and the situation over there is not great. It's like, like, I was like, okay, what? Like they're, they're, I saw your post that broke down like their financials and their profitability. I'm like, Ooh, yeah, that's gross. So like, so it's like, man, like, okay, if they keep growing at 30% a year, they're probably okay, but probably like, not definitely. And then if they just stop growing, they're going to have to fire three quarters of their people for sure.

Maybe, maybe even 90% or whatever. Uh, and I was like writing it like, you know, like all just like, Oh, whatever. And it was actually much more inflammatory than that. And, uh, you know, I like let my friends read it in 80% of them were like, dude, like, you can't put, I mean, like the end was like, well, the end was like, I am glad that I do not work at six cents, do not own their equity in like, whatever. It was just like, like absolutely. And I was like making all these references of how it was like the democratic people's Republic of six cents or whatever. And there was the great leader who had just like hypnotized everybody. So, you know, I kind of like, one of them was like, you know, if you're going to do this, like Bill Ackman style takedown, he's this guy who like, cause you know, he's, he's had some, some famous short sales.

He's like, I'd keep it, you know, less of this humor inflammatory and more just like kind of facts. But then it took a lot of the bite out of the post and I posted it and I'll never do anything like that again. It just wasn't right. Right. Like, it's like, I don't think people want that from me. And it's exactly what you're saying. If I kept doing that, which is like all negative, not funny, like pure conjecture, but still conjecture. Uh, and just like say, you know, you know, people just like, like, so how do I say this? It's like, if you looked at the number of comments, the number of comments, it was still maybe 80% positive. That was from 100. There was not a single six cents backer in 850 comments on the cease and desist post.

Right. But like on that one, probably 20% of them were something along the lines of you're coming across as thirsty, which I agree with. Right. Cause I did something else too. I was like, Oh, I'm going to post my PNL. And if people don't care about six cents, they'll want to see my PNL. And it just felt desperate, you know? Um, so I think it's like, there's a lot of different lines, right? Like there's tons of lines you don't want to cross on this line. I felt like I crossed a line that people didn't want to see me cross, you know? And like, I probably like, I had, I had some funny stuff that I wrote, like a fake Adam Robinson versus six cents, like court court transcript or like, you know, the executive meetings, like leading up to this or whatever.

I should, I should have put something like that out. But, um, man, you don't know, you know what I mean? It's like, or perhaps it might've even landed better if I didn't tone it down. And it was this cause like what people were like reading it, the not toned down version. And they're like, this makes me feel, I don't even, I don't know how to describe it, but it makes me feel very weird reading it. Well, I, you know, so I, I kind of had a similar, like when I read it, I was like, I actually appreciated the educational component of it, of like showing why this is a problem. Right. But I, to your point, I think just from my standpoint, I think the, where I started feeling weird was when I started thinking about the reps at six cents.

And if I was a rep at six cents, reading that I would now be questioning everything about my job. I'd now be on the market. I'd now be like, what the fuck is happening to me? You know what I mean? And I, so I didn't care about the executives over there. It was more when I read that 90% of their people are going to get fired. That's I think where the weird stuff came in. I was like, Ooh, that, yeah. And then if you're thinking that if I kept agitating it in that way, that's going to be bad, it's going to be a bad look. But the good thing about LinkedIn is a super fast feedback loop, right? Like three weeks from now, like the only thing that will ever bring that post back to people's minds is a conversation like this.

And I think that like, when they hear my perspective, they'll be like, Oh, you're thinking about it the right way, you know? Well, and I think you, let's go on to that feedback loop because I figured I saw a post about your, about your, first of all, you're doing a, you know, obviously you put out there, you get a feedback loop pretty quick on LinkedIn, but is it your CEO? Who is the one who's doing the weekly? Yeah. They're doing the weekly, like just what are they doing on that? Cause that feedback loop is awesome. Could you talk us through that? Cause I think that's something that everybody could leverage for their own business. Yeah. The webinar. Oh yeah. So, so that's, yeah, that's, that's kind of like our weekly event.

So for background, check out my stuff. I post probably like a quarter of the stuff I put out is something related to either like a very detailed monthly update with like my monthly current revenue and PNL and stuff, or, you know, I'm launching this product RB2B. It's a freemium offer. It's PLG. I've never done anything like it. So I'm super unqualified to do it. And I realized that and I have these hypotheses and the thing that I'm not surprised by is that they don't work out. Right. Like, like we, like, like, uh, you know, this, I was totally convinced that people would see these leads in Slack and we would just have upgrade for $450 a month raining on us. Cause I'm like, who can't afford $450 a month?

Like 6,000 signups now, zero people have upgraded on their own. I mean, it's just, and the fundamental problem is, you know, the magic moment of this product is when you look at the leads in Slack. So we wanted to give that away for free rather than keeping people in the app. Cause then there's all sorts of problems. It's like, I don't want to keep another app open. It's like, it just doesn't look as sweet. Um, and the problem is when you create the magic moment in Slack, my plan was to charge for integrations from, and just people would just be clicking this button in Slack because I want to like enable the integration. The problem is anybody can parse the Slack block with no code with Zapier for like whatever.

So then it became this weird thing where it's like, there was so much value in the free plan that we'd be having these discovery calls. And it's kind of like, no matter what we told them, the paid plan would include. They were kind of like, dude, like it was weird. Like there was, there was a tremendously high willingness to pay before they saw the free version. And then afterwards they were just like, I'm just going to stay for the free thing. So you know what odd, sorry to interrupt. You know, what's odd is for context. Like you're literally facing the exact same challenge LinkedIn did when I first started working with them, they gave away LinkedIn. Everybody fucking loved LinkedIn. And then they tried every up to upgrade everybody to premium.

And people were like, what else, what else do I get? Like I get that now obviously done a really good job. You know, they had their different products that they could sell to recruiters and everything else. But I vividly remember their biggest challenge was that exact problem is that they gave away that like too much free stuff that was too valuable. So when you looked at the upgrade piece, you were like, is it really worth it? And they're still struggling with that to this day, quite frankly. Mm hmm. So I mean, I think that's how you get true scale. Yes. You know, like, like there, I think you kind of need to operate with this mindset that like, I am not going to be making as much revenue as I could.

I'm not going to be making as much revenue as the person who acquires this is going to make, but that's going to be the story. It's like, how can I run this in the way I want to run it? And still, so my attitude now is like, anyway, where this came to be is like, I'm posting about this. I'm like, you know, our conversion rate is like 0.0002%. Like, here's what I'm trying, whatever. And like, I mean, hundreds of people are writing these comments that are not the little magic one chat GPT thing. They're like giving me deep thoughts in like vocabulary that I did not know in like frameworks for thinking about all of this stuff. And they're basically telling me exactly what I have to do, you know, like, and the answer is, you know, uh, basically like give it for free for 85, 90% of people, but like gate the contact account.

And like, I didn't want to do that. Cause that's going to be a high churn business. Cause you're selling leads to the SAS, but like, whatever, if it's high churn and it's super, if it's high churn with zero CAC, like fine, like I'll take it and figure it out later. Um, so I'm talking to Chris Walker and Andy Mooborn about, I just can't even believe how good this information is. I'm getting, you know, and it's like real time and it's like, whatever. And this is after we use this content and basically inbound connection requests to have like literally like 500 discovery calls while we were making, making this app. Like, you know, we have one guy building it and then Sandra was on the phone all day with like VP marketings of whoever talking about like how this fits in to ABM and outbound and all that shit.

So, um, Chris was like, if you, he's like, yes, you are right. LinkedIn is like an incredibly fast feedback loop. He's like the best feedback loop is this weekly event. And I was like, cool. What do you do? He's like, well, I basically create this zoom meeting and then you schedule out till the end of the year and you get people to sign up for it. And then it's in their calendar every week. And then I just like promoted a couple of times over email. And he's like, I get 50 to 200 people to show up every week. And I do a 10 to 30 minute monologue. Then I open it up for questions. And he's like, it just helps with everything. It really helps, you know, take the temperature of the market where the pain is.

He's like, it really helps with my narrative in the market basically. Cause that's this whole business. It's just like this content that like hits and then, you know, funnels down into his agency. Um, and yeah, so I, I promoted mine a couple of times, made a post about it. And based on what I saw, I was like, okay, so there'll probably be, you know, I heard that 20% of people show up for events that sign up or whatever. I think I had 120 registrations going in. So I'm like, okay, cool. Let's be like 30 good for a first event, but 1300 people were on it. It's like, it's like so many parts of this. I'm just so mind blown by, uh, I think a couple hundred came in through zoom and then I had made a post about it a week before on LinkedIn because I like, I streamed it through recast or whatever, whatever that's called.

And then LinkedIn was pulling people in through LinkedIn live somehow. Um, it just kept going up the entire time. And when it ended, there were 1100 people on it on LinkedIn because they show you the count and it had like 200 comments from the LinkedIn people in, in, you know, questions like whatever, just like blah, blah. This is great. And then there were 200 people on the zoom side, which is nuts, dude. So like that, that's like every, you know, in, I don't know how to say this, but it's like so many parts of this are just defying gravity like that. You know, like I just can't even believe how incredible this all is. Um, Hey, I hope you're enjoying the conversation so far. I want to take a quick minute to share with you what I'm working on these days with my new JB sales membership.

It includes live monthly training delivered by me on my two signature courses, which are filling the funnel and driving a close that cover all aspects of the sales process. It also includes monthly workshops that I'll be running on specific sales skills and different tech skills like chat GPT and how to leverage AI throughout the entire sales process. Finally, the membership gives you access to my entire online catalog with every course and every tip I've ever done. And as an exclusive offer to my podcast listeners, if you go to jbarrows.com, click on the individual membership link and use coupon code podcast at checkout, you'll get 25% off. Now let's get back to the conversation. What was the hook though, for that, for that part, right?

Cause I'm like, I mean, look, you know, my, my former company sell better. Like they run a daily webinar. They got a huge audience. They probably drive, you know, 500 to a thousand people every single day when doing this, but it's a real long time for us to really get to that ramp. Right. What was the hook for you? And you know, webinars, a dime a dozen here, a million of them from anybody. Right. So why do you think, what was the, what was the hook for, for this thing, for this event specifically? Um, I just said, so I'm trying to coin this for it. You know, it's so helpful to just do this category creation thing. I think even if it's not real, right. It's like so helpful to say that you're part of some new workflow that people are not doing.

And then my thing is inbound led outbound. And, and basically it's like, you know, it's like, it's like you do things in the digital and real world to bring people back to your site who either then sign up or book a demo with you, or you use these different retargeting methods to try to bring them back again. And the novel retargeting method of course is, is RBV. Um, and, uh, I just was like, Hey, inbound led outbound workshop. Number one, you know, inspired by Chris Walker is on Tuesday, you know, topic number one is what is inbound led outbound. I'm going to discuss this, this, this, you know, these playbooks we're doing or whatever. Um, yeah, I, we'll, we'll see how this week's go. It's later today.

We'll see how many people show up. I haven't even created it in LinkedIn yet. So maybe, you know, I'm, I'm still trying to figure all this stuff out, but, um, yeah, I was like, it was literally like 50 times more people than I thought were going to show up, you know, it's totally not. I immediately quit the event and I had, uh, I had a coffee with the VP marketing of G2 who was here for, uh, Forrester last week. And I told him, I'm like, I just do 1300 people show up. So he's like, we've never gotten more than 200 people on any that like our biggest one by far was 200. Like, uh, let me ask, did you promote it as you or did you promote it as the, uh, RB2B or did you? It's like, like my face is on this thing.

That's so, okay. Yeah. That's what I should say. The brand versus the company brand is, is, is like an X, right? Yeah. At least I think, you know, it's like, it may be 10 X. Here's the way to think about it. It may be 10 X on any individual thing that you do, but these, this, all this stuff compounds. So if everything is 10 X, then in a year it's 10,000 X. Yeah. You know, like there's just nothing, you know, yeah. And look, if you ask me, it has to all go this way. Like, like, so I'm, you know, I'm on the, I'm on the, the, my other company sells into these e-commerce brands and they're, I think the most sort of like forward thinking and operating econ brand. I know it was this guy who's a second time dude.

His name's Ryan Babenzi and he's got this showerhead brand called Jolie. Who cares? Right. But he's like kind of, we're going to make the apple of showerheads. And he like reverse engineered the business model to have a subscription where it's like, we send you a filter for nine bucks that no one cancels ever. And he is co-founder and one full-time employee got to 50 million run rate in 18 months. Jesus Christ. Just like all UGC. So like their whole thing was like, they kind of like didn't get, it's like paid. There's Mark great marketers. So crush paid ads through an agency. And then they basically went out and got a showerhead into 20,000 medium-sized influencers hands. Who then create, they, they like it.

So like they do a post about it or whatever. So he got, he got, he got 20,000 pieces of UGC created last year for his thing. That's what I'm trying to do is it's like, how do you get that? Cause yeah, I mean, that's what I'm trying to engineer here. And I think it's possible with this tool. And like, the thing about it is so beautiful is like, if you can get it, if the UG ski, if you can get free users to make UGC instead of pay, it's like, as you get more free users in theory, more UGC is going to come out. And then that becomes the moat. It's like in a world where anyone can build anything, what do you have? Right. Which is like the question about LinkedIn brand versus LinkedIn direct sell.

I think these days I heard David cancel say this from drift. When he started drift, he's like, there were a thousand, he's like, there were 600 people doing what we did. I was looking at what Procter and Gamble did, right? Like how do you create affinity around a brand and then sell what are commoditized products into it? Right. Do you think that there's still too many founders out there that they're engineering driven that think the product matters? Well, what I would say is it definitely does. Like it can't be, you know what I mean, it's like the combination. Yeah. There, I think there's no question that being able to amplify things through distribution is the way you break through, you know, it's, it's, it's just to me, it's like so similar to break cutting through on LinkedIn.

It's like, this is how you have to do it these days. Like, uh, man, it's just, it's so expensive the other way, you know, it's like, you know, what happens when you build something and people don't want it? You got to go back, you know, like, so, so it's kind of like this, this really hyper iterative. There's this great book called four steps to the epiphany that I always say is my favorite startup book. And it's the lean startup method. The lean startup guy kind of summarized this. It's like, you have got to be building your buyers as you're building your product before you have it, because software is so hard to get right. That if you do not do that, you will almost certainly fail. If you do do that, then you'll find out that what you're building sucks and you'll quit before when the cost, when the stakes are still low and start over and sort of do the same thing.

Um, and, and to me, LinkedIn has given me the ability of this new product to just do that at light speed and at a scale that was never before possible. I mean, you read that book, this guy's like, Oh yeah, you make, you know, 10 cold calls a day for a week and then you'll get five conversations the next week. Like we were having 10 a day for three months. Like it's just with like perfect people, you know? Um, it's insane, but it wasn't what you, it wasn't pitch slapping people. It was letting them come into us, you know, off of some very soft CTA. We did after a very articulate post that just nailed this pain that like, we knew that they had. And it's like, yo, you want to talk about this like person level ID thing?

Like, you know, hit me up on the DM. Right. And I think that's ultimately it. It's like, you add enough value to people. And they said, so the challenge though, is like free, you know, the free versus paid, right? Like the people who consume free content don't necessarily pay for stuff, but they give great feedback loops. So you can iterate and find the people that'll pay. Yes. And word of mouth like that, that it, I think if you don't have word of mouth in today's world, do not go a step further until you have some way of realizing your word of mouth, because nothing that you will do will work. All of these things will amplify word of mouth. Once you have word of mouth, everything works. If you don't have word of mouth, nothing works, you know, like we're sitting here picking channels, right?

It's like, well, what's the maximum lowest hanging fruit that we can execute on and keep a small team. Uh, but if you don't have word of mouth, it's like none of what we're going to do would work for you at all. You know, that's why I love, you know, early in my career, I read raving fans by Ken Blanchard. Right. And it was just that whole concept is like, make raving fans out of your customers. And they'll tell, that'll be your marketing engine. Like you don't, you almost don't have to invest in marketing. If you create raving fans out of your product, like that guy did with the shower heads, right? It's like, Hey, take it. What do you think? Oh, shit, this thing's awesome. Let me tell everybody about it.

And I think people like doing that too. Um, let me ask, let me back up a little bit from your sales background here, because you didn't start in sales. You started, you started in finance or economics, right? Like you got your degree in economics, I think, right? Yeah. I got my degree in economics. I was a credit default swap trader for 10 years. There was certainly a sales element of that, but it was not, it was, it was fast-paced. It was like, uh, yeah, but you understand the fundamentals of sales, sales, definitely. I was going to ask like, when did say, when did it become evident to you, the importance of sales and marketing compared to the product or whatever you were, you know, selling, if you will, like, cause you, there's a couple of threads that I've read through where, you know, you talk about the importance of a founder who can sell and sales led and all that other stuff.

So where did you kind of, where did that hit you like in your career where you're like, shit, man, I got to learn this craft. Yeah. So my first startup journey was a little strange. We started, I mean, I think a lot of people start with these like very small business, low price startups because you have no brand and those are the only people that'll buy from you. So it's like, you start selling assassin $9 a month and then you just like work your way up market until you can't anymore. Cause that's just math. You know, uh, in my first product, we were poaching customers from constant contact. Another one of these David and Goliath fights, we kind of figured out a way before built with to like do the built with things.

So no one else was doing it and it really worked. Uh, and just speaking with someone who had done something similar, we were like under this impression that we could direct mail people and it would just like work. And of course it didn't, right. You know, the conversion rate was like terrible and we had a finite list and it's like, okay, like if we direct mail these people, we're going to convert 0.2%. If we call them, if you call a list that is a perfect list that no one else is calling, then you're going to convert 5% or like maybe even, you know, 7% or whatever. Uh, so like strangely, it was at that moment that I was like, I need to learn how to create a, an engine that can literally get people on a phone, listening to reps and explaining exactly why they should do this from walking through this whole funnel.

Um, and it worked, I mean, it worked, you know, it worked, you know, 50, whatever it is, 40 times better than direct mail did. Uh, and then after that, we burnt through this list and you know, my business was stuck and it was like, it's like, man, like, okay, that was sales. Like what is marketing? You know? Uh, and I, cause we didn't, we had, there's only thing we ever did. And like, I really didn't know anything about it. Um, and man, I remember this moment. I, I went to digital marketer.com, found them somehow. And I'm like watching this video of Ryan dice talk about literally like what the, it's like marketing level one course. And he's got this, this, uh, statement of value card. And he's like, until you can fill this card out, don't do anything else.

It's kind of like the word of mouth thing. Right. Like, and it was like company X helps group Y do Z like a very simple thing, you know? But he's like, until you can clearly articulate this, you don't have a business like you have. And this was 2015 or 16. There's this company called MailChimp in the space that I was in. They had this incredible free offer. And it was this devastating moment where I could not, write on this card, why somebody should use my product instead of MailChimp. I was like, man, if every one of my customers knew about MailChimp, they'd be using MailChimp because it's free, right? Like a not $45 a month or whatever we're charging. Um, and that began a very uncomfortable multi-year journey of like, just trying to figure this whole thing out.

I was like, cause it became clear to me. I'm like, I'm not going to be able to grow this in this market because I can't fill this card out. So it's like, it started this whole thing of like, what can I do? The MailChimp's not doing, you know? And it's, it's, yeah, I mean, it was just so hard, man. I made, I made a bunch of really big yo's that were like fails two different ones, two years in a row. And then finally landed on this thing that is now retention.com, which was called get emails, which was like, somebody hits their site, doesn't fill out a form and we could resolve it to an email address, you know? And, and that's pretty dope. Nobody knew about it in 2000 and whatever 19. And it just kind of worked, but there were just so many struggles and so many lessons in the middle there.

You know, basically there were like two camps of people I would talk to just trying to talk to anyone that was ahead of me about how to grow this thing. One camp was like, okay, you have a 3 million ARR business that's spitting off a buck and a half and you got two co-founders. That's a pretty good life. What if you just made 2 million more? That'd be a really good life, right? So that's like one camp. And then the other camps like that product is not good enough, which really hurts you to hear because this is what you're spending your life on. You're too driven to waste your time on something like that. Start something completely new. And ultimately, I think that the second thing is correct.

It's just so hard to do. But, but I think I landed in an in-between. It like, wasn't like I started in an AI company. Like I started what, what my more successful company was, was a feature. It originally started as a feature in the newsletter app. And then, you know, people were like using the newsletter app, using the feature, downloading the file and putting it in whatever, Klaviyo or MailChimp or whatever. And saying it was awesome. So it was like, okay, if I'm trying to grow the email app with that feature, it's not a good product. If I spin it out and connect it to everything else, it probably is. So anyway, um, I, throughout that journey, I just came to appreciate how important distribution is.

And I just hear these things about MailChimp that were like, Oh, it was like, what do you mean you have 18,000 people signing up every day? Right. Well, like, I mean, it's just, I became obsessed with this. I was like the day that it becomes possible. I'm going to try one of these free offers. Like it's just so powerful in the positioning it gave them in the market. It's like, what can you do when the company who has a dominant brand is free for 90% of people? And they don't even know that they'll ever pay for it. Right. So like, they just think that email marketing is a birthright and they talk about it that way. Right. It, it is, it's such an, it is such an incredible positioning because what are you going to do?

Be more free than MailChimp? Yeah. No, you know? Yep. So, so yeah, that's kind of why I'm going about doing what I'm doing with this. It's like, it would have been really easy to try to do one of these 30 to 50 K ACV mid market. And the reason I thought that that was possible is because I had a brain in the space already. I'm like, you know, I could get on the phone with these people. Surely we could sell this to them. But then I'm like, well, I have this huge megaphone and it's got scale, but the mid market sales operation does not have the advantages of scale as if I had a free offer, it would help me a lot more than it would help somebody who didn't have a huge megaphone. Yep. So that was kind of like the whole evolution of this thing.

Well, man, so let me, so I, you know, I saw one of your posts about Scott Lee's talking, I think Scott and I are on the same page as far as where things are going and how we're both screwed basically. Um, but, um, I mean, you're screwed in the current iteration, but you and Scott also realize that life's about figuring it out, right? Like, exactly. And I, but my fear here is this, right? I think SDR BDR role, maybe two to three years as a life cycle, you know, winding down, transitioning to inbound as outbound with full blown, you know, account-based marketing, feeding true intent, not just download white paper, but on the website, looking at different pages, doing those types of things and then getting tailored messaging and then putting the human as the last mile to have that conversation, almost like a dashboard we're going to be sitting in front of.

And instead of wondering who I should call today, it's going to say, no, John, you got to call Adam. And by the way, you need to call him. You don't have to email him because his personality says this, cause we're tapped into crystal nose as well, like all that shit. So first of all, A, do you think we're headed in that direction? B, what does that mean for the, for the population of sales? Cause I, and one more point on that, cause I walked out of, out of, of golden hour and I, I wrote a post said sales reps were fucked because marketing is coming so far down the, the, the, the funnel, if you will, as far as education is concerned. And the data is undeniable that clients want less and less interaction with sales cause they don't see any value with it.

So I think we're in an 80, 20 rule here where, you know, Pareto's rule of 20% are going to learn how to leverage this shit and be assassins. Whereas the other 80% are just going to die on the vine. And I'm worried about that as a, as the profession, help me understand why either I shouldn't be worried or what people need to do to evolve in this world. Yeah. So like my, I had a really rough experience and yeah, I'm a novice or whatever, but like, um, I kind of did this classic screw up where you got outbound working with two BDRs and then you try to scale it to like eight and you're booking the same amount of demos. Right. And you're like, that would have never worked, but it used to kind of work.

Yeah. When money was free, sure. Grow at all costs. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It used to kind of work. Uh, but you know, and then we reduced the sales squad and the culture got so much better that the whole thing started speeding up and it was just like, whatever. So then it got me thinking about a lot of stuff. And, and really, I think the, the fundamental issue is that response rates are just getting crushed. And I think that like the trend there, like I would bet you everything that I have that the world sends more emails in 2025 than 2024, every single penny I would put on the line. Oh yeah. Yep. In 2026 way more, right? Like, like, so it's like even the best personalization, if the channel is just getting annihilated doesn't work, right?

So it's like, uh, I think we're in a moment now where, um, I had this really smart buddy who was an investor at Goldman Sachs and he kind of went on in 2017, 2018, he thought shopping malls had been crushed too hard, meaning the valuations were depressed because of the Amazon thing, but it was too much. And he actually bought a mall and then he bought a bunch of mall public equities. Um, and guess what happened? All of them are bankrupt. It wasn't like, why? Because this mega trend of Amazon siphoning off stuff that people used to go through to the mall for is in place. Yes, there are, you know, bound dead cat bounces or whatever, but like the mega trend the mega trend in what is known as outbound today is undeniably getting worse.

Now I have created a business model where I was like, you know, what is the exact, what, what is the opposite extreme in the most extreme way that you could go about doing this? Um, I don't think that's necessary. I don't think we're there yet, but like the similar things to what you described are what I think is probably going to happen. And it, it, so like some of the pushback that I get was like, you never should have been having an outbound engine on a 20 K ACV deal anyway, which, okay, fine. Like either like HubSpot made you think that that was possible. And it was for a while. It's like, okay, well, if you cut response rates in half, then we're now at 50 K where it works for North American reps or whatever, if response rates get cut in half again, it's a hundred and if they get cut in half again, it's 200 and then no one's got a job, right?

Like, so, so that's concerning to me. And, um, so it's like, to me, it's like, I don't know which part of it is the chicken or the egg. Like the fact that this is happening, does that be get people doing their own research because they have to? And, or is it the fact that they're just getting this information? So, so LinkedIn's, I think this incredible sort of case study of how this is all changing, right? And so much of it is kind of up in the air also. Like I built a business model around trying to future-proof something in this environment, right? So it is free. It didn't have to be like, this is not a free product. People think I'm out of my mind for giving it away for free, but like I do because that's what I think works right now, you know?

And when we talk about this trend, these trends, I think it'll continue working. And strangely, dude, we're getting an enterprise lead, like two, three times a week, like crazy sort of, we're through legal at Rippling, MongoDB, like, you know, every day we get every, a few times we get like a 5,000 company employee. That's like, I want to talk to you. I don't know if we've closed all the deals because of the nature of the product, but it's still like, that's one of the things I think it's a reaction. It's like, well, you can't do the type of deals I need to do. It's like, maybe you can. I mean, that's not what folks are, but, um, so I think it's like business models will have to adapt to this new world in one way or another, just because what's the alternative, right?

It just can't, you can't fund it forever. Right. Um, so what's that mean for a rep? I mean, will the most skilled salespeople always have jobs like for sure. Like w w w will it look different than it does now? Like almost certainly. Right. Like, um, you know, exactly what you described as how you see the future is kind of what I set up with RB to be, you know, it's like, and, and then, uh, you know, it's like, it's like basically like create, creating the desire for people to come learn about you on your site and then taking that signal and then trying to get them, you know, further and further down the funnel any way you can basically. And then eventually if it's, if it's a, you know, phone sales product, it's like you get them to do a demo or, you know, you sort of, and there's all different ways to do it.

But, um, I think people are also consuming content in a way with social media where it, you know, like the stuff you put out, stuff I put out, it's like the best advertisement in the world. Like people are more focused on reading this stuff than they have ever been focused on an ad. Yeah. Oh, you know? Yeah. So, so it's like that, you know, that's, what's educating them, which is so interesting, you know? So, so it's like all of this together in, yeah, it's like, I'm not articulating this super well. It's like, well, well, what's an SDR do? I mean, I think you just try to do your job as best as you can while it still is working. I personally think that anyone who can build audience on social media organically has a tremendous leg up in this new world because you're not going to be an SDR forever.

You're probably not going to be an E forever, but like, just look at the type of people who are crushing it in today's world who are later in their careers, who are very good at organic social media and look at what it's doing for them, right? Like it's just, you know, no, it's, you're right. I mean, I think that's why it's, I almost think of, you know, my first major in school is art and that was a terrible disaster. So I've moved on quick, but, um, but you know, I studied Picasso and what, what fascinated me was Picasso wasn't, he wasn't Picasso, like all to like, we all know him. He spent time mastering each of the mediums before he started to really fuck around with them. Right. So like it, so he was in this, you know, acrylics and then he was in oils and that, you know, and he really mastered each stage to understand how to master it.

So it's almost like you can't break the rules until you know, the rules. So you can't break, you can't evolve without having the foundation. And so that's what I'm trying to encourage reps right now is like, Hey, pay attention, give a shit, do this. What are you're asked to do as best as you can do it? Understand the conversion ratios, understand all this stuff and understand why it is, or it is not working and then evolve to the next role and the next role. So that as you layer on technology on top of this, you know how it works. It goes back to our original conversation about LinkedIn. I think the reason that I think I'm effective on LinkedIn, you're effective on LinkedIn is because we knew a world of networking before LinkedIn.

We knew a world of engagement and, and, and connecting with people before LinkedIn. And so when LinkedIn came, it was like, Oh, okay, this is how to do it. You know what I mean? Versus a kid who just jumps into LinkedIn with no background, no ability to network, no relationships, and just starts hammering people with, let me tell you some shit. Right. And it just is, it saddens me that we're still in that state of sales rep still product pitching sales rep still hammering. I mean, I did a post the other day about what I've been preaching this shit for 15 fucking years. And yet every goddamn email I get in my inbox is still a templated piece of shit email that says how great they are. And I'm like, is nobody fucking listening right now?

And, and that's where I'm scared. This, there's a whole group of people that are just going through the motions, man. And I don't think they have any clue what's coming. Yeah. I agree with you. So it's just, it's like, it's like, I just see it getting like continuing to sort of like get a little worse. And then at some point it might just break. So it's like Scott brings up, he's like, there's this generational thing also that's like a strange one where, you know, he's like, my kids will never work in an office. They don't know what their email address is, you know, like even Excel sheets. I mean, we're all headed to the, you know, I've, you know, it's not even going to be an iPhone. It'll be a chip like Elon, you know, we'll have our own personal computer.

We'll have our own personal AI that we can ask any question to at any, you know, anytime for any reason. And it'll do it for us. Right. So even education, you're like, well, why do I need to go to school to learn that when it's legitimately at my beck and call whenever I need to know it? And it's, uh, yeah, it's weird. I mean, I think, I think the only thing in the look, why I'm doing what I'm doing in the way that I'm doing it, it's like being a trusted source of knowledge thrives, not only survives, right? Like if you are a trusted source of knowledge and you are the guy for what you do, um, that in that world, you keep, you keep getting pushed higher as more people enter and try to figure it out or whatever.

Um, it's everything. It's like trust brand, like however you want to say it. Um, it's all that, that trend, that trend is that way. Absolutely. Awesome. Well, look, we, we need to talk cause I want to work with you to do that for me. You know what I mean? Like set up this system so that I could, but, but for the main, yes, to get business, whatever, but it's more to educate people on, on where things are going and how easy it is to really be intentful with your outreach based on true signals and authenticity and all that other stuff and stop with the spam can and shit. So, you know, I'd love to work with you on this transition to, to just educate people of saying, Hey, look, I'm admitting right now I've done some like literally recently.

I mean, I always prospect just to kind of keep the wheels going, make sure that what's, you know, I can kind of keep my finger on the post, but I've done some, like when I tell you like super hyper personalized shit recently, just some tier one target accounts that like would have worked a year ago would have made what I would have gotten a response, no question about it. And I'm getting crickets right now, as far as like the hyper personalized shit. And, and it's because timing is everything, right? If you're not there at the right time with the right message, it doesn't matter how good your personalization is. And so I'm looking at it saying, okay, I know I got a shift and I know my audience has to shift here, but let's educate them along the way to how to do it.

So I'd love to, you know, if you're up for it, work with you on that, see how we can make that happen. I'm a thousand percent down. Um, I'm just so interested in it. Yeah. Same here, man. That's the same thing. It's such a massive change, you know? Yeah. Um, probably. All right, man. Well, look, we could keep talking about, I had about two other pages of notes of shit that I wanted to talk to you about, but in the interest of time for the audience here, uh, first of all, tell them, uh, where to send you like the RB2B shit. I've been telling everybody about it because I'm loving it. Even on the Slack channel, you know, I haven't had it set up where I kind of automate the outreach and all that other stuff, but just seeing that shit in, you know, in Slack is bananas for me.

So tell people where you want to learn more about and where they can follow you and everything else. Sure. Yeah. Uh, RB2B.com. We'll check that out. That's the product, um, person level website, visitor identity. It's free push to Slack, LinkedIn profiles, people on your website. Uh, and then LinkedIn is the place where I'm focusing all of the content creation efforts. So check that out. Yeah. And it's a Robinson, right? Yeah. Adam Robinson. That's right. Perfect. Awesome. Adam. Well, thanks again. Thanks for coming on. It was a fun conversation. I think, uh, I'm looking forward to seeing what, uh, the, what keeping following your journey and seeing if, uh, you and I can figure some shit out to educate the audience along the way.

Totally. I would love to come back anytime if any of these topics, um, you know, deserve more, more digging into. Absolutely, man. Awesome. Everybody. I hope you enjoy the conversation. Please go check out RB2B. It is absolutely bananas. Um, and I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. Uh, and like I always say at the end of all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today. Cause no matter how bad your day is going or you think it went, you make somebody smile, you know, you had a good day in the world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all very much. And I will see you on the other side. Hey everyone. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did with your support and our incredible guests.

We're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now. And I can't thank you enough now to keep the momentum going. It would mean the world to me if you could go and leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network. Also, I am super excited to be launching my new newsletter where I'll be sharing everything I know and everything I'm learning along the way while I'm out there selling every day, just like you go to jbarrows.com slash newsletter to sign up today. Let's all level up and make this happen together. We'll see you next time.