Laura Palmer: Sales Pays You What You’re Worth

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 who I think make a positive impact on the world around us. And this conversation today is with my good friend, Laura Palmer. She is the global vice president of sales for Unity. And for you gamers out there, you're going to know this one. Unity powers about 50% of the video games that all of us play. And they are deep into the metaverse and all the things that come with it. So this is a really interesting conversation. Before we get to that though, we talk about her background and where she got to and how she got there and whether sales found her or she found sales.

And then also leadership because she thought she was going to be a lifelong sales professional, but she realized leadership was really in her DNA. And we talk about that and that journey as well. We talk about her and how she's leading a global sales team and how diversity is the key to global understanding and the key to leadership as well as listening. So a lot of details there. And then we dive into the metaverse and what should we all be paying attention to? Where are the trends headed to right now? It's going to affect all of us. The question is, is when? It's already doing it, whether we like it or not. And it's moving in that direction. So if you're not paying attention, you're going to be left behind.

So you got to listen to this podcast and give us your feedback. Let us know what you think. All right, let's make it happen. What's happening, make it happen, family? Big shout out to our partners today, Gong, Proposify, Vidyard, and Chili Piper. Gong's data is more than valuable. It's cornerstone in any organization looking to collect the data that's going to tell them where they can improve and where they need to spend their time making changes. Proposify is one of my favorite teams of all time. What they do is they make the proposal and contract processes easy for the sender and the recipient. And who can't benefit from that being a great experience, right? Vidyard makes it easy for people to use videos anywhere.

No matter whether you're sending videos in email or on social media, posting them somewhere, or sending them in a DM, Vidyard has got you covered. Our friends at Chili Piper are so much fun to be around. They make it easy for people to get on your calendar. And every sales rep has got to have this function locked in. It's one of the most important things we can do as a seller. How can I get you on my calendar easily? Chili Piper can make that happen for you. Be sure that you're checking out all these great tools. And now let's pass it over to John to find out who's joining him today. See you soon, everybody. Laura Palmer, how are you, my friend? John Barrows, nice to talk to you. It is fantastic to talk to you.

We were just catching up right beforehand. You said you're out. Like, first of all, I'm jealous about Paris. Talk to me a little bit about this first client experience in public without being on Zoom. How'd that go? Oh, my God. Well, it was... Well, I stressed very hard on packing because I realized I don't have that muscle anymore. Right. I mean, I could go for like 10 days in a carry-on. I was good, right? Yeah. I was good. I was stressed. But the minute I got on the plane, my heart rate came down. And I just thoroughly enjoyed being out, different scenery. I kind of have a thing when I travel for business because I know I'm not going to be in a city too long. So I get up and I go on a run in the morning, even though I'm super jet lagged.

It helps with jet lag in whatever city I'm in. And so I woke up, I stayed in a really lovely hotel in Paris. And I woke up and I went on a run down to the Saint-Chapelle that a friend had told me I should go and see. And just even doing like a little something like that makes you feel like you're there. And, you know, the food was... There's nothing like whining and dining a customer in Paris. I mean, that was great. And then I buzzed over with my leadership team and they took me to Brighton, which is where we have a big office. You've been there, you've trained our teams in our Brighton office. We have a newer office now. Very cool. And we spent some time there. I won't forget that train station.

Right? Yeah. So we're still right by the train station. And I spent an awesome day with the team, meeting a bunch of new people. I manage a new team now. And so I got to know all these people. We had a great dinner. And then I took my leaders to London for one final night. And we did a leadership meeting and I flew out. So it was fast and furious, but it was really invigorating. I came home so excited. And it all goes back to people, doesn't it? It really does. It all goes back to people. And I just, yeah, I feel really lucky to work with the people and have a network of these people, you know, in our business. So it was great. Thanks for asking. Yeah, no. And I just love it because this, you know, the interpersonal stuff, you know, you don't realize how much you miss it until you do.

And until you're back in it and you're like, whoa, because we're doing these like networking events now, we call them more social than SaaS. And so we're going to all these local cities and we're just saying, you know, forget about the agenda here. Like we're not trying to sell anything. We're not trying to network hardcore. It's literally just let's get back together and start remembering what it's like to be around each other and have camaraderie and just shoot the shit in general and not have to be too stressed out about, you know, whatever it is. Ideally not behind the Zoom session here, which again, loves it. But, you know, it's- It'll be interesting. And I mean, you're an extrovert, obviously.

I'm an extrovert. And I even have a little anxiety about going back out and doing all this. And then once I'm there, I'm good. So if for anyone listening, if you have anxiety, just go do it. Just go do it. Yeah. Just go do it. Shake that hand. Go introduce yourself to somebody and start a new conversation. So love it. So let's back up a little bit here, Laura, because I mean, you talk and I want to get to where you are because I think this is, your journey has been fantastic and what you're doing now from a leadership standpoint is bananas. But let's talk a little bit about how you got here to give the audience some perspective here. Because you've had a pretty cool journey and now you're working at a company.

We're going to get to, for everybody listening here, we're going to get to some cool ass shit that Laura has access to that, that people like me and others don't about metaverse and about, you know, gaming and the impact that it's going to have on us as a society and also us in sales. We're going to get to there. But Laura, give us, give us that background of, of kind of your journey and how you got to where you are right now. Yeah. I mean, it, I guess in a way it's typical, right? I've, I grew up in tech sales and I worked my way up. I was a, an SDR for Silicon Graphics back in the day. And I've been at startups. I've been at midsize companies, always in sales, loved sales, fell in love with it, felt super lucky to fall in love with something that I was good at, that I could make a living at, um, I have three kids, so it was also an amazing job, especially when my kids were young, I had the flexibility I wanted, um, but without sacrificing income, which, uh, I think is, is, I feel really, really lucky for that.

And then, uh, I hit a point when I was at Google where I, I decided I'd throw my hat into the ring, um, around leadership because I knew that company would invest in me and man, did they ever, um, so that was kind of when I went off on this, on this other track. I thought for a long time that I'd be an individual contributor, um, in tech sales for my entire career. That's how, that's how much I loved it. Um, but then leadership kind of piqued my interest. And now I think that I still totally have that love of sales and love of being in front of customers, but I also really like leadership and thinking about how to motivate groups of people and, um, how to scale and, you know, all the things we, we think about every day.

So that's, that's it in a nutshell. I love it. Well, let's talk about, did sales choose you or did you choose sales like early? Like when you, cause you didn't go to school for sales, right? No. So, so you fell into it like most of us. Yeah. Where did that click? Where was it? Did you come out of school and you were like, I don't like what I'm doing here. And, oh, what's the sales thing about and fall into it or how were you introduced to it? Well, okay. I guess it's a little bit backwards. I always thought I'd be a journalist. That's, I studied communications and I still joke that because you have to ask really good questions in sales. So I'm like, if this sales gig doesn't work out, I'm going to go work for, I'm going to go be a reporter.

Um, yeah. Kara Swisher's job would be amazing. I think that'd be really fun. Um, but what I did is when I graduated from UC Santa Barbara, the, the economy was awful and I ended up taking a little detour and wanted to go just do something totally different. So I ended up working for club med for three years and in a number of different countries, but primarily Mexico. And so when you asked, did sales find me? Well, I was down there, I was a fitness instructor on a sports team, living the life, right? I worked super hard though. Yeah, I know. It sounds great. Okay. It was glamorous. And at the same time, it was really, really hard work. We worked seven days a week, no break. I mean, it was, it was hardcore, but one of the, one of the villages I was at, they hosted a president's club.

And I was like, what's this? And the president's club was all the top salespeople from this company. And I would get to know the guests. I mean, that was like, what I was there to do is get to know the guests and get them engaged in the whole vacation experience. And, um, so I remember talking to this guest and I would do these so silly. I would do these power walks. Okay. So I was power walking with one of the group of people who had won this award and they were like, yeah, this trip is fully paid. And, you know, we just hit our sales targets. And, you know, the more we talked at the end, they're like, when you go back, when you're done with this travel the world gig, you've got to go into sales, just, just go into sales.

And that's why I did it. Like literally somebody told me to do that. Um, I love it. And yeah, that I'm not kidding, John. So I came back, I had no idea what I was doing. All of my friends were, you know, think about that. I was like three years gone, come back. My friends have all advanced in their careers and sure. And I'm like, I guess I'm just going to do the sales thing. So I went and found a recruiting company that recruited salespeople specifically. They sent me out on a couple of interviews. They were for like hardcore sales positions for like copier companies back in the day. That's what my, that's my background. I was like, I don't know if I could do this. Nope. So they ended up hiring me at the recruiting company.

So I was a recruiter for a very short period of time. Cool. Then the second moment that sales chose me was I, I was recruiting salespeople though. Right. Yeah. And so we started to move into tech sales and I had to ask people, you know, what did you W2 last year? That was like part of the process. I didn't even know what W2 meant. I'm not going to lie. Like that's how like I was, I was like young and, and stupid or inexperienced and, um, and then when I found out what it meant, I was like, Oh my God, this person's earning this much money. I'm like, forget this recruiting thing. I'm going to go do that. And so through friends, actually a guy who's now my husband, he helped me get an interview at SGI through a friend and the rest was history.

So I don't know. Did I find sales or sales find me? I don't know. There were some hints in the universe, I guess. I was going to say, I think it's always a little bit of both, right? I mean, for me, it was, it was the copier sales was my second job, but to Walt, like I kind of, yeah, I did. Oh, I did it for a year and a half and I sold to the government too, by the way. So it was like, I mean, talk about learning relationship selling, talk about learning how to take rejection. I mean, good Lord. But the first job was DeWalt and it was positioned as sales, but it was really more event marketing. And my background was marketing. And so I was like, oh, and I didn't like the marketing jobs. I'm like, these marketing jobs suck.

Like, I don't want to pay, you know, get paid 20 at the time, 25 grand a year, you know, waiting for my 2.5% merit raise type of thing. And I was like, I was, I think you probably were similar to me. It's like, I always had a hard time with, or I always wanted to be paid for what I was worth as far as the effort that I was putting in. And it didn't make a lot of sense to me to be working harder than somebody else and getting paid the same. That, that fundamentally was always like, wait a minute, a salary job for me. That just means that I'm capped. Like, so then I'm working hard for a promotion, but then that's determined by somebody else. Whereas sales, I'm like, I work harder. I get paid more.

Yep. Yes. That's where I'm going. So, yeah. And then once you go there, you can't go, I mean, you can't go back the other way. Right. And you know, what's even more interesting for me was like, you're right. Once I got into sales, I was like, nope, I ain't going back. But I was always scared of, this was a weird mind fuck for me for a bit because I, I, I was always scared of the a hundred percent commission job. Cause I was still, I'm not a risk taker. Like I'm a calculated risk taker. So to me, like having zero base salary always scared the ever living crap out of me. Cause I'm like, well, what if I don't show up one month for whatever reason? And then when, when I got fired from Staples and then I started Basho and then Basho screwed everything up and I took it over, I found out that I was now a hundred percent commission rep.

And man, if you, I mean, I don't, I'm, you're very similar to me, like pretty self-motivated, but if you want to be motivated, realize that when you wake up in the morning, you ain't getting paid if you don't go to work type of thing. And again, going to your point, like I wouldn't go back to it now. I wouldn't go back to a non-commissioned jet, like a base salary. I mean, I get, you know, now I'm a CEO, whatever, but if I'm in sales, like I gotta, I need that. Like I want to get up every day and make this work. So it's a nice, uh, it's a, it's a good way to look at things and it's not for everybody, but man, for the ones where it clicks, it clicks. So I was, I, my joke too, on that. Sorry. Just if it sales is the best job in the world, unless you don't like it.

And then it's the worst job in the world. Like it's the best job of the world. I have a slightly different view on it. It's the best job in the world when done right. It's the worst job when done wrong. So like Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross, Wolf of wall street, boiler room, worst, worst sales. Like that is gross, but when you believe it and when you're out there pushing it because you know, it makes a difference. It's unbelievable. So totally, totally. So let's talk about, I mean, now you have a passion for leadership. Where did, where did that come from? Where did you said you, you said, Hey, lifelong sales are up here. I want to, I'm going to lead my own charge. I can be flexible here with, you know, work-life balance, all that stuff.

And then where'd you get that leadership bug? Was it again, did it find you or did you find it? I think I found it on this one. I think it's really interesting as a, as a leader now of a global sales organization to think about here are the, here's the goals that I have. Yeah. That you have. Let's say the organization has for my business, right? How do I take that and get a group of people around the world to do what I think they need to do to hit those goals. Right. And man, the better the people, the easier leadership is. And I just, and I, I love helping leaders grow. I love helping individual contributors grow, but I just, I don't know. It's, it's sort of this, like, cause you're diluted, right?

When you're in that, what we just talked about, right? We love sales. Cause it's like, it's me. I get up. When you're in this job that I'm in, it's not like that. It's very different. So there has to be this, you, you have to influence so many different people. And to me, that's psychology a lot of the time. And so I really dig psychology too. And, um, I think that's what I love about it. It's like, how, how do you motivate people to do these things? And, and in a way that's legit and authentic and looking out for them. And at the same time, looking out for the company and it's this fine balance. And I don't know. I think that's pretty fascinating. I, I, I love the, the idea of, you know, one of the things I all, I know as a fact is that you can never get somebody to do more than their job without getting them to believe in a bigger picture.

And I think that's a lot of what leadership is about, because if you don't believe in that, to your point, that bigger vision of where we're going, what we're trying to accomplish and, and what my piece is part of that, then I'm just going to show up and do my job. Right. And I'm just going to get, what are you paying me for? That's what I'm going to do. But if you want people to go further, which I think is a lot of what leadership is about because management is getting people to do their job. Right. So it's like, okay, you know, what are the numbers? What's the forecast review? Those types of things. That's, that's management stuff, but leadership. So talk to me a little bit about kind of how you, how would you define your leadership style?

You said authentic, like, what are some of the things that, that make, um, cause now you're, you're global VP. I mean, you've moved up quite a bit in this org and now you're running, you know, global vice president here. What, what do you think about your leadership style has allowed you to be on this journey and get to where you are right now? I listen. Yeah. I really do. Because I think, and I think that comes from like having climbed the ladder, right. Gone from the sales development rep. Like I really do believe if you listen to your, your customers and you listen to the people that are out with those customers, you'll have the information you need to, to implement a strategy. Right. So I, I think it's a lot more listening.

Um, I'm in a, I'm in a new role and we're calling on industries that I have like a little bit of background in, but not a ton. Um, so I think being okay with saying like, I don't know everything and I'm going to look to you guys that that's been, that's been key. Um, and then trusting the people that, that work on my team. Like I've got a lot of trust. I'm super transparent, maybe to a fault. So I always say like, if I go down or I fail because I've been overly transparent and people see me as weak because I've admitted when I don't know things or when I screw things up, then I'm cool with them. I'll go down for that. Um, so those are, how was that? And if you don't, if you don't mind me asking on that one, um, curious from a female perspective, um, leadership style, right.

Cause I think weakness, you know, can be leveraged and perceived in different ways. And have you found challenges along the way, being a female leader that, that you've seen your male counterparts not have those challenges? And what are some of those things that, that we can learn from? Well, let me flip it around. Let me, instead of talking about, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I've seen challenges. Um, I have many, a story we could, we could chat about best probably over a beer, John, but, um, yeah. And, and, and look, it's one of the reasons I'm here. I am doing this because I believe wholeheartedly that diversity, not just male, female, every kind of diversity is good for a company. I really, really believe it.

Um, and so that, that is why I'm making my way here because I ultimately, if I can, if I can influence it at a board level, I think that would be a really think it's where they really need a lot of female leadership. Um, I think what females can bring to the table and let me just talk about myself as a female and like how I see difference. I'll give you a funny story, a specific example. So I don't know. I'm sure many people have done different personality tests out there. My one I love is the Enneagram. So if you haven't done the Enneagram, the wisdom of the Enneagram book, have you done it? I'm a, I was just introduced to it this week on my little soul journey. Apparently I'm a, I'm a three and an eight.

I don't, I don't know the details of them, but I'm a three and an eight. Yes, you are. I'm a three. I'm married to an eight. I have a ton of colleagues that are eights and I laugh because they'll do something and I'll be like, just like my husband. But when you do, so if, if for anyone listening, if you haven't done the Enneagram, it literally changed a lot of things for me because I can now understand my behavior and my reactions to things to a point I never could before. So I am also a three that's an achiever for people who haven't done the Enneagram and I go to nine and nine. I can't describe the number really well, but what that looks like is I'm going to try and achieve, achieve, achieve.

And then once I hit a point where I am so frustrated at something, I go into like, forget it. I don't care about this anymore. Do what you want. I don't care. That's so, and I can catch myself, but anyway, so going back to kind of like the female angle on this. So there was a point at unity a couple of years ago where I was fairly new still, but all of my leadership team, maybe except for one person were men and it was Christmas time. And so I decided instead of, you know, I wanted to get everybody a Christmas, Christmas little, just a little gift. So I got everybody an Enneagram book and we got it. We went into a conference room. I said, you know, happy holidays. If you would have been working for a man, perhaps this would have been a bottle of bourbon or wine, but instead you're working for a female and I got you the Enneagram book and we're all going to sit and take the Enneagram test and talk about ourselves.

So it was awesome. It was awesome. So God, I hope what I'm saying is appropriate and like, but it's, it's genuine. Right. And I guess I am, I want to say like, I make it okay on my team to ask for help. I make it okay to screw stuff up. And I don't know if that's a female thing or not. I, maybe it's just a, how I am. I think there's an empathy angle. It's like an empathy. Yeah. It's like a listening, it's like a, yeah, I know you can't mess around. I mean, I'm tough too. Don't get me wrong. But I think that's, that's definitely some of it. It's that, that listening and empathy and, and maybe just bringing a different, I don't know, a different thought process to the table. Well, and I think that's the, I think that's the biggest part is that, you know, you see those homeogenous environments where everybody looks the same and acts the same and that type of stuff.

And you don't, there's no growth there. There's no different perspectives there. There's no, you know, I mean, even age, sex, you know, sexual orientation, all of it comes from a different lens. And man, if you're not open to that different lens, then what are you doing? You're like, that's why I wish, you know, you talk about traveling to Paris and, you know, I just wish everybody could spend the first year out of college traveling period. I don't like, let's subsidize it through the government. I don't know, but just go out there and see what else is out there. Because like, what is it? The stats, something like 70% of people in America never go outside, like the three towns that they live in or something ridiculous.

It's absurd. And to get, to get the experience of other perspectives, it just opens up your eyes so much. And I think that's where, you know, having female leadership just as a male brings a completely different perspective to the, to the scenario that, that I would have probably not looked at in a, you know, that way or been challenged in that way about that. I mean, you talk a lot about, you know, those, that listening and that empathy. I mean, the value piece, which I think is coming screaming through right now, now that COVID hit and, you know, work from home and the balance and all this other stuff. And it's reset on a lot of these values about kind of making sure that you're living them, right.

And, and making sure that your team understands them because once that happens to your point of failing, like being encouraged to fail, I had to tell my team all the time, we got five core values. As long as you follow those five core values, I honestly don't care what happens. If I get a call from a customer and they're rip roaring, pissed off. But if you follow those five, I'll defend you until I die. You make a mistake and something screws up and we have to pay somebody, whatever it is, as long as you follow. Now, if you broke one of those, we're going to have to have a conversation about this. But as long as you're following through on that, you should feel comfortable to make mistakes, to go for it, to try things, to give me feedback, to, you know, manage up and all that stuff too.

So yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I, I, you have to do it in a smart way. So I, I'm going to go through a set of, um, reviews with my team over the next couple of weeks. And, um, I've, it's interesting because culturally too, John, the way people feel about losing in the Silicon Valley and the, you know, uh, people are cool with it. I mean, we're, we've grown up with this, right? Uh, you go to other countries in Asia, that's a very different proposition. So, you know, I, or, or, you know, I'm struggling right now, not struggling, but like working through right now with my APAC team, Hey, we've got to get these deals into the system and they don't want to put deals into the system unless they know they're going to close, right?

And it's just a different mentality. I'm like, but I need to get your resources. But it's so interesting for me to hear about that. Right. And again, it's that like listening. It's like, I need to, don't just put your ideas out, like, listen to what the rationale as to why people are doing what they're doing. What's up everybody. I know you're enjoying this conversation. John does a great job with genuine curiosity on these episodes and our guests consistently bring the heat. We want to take a moment here and let you know that you've got an opportunity, an opportunity to become better than you were yesterday. And you can do so by gaining access to all of JB sales content, all of their training tips, techniques, tactics, and takeaways can be yours for $1 a day.

$365 for the year gets you annual access to everything, including our private Slack channel for members only, which you get access to all of us directly a hundred percent of the time, 24 hours a day. And then at the same time, you're going to get access to our biweekly ask me anything sessions where you can bring real deals to the table and get the help that you need where you need it. This is very, very important. Sales reps that invest in themselves are often found at the tops of their leaderboards. Join us today and get the help you need to become the seller that you deserve to be. That URL one more time is joinjbsales.com. Let's get back to the show with JB and our guests for this week. Because we all come from different backgrounds, even here in the States, obviously, right?

I mean, some people grew up great and their family supported them. Some people didn't. You know, some people have divorced parents. Some people have parents who've been together. Some people have no parents. Some people were adopted. So all that is what you need to tap into from a leadership standpoint to make sure at least you're being thoughtful about it, not just to your point, putting in a direction saying, all right, everybody, let's do this. Because everybody's not motivated by the same things. Everybody's not going to follow the same script here. So let's talk about this, you know, look, Unity is, I think, on the cusp. You guys have had, what, like 15 acquisitions in the past couple of years here.

Every time I'm following you on Owler and it's like every single day I see this acquisition come from Unity. And it's the game. It's, you know, you're the engine that basically runs the gaming world to a certain degree. And so you are really tapped in now to the metaverse and everything that's going on. So give people a better explanation of what Unity is all about. And then I'd love to just kind of learn from you about what you're seeing right now. Because I am on the outside looking in. I've started to play around with NFTs. I'm starting to screw around with crypto. I have not touched the metaverse yet, but I know Ready Player One is basically where we're going. So talk to me a little bit about Unity and what are some of the things that you're seeing and that we should be paying attention to.

Well, maybe I'll start. When I joined Unity, so it's four years and a few months ago. And when I joined, I joined to go build their games, their sales team, right? And went in and did that. I think the company was like 1,200 people and we're over 5,000 people now. And we went public in September 2020 during a pandemic. And we actually created a new way for companies to go public virtually. So that was pretty cool on our tech. Yeah, it was really cool. But we're doing all different kinds of things. So yeah, half the world's games are built on this platform. And I think what we're seeing right now when we talk about the metaverse or Web 3.0 is the internet is, it's 2D. It's, you know, you type something in, you get a result back, right?

When you think about the most immersive kind of experience people have, it is when they are playing games. Absolutely. Right? It is when they are playing video games. So I feel grateful that I spent four years learning this industry because I think it very much applies to everything that's about to happen. So I actually don't think everything's going to be like Ready Player One. I think that is like sort of what people imagine or if you haven't watched Mark Zuckerberg's feeling on like when they announced meta, you may want to go and check that out on YouTube. It's very interesting. I don't think we're all going to be avatars. And for people that want to do it, it's already there. Guess what?

You can already go do it. There's some great games, many of them built on Unity, right? That you can go play in VR. But I don't think this is about VR. I think this is about new ways to immerse yourselves and engage your customers in different ways. Right? And so the role I have now is saying, okay, how do we take the Unity technology outside of games and help organizations, construction organizations, architecture organizations, manufacturing organizations, all these different kinds of things? How do we take them and help them embrace the metaverse? Okay. And we just hired a new chief marketing officer, Carol Carpenter. She and I kind of crossed paths at Google quickly. She was the CMO at VMware and she's come over to Unity.

And we're having some really great discussions on how do you take a company that's known for games and rethink how we put ourselves out there as the company to come to to help build your metaverse, whatever that is. Yeah. So it's about finding solutions for companies to do things better than they can do them today. I know that's really abstracted, really big. No, it is. So I'm happy to go into more detail. Yeah, let's unpack that a little bit. So, because, you know, I like, what's the movie with, oh, Guy, what's the movie with Ryan Reynolds? He's the avatar in the movie and it's something Guy. I forget what it is, but it's more about augmented reality where he puts on, he's actually a player.

He's a role player in a game. You should absolutely watch this if you haven't seen it, right? He's a role player in the game. And so he wakes up every day and everything's exactly the same for him. He eats his breakfast and he walks down the street because all the players are like, they're the ones who can go and do whatever they want, but they'll kill him. And he wakes up tomorrow and does the same thing. But then all of a sudden he's basically an AI bot and like the players in the game have these glasses and the non-players don't have glasses. And so he ends up taking the glasses and he puts these things on and everything around him, he starts to see like, holy shit. Like there's a little medical thing that if I touch it, everything feels good now.

And there's like, so there's money and let me touch that. So it's like this augmented reality of, of where we are. So help, you know, if I'm now like, I guess, what should I be paying attention to as a business professional, forget about a sales rep here for a second, but think about the leaders out there and all these other companies that you're trying to communicate with to say, Hey, we can help you on this journey. What should I be starting to think of use cases? Should I be like kind of taking a step back and saying, and then how do I need to look at that? Like, what do I need to be looking at as far as a use case is concerned? And is there a way I can dissect that to say, okay, here's a starting point for me to start dipping my toe in this.

A hundred percent on use cases. And in fact, we've taken, I've taken our business and we've broken it down into specific use cases. And we, we did a, a really large exercise as a cross-functional team to decide what are the use cases that we feel like unity is best suited to help people go after. And those use cases are based on, in most cases, challenges or opportunities that a company might see, right. That they could go after. I, I joke with my team. I'm like, when we think about what we call this in this part of our business, digital twins, like real time digital twins. So think of taking anything that exists in reality and creating a digital representation of that, and then being able to apply simulation to that new digital twin, right?

Many different use cases are out there. And I've read a lot of, a lot of literature that, that companies like Gartner's put out on like how to help companies think about this. It's kind of funny if I take it back to the days at Google, John, I see a very, very similar path where in the early days of cloud computing, no one wanted to move to the cloud. It was not safe. Absolutely not. My data centers are way more secure. And you took them through this like educational process, right? Which was, Hey, did you know Google spends more money than the government on security of its data centers, right? Like, I mean, and, and then people would come back to you a few months later, like, Hey, remember how we talked about that cloud thing?

And I said like, no way. Well, okay. I think we're going to do that now. So stay tuned. And then they come back. Okay. We're definitely going to do it, but what should we do? Right. And it's that same thing with metaverse. It's that like, no, this metaverse, no hype, hype, hype, avatars, you know, now it's sort of like, okay, hold on. So no, this is for real serious FOMO right now out there about it. Then it comes back to like, what problems does it solve? What opportunities does it open? So the three things I tell my team is we should either be helping people make more money out of their businesses, grow their business. Our solutions should help them from really being eaten by their competitors, right?

So give them a competitive advantage or save lives. And I, I think it's one of those three propositions and then it goes a little bit deeper, right? So we've kind of got our use cases divided up into two use cases related to sales and marketing. So today you go and you look at a bike on a website and it's two dimensional and maybe you can change the color, but what if you can take that bike and look at it and not using special glasses or anything, we're just talking on your computer, but look at it in 3D, configure it right, right there in front of you. That's metaverse right there, right? And I don't think people necessarily associate it with it, but that is real time 3D at its finest. Well, and that's like, you go to, you know, and I'll take the, you know, dumb version of it on my end.

You know, I go to Dave and Buster's with my daughter and we get on the race bikes and we configure the race bike. And I'm like, I want the cool engine. She wants the, you know, nice, you know, splash guards or whatever it is. And it's like, and then you see the 3D rendering of it and you're like, that's pretty badass. And then you go ride it, right? And so we're taking that from the, okay, cool. That's a, but no, now this is what you can buy. This is what you can take home and you can experience. How do I experience it though? I love the, you know, the idea of being able to kind of render a 3D CAD design type of an approach here. But what about the experience of physical products that I might be interested in?

Is there a bridge there that I can kind of start to feel what it's like to have this thing? Yeah. I mean, I haven't seen anything you talked about in the Ryan Reynolds piece that, you know, he touched something and then he feels good. I don't think we're there yet, right? But let me give you another example. And I don't know the company that's doing this. So you'll have to excuse me, but this is more of an example using the VR headsets, which will get, by the way, lighter and lighter, easier and easier, right? Over time. But, you know, if I'm going to buy a car and I'm going to put on a headset to be able to open the trunk, to feel like it feels to open the trunk, right? And then to see if you can fit your golf club suitcase.

Like, you will have that concept of depth and that is true, right? So from a feeling like that, yes. You know, gaming engines have physics built into them, right? So eventually, you know, you can go in now, create something in real time 3D, create a car and know when the wind is blowing and you're moving at 45 miles an hour, where does that wind going to go? So that's an example of like simulation built on top of a digital twin. So I don't think we're there at the like feeling like, you know, if I put my hand here, it feels hot or it feels cold. We're not there yet. But did that answer your question? Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think it again, to your point, like, like that's for, let's go to the car analogy, like me sitting in the car and feeling and seeing where I fit in this car.

And I mean, for me, it comes down to like, where's the dial on this car for the shifter? Like, I like shifters, you know what I mean? Just even if it doesn't shift, I like to have, you know, that, that in the button or this or whatever. I'm like, eh, that's not really. So to be able to, for instance, I got the Tesla. Um, one of the reasons we didn't go to the, like we had the X and we went to the Y, but the reason, one of the reasons I did outside of being half the cost, um, of the, we didn't stay with the X was because it's got that new steering wheel that looks like a joystick, right? It's not a circle. And I just, I, I physically was like, I don't, I don't think I want that. And, and I made that decision.

But if I was in a virtual environment, I can say, okay, let me see how this kind of like how I drive and how I would feel driving it like this, as opposed to how I usually drive like that, maybe then I might be like, all right, I can kind of see myself getting used to this versus like my brain, as soon as I saw it, I was like, absolutely not. I'm not going to even try that thing. Okay. Well, and then, and then imagine the, the car manufacturers themselves being able to, how tall are you, John? Six, one. Six, one. So you're six, one, I'm five, two. Those cars need to accommodate both your size and my size. Right. And so being able to then personalize in a digital twin, right? Via digital twin versus like clay models.

I mean, these companies are making clay models of cars. So that's what we mean by like doing something better than you can do it today. Right. No one moves to new tech just because it's cool. It has to do something better than you can do it today. So, you know, that to me is a version of a metaverse is you going and being able to get into a car. Hey, how about if your wife could get into the car as well and sit in the passenger seat? Right. So now we're talking about multiplayer. Yep. Where, where do we experience multiplayer? Games. Right. We experience it in games. So that's, you know, again, Hey, let's get, put the kids in the backseat. Right. What's that going to feel like? So that that's, these are examples of where things are going.

Are we all going to be, cause one of the things I constantly try to remind myself is that we live in the tech space. We live in the SAS world. And a lot of times you take one step out of SAS and it's like, okay, you know, back to basics here for, you know, fun, whatever it is, like in our case sales. Right. Is everybody going to be impacted by this one way or the other? Is every business going to be impacted by this one way or the other? Uh, I believe so because I, it's, it's goes back to customer engagement and employee engagement. So we have companies that will use this to engage their employee base more effectively. There are companies out there using virtual reality metaverse like applications to train employees.

Right. Um, so that'd be an internal use case. And then we have companies, every retailer, every brand in the world is thinking about this right now. And I've had some really interesting conversations with, with brands. How, how do I do, how do I enable virtual try on? People want to be able to try on the blouse before they buy it. No, no one's going to the stores anymore. Right. So, oh, make, yes, every, this will impact everyone, which is why it's so exciting. And, and, um, you know, you, you run a, you run a sales training company. And I think the other thing that I'm seeing John is we're doing a lot of stuff at unity around product led growth, but man, this is a really good reminder to me too, that to take people on these journeys with new tech, it does require this solution based sales approach.

It comes back to like, man, I am so worried if I don't, if I don't do something, I'm going to lose my job or my company is going to fail. I want to work with people that I trust to help me, right. Grab on to metaverse web 3.0 and ensure that my, my company, you know, gets there. So it's been a good reminder that it's a people business and solution selling is not dead. At least not in my mind. No, not at all. I mean, especially when people don't really know, you know, what the problem is that they're trying, you know what I mean? Everybody's curious. And so you can't come to them and say like, you got to lead them on this path, right? Cause if they don't buy in, if you don't address that problem and get them to think about that problem first, now we can talk about the, you know, various ways to address that problem, but we got to agree on the problem first.

And we got to agree that you have a problem first. And I might need to educate you that you might not have a problem today, but in three months, in six months, you're going to have a problem. And this is what we're, and there, that's kind of the marrying of challenger sale and solution selling, right? It's like, let me educate you on where things are going, whether you like it or not. Because I've always told people our first job in sales specifically is not to convince you to buy my stuff. My first job is to convince you that status quo is not okay. Because if status quo is okay for you, and if you genuinely believe it, then what, what are we having this conversation for? Even if you think you want this, if your existing situation is tenable, then what the fuck is that?

Why are we wasting our time here? There's got to be something there that tells you that this isn't okay, and you have to be. That's why I'm exploring NFTs right now, crypto and the metaverse, because I know right now we're great. You know what I mean? Top of the keep. We're doing great out there, but there's somebody else out there that's chipping away, and you're just going to have a better experience. And at the end of the day, I keep going back to my friend Dave Cancel, who's over at Drift, and he always says, everything is commoditized except for the experience. And talk about experience. Metaverse is the experience. It's the experience, right? And how people will be thinking about things.

And again, I don't think where people give themselves an excuse to think it's not real is if you only think about it in terms of, you know, we're all going to be avatars, and we're all, right? Because that's easy to dismiss. Easily, yeah. And so if you, like, one of the things I believe that's probably easiest to begin to think about is, like, just think about all the interaction we have with the internet today. It's all flat. It's all 2D. First step, we need to get everything into 3D. Take any asset, anything you sell, anything you make, anything that you depend on to make something else, and let's create a 3D representation of it. If you've got that, you're one step ahead of getting to the Metaverse.

So that's kind of the discussion that we start to have with customers. And who would have thought a company that helped companies make games was out there having those discussions? But that's where we're going. Again, it kind of leaves the charge in a lot of stuff. Yeah. I think the aha moment that I had on NFTs, because I've been bought into NFTs for a while, but I started just like everybody else. It's like this stupid digital asset. What the hell? Like, yay, I have it as a digital. So here's a quick one. I went to the, remember when, you know, the Will Smith slap of Chris Rock, right? Of course, yeah. So his first live show was in Boston. And I was like, I got to go to that show. I'm like, I have to.

So I spent a ridiculous amount of money because I wanted to see his, the psychology about how he even dealt with the first moment that he went on stage in front of 500 people and how he was going to do it. I didn't care about the jokes. I just wanted to see that first 10 minutes of how he was going to address it. And what was, so that was an event, right? That was like this, the Chris Rock, I mean, somewhat historical entertainment type event. There was no paper. You couldn't print out your ticket. They didn't give you a ticket. It was all on my phone. And so I took a screenshot of it. But now I have this stupid screenshot of my Chris Rock ticket. Now, if I back up, I'm a huge New England Patriots fan.

I have ticket stubs from some games that are the historic, you know, the tuck rule game that I was at. And I have them proudly displayed in my house that very few people ever come to, right? I would love to have that Chris Rock ticket as an NFT in my collection that showed that when somebody comes into my little universe here of, oh my God, you went to the Chris Rock show? That was the one. So that, when I try to explain it to my friends who are like, this is just dumb. It's like a PDF. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Here's a little shift to think about it that way. When was the last time you had a memento from anything that you've been to in the recent two, three years? I don't have one.

Well, think of it that way. And now let's go on this journey of what else it can be. And I think that's that we're all coming to this slow realization of like, oh shit. Like once we start to make those type of small connections, it's like, okay, I kind of see where this is. All right. You know, but I think it, I think that to your point, like when we make that leap all the way to the end, it's like, yeah, we're all going to be living in this weird world. And we're all going to be sitting in chairs and super fat and being fed by stuff. And, you know, you know, and not moving like, all right, come on, give me a break. Well, and what you just described is the use case. Yeah. Right. And I think so, like, whether it's for a consumer or whether it's for a business, it's like, you've got to break it down into a use case.

That resonates with that, with that individual. Right. So no, I'm totally, totally following you. It's a fun ride. I am fascinated. I mean, that's why I'm, I was so interested to talk to you about this. Cause like, I think you're, you're in it. I'm, I'm watching it, but you're in it. And so you're seeing the use cases, but you're seeing it from a non-tech standpoint. I mean, you're seeing it from a tech standpoint, but from a sales and a business standpoint, not necessarily the engineers coding this stuff, which, you know, sometimes you get lost in the code, but from a business standpoint, you macro out on this and you could see thousands of use cases. So I'm, I'm excited to see where you guys are going to take this next.

I wrote down one stat cause I knew you'd bring up NFTs, right? This is a little different, but $61 billion in 2021 of in-game purchases on games. $61 billion and I will get you the, uh, the link to where that is. Right. Um, I mean, that's a lot of, that's a lot of transactions and money and that's in games, right? So then if you take and you think about, well, where is this going? Um, fashion is right behind it. Fashion is right behind it. Um, sports is right there. Right. So I'm, I'm happy to send you that in writing and I'll tell you where I got the stat from, but, uh, yeah, I just thought that's $61 billion in 2021 revenue from in-game purchases. It's just insane. Who would have thought, right?

Awesome. Well, look, we got to wrap this up here, but, um, uh, I want to, but let's almost make this a yearly thing. I want to, I want to have another, I want to talk to you before next year, but, but I want to, I want to have this conversation next year and tell, and talk about how, well, things have evolved and what else you're seeing. Cause I, this is moving faster than I've ever seen, uh, any type of technology move. I mean, the internet kind of came on and it was chugging away and most people disregarded it, but this is like iteration after iteration after iteration is, is moving faster than I've personally ever seen in my career. So, uh, I can't wait to see what next year is going to bring for you guys.

Yeah, no, thank you. And, and, uh, you know, check, keep checking us out. I, the, the use cases evolve daily. And I try to, I try to do a decent job of ensuring that I'm putting a lot of them out there. Um, especially on LinkedIn, that's where I, where I play the most. Um, but yeah, if anybody has any comments, I I'd love to hear what people are seeing as a really valuable use cases for the metaverse. Cause as I said, I love to listen to, so thank you. Awesome. Well, like Laura said, everybody go check her out on LinkedIn. Is that the best place you want people to send, uh, to go? Right. And it's Laura Palmer, P-A-L-M-E-R for those of you listening to the podcast. Anything else you want to share before we tie things up here, Laura?

No, just thanks. Thanks for having me. And, uh, thanks for all the good work you're out there doing too, John. I'm trying to do my best to stay a little bit ahead, but I appreciate everything you're doing too, Laura. So thank you so much for coming on and pleasure as always having you on. Thanks for having me. Thanks, John. Absolutely. And everybody else listening. Thank you very much for listening as always. And as I always say at the end of all these podcasts, do me a favor, go out there and make somebody smile today. Cause no matter how bad your day went, you go out there and make somebody smile today. And you know, you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that these days. So thank you all for listening.

I'll see you on the other side. Thank you so much for your time today and listening to the podcast. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did with your support and our incredible guests. We're one of the top sales podcasts in the industry with over a million downloads. And I can't thank you enough. To keep the momentum going, if you could go to your favorite podcast platform and leave us a five-star review, I would greatly appreciate it. In return, I will answer any question that you have on Instagram. Hit me up there at John M as in Michael Barrows with a video question or a DM, and I will get right back to you. I promise. And last but not least, if you're looking for training, I'm adjusting my training approach this year, and I'm actually going to be delivering training to the masses.

I'll be delivering live training the first and second week of every single month with our two marquee courses, filling the funnel and driving a close to anybody who wants to join. And it includes membership in our on-demand platform with weekly AMAs. So you can go to jbarrows.com slash open to check out the details. Thanks again and have a great day.