Matt Millen: From Tony Robbins to Regie AI—Lessons in Performance

The difference today with AI is that you don't organize around AI, you actually organize with it. And the opportunity is to like rethink go to market with technology as a teammate, not technology as a tool. Hey everybody, 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 a doozy. This was with Matt Millen. He's the co-founder and president of Reggie AI, which full disclosure is a new sponsor of mine and partner of mine, but there's a reason for it. Because Reggie basically does every single thing that I train in an automated fashion without taking the sales rep out of the equation.

So you hear me do the Iron Man analogy where it's the person, the tech, and the AI. Well, Reggie is exactly that, which is why I was so excited to have this conversation with Matt, because I do have some concerns of over-automating and taking the power away from the sales team. But before we got into that, we got into his really unique backgrounds where, you know, he went to school and what he studied, where he got his bug, but also how he got into racing. And he's won some pretty cool things while he did some racing, car racing, and what he learned from that from a business perspective. We also talked about Tony Robbins. He used to run sales for Tony Robbins, which blows my mind. We got that to the end, by the way.

And then we really just dove into what, again, my concerns were of what's happening right now, as far as the lack of business acumen and giving reps the answer without the context behind it. And how do we develop sales professionals now? What are the fundamentals? How do we get back to those? But yet still leverage the tech to do what we need to do and stand out. So this was a really interesting conversation to me about the future, what the future sales rep looks like, and also one of the reasons why I'm partnering with Reggie. So I've said it before, what I train, as far as the outcome is concerned, I think is almost irrelevant at this point. You know, I used to teach reps how to write a really good email.

I used to teach reps how to, you know, say something really good on the phone. But that is now being taken over by AI, and quite frankly, it can do it better than most of us can. So my training, though, isn't necessarily about the outcome, but it's about the why behind the outcome, right? Why does this persona care about certain things? What are these trigger events all about? You know, how do you have that conversation? So a lot of this is a beautiful marriage here where I teach the why, and then they automate how to do it. So you have the context to be able to execute and be the Iron Man of sales, or what? So I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. If you decide to check out Reggie, just tell him John Barrows said hi, and see if we can have some fun together.

So I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I do. Let's make it happen. Matt Millen, what's going on? Welcome back to the Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend. How are you doing? So great to be here with you, John. Yeah, this is going to be a fun conversation. Got two Bostonian kids going right at it toe-to-toe, talking about AI and all the fun stuff around it. I think we're going to get to this kind of augmentation versus automation discussion with AI. But before, as always, I was like, don't know origin stories here, Matt. What made you, Matt? Like, growing up, parents, what they do, how'd you get the sales or entrepreneur bug, all that fun stuff, and then take me through college? The stuff that you can't read on LinkedIn.

Yeah, you know, I've got my story. Single mom, grew up pretty poor in Boston. And very early on, I figured that work was my way out. And when I started working, I had a roommate. I was a credit manager at a Fortune 500 bank. My roommate got into sales. We both made $19,000 a year base salary. This is 1987. No email, no internet. And at the end of the first month, my roommate got a commission check. He got paid again. So we both got the same base salary, but my roommate was getting paid twice. And in that moment, I made the decision to get paid twice. There you go. And from there, you know, I've just had a great career working for some amazing organizations, great people, and had a fun run. And quite frankly, a front row seat to watching the infusion of technology into the selling process.

Yeah, I mean, I remember you have no experience with like Gateway and like back then. I remember the Gateway computers. You know, that was, you know, what happened to them. But I think both of us have had, I mean, you're, I think you're a little bit older. I'm about to be 50. Where are you at right now? 62. Oh, 62. All right. So you had a little bit, you got a little bit on me, but you know, we saw that nothing go from no tech to all tech and all this. And I am curious to kind of get your take on this specific AI, because I think it's a little different. I think it's a lot different, quite frankly. But a couple more things before we get there. Two things, racing. How and why did you get into that?

Because that took you on some really interesting places. And, you know, I think there's some cool takeaways that you've had in other conversations about what racing taught you about business and sales and all that other stuff. But first of all, how'd you get into racing? Yeah, so after college, I started, got into racing, something I always wanted to do. Didn't play sports as a kid, you know, just didn't have the money. So if you couldn't play it in your backyard, you couldn't play it. And had an opportunity to get into racing. You know, I competed semi-professionally, two-time champion, mostly down in the southeast, Daytona, Sebring, Moroso. So, but the cool thing about racing was you learn very quickly what you can control and what you don't control.

And I brought those learnings into my selling environment. Like the three things you control is what you do all day, what comes out of your mouth, and your attitude. Everything else. So you'll like this, my daughter and I, you know, back when she was about six, she's 14 now, my wife and I were pretty angry at what was going on politically, whatever. And I remember we're yelling at the TV, and I look at my daughter, and she starts, and she's getting angry, right? And she's getting, you know, yelling at her dolls and stuff. And I didn't, and I made the connection, like, holy shit. Oh, stop. So I shut off the TV, and I said, all right, sweetheart, we can't, we can't be upset about what's up on there.

We can't control that. So let's talk about what we can control. And we came up with a little acronym, which is EAT, which is Effort, Attitude, and How You Treat People. So your effort, you can know how hard you work, how not, your attitude, whether it's positive or negative, and how you treat other people. You can't control how other people treat you, but you can control how you treat other people. So what were some of the things that, from a racing standpoint, that you focused on trying to control to reduce the variables for you? That's great. So, you know, the investment you make in yourself, your equipment, and your preparation. So as an example, you know, you spend 40 hours a week prepping the car, just going through the entire car.

You would take eight practice laps for every one race lap. You would study the track film. Like, there was so much that you could do to mentally prepare and get yourself ready, make all your suspension adjustments for the track, whatever it may be. But once you're on the track, you can do everything right, and the driver next to you can make a mistake and take you out. So there's a bunch of mistakes that you can make, and then there's just situations on the track that you just have to be very alert of. And sometimes you go through it, and sometimes you don't. 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 will be running on specific sales skills and different tech skills like ChatGPT 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. Yeah, I got to imagine.

I had the pleasure of doing one of those, driving Lamborghini around a racetrack a couple of times. I was like, this is awesome. And I remember I was right behind the pace car, and I looked at the guy next to me who was in the car with me, and I was like, hey, what happens if I pass the pace car? He's like, you're not going to pass the pace car. I'm like, just theoretically, what happens if I pass the pace car? And he's like, no. And so first turn, I'm like right up on the pace car. I'm like, can I please? And he's like, don't do that. And he was, again, trying to control the variables here. Here's one for that, which is how do you, the experience from other drivers that you learn from versus what you had to go through yourself?

Because as a parent, I look at my daughter, and I'm like, oh my God, don't do that. But there are certain things that she has to do just because she has to experience herself to have the context of why it's important to or not to do that. But then there are other things that you can learn from so that you don't have to make those smakes. What were some of the ones racing-wise that you look to your elders or people who are experienced and say, hey, give me some advice on this? And others that no matter what advice you took, like you still had to go through it on your own to experience that. Yeah, I think there's like three ways that you learn. Like, well, one, what is classroom? Like, you have to learn the tracks, the lines, the rules.

Second is, like, you have to relearn how to drive. You literally relearn how to drive, like performance riding. Like, an example would be there's something called braking backwards. So today, you're with your family in the car. There's a stop sign. You take your foot off the gas, and you roll into the brake. In racing, like, you're full into the accelerator until you're full into the brake. Like, you're either accelerating or you're braking. Like, you have to retrain yourself how to drive. But third, when you're actually on the track, like, the line you're on is going to be different if you're racing someone, if you're in front, behind, defending, trying to overtake. Like, there's so many variables that are going on just in real time.

Like, you're just mentally processing, anticipating, and then you're learning. So if I've got John in front of me, you know, and I'm going to pass you to, like, with the Lamborghini story, you know, I may follow you for two or three laps to see where you're braking, where do you turn? Like, where am I going to make my move to make sure that I get through cleanly without taking you and myself out of the race? So, you know, there's just that you're learning in real time on the track, the different drivers, the styles, what they're doing. So how do you relate to, let's bring that to sales, with teams you've coached and that type of stuff. Where do you, how much do you guide new sales reps in the sense that, you know, there's scripts, like, here's a template, here's a script, read it.

Then there's do whatever the hell you want, right? And then there's, like, structure in between. Like, what's your approach to kind of getting sales reps on the right track, if you will, that put them in a position where they do have to learn on their own, but in a way that isn't, like, just a straight up disaster or just, okay, figure it out on your own. Good luck, like, you and I probably had to deal with when we were first in sales. Look, you know, my life's been a transformation. You and I grew up in unstructured environments. We knocked on doors just as quickly as we'd pick up the phone back in the day. I've evolved in a pretty methodical leader, meaning I do think good process outweighs bad process.

And in the beginning, like, you have to learn the process. You have to learn, I say the script, like, the script, like, it doesn't have to sound like you're reading a script. A script is like a map. It shows you where you're going and how to get there. And if you don't have a script, you're going to end up on tangents and bad, bad places. So we do. We have a very orchestrated conversational path that we give our reps, whether it's SDR, AE, success. And, you know, how we play with the product. You know, how do we make it fun? How do we make it interesting? How do you create magic, engagements, you know, without talking 90% of the time? Like, how do you accomplish all this? The other piece, John, is, you know, I never want to have an AE do a discovery call, only to set up a second call to show the product.

Like, we, you've got, like, if someone's interested, like, you've got to be able to get your discovery done in a great way. And then use that information to contextually demonstrate what you're actually selling and how you'll solve their problem for them. And if you can't do that in a call, you should rethink your process. So, okay, how does that relate to the SDR role? Because the challenge that I have right now, and I've always said the predictable revenue model is a joke. It's never been customer-centric for that specific reason, is that you have some, usually kid, 22 years old, going to make a phone call, going to say something that might get somebody interested. And then, sorry, I have to wait another week to talk to my AE, then the AE gets on, usually ask the same dipshit questions, and then usually has to wait another week to get the SE to come in to actually answer the right questions, right?

So, with SDRs and the onslaught that is happening to them as far as automation and all this other stuff, and we'll get to that too, how do you, what's the role of the SDR right now in the qualification? And how far down the funnel should they go with qualification and adding value? And one more piece of context, I look at it as, I think the days of not adding value in that conversation are over. I think the days of simply calling somebody up, doing a stupid pitch, asking dumbass bank questions, and then saying, and if you get somebody on the hook that says, hey, I'm kind of interested, can I see that, you know, what's this about? To your point, if you can't show me right then, I'm gone. Because there's too many other options.

By the time we have that meeting scheduled next week, I probably forgot about this conversation altogether. So, especially on an outbound. So, how do you empower, what's your philosophy, I guess, on empowering SDRs to add as much value in the conversation as possible before flipping it to an AE? So, I love what you just said, and I'll probably give you a slightly different answer without arguing your point, which is this. There's the problem that you've got to be, you know, I think one of the mistakes SDRs make is they're not being very clear and contextual with, hey, can I solve a problem you have, yes or no? Like, so one, like, can I help you or not? And if I can't help you, it's okay. I don't think an SDR should go into how we solve the problem.

Like, it's too much. And you can't provide a consistent experience. The other thing that I'm seeing that's different to back that up, John, is, you know, today, like, if I called you up, you know, to have that initial conversation, the meeting will get scheduled with two or three people today. So, it's not like you're going to jump right in. It's like, hey, I need to get my RevOps person. I need to get in. So, what we'll do is actually orchestrate that right first meeting to see if there's a there there. So, I'm still the proponent, like, can we solve the problem if we do? Who are the right people to get in the room? Let's have a fantastic first meeting. We'll know enough after that 45 minutes if we should spend more time together or not.

That's my philosophy on it. It's a little different than yours. I do think there's clear scenarios where you have strong SDRs. And if they're calling into the, let's say, SMB or mid-market, they can absolutely take it further. We're more in the enterprise space, commercial enterprise. And I just think we want to get the right people in the room and have the right conversation. Gotcha. Yeah. And I think there's, you know, there's obviously a fine line. And I think it's, it's my, my frustration is, is the, is the total lack of ability to even have a legitimate conversation about what the problem is with the, and this is where the business acumen comes from, which is, I think is sorely lacking for the most part.

For most, and it's always, but now I think it's just, it's, it's exacerbated with, with the ability to skip the line so much. We've skipped it too much almost. And so now I just want to have a conversation. You know what I mean? And, and, and I think the challenge that I have is what I'm not worried, I'm not worried about the tech on the sales side of the house, replacing sales reps, any of that stuff. That's not, I'm not, I used to be, I was like, oh my God, I'm not as concerned anymore. My concern is no more on the client side of the house is when the client wakes up and realizes that a 10 minute conversation with ChatTBT is vastly more valuable than 95% of the conversations they have with sales reps.

So how do you address that? How do you address the business acumen component and the ability to have a real conversation with a real person without having to feel like it's going through a checklist, without feeling like I got to, you know, get through my slide deck to show you this, but to just be like, can we break down all that bullshit and just talk about what your problem is and see how I can help you solve it? How do you get to that point with younger reps? That's a great question. I think there's a couple of things that make for a real conversation like you just alluded to. Number one, does the person having this conversation actually understand the pain that they're talking to this prospect about?

So for instance, I'm lucky. My SDRs grew up with sales tech. They know bad tech, good tech, the pain of tech. And they're talking to the sales leads about tech. If I was selling an HR management solution, my SDRs would have no clue about the pain that we're solving. I think it gets upper. So one, one is you have to understand the pain or the problem you're solving, like viscerally, like better if you've actually experienced it. Two, you need to give a shit about solving it. Like you need to care. Like I'm not selling, I'm solving. Like if you're not there to solve, you'll never sell. If you're there to sell, you'll never solve. Like, so like you should really understand and really care. And then the third piece, you know, for everyone managing their career, like, you know, if you do a year selling HR software in a year, manufacturing software, like you never get expert with your buyer.

You never get expert with your industry. So what I always suggest is before you ever get into selling, figure out a problem that you love. It can be the environment. It can be alternative fuels. It can be sales tech. Anything you want. Find something you love and dedicate yourself to being great within that sector. Be an expert. So talk about building up the ability to have those conversations by not job hopping, by not industry hopping, but getting clear, focused, and committed to a certain segment. You'll own your career at that point. You got to create your own expertise. So how do you guide reps on that path, right? Because I agree with you. Unfortunately, so many reps and, you know, I didn't have this perspective when I was coming out of school.

I just, I just wanted a job and, you know, like whatever, that sounds cool. I can make money doing it. Yeah, that's, you know, whatever. And then I realized very soon, quickly that I can't sell shit that I don't believe in. You know, I can't sell shit that I, that I don't have a passion for. You know, somebody told me early in my career that sales is the transfer of enthusiasm. And if you don't believe in what you sell, go find something else to do. And that's, I think, but I always put on the hat of, you said it earlier, like we're fortunate, right? Like I sell sales training to sales reps and I'm a sales rep. Like I sell crack to crackheads and I'm a crackhead. You know what I mean? So it's pretty easy for me to sling some crack over here, right?

But, but for that kid that takes the job with cybersecurity, because it's a good tech and they're selling a CISOs, like what's your, what's outside of, Hey, find what you're passionate about and, you know, dive into it, which, okay. But what do you, how does, how does that kid get to a point where they are at least even able to have a reasonable conversation with their ICP that they're reaching out to, which they have no fucking idea about? So I think there's two ways to approach it. Way number one is you have a much more immersive onboarding and training for new hires where you do have to learn industry knowledge. You do have to spend time interviewing the persona. Like, and it's not going to be one of those 30 day ramps anymore.

There's going to be 90 days of committing yourself to learning the industry, passing tests, knowledge tests, and getting your point to a certain acumen level where you can represent yourself in the organization. The other way is just rethinking the minimum higher qualifications. Like if you're really selling a high-end solution to C-level folks, you know, you may, you may have three years of experience, five years of experience, like for any of the roles coming in. So I think there's like just two ways. Like one is you just hire the experience or two, you make a commitment in a much more in-depth onboarding training. And, you know, it could take you six months to hit the phones. See, that's, so I'm, I'm coming out here soon.

I'm using ChatGBD to do some deep research and all this other stuff on the viability, the SDR role right now, as, as it's, as it's been constructed, not how it works at some, you know, good companies. And the numbers just don't add up across the board. If you look at the SDR role as, as an independent thing, you know, reps only stay in the company for 1.6 years, less than 50% of them hit quota, like all this stuff. And so what I'm proposing is we actually move back to old school Xerox days when I grew up, where to your point, you didn't, you, you, you didn't even mind having been in sales for a year for crying out loud, but you did an eight week sales training program. Then you got an apprenticeship.

Then you did all this other stuff. And I think we need to, like, if you think of all, all the go-to-market roles, marketing. And so you got ops, rev ops, you got marketing, you got sales. You got, the only one that actually has a degree that you can get is marketing. And, and that degree is a joke. Cause I got it. And I, and I, and nothing of what I learned at school had any relevance to what I was experiencing in the real world. So, because most of the GTM function is a, it is a learn on the job function. Why not standardize across the board where I, and I'm, I'm coming up with this idea of like a GTM generalist and then a GTM specialist, whereas the GTM generalist first year, everybody's a GTM specialist.

And you're basically a admin for the full cycle sales rep, where you get to learn the tech, you understand marketing, you talk to customers, you'd understand like all this stuff. And then your second year, and there's no commission you're based out the second year, you move into a GTM specialist role where you kind of lean into sales, lean into marketing, lean into ops. And then third year you're actually in that role. That way we can really create true business acumen, professionalism, understand the process and all that other stuff, as opposed to this ridiculous model of 30 day ramp, good luck, start making some calls, see what happens. Like it's insanity that we've gotten to this point where we think we can over process everything.

How do you balance that as a leader with the growth that you like with the foundation, you know you need to build with the growth expectations of your investors and everybody else? Because that's what pisses me off is that VCs stuffing it down, go, go, go, go, go. We got to grow, hire more. And it's like, that's ruined so many sales professionals and organizations. So how do you as a leader balance that? Yeah, I get it. We got to aggressively grow here, but we got to develop talent the right way. It's such a great point. And there's so many pressures, like you can give an answer, but there's so many pressures. But I would say this, I think it's very contextual to the stage of the company. So like an early stage company is not going to have that three-year journey that you outlined, which is brilliant, but that would certainly be a much more mature organization that had, you know, the room to bring in and to rotate and to make those investments in the long term.

You know, my team at T-Mobile, I had 1,200 reps across the country. We were very much like that. I could bring you in small business or up from the store doing retail small business and work your way up to strategic accounts. Like we had a rotation for that. But, you know, working for a small startup, like, you know, I need someone to set meetings. I need someone to run like it. So I think, like, there is a contextual nature to, like, what's right in that situation. I do think you would aspire to do more of what you're outlining, where you can bring great people in, get the right education and the right opportunity to experience where you fit into the organization. So I think that's smart. But I think smaller companies, you know, you've got founder-led until it's not.

And then, you know, then you start bringing folks in to start picking up some of these roles. I do think, like, an interesting point here, John, is, like, especially you and I, like, there was no tech. We knocked on doors. Then there was the birth of the call center. Then there was the birth of sales engagement. And what's happened, like, with all these points along the way, revenue teams have organized around whatever tech you had. You know, when there was no tech, you knocked on local doors. When the call center came up, you aggregated to a call center and leveraged the tech. You may have a few folks out in the field for brand presence, but you transacted over the phone when you could. And then with sales engagement, like, it was the epitome of this where it created world specialization.

Like, it was the birth of the SDR. And the difference today with AI is that you don't organize around AI. You actually organize with it. And I think this is, like, the fundamental shift right now that go-to-market teams are wrestling with because we still have a lot of traditional thinking with a lot of innovative tech. And the opportunity is to, like, rethink what go-to-market is. And I think a lot of the conversation you're leading here, you know, dovetails into that. But it's, like, how do we rethink go-to-market with technology as a teammate, not technology as a tool? The argument that a lot of people have right now, and it's a viable one at this point, is to burn the sales org to the ground, basically, and start with AI native tech and AI native reps.

I personally don't think that is the right, I mean, for some it might, right, just because there's such a disaster with how they build things in the first place. But I don't think that's the right answer. But it's a viable conversation right now because if you're not, because almost everybody's seeing results do this, right? You know, conversion ratios, everything, right? So it's like, all right, well, it's like the Titanic. Like, I don't know if I can turn this Titanic, so why don't we just sink this sucker, sunk costs, screw it, do some assessment of who's AI generative and has the ability, and then let's just find something cool and then go. What do you suggest to adopt, right, to work with it for the companies who are right now, like a CRO or a leader looking at their org going, Jesus, like I have this overbloated tech stack.

I got these reps who are doing shit and activities based on this old model that is not like, and no matter how much I push on them to get better results, it's not working. How do you suggest transitioning out of that into this new world, which quite frankly, nobody knows what is going to happen here. So we're in this weird transition where we all know that we're in a legacy broken model that doesn't work anymore. We're in a transition. We have no idea where this shit's going to go. So what do you do to make this transition to prepare your team, your reps, and your org for what's to come? Well, first of all, I would never advise anybody to burn it down and rebuild it up. Like, that's a disaster for breaking any momentum that you have in the business.

So I think there's, for me, there's like some very obvious workflows to go attack. Like I break it down to the workflow and the primary workflow I'm sure that you see is like a tier one workflow where your SDRs are, you know, every month are given 100, 200 great prospects to work. So you've got your best people doing their best work on your best prospects and you're going to get your best conversion out of that. But that does not scale. Like, you can't double that. Like, so that doesn't scale. But it's like, okay, well, how can we make that better? Well, you can actually bring AI into that and better support that tier one process. You can do that today without breaking anything and you can drive some efficiency into that.

The second workflow, which has a tremendous amount of opportunity, is the long tail of your TAM that's just not getting worked. Like, just anything outside of that tier one is traditionally just not getting worked. And there's many, many leads or prospects in there. They do convert lower. But there can be thousands or tens of thousands of these unworked parts of your TAM. And this is where AI can shine with you. So it can be going in and looking for signals. It can be looking for intent. It can be looking for engagement. And then within that big bale of hay, you can say, hey, I just found the needle. John, call Matt right now. He's searching the web for what you do for sales training. Like, talk about this.

Like, so the AI, while your reps are working their tier one workflow right now, you can be having tech as AI as your teammate, working the long tail of your TAM. And then serving up incremental tasks to those reps in real time, you know, sifting through all the hay and looking for the needle. So, like, that's a secondary workflow that you could do right now without breaking anything. Like, these are all things you can do right now without breaking and figuring out, like, where you want to deploy the AI. And the third one is a little bit more, like, where we're going. It's, like, think outside of the engagement box that we've been in for 12 years together because we're limited to the workflows that sales engagement can support.

And, like, what workflow would you do if you weren't encumbered by your current technology? And we can build agents to do that. So, you can run incremental additional plays on top of your standard plays. And then what you're doing, start learning. Start learning on how the AI is affecting and supporting your tier one workflow. How is the AI helping with incrementality from the long tail of your TAM? How are we doing with these new plays that we're developing that we never ran before? So, I do think, like, we've got to bring it in and work with it and learn. Like, there's a lot of learning we need to do before we say, okay, we're cutting the cord. Like, do not cut the cord. There are ways that we can start moving forward in a very safe and learning environment and then doing more of what's working.

And when it's not working, it was a test. You bring everything in, like, test. And I'm not saying 30 days, like, test for a year. Like, really put some of these plays, you know, to work and make these smart investments. How do you do that? How do you facilitate that with a team? Because I think historically we've been able to get away as organizations with top-down management of decisions, right? Where it's like, okay, we're making this decision to bring in outreach. We've made the decision as a leadership team, sales team. Here you go. We're going to train you on it and you're going to use it, right? Obviously, that doesn't do much for employee satisfaction, engagement. That's why adoption is usually through the floor because we don't involve the people who are actually going to use it in the decision.

And so now ends, you know, just, again, retention of reps, right? Like, if they feel like they're being talked down to or told what to do, they tend to bail pretty quick. So how do you foster kind of the bottom-up approach to testing, trying different things out while still maintaining the leadership directionally, but almost the PLG motion of making decisions or figuring things out? How do you do that at Reggie? Yeah, and I would say this, John, like when I go join an organization, regardless of where I've been in my career, I am joining a company whose brand I trust and I'm joining a leader where I'm going to put my career into their hands. Like, I believe that going to work for you, like, my career is better.

Like, you've been there, you've done that, you've got my back, you've got the company's back. Like, I'm going to put my career in your hands, I'm going to work my ass off for you, and I know that you're going to, you know, do everything you can to ensure my success. And I think we, like, we get away from that for a minute. Like, reps joining your team are buying into you and your leadership. Like, you are a proven leader. You've delivered winning organizations throughout your career. And if, you know, if I come into your locker room and you say, here's the playbook we run here, I'm going to do that. Like, I'm not going to question you. Like, I'm going to say, look, I joined your team. I came here to run your playbook.

Your playbook's better than the playbook for my last team. And I think there needs to be a sense of this, like, you're buying into the team that you're joining and trust it. Like, don't fight it or go somewhere that you do trust it. Like, you're making a career decision. I'm buying into the brand. I'm buying the leadership. I'm buying into their playbook. And I'm going to give it all I got. I'm not going to buck it. I don't know better. I want to come play the game with them. And I think, like, building that cultural identity of all of our role, that's why, like, you win in the locker room. You don't win on the field. Because the locker room determines how you practice and how you practice determines how you play.

And too many leaders focus on game time and not getting the locker room in check where you have the right culture, the right attitude, the right systems. And then you practice and you drill on that. And then you go out and kick ass when you're on the field. With that, do you think that leadership, I mean, with as fast as things are moving right now with AI, right? We're stuck in this, and I'm sure you've read Jolt Effect and, you know, the indecision versus no decision and all that stuff and how it's just analysis paralysis. People are scared to make decisions. Like, it's hard for me to look at any leader right now and have a ton of confidence that they know what fucking decision to make that isn't going to be irrelevant here in six months.

And so how do you as a leader balance making decisions for the team because you have a vision but also realizing, like, Jesus, this shit's moving so fast that I – like, for me, I almost feel like I have to leverage my team to test and try different things out so that it bubbles up. And then we all kind of say, yep, okay, based on all of our collective experience of what we tried here, we know that we need this. And now I have the insights from the team and feedback, I have their buy-in to a certain degree, and now I go look for the solution to solve it. So how do you balance that as a leader with, like, the feedback from the team for your culture? Yeah. Well, first of all, I think in that example, you're too far away as a leader.

Like, today, and I'm sure you see this, you know, there are sales leaders that have never sold or never sold or, like, never carried the bag. Or they have what I call sales amnesia where they actually forget what it was like to do the job. And, by the way, the job's changed since I've done it. So, like, I'm on the floor with my SDRs, I'm on the calls with my AEs, I'm doing customer – like, I can't make decisions for my team unless I know what they do all day. Period. Like, I have to understand and appreciate what they do, and then I'm in a position to make better decisions for the organization. But if I'm sitting back and just getting feedback, I have – and that – and I think that's part of the hesitancy of these, like, analysis paralysis, if you describe, because they're not close enough where they can see clearly this is exactly what we need or there's no way.

It just means you're too far away. Like, you should be able to assess something based on your knowledge, your personal experience with the front line, what's going on, and what would help them win. We have a responsibility to drive winning in the organization. Period. Like, that's our job. Our job is to make sure our team's winning for both the company and the individuals. And we need to be looking at anything that we can possibly do to ensure that happens. And every sales leader should be taking their prospecting calls and evaluating if a solution can help them win more. I take all the prospecting calls. Number one, I love being sold. I love to hear the pitches. By the way, real quick, your point on that.

Like, it drives me nuts. VPs of sales who don't take fucking cold calls and then turn around and yell at their team to make cold calls. Like, if you're a VP of sale, you should be picking up every dumbass random phone call that hits your big cell phone so that you can, A, learn, right? B, again, get a little bit closer to the ground floor of what's happening right now and how the reps are being treated. So, sorry about it. But that's just like a super pet peeve of mine. Like, back when I was training a lot more than I was, I used to actually call the VP of sales on their cell. Like, if I got their cell phone, I would just call and I would just say, do you pick it up, right? And then during the prep, I would have the conversation and be like, hey, I know you're telling your reps, like, you want to heavy down on cold calling.

But I called you like three times last week and you didn't even pick up the damn phone. So, right? So, what else? Well, the beauty is, let's say you do pick up the phone as a VP and you go, I'm not interested. And I literally say, look, my product just got you to pick up. Isn't this what you want for your reps? Like, how do you say no to this? And it's just good karma. Like, if you and I pick up the phone, like, you got to do it. You got to do it. So, you got the one, you know, be on the front lines. Lead by example, basically. Yeah, lead to the front. And then, I guess now, here's the question I have that I'm searching for, which I don't know if I have a great answer. There's two questions.

I think one is more important than the other. One is, again, going back to the fundamentals, right? You and I grew up. We hit the bricks. We knocked on doors. We shook hands, kissed babies, you know, got our asses handed to us. We did all the admin shitty work of writing stuff down in notebooks and then transferring it to something so we could kind of remember it, hopefully, right? All that crap. And all that, as painful as it was, and quite frankly, as unnecessary, especially now that you see all this stuff that we could do. But it allowed you and I to be who you and I are right now and with context and with grit and with perspective. So now, somebody like you and I, like, these AI tools are absolutely bananas valuable because I'm not looking at it for the answer.

I'm looking at it to feed my curiosity. I'm looking at it to automate some shit that I already know why I'm trying to automate it. But I'm worried right now that the entry-level anything, all that grit and shitty work is now being done better, faster, and more efficiently with AI than any kid ever could. And so, I guess two questions. One is, where do the fundamentals come from if AI can do the majority of the grunt work that we did to get those fundamentals? And, by the way, the other part of this is our audience, our customers, in any component, kind of accepted the learning curve of younger what-the-hell-ever, right? It was like, okay, I got to take this dipshit call from this kid who's going to puke all over himself.

I get it, whatever. And it was tolerated. It's not going to be tolerated anymore. And so, A, where do the fundamentals come from? But more importantly, what are the fundamentals anymore? And have they changed from your perspective? That's such a loaded point, right? First of all, you and I were tolerated because there were no options. Right. Yep. There was no interweb. I got my information as a buyer from talking to Johns. We had all the power. Before the internet came out, man, you didn't see. So, that's why pitching worked, right? Because you never fucking saw this. I was like, hey, man, have you seen this? You'd be like, no, holy shit. And I could just literally throw up on you for 30 minutes about this awesome thing that I had.

And you'd be like, oh, my God, give it to me, right? And then the internet came out and Google screwed that all up. But now AI is taking it to a whole nother level. So, yes and no. And this is philosophical. I'll give you two philosophies. First is, at Reggie, we call left brain, right brain. Left brain is the analytical side of your thinking, like all the tasks and the chores and the data. And the right side is the rapport building, negotiation, and human interaction. We believe that the left brain is what should be AI and the right brain should stay human. I also believe it's a brand decision, like your brand. Like if you think about for a moment, you know, a decade ago, there was this big movement to offshore customer support.

It was cheaper, customers complained, they reshored it or they reshored the higher-end customer support, right? Like, so I think like from a brand perspective, like what do you want to associate with your organization? And I think when it comes to sales interactions or customer success or support interactions, like where do you draw the line with AI versus still a human? And I think it's really important we don't lose sight that at the end of the day, people are going to talk to people. And it's where does that happen? When does that happen? How often does that happen? And that, you know, back to all the learnings you talked about, that's where the soul of sales comes from. Like great blues music comes from pain, great salespeople, you know, it's all about the losses we've gone through, like the loss.

And like that still happens. Most of the losses come from customer interactions that didn't go well. I mean, you weren't prepared. It went sideways, whatever it is. And I don't think those get lost, at least in the foreseeable future. We, again, if you're using your SDR team correctly and offloading the left brain activity, there's still customer interaction, prospect interaction. And by the way, like another way of like how do they learn? Have them join the AE call. Like if you really want to understand like the work that you're doing, where does that go? Join the call, the AE, and understand what the AE does in terms of bringing that forward and start to really understand how that meeting you set up, like where it goes.

And that makes you better and better because even if you're not taking your call further, you have so much more depth of understanding. Like I just heard seven calls this week. Now I get it. Like now I get where this is going. And I have a different level of spirit and a different level of conviction in the way that I'm speaking with these prospective meetings that I'm setting. Like there's a different depth to what I know. So, yes. Let's talk like specifically with Reggie, because this is where like, you know, use a super tactical example here. Trigger events. Yes. The, the, what I've always positioned from a trick, like training on trigger events and all that stuff. Right. You know, first it was mass blast.

Right. And then it was like, Hey, why don't you spend a little bit of time looking into a company and trying to find something relevant. And then it was like, okay. Oh, they went through a merge and acquisition. Here's what I say when somebody goes through a merge and acquisition. And that was better than most. Right. It was like, okay, cool. You're at least doing a little bit of homework here, but it wasn't because you had experience with mergers and acquisitions. It's not like you've ever been through one. You just kind of took it and said, that's my merger and acquisition message. And they went through a merger and acquisition here. And then the, the, the level you get to is the give a shit factor.

Like you, you, you understand what that trigger does. You understand what a company goes through when that thing happens. And so you can solution map your thing and come up with a succinct message that is real and not bullshit. Right. But that takes some time for us to figure out now, Reggie, you serve up all these different trigger events. Like look at all this shit that you could use. And then, you know, I can choose. I like this one. And then it writes the fucking email and it's like better than most could ever write. And in the right context, the rep sees that trigger event, understands it, reads the email, finds it interesting. Maybe goes and asks a few questions about like, Hey, why is this?

But I fear we're in such a lazy society of, of just wanting the answer without having to put the work in to get there. And so help me because I love our partnership because the way I, I've actually, I don't know if you saw the post that I did the other day. I, I, I'm admitting the outcome of what I train, I think is irrelevant at this point. I think like the, the, the email that I used to teach reps how to write, right. Is irrelevant. The out, but the process to understand why the email is written that way is why I still have confidence in what I sell and what I train because I'm teaching the why behind why that's important. So in lieu of my training and your tools and stuff like that, how do, how does somebody using Reggie make sure that the answer isn't just cool?

Oh, that's a great trigger. Send that email without learning shit about why that trigger is legit and relevant to send at that moment. Yeah. Big, big, big statement question, which I love. There's a few things here. I think like one, you know, cold outbound gets you so far, but there, there are three things going on that you don't see. That should be of interest to you. Like one is a prospect engaging with anything that's going on from your company to there's a prospect on your website or a competitor's website. And three is there a trigger or a signal of something that would mean it's a good time to talk. And, you know, when you talk about the unsustainability of the SDR model, it's because if you think about the tier one workflow and it doesn't scale, there's only so much you can do and convert.

Where it gets interesting is if you can start to do that at scale and the AI is at scale. So if you have a small front lawn, you don't buy a riding lawnmower. Like AI loves scale, loves data. And if you can apply to the scale of that, but you still need to train your reps on who do we sell to, buyer persona, what problems do they have that we solve? And what's the value proposition? Like why, why should they buy from us? So the, I call the three piece, like the persona, the pain and the value prop. Like, and these, like for me, what you're describing is just all part of the training. Now, whether the AI is doing this, because you know this too, how many reps have taken 30 minutes to write an email that never gets open?

Oh God, yeah. It's just not a good use to tie. Right. So it's not about being lazy or not being lazy. I think about like, where's the best use of your time? And if writing a trigger-based email is the best use of your time, then you probably won't be on my team. You'll be on someone else's team. Understanding the why Reggie is doing that for you gets served up to you. So as an example, if someone's engaging, we're creating a high-party task for the rep, we're going to put the context in there. We're going to say, this is the intent data that's triggering this task. And here's the email. And we'll say, if it's a manual tab, we'll say, look, here's the email to send. You can edit it, but here's the email to send.

Here's the voicemail. Here's the call script to use if you call. Or here's the social message to use if you're going to go on LinkedIn. So what we're doing is we're giving enough of the context. If you're training your team, they're going to get it. But we're going to take out that busy work of actually doing it so they can spend more time on more tasks. And that's why I think the, like I said, where it clicked for me when we started working together was because I was, because quite frankly, I was struggling when I first, because, you know, I started with Sales Loft and, you know, and back in the day with Outreach. And I'm like, you know, okay, this is cool. And then very quickly, I'm like, oh, fuck, everybody's using this as a spam engine.

I'm like, cut the shit, people. Like, stop it, right? Like, marketing teams, stop creating the sequences for the reps to just stuff them down their throat and push play, right? They're not learning anything. You're turning them into robots. And that's what happened over the past 10 years. We over-processed the sales process. We over-teched the sales process. We forgot about fundamentals. And now we have, in my experience, we have a whole generation that really fundamentally, I don't think know how to sell because they were, it was a process. It was, okay, I have to send this thing. I have to get that email. I have to ask these stupid questions. I have to then present this way. I then give you a discount.

And then we close the deal. And it was tolerated because grow at all costs. Who gives a shit? Everybody, money's free. So let's go. And so that's when it clicked for me with you guys is, is if, if I can show the why behind it, if I can train the why behind it, then Reggie can show you how to automate all that shit that I train and have the context of the, when it works and you get the conversation, you can hold your own. And that to me is, is, is a, is a, is a great combo. Yeah. Imagine this day, like today you would come in and all the tasks that you're assigned today are just based on the sequence or the cadenced step. It has no regard to your prospects, engagement, intent, or signaling. Not, not at all.

Right. But imagine a day if you came in and instead of the tasks being served up, because that's day five of the cadence, it's like, here are the hundred highest value tasks that you can make today based on prospect engagement. But that's, that's where we are. Like it's, it's, it's rethinking task execution in the age of AI. That's what it is. Like not predetermined tasks based on the day of the cadence or sequence. It's based on prospect engagement. Here are the hundred things to do today. So I just went through a process that I thought was flawless for a $20,000. It ended up being 15 grand, but in my head it was 20 grand. Right. So it was, I saw some guy on Instagram do a post about this app for, you know, creators and all that other stuff.

I was like, huh. Okay. And it was really well done. He educated. And then all of a sudden it popped me over to his website and on his website, there was, okay, you can sign up for these monthly subscription where you can do this or you can do it yourself. And then I clicked on the, I'm sorry, we'll do it for you. Right. So they'll come in and do this all day. So I clicked on, we'll do it. Educated. Boom. I had to then get an, a fill out a form to, to submit, to see if I was even worthy of so exclusivity and all this shit. Right. And I knew what was happening as I'm filling this stuff out. Right. And then after I submitted, it says, cool, you know, you, you pass the test. Here's a link to schedule a call.

Great. As soon as I click the link, a video pops up with the guy saying, Hey, thank you so much. Here's some social proof, social proof. And by the way, if you don't show up to this meeting, we only do 25 a month. If you don't do show up to this meeting, you're off the list. You can never come back. So make sure you show up all this. And I was just like, I was so enamored by the flow and how flawless it was and how at every moment a video popped up and educated me and showed me value and made me feel special and all this shit. And I literally set up a call with effectively an AE for a 15 to $20,000 solution that I'm, that I'm willing to pay for without ever engaging with it, with an SDR, without ever engaging with anybody at the front end of the funnel.

So with Reggie and your ability to surface intent and your ability to customize messaging to go out, where's the SDR? Because I could theoretically right now have you guys, I could put my entire list of ICPs in. You could go solution map those. You could tell me my hundred best things based on that hundred best. I got to have an agent go, fuck that, grab that thing, write a personalized email and kick it in. And then, you know, if they say yes, put it on my calendar. So right now with where we are and who knows where we're going in the future, you know better than I do. But what's the value of the SDR in that equation right now with the ability of your tool? Because it is that good, quite frankly.

Yeah. Oh, thank you. Look, we have an SDR team. So I think in the example that you use, you went inbound. Okay. But I wasn't searching for it, is my point, right? So there's one thing about me looking for something and searching for, I need an app for this. And then all of a sudden I get that. Like the inbound side of the house, I think we could automate all. I think we should automate the whole inbound side of the house, right? But this was a targeted, I mean, my Instagram handle knows me. You know what I mean? They know what I need. They're listening to this conversation right now for crying out loud. So it served me up that. And so it was kind of an outbound, but it was a marketing outbound scenario, right?

Because I don't know if that was intent, but you could tell me who's out there looking for my shit, right? And then I could go and say, okay, cool. Well, if that person's looking for it, why can't we just automate an email to them? So a couple of that. I think one, like where does the SDR fit? Like it would have been interesting if you had like an empty cart experience at some point with this. Like what would have happened if you, like would a human SDR, like would somebody have then intervened into this well-architected, well-orchestrated experience that you went through? Like, because you kept going this way, which is easy. But what happened if you stopped, like empty cart syndrome, that's number one.

And then number two is, you know, this could be a happy cottage business where they've got it. Like they're not scaling to these, like, you know, I'm going to get enough of this, whether it's John or Matt or Sally or Sue. I've got enough of this coming in and like, I don't need to provoke more than I'm naturally getting through my feet. And I think the one thing that we forget with the SDR teams is we're provoking our natural growth. Like we're provoking growth beyond what would normally happen when you're doing outbound prospecting. And that's where I think the SDR still fits. I mean, look, I get, you know, outbound is, I look at outbound as a little bit more of a marketing function these days, right?

Because it's about impression points and making sure. And so you combine that with AVM, I still, I know it doesn't work, by the way. I know full automation of the SDR doesn't work. You and I both have seen those companies that are disasters. But my fear is, is it getting pretty fucking close to being able to do it? And unfortunately, it's done better than the vast majority of SDRs who are stuck in the old model being told what to do with these generic cadences. So it's like, if I'm a leader looking at this and I got this SDR team, that's just stumbling, bumbling, I got this over bloated tech stack. And then I got some like automation thing over here that does it way better. I don't know what the results are going to look like, man, but those emails look pretty killer.

And man, it's picking up on intent data faster than my SDRs ever could. So let me just, so where's that fine line of like, like getting the SDRs that matter and are willing to put in the work and leverage this stuff to leverage a tool like this to be exponentially better? The phone. We, we have a parallel dialer embedded in Reggie, AI dialer. And I think like email, social are great. Like depending on the research, 80, 90% of meetings are still booked over the phone and we're very phone first, phone heavy here. We, we believe, I mean, to the point where we literally built our own AI parallel dialer and embedded that into the platform. And, you know, we think it's a consolidated experience. You consolidate a bunch of tech reps on one screen, have access to every channel side by side with their agents.

And we think, we think that's the future of selling. And we still see, you know, there's a, there's room for the SDR team. It will shift, but there's still room. There's, and that's why I think I just keep coming back. I think there, there's always going to be room for SDRs and there's always going to be room for sales. It's just the, it's Pareto's rule, right? 80, 20. It's like 20% are going to be assassins because they're going to learn how to lose, learn this stuff and this acumen and all this fun stuff. And then 80%, I fear, you know, there's a, there's a large chunk of that 80% that, that I look at tech and I'm like, unfortunately, even though I don't believe the tech is as good, you know, from a results standpoint, it's cheaper, it's better, it's faster.

And it produces better, you know, messaging than this whole team of mine over here. So I'm just, I guess I'm wondering what the breaking point is for an organization to, you know, where they start to really assess that and, and say, I don't need this many. 20% of the teams doing 80% of the work, you're probably looking at doing something different. Like you need, you need 80% of the team winning. I agree with that, but unfortunately that's just not the case. Um, I mean, uh, one more question, just cause I'm curious on this shit. What was it like Tony Robbins, man? Uh, let's go back to, to that. Uh, I have so many questions about Tony Robbins, uh, but I guess you talked about how that was the most world-class sales organization or professional sales organization you've ever seen.

What made it so special? What, what was, what was above their sales process specifically or their sales, uh, caliber, whatever that, that said that, holy shit, that's sales. Yeah. And I ran worldwide sales for Tony and, you know, we, I guess at the highest level, you think about the brand you represent. So when you, when you, you know, if you're a Tony fan, great. If you're not a Tony fan, I understand. No, I like him. I definitely like him. But to, to your listeners, like not everyone's going to be a Tony fan, but he's got a hell of a brand and like number one, every interaction you are operating into the Robbins organization. Doesn't matter what product you're selling. And we, we were like talk about scripted and most of our reps are in front of audiences or like, so we, we would actually have a two part process.

We, we would actually like send a potential rep, the scripts of, of our best rep doing it, which, and this is what it looks like when it's done. And right, when you can do the first 10 minutes, you come in and audition and they would come in and they would do the free. Cause if you can do the first 10, you can do the whole 50, right. But just do the first 10 and like, we show them what bring it. It looks like is, you know, Tony's got the energy and like, you got to bring it. And, and then if they could get through that audition, then we'd interview them to sell. Like we actually did it the other way. We didn't interview if they could sell. We interviewed them if they could actually like be somebody and then, and then do they have what's behind it?

So we would, you know, think through. And then it was always about like, you never leave with something like, sure. Like if we're working with you and it wasn't right to buy something from Tony, you would leave with something anyway. You would always leave with something like, um, and, and, you know, Tony, you know, Tony's got a sixth sense. He's an amazing human being. He pushed everyone that worked for him with him and everyone that spend time with him as a, as a customer. He pushes you to be the best that you are. And it was, it was just an amazing experience to be around, whether it's the, your coworkers or your clients to be around people that motivated to invest in yourself continually and to live life at the highest level.

Yeah. I think it's almost, it'd be almost impossible. Well, I hope so. It'd be almost impossible not to be motivated working for Tony Robbins. It's like change your state. I don't give a shit. Get after it. You know, that type of thing. Or change your job. Change. Yeah, exactly. Um, on that note, how much, how, how bought into NLP are you? And I don't mean natural language processing. I mean, you know, neuro linguistic programming. Yeah. Yeah. So Tony came up with his own version of NLP because he thought NLP didn't, wasn't lasting change. So he came up with a version. But look, there, there's elements that I'm very bought into there's elements, uh, but it's, it's effective. Like you can see it, you can see it play out and you know, how to influence people and how to read people.

I mean, it's a very strong science and it's, by the way, it's a great book. NLP for dummies is a, is a, that's why I've actually, it's, Oh, I, you know what the, I don't know if you've read this one. It's, um, selling with NLP, the unfair advantage. I actually read a different NLP selling book, but yes, I've read it. Uh, it is, it's an unfair advantage and it's available to everybody. Yep. Yeah. It's nuanced though. It's super nuanced. Like I, I, I, I've seen people try to try to, I know when people are trying to do it with me, it's cause I've, I've paid attention to what it is. And I'm like, all right, dude, stop mirroring me. I get it. You know, if I'm leaning back, you're leaning back. If you put my, if I put my hand on my, you're going to get me to do something, see something.

And here's, I get it. So, right. But it is, you know, I think that's the ultimately what I, what I also come to, which is the difference between good sales reps and bad sales reps, in my opinion, which is influence versus manipulation. That's right. Great sales reps, influence horrible sales reps, manipulate and stuff like NLP helps you influence people for the right reasons, but also manipulate people. If you, if you, if you go pretty far with it, right? Like the book, the game, I don't know if you've ever read that one, the book, the game, it's basically how to apply all the sales techniques to dating and go to the bars. And it was all these psychological things of talking, you know? So I think that's what we can end on, which is what are you, what does great look like these days from a great sales rep standpoint?

If you're, if you're, if you're building the sales rep of the future right now, what's the foundation? What are the skills and what would you look for? Yeah. I mean, that's such a great question. You know, I, I look for a few things personally. I, number one, I look for reps that are hungry. Like, like you show me someone who's hungry and I'll show you someone that doesn't go to bed hungry. Like, like you've got to have this inner hunger and, and you can't train that. Like you, you just know it when you meet those people. Like they, they're just, they're there. Number two, you know, high integrity, strong work ethic, work ethic. And lastly, a history of winning, a history of winning. There was a great quote, the most powerful force in the human spirit is the need, is the need to stay consistent with the identity that you create for yourself.

So if you identify as a winner, like true identity as a winner, you'll do whatever it takes to stay winning. But if you've been a mediocre player, you'll be mediocre player. Like, but if you find people that have really won in their career and they're coming to join you because you've got an innovative technology, a strong leadership team, whatever it may be. And they're bringing their winning game to your team. Like you, a history of winning is so important. Yeah. That did the passion as my, one of my bigger learning lessons in my early careers when I was at, uh, so I worked for Jack Welsh and Susie Welsh for a couple of months with our online MBA program to get off the ground. But before that, when I was, you know, I don't know, 26, uh, we were, you know, our company was five people, 10 people, 20 people, 30, 50.

And after 50, it just didn't feel like everybody was same drive. Right. And I remember going to a conference where Jack Welsh was, and he just does Q and a, he amazing. He was paid 250 G's for standing, sitting up there on stage and doing a Q and a, like, Jesus God, hopefully I can get there one day. But, um, I stood up in front of about 10,000 people and I was, and I asked the question, I was like, and it was a dumb question. Now I know, which is, Hey Jack, um, you talk a lot about passion and grit and all this other stuff. Well, you know, we're a startup and we did this with 10 people, everybody's on board, 20 people, 30 people, everybody's fired up. The 51st person that we hire though, just does, I just, they don't have the drive.

They don't have the passion. And, and I asked the dumb question, which is how do you instill your passion on somebody else? And in front of about 10,000 people, he told me I was a moron and he was just like, uh, you're looking at it the wrong way. He's like, you can't train passion. That's right. You got to hire it. That's exactly right. And, and honestly, in that moment, it changed my hiring profile. I stopped looking for skill. I stopped looking for anything other than grit and drive and power. Cause I can, I can train everything else. I can't train passion. And actually it's one of my favorite interview questions, which is what are you passionate about? And by the way, I don't care what your answer is.

I care how you describe what you are passionate about. Like if you're like, oh, I really enjoy customers and working with them and making sure that they all get the needs. Right. Versus. Holy shit. What happened to the fucking Celtics this year? I'm driving me. No Tatum got an ankle. Like, what are we going to do now with Brown? Like, are we going to trade him and get Giannis here? Like, I don't know what the fuck's happened. You know? And like the way, and you know, the Celtics might have nothing to do with what we're here to talk about. But the way that you explain that to me tells me you got something in there. Now it's my job to get you bought into what we're doing and transition some of that passion over to us.

I love that. And by the way, in Jack Welch, one of his books, Jack, he talked about he hires energy. Yes. If you remember, he hires energy. People with energy. Yep. And that makes all the difference in the world right now. And I think that's why hiring up is probably one of the hardest things to do in any organization is find that grit, find that passion. Because, you know, the sales reps interview is their best sales job. So exactly right. They better be damn good. But you better be able to sift through some of that crap to see if they're actually legit. Right. Awesome. Well, it's been a great talking to you. Great catching up here. And I'm really looking forward to what we can do together.

So talk to people about Reggie, everything that you can do, where you want him to send, and anything else you want to let the audience know before we head out of here. Yeah. Look, I'm Matt Millen on LinkedIn. We'd love to keep the conversation going. And I've really enjoyed our time together. Likewise. Absolutely. All right, everybody. Well, hopefully you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. Like I say every day at the end of all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today. Because no matter how bad your day is going or how bad you think it went, you make somebody smile today and you know you had a good day. And 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.

Let's all level up and make this happen together. Let's all level up and make this happen together. Let's all level up and make this happen together. Let's all level up and make this happen together. Let's all level up and make this happen together. Let's all level up and make this happen together.