Monica Stewart: Escaping Founder Sales Survival Mode

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So I'm super excited to be partnering with them to give you an exclusive offer to get Otter.ai for sales today for free. Go to otter.ai, that's O-T-T-E-R dot A-I forward slash JBSales to get your free offer and start saving time and selling more effectively today. Do you really believe that you can get almost anything you want if you ask for it in the right way? Or do you believe that there are like fundamental like rules of reality that are unchangeable? Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays, where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us.

And today's conversation is with Monica Stewart. She helps B2B SaaS founders escape survival mode through scalable revenue systems. In 15 years, she's generated $25 million in revenue, influenced $200 million in valuations, and worked with LinkedIn, Trello, S&P Global, Berkshire Hathaway, and plenty more. Her sustainable, growth-focused approach makes her invaluable for founders, seeking long-term success. And this was all about founders, founder-led sales, but not necessarily like straight up initial first day, right? This is companies who have already gotten to about $1 million to $10 million in revenue and have a system and a process, well, have some type of system and process in place, but the VP or the CEO is still selling for the majority part.

So I was really curious some of the pitfalls that she sees out there and goes back to, you'll hear me talk about it again if you've paid attention to these podcasts, the founder's dilemma, specifically engineering founders, look at sales as a second-class citizen. They think the product sells itself because everybody needs this, and then they realize, holy shit, no, it doesn't. We need sales. And it's almost like a necessary evil to them and the dangers of that. So we talked about that. We talked about some of the misconceptions of sales by founders and what they or their perception of what it is versus what it really is. And what do you need to do as a founder to put some structure in place so that if and when you do have that VP of sales, they have some semblance of process to follow that isn't just you as a founder being charismatic and being super knowledgeable about your product.

A lot of founders, one of the things she highlights in some of her conversations previously too is how founders do the right things in the wrong order. And so they might be doing the right things, but they're doing them in the wrong order so it doesn't help them at all. And her opinion on methodologies is very similar to mine, but she's a little bit more aggressive. She thinks most methodologies are actually garbage right now, specifically because they're a little bit too rigid to address the challenges that are happening now. And obviously we talked a little bit about AI and instead of tactics or tips, how to change your belief system and how that can significantly impact your growth and success.

So I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. Let's make it happen. Monica Stewart, welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast. How are you doing today? Hey, John. Doing great. Happy to be here. Yeah, good to see you. And it's just as hot in New York City as it is in Boston right now. So I'm going to try to stay cool during this conversation for both of us. I see your AC blasting into the background there. The steamy AF podcast. Yeah. And it's actually funny when New York gets hot, man, it gets hot. Like at least I'm up here in the suburbs a little bit and there's some wind, but man, you got nothing going except for the dense air. Yeah, totally. And I'm like, I'm in Brooklyn in the like cool industrial area.

So it's great. But there's like, there's like some trees over there, but it's just like, it's, we are, we are in it. Right. But like, that's like the problem about New York City. It's like, you want gritty, you want the whole vibe, like it's happening. It's like dog day afternoon out here. 100%. And the same thing with Boston. Like people say, well, you know, why do you live there if the weather sucks? I'm like, first of all, I'm never going to complain about the heat. Okay. Because it's cold and I hate the cold. So when it's hot, I don't care. But yeah, it's like, it is what it is. Cause we, cause there are those few days where it's just so glorious that you're like, okay, I appreciate everything about this.

And I think if you have good weather all the time, you don't really appreciate it. So that's at least how I'm justifying. It's like raining on your wedding day, right? It's like, no, no, no. That was good luck. So I justified my estate. You're getting married. Like, who cares? Yeah. And also like, we are East Coast city people. Like, we're not here because it's easy. We're here because it's like, you know, we appreciate it and it makes us tougher. And like, yeah. I'm right there with you. So awesome. Well, I think we're going to, we're going to talk about a, not necessarily founder led today, but, but kind of that series A, B, you're kind of got some groove going. You got to figure out where your next steps are, five, 6 million ARR, and then all the stumbling blocks that happen at those stages.

But before we get to that, talk to us about your origin story, where you're coming from, talk to me about your parents growing up town. Where'd you, where'd you get the bug for business, sales, entrepreneurship, all that fun stuff. I feel like I really never had, uh, there was never a chance that I was going to do anything else. I grew up in Portland, Oregon. My parents are pretty entrepreneurial. Uh, my dad was a like construction worker, musician growing up. And then he ended up, um, running a company that ended up being like a global company. They were in like 200 countries. And so I watched him go through that whole, you know, he dropped out of school when he was 15 and went back to college, got in his GED, like when I was like in grade school and he was in his big forties.

And so I saw him go, you know, from that and like only wearing the Levi's every day. And like my brother and I grew up on construction sites to, you know, getting up at 5 AM, reading all the newspapers, reading all the business books. He did that for 15 years. Um, and like had this full other life and this full other career. And it was, I think that's where I got my work ethic from. And then, you know, I started like working in that business when I was like eight years old. Uh, and then as I got older, I was always trying to figure out like, well, what can I do where I'm going to make the most money in the least amount of time so I can have more freedom to go do like other stuff. Right. So that led to, um, selling magazines door to door.

Then I did the full nonprofit, uh, fundraising, like, you know, hi, do you have a minute for Greenpeace thing, uh, in college when I moved to New York city? And that was, uh, that was actually fun because we were, if you can imagine doing that in New York, right? So we were going to all of the like fancy suburbs going door to door and knocking on people's doors during dinnertime and like, Hey, do you have a minute to talk about gay marriage? And then we had this really great idea. We were like, what if we did this in the city? So we were the first team in the country to like go into people's apartment buildings in like Manhattan, like in the West village, someone lets you in and then you just go door to door in the building until someone's like, who are you guys in here?

Like, is this, is this allowed? And you're like, sorry, sorry, we'll leave. But you could get like a couple thousand dollars before somebody kicked you out. So we ended up being like the top office in the country. And we were just pirating, like going into people's buildings. It was so much fun. Um, and then when I graduated from college, uh, and it's, it's crazy cause this wasn't that long ago, but I was, you know, went to all these recruiters. I had a bachelor's degree in international relations and they're like, go find the industry that you want to work in and we'll get you a job as an executive assistant to the highest ranking person that we can find in that industry. And then you're going to work your way up from there.

And I was like, no, like that's, I, that's not how I'm going to work my way up. Right? Like, this is not like such and such starting in the mailroom. This isn't the fifties. Like no one's going to take me seriously. I don't have time for that. Also, I cannot live in Manhattan on an executive assistant's salary. Um, I I'm trying to like make money here. And so I got a sales job because they were like, you get the salary that people are offering you as an executive assistant, but you make commission. And I was like, great. I do this. And then it just went from there. Love it. 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 to cover all aspects of the sales process. It also includes monthly workshops that I'll be running on specific sales skills and different tech skills like chat GPT and how to leverage AI throughout the entire sales process. Finally, the membership gives you access to my entire online catalog with every course and every tip I've ever done. And as an exclusive offer to my podcast listeners, if you go to jbarrows.com, click on the individual membership link and use coupon code podcast at checkout, you'll get 25% off. Now let's get back to the conversation. It's fun, right?

When you, I don't know if it's that itch. I always think of like the nature nurture thing, right? Where I had an itch to be in sales early and I didn't know it, right? But it was, you mentioned a word, the freedom, right? My mom always said that I was, I was very, she thought, she said I was money motivated and you always wanted to make money. You always wanted to make money. And I'm like, my, yeah, but it wasn't just because I wanted to make money. It's because I wanted to do whatever the hell I wanted to do. That's why I wanted to make the money because I wanted to buy what I wanted to buy. I wanted to do what I wanted to do. And I knew without money, I wouldn't be able to do the cool shit that I wanted to do.

So yes, I was money motivated, but it wasn't because of the money. It's like what it can do for you. And I think the other thing, I 100% resonate with that. And I think the other thing that really like hooked me was just this sense of possibility. Like one thing that I learned really early on when I was growing up is that like everything is negotiable and like everything is possible. Like I would see my dad, he would like negotiate with like our dentist, like everything was like, okay, okay. Like that's a good starting point, but let's make a deal here. Like literally everything. And it was so eyeopening to me. Um, and I think I, I just really resonated with this message of like, you can create anything that you want if you know how to have the conversation and how to ask for it.

And that's pretty much how like I approach my life. And I think I, I really loved sales cause it, you just get to practice that every single day. And I found that like, you know, they say that there are a lot of things about sales that can't be taught. And I think that that is, that is one mindset that it's like, do you really believe that you can get almost anything you want if you ask for it in the right way? Or do you believe that there are like fundamental, like rules of reality that are unchangeable? Yeah. And it's funny how once you make that switch, the doors open up pretty wide, right? I remember I watched this consultant work with, or there's a story I read a while back of this consultant who worked with like an engineer who is, you know, swore upside down and sideways.

They weren't in sales, right? Yeah. I can't talk to people. And the guy's like, and the consultant was like, Hey, do me a favor. I just want you to go around. No, to see that everything's negotiable. He said, I want you to go around and ask for the good guy discount. And he was like, what do you mean? He goes, all I want you to do is whatever you're buying, wherever you are, if you're in a hotel or a restaurant, you're buying stuff, just ask very simply, Hey, do you happen to have a good guy discount? And when they go, what are you talking about? Be like, well, I'm a good guy. I just want to know, like, you know, and just, you kind of have fun with it. Right. And he was like, that sounds terrible.

I don't know if I'll do it. He's like, just help me out. And literally everywhere the guy went, he got, you know, he might not have gotten a discount, but he got, you know, extra, you know, free dessert. He got, you know, extra night stay, you know, breakfast at the hotel, whatever it was. He got it just by saying something simple. And to your point, like you, you don't get what you don't ask for period. And you have to figure out how to, you have to figure, I think there's the science of asking for it, but then there's the art of how you ask for it. Because I think that's the part that gets a lot of people hung up. It's like, okay, yes, I can ask for it. But the way you ask for it is, is going to dictate, you know, how far that goes.

Yeah. A hundred percent. And a lot of that goes back to like, how do you feel about the fact that you're making that ask? And I think that that is a lot of what holds people back in sales is they have all of this baggage that's attached to it. And so they don't show up in the right way when they feel like they're doing sales versus the way that they show up when they're just authentically talking about something that is, that they're passionate about, that's really exciting to them. You know, this is why people are like, oh, in sales, you have to be authentic, et cetera, et cetera. Like, we're not all going to be authentically passionate about like data storage or like what is that we're selling.

HR services, yeah. But you have to feel legitimate in the ask that you're making. And if you don't, you're not going to get the result that you want. And that's why I love experiments like that one, because it's such an easy, it's such an, you're not even asking for anything in particular. And so you have no attachment to the person saying no to you or not. Right. It's just other than the uncomfortableness of, you know, trying to get over that ability. And I think that's the biggest part is you got to get, you got to stretch yourself. You got to get uncomfortable a little bit to, to grow in general. Right. And so I like little safe things like that. I'd try to coach people. I, you know, an interesting one I went to, there's a pizza stop, like one of the best pizza joints in the area is right.

Walking distance to my house. And it, in the slight nuance here, when they give me that, when I pay for it, my credit card, they give me the receipt at the check, like, cause I go in and pick it up. They don't deliver. So I go in and pick it up and they're like, uh, could you just sign this and hand it back to me? And I sign this and take it. I'm like, okay. And I did it a couple of times and there's a tip thing on there. And I was like, can I give you a tip? Like not an actual, I will give you a tip, but can I give you a tip on how to ask for this? And she was like, what do you mean? I go, instead of saying just sign here, just say, could you fill this out, please? Like the simple fill this because sign there's my signature.

See you later. I'm out the door. Yeah. Could you just fill this out and give it back? Like, oh, that means there's other stuff here for me to fill out, which means all of these things. And I came back like a couple of weeks later and she's like, that made a massive difference. She's like, we're getting twice as many tips. It's just this, like, just by phrasing it a different way. I'm like, see, it's just, you don't have to be pushy about this. You just need to know the psychology around it. That's awesome. That reminds me of something that I did my first like startup SaaS sales job. We had at that time, we had like monthly pricing. You could buy it on the website. And so some of the companies that I was doing demos for, like, obviously I wanted to sell them more, but I was like, maybe I could just start closing them on these calls.

So when they asked about pricing, instead of giving them an overview, or just showing them our pricing page, I would take them to the pricing page. Then I would talk them through the plans. Then I would have them pick one. Then I would click the button on our site that took us to the checkout. And then I would just talk them through giving me their credit card. And it would, and then, and it was actually literally what I used to do in, in door to door sales when I was selling, you know, like monthly donations for the Sierra club is I'm like, okay, cool. So do you want to do like a one time or monthly and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, and you just like a credit card. And I was like, I can just get the credit card from Caterpillar or whatever right now.

And it worked out really well because we got someone to commit to something on that call. And then the next conversation that we're having, it's not like, so do you guys want to do this or not? It's more like, great. Now, how do we take this further? Love it. Love it. So you work with, talk to us about your niche, right? Like who do you help? And then I want to kind of unpack it from there as far as what the challenges they face, but who's the ICP for you that you're talking to these days? So I work with B2B SaaS founders that sell an enterprise product and I start working with them when they're somewhere between like 1 million to 10 million ARR range in their journey. And then I'll work with that up to pretty much the point at which they're self-sufficient, which could be, you know, up to 10 or 15 million ARR.

It could just be whenever they're ready to bring on a full-time VP of sales and then they can take the team from there. Love it. So are the majority of these founders or, you know, leaders that you work with, are they from the business slash sales side of the house or are they a little bit more from the engineering side of the house? Like the people who create the thing versus the person who's like has the idea and gets other people to create it. So what's the mix of engineer-led founders versus business-led founders? Interesting question. I would say it's actually a pretty even mix. Like right now I have product and I actually get a lot of product founders, some technical founders. I also work with people who have sales background.

I had a CEO recently who like he was a, he was a wreck and then he went on and founded a company and was like very successful doing that. It's not really about, yes, there is some element of understanding what are the fundamentals sales, but then there's also an element of understanding, okay, what does that look like as you're growing your company through the stages of, of what your company needs to go through, which may or may not look like what you've experienced before. So with that, you know, cause there's, and the reason I ask about engineers versus business is, you know, the engineering mindset's always an interesting one. It's, it's build it and they will come in a lot of ways, right?

Like our product is awesome. The features and functions are better than everybody else. It should sell itself and I can't tell you how many engineering founders I've come across who think sales is at best a necessary evil, right? Cause they're like, well, the product's the best. So it just needs, and I've, I've almost never come across a company that failed because, you know, product market failure. Most of the time it's because they couldn't figure out how to sell it. And they, and inevitably they, they have to bring sales and then they don't support it. And to me, if it's not supported from the top down, you're, it's a fool's errand. So what are some of the things that early stage founders between one and 110, um, what are their perceptions of sales and what are some of the things they get wrong early from a sales standpoint that you in a lot of ways have to reverse engineer?

Oh my gosh. Um, that's a really good question. So I think one of the misconceptions around sales is either that it's very easy or that it's very hard. Like they tend to really overcomplicate it or undercomplicate it. Um, I think, you know, other, other big misconceptions that they have are, uh, that it's something that they need somebody else to do for them. If I could like, I think if I could change one common perception in the market, you know, it would be this. And it's so heartbreaking to me because usually when I talk to these people, it's like, if they're talking to me, it means that they de facto know how to sell, right? Otherwise they wouldn't have sold a million dollars in revenue and been able to retain it.

That's, that's why they're talking to me is because like, they've done something good already. And then they're willing to completely throw all of that out the window, abandon everything that they've already done. Such a great job at learning so far to like bring in some guy that they think knows more about sales than them. Um, and then the conversation that I always have at that point is like, let's continue to do what's been working for you and then get to the point where it becomes unscalable for you to do it anymore. And then you teach what you've been doing with some improvements to somebody else. Like you don't need to, you don't need to like, it's like they get to this point because something's been working well.

And then they're like, okay, we need to stop doing that thing now and start doing something completely different in order to get to the next level. And it's usually, uh, not entirely the case. Yeah. I mean, well, the challenge there is that the founder, I mean, I wrote a post on this a while ago called the founder's dilemma, which is, you know, usually engineering founder comes up with a product solution, you know, and as we've talked to you, I think the number one thing you have to have in sales to be successful is a passion and a belief in what you do. And obviously because the engineer has passion, right? Sales is the transfer of enthusiasm. So when they, when they go out there and they meet, you know, and they start talking about this new thing that they created, they're usually talking to friends, families, and fools, right?

Like their, their ecosystem. And because they're super passionate about it, uh, and they, and they speak into a friendly audience. A lot of times they get great feedback and, you know, might even get a customer or two out of it. And so then they're like, oh man, sales is easy. Everybody loves this. Like you, everybody needs it. Oh, sales, you know, VP of sales, like giddy up and go. And with no, with no process in place, with no true passion for what the solution is, like you're, you're setting them up for failure. So what, what can a founder do? How do you, because a lot of times the founder doesn't know what's working. They're just working because they have the charisma, they have the ability, they can answer questions.

They're the SE basically on the call. So they can answer any question that the client needs. So how do you create a framework that the executive can put structure to so that when in a, when, when the VP comes in, when said sales professional, there's a, there's a structure in place at least that, that shows, Hey, these are the things I've done. This is what it is without going overboard as far as measurement and all that other stuff. What's a kind of a fundamental structure that they should start with so that they can fill in the details so that then hand that off to said VP of sales who can then blow that out. Yep. So, um, the first place that I would start is like, you need to think about your, your GTM maturity in terms of the stage of your organization.

And then you need to be able to like break it down into component parts. So, and this is why I like bringing in somebody, you know, if you're at 5 million AR, bringing in someone who knows what good looks like at snowflake, isn't going to do shit for you. Can I say that on this podcast? Oh yeah. Take the filter off. My audience would be disappointed if you didn't. So. All right. Great. Cool. Um, because like that has, that literally has no bearing, like you are two completely separate companies. It's like taking, it's like, it's like having a PhD come and teach a baby how to walk by teaching them like the principles of physics. Like it was just, it's not, it's not the vibe. Um, so the first thing is you need to, you need to have benchmarks for where you should be based on the stage that you're actually at.

Like you cannot skip any steps. So even if you've been at a bigger company before and you're like, we had this and we had this and we were doing QBRs for all of our customers and we had sales engineers and blah, blah, blah, blah. You can't go right from 1.5 million ARR to like having what would require hundreds of people on a go to market team to have. You need to like walk, crawl, run. So understand what that needs to look like for you and then break it down across the parts of your organization. So like you should be thinking about, okay, maturity wise, where are we in terms of how we're defining our ICP and how are we basing? How are we judging that? Um, do we have key channels? Are they performing?

What does our sales process look like? How's our post sales? So on and so forth. It's not just like, how's sales going? It's like, well, let's break down the funnel. Let's break down the way that we are operating as a team. And then let's kind of gauge ourselves in all of those areas. And then that's going to give you an idea of where you actually need to focus in order to get yourself on track so that everything's landing up. And then you can jump to that, to that next stage. I would say that's, that's kind of the first thing. I love it. You know, and I just thought of this now, I think in lieu of that, in a lot of ways, I think there's a technology component to this that could significantly help out.

So in the, in the sense that before it was kind of hard to replicate what the founder was doing, if you weren't there, if you weren't watching it, but now you can take your phone or whatever and set up one of these AI things just to record the dialogue and record every single meeting you've ever been on. Don't even worry about what to do with it for crying out loud. Just record it. And then when the new VP comes in, take every single one of those recordings, stuff them into chat GPT and say, what's the sales process here? One of the questions that he asks or she asks, what are this? So again, if, if the founders, like, I don't know what do you mean? Talk about the process. Like I don't have time for process.

Like I think about my wife all the time. They have a process though. They do, but, but for them it's, it's, it's an art and it's an, and it's hard for them to distill it down to, because they don't, they just do it instead of thinking about what they're doing. That's why I always say it's, it's the, one of the worst things any company can do is promote their best sales reps to be managers because nine times out of 10, their best sales rep is in a lot of ways, an artist. They're, they're the ones who just, they know how to read people. They know how to, where they spend their time. They just inherently know certain things that are brutal to try to teach to other people. And so I think founders have that similar thing.

I mean, I had, again, my, one of my first founders, it was, it was my friend. And when we walked out of the first meeting, literally we did outsourced IT services to the SMB market. We had a good, like I worked my ass off to get this meeting, whatever it is. And we walked out and it was all positive. And he literally said, man, shit, that was easy. Everybody loves this stuff. Everybody needs what we want. And he said to my face, I don't understand why sales is so hard. I'm like, are you shitting me right now? Do you have any idea what it took to get that tip of the iceberg and to prepare for that meeting and to get all of those people in the room excited for you to be there and all of that stuff.

Yeah. I don't have a contract yet. So do I have to follow up? I get to get this. I go, the likelihood of that is me. You said it's a slam dunk. I'm looking at it as 20%. Maybe. 100%. 100%. Yeah. And it's like, that's actually something that I see with a lot of founders too, is they think that they overestimate how easy sales is because what they're doing is like actually not even 100% of sales. They're like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I closed all these deals. Yeah, they're POCs. But like the metrics are great. The metrics are going great. They're totally going to flip over into deals. They're like, yeah, this deal is almost closed. They're getting us into procurement. I'm like, you know, procurement doesn't own budget, right?

Like, like that's just, that just means you're allowed to get money from them. Do you know how you're going to get the money? Have you talked about that? Who are you talking to? Oh, it's a VP level at Oracle and your, and your, and your product costs like 400K. Like, I just, I don't know, man. Like, I feel like there's some other stuff that's going to need to happen there. Right. So, and, and that's okay. Right. Because I get that it's hard to even get to that point. And I, I understand that you need to do what you need to do in the beginning stages to like get the pilots teed up and at least get revenue flowing into your company. But also don't be surprised when later on, when you hire people in, it's going to be harder for them to do everything than it was for you to do it, even though they're professionals seems counterintuitive, but it is.

But also it's going to be harder because they're going to be doing like real sales. Um, and you want them to do that because if you continue doing the things, the way that you've been doing them, you're just pushing your GTM debt down the road and you're going to end up with like a clusterfuck of renewals and expansions that you think are in the bag. They're going to turn into like churns and contractions later on because you had one person that you were talking to at the company. Yeah. Yeah. Like in that perception of, oh yeah, that's no problem. It's like, oh God. Yeah. Obviously you've never done this job before. Totally. Oh yeah. Like Rick, Rick loves us. Rick fast tracked our contract. Like Rick is so excited about this.

I'm like, well, so like Rick is, Rick went to another division. Like now what are you going to do? And like, but like all solvable problems. Right. And again, this is why I say like, I don't say this to be critical of the way that founders say, I say this to kind of bring back that point. Like you can't skip steps. So you're going to do that at the beginning and you're going to like cut some corners because you need to get the wins and then you're going to need to go back and smooth out that process later on. Well, that was actually going to be where I was going to take this next, where you've, you talk a lot about doing the right things in the wrong order. Yeah. How does, what, what, what do you mean by that?

Like, and give me some examples of some of the things either you yourself have done the right things in the wrong order or a client that you've worked with. What's that all about? Totally. I mean, the most common one that I see is like, we need more leads. Like, okay. You know, we need to grow the sales team. We need to grow revenue. Like we're kind of getting a roadblock. Well, we've got all this pipeline, so we need more leads or we need to figure out sales. So we're going to hire a sales leader. And that's the first thing that we're going to do. I think that now founders and really everybody have access to more information than they've ever had. And like a lot of it is really good information.

It's just not necessarily helpful for them at this time because it's not their story. It's somebody else's story. So it would be like, if you want to, if you want to get in shape, you want to like increase your flexibility, lose weight and, you know, whatever it is, be able to run a marathon. And then you skip straight to like trying to fine tune your macros, but you can't run a mile in under 10 minutes yet. And you only go to the gym twice a week and you've never worked out with a trainer. And like, you're just, you're going to the gym and you're just picking out some random 15 pound weights and throwing around a kettlebell, a kettlebell leaving after 30 minutes. And you're trying to do like elite LeBron James level, like nutrition hacking.

That would be an example of doing like the right things in the wrong order. It's like, let's get the foundational steps first. So, I mean, I think that this could look like a lot of different, it can manifest in a lot of different ways for different teams. But typically what I see is people trying to scale too fast before they have the fundamentals in place. And they have like repeatable metrics that are good, good conversion rates across their funnel. And then the other thing that I see is people tending to think about optimizing their GTM from like the top down. So they're like, okay, we need a lot more leads so that we can get more pipeline. Then we need more AEs to convert said pipeline.

And then we'll worry about the customer success stuff later where it's like, okay. And you know, again, I'm only speaking about enterprise sales, people that already have product market fit, already have a couple million in revenue. What does that mean? That means that first of all, you've already got like a couple hundred thousand, maybe over a million dollars in closed business of current customers that are sitting there. And probably that's worth more to you than like the last five discovery calls that you've had because you're counting on that. There's expansion potential that you're probably not seeing, et cetera, et cetera. So like when I talk to companies, I just sort of try to look at like, where are the biggest buckets of revenue that you have?

And let's focus on unblocking those first. And it's not always at the bottom of the funnel, but that's where I start looking. And I'm like, okay, current customers, how are we doing? Like, how's our NRR? Good. Okay. Next step. Like, what does adoption look like? Like when we sign a contract and we flip somebody, flip the switch on, are they like, are they ramping up in the time that we expect them to be? AKA, if you guys close a bunch of new deals right now, are those customers going to be successful? Okay. That's good. Great. Next thing. Cool. Everything that you've got in late stage pipeline, like what is your conversion rate on that and how quickly are those deals moving through? That's the next place that we're going to look.

And then the next place that we're going to look after that is like, cool, how are you moving people in from qualified to like, you know, real op? And then we can think about like actually pouring more leads into that funnel. Once you have a good funnel that can convert people at a consistent rate. And usually when you do that, you're also going to learn a lot about what kind of leads you even want because you're going to be able to see like, who are the people that are your real customers in your current universe, either in your current customer universe or in your active pipeline universe. Love it. With that process that you outlined there, I mean, there's a lot of frameworks that people use, methodologies that people use.

And I've never really been a methodology person because I, early in my career, I remember like going to Sandler, going to Miller Hyman, going to tags and getting all these things and being like, okay, like apparently they've made a business out of this. So that must be the process to follow. That would be good, right? Right. And, and, and I would follow it. And then some of it was really good, but others, other, it was garbage. And so I'm like, uh, so I, I really quickly early on said, I'm, I don't, I don't subscribe to any singular methodology. I'm going to take the best pieces of all these methodologies and create my own, but you know, but I was sales oriented, business oriented. That was my world as a VP of sales.

What do you think that, is there a strategy or framework that, that, that you see that people are, um, overusing, right. And, and almost being lazy with to implement because, Hey, that's just the way everybody else do it. And I'll give you an example, like predictable revenue, like the SDR, BDR, AE model, like for years, people just follow that model. Cause that's what Salesforce, like a five person company would follow the predictable revenue model when Salesforce.com was doing it. Right. It's like, uh, do you, I don't, I, so where, where you think that they're relying too much on, on either framework or methodology versus learning what there should be? Hmm. This is a spicy question. Um, first of all, I think that Sam Blair should have died like at least 10 years ago.

So, okay. Here's the thing, John, right? Like, like I am a, I'm a, I'm a negotiation and like sales nerd. Like you can't see all the books behind me. I have even more like, and I don't just, I don't just read about this. Like I also read like, um, not just Chris Foss. I've read all of the FBI, all the CIA interrogator negotiator books I've done getting to guess. I've done getting to know, I learn about communication styles that therapists use. Like I have a really great book called motivational interviewing that's like what addiction counselors use to try to like get people to unblock their limiting beliefs and like get them to do something like any, any person in the world that is studying how to like get inside people's heads, understand what motivates them and then move them in a direction.

Like I am interested in you. If I haven't read your book, I will soon. And if there are any that I didn't mention that anyone listening to this thinks is amazing, please send me a DM on LinkedIn because I literally will buy it on Amazon right now. Like that's how, that's how, that's how into this I am. Um, and I remember one time I went to a, uh, I went to a, why was I in Harvard? I went to like a, an event at Harvard because my company's engineering office was in Cambridge and I think I had a meeting there or something. And I was so excited because the Harvard program on negotiation was having a seminar there and I've always wanted to do that program. And so they were all in the elevator and I was looking at all of their name tags and it was all like, it was all the companies that I was selling to.

It was all of those enterprise organizations. It was like Honeywell, Target, Walmart, all the executives that I was trying to sell to were taking the same goddamn negotiation program that I was reading, obviously, because like those, all those companies know that like, not only do they have to do vendor negotiations with every single person who's trying to sell to them, plus all of their active vendors, plus other people in the company, like Newsflash, they get negotiation training too. They've read Sandler. It's been out for like 30 years. They've read Chris Voss. They know what you're trying to do. Like just stop with all of them. So I think like, honestly, any methodology really that it has been around for that long, like you should not be taking it off the shelf and using it anymore.

I think Bant, Bant and Sandler are my two, like, Bant is the worst. I was talking about this, that like this executive dinner I was at last week. Okay. Of all the things that you've sold in your life, John, how many of them did people have a budget for? Not many. None. Yeah. I mean, ones that came to me maybe and already identified and that type of thing, but like with me creating the need and that type of stuff. No, I don't. I always had to go find it. Yeah, exactly. Like there's, and especially like if you're selling any kind of SaaS today, like you think there's a budget for just to use an example, because I love Amanda's used content on LinkedIn. Do you think there's a budget for like an API to unify all of your meeting data?

No. Like, right. Right. So just stop with, with that. But I, I mean, I'm with you. Like, I also kind of take a little bit from all of them and mold them all together, but I, it's also really important to understand again, like what was that methodology designed for? And then how well does that actually match to what you're selling? And I think that currently almost all of the methodologies are outdated because most of them, even the really good ones like Challenger are based on, um, a product model that kind of doesn't exist anymore. Like one of the things that I've been noticing recently, it's accelerating the last couple of months, almost all the companies that I'm working with are working on a consumption based model or a database model.

Like no one's selling seats anymore. And so you still have to go through the same motions, but like this whole concept of like, you know, multi-threading and like getting, talking to VPs and other departments and so on and so forth. It's not quite as relevant for a lot of the products that people are selling today. Like you're selling something that bolts on to the way that they're processing payment data throughout the organization. And then you're just charging on usage. You're going to have to have a conversation about that sooner or later because like the whole, you know, you don't get paid unless you're getting value things sounds good at first until people start seeing the bills. Yeah.

Like it's not quite that simple. It's not like, oh, you just get like one software developers or like one director's permission and then like, you know, they're never going to kick you out. Like they will kick you out. You still have to do all that work, but it's, it's not the same as when you were trying to sell like, you know, 800 seats of a CRM or whatever it was, or, you know, database, 800 seats of zoom info, let's say. Not the same at all. No. And actually to your point, especially with AI right now, I think there's, there's good parts of, I will say there's good parts of almost all of them. You know, like Sandler is an example, the, the upfront contract, if not done super cheesy is actually a pretty solid way of setting the stage for the clothes.

Like it's an if, then statement, right? It's an if, then statement. It's a, if this goes well, typically the next steps are this, would you be open to doing that? Right? So it just helps, uh, you know, reverse questioning that that was a little early in my career. That was an eye opener where it was like, oh, okay, before I just answer you, let me clarify it with a question, pain funnel. What does this mean for you? Okay. But that's about it, right? Challenger sale. I found this one out recently, and this is, this is why everybody needs to take almost every training, including mine with a grain of salt, which is, I found out the challenger sale. So, you know, jolt effect. So challenger sale, challenger customer, jolt effect.

Why wasn't it challenger challenge and decision? Why wasn't it? Well, because they found out that by like right before COVID hit. Oh, no, right after COVID hit, because this is when they could do all the data analysis with all the recordings and stuff like that. They found out that by applying challenger sale to their own sales approach, reduced conversion ratios by 85%. What? And the reason was, and that's what stemmed them to start looking and be like, because they were panicking and they were like, Oh my God, what is going on here? And with all the data analysis and insights, they realized it was indecision, not no decision. People were just freaked out. And the challenger methodology, the idea there, it's, it's FUD, right?

So, so it's fear and certainty that, Hey, if you're every minute, you don't do this, you're going to lose money. The problem with that is you're selling to somebody who's, um, who's, who's risk adverse, right? Like nobody wants to change because change is scary. And the risk of that change is scary. So even if your product is better, faster, and cheaper, by the way, if, if the perceived risk of that change is, is too much, I'm not going to do it. So they drop, put their head in the sand and like, and so they're already, when they recognize that they already, they need to go from current state to future state and they've kind of mentally committed, like, I know we need to move, but I don't, I don't really feel comfortable doing it.

You're, you're dealing with somebody who's already scared effectively. And then with challenger, you're compounding that, that fear. You're like, Hey, you know, you got to do this. And it's like, so now you're pushing on somebody who's already scared. And we all know what happens when, if, you know, you push on somebody who's already scared, they're going to run further away. Right. So, so knowing those, and it's like shame on challenger, by the way, for still selling that. If it's, if that gen, if, you know, I heard from some, so I can't a hundred percent verify it, but I heard from some insider resources used to work there, which is pretty reliable. And it was like, shame on you. Like, why didn't you just come out and say, Hey, challenger sale was what it was for the time that it was.

We've updated it to jolt effect. It's, it's the challenger evolved, whatever the fuck it is, because that's where so many people, I mean, I've been in the case because I trained Salesforce and everything else. I've had small sales teams come up to me. Oh, John, I heard you train Salesforce and you need to train us on the same thing. I'm like, no, what I'm like, like, don't get me wrong. I'm happy to take your money, but do you, I, you don't, Salesforce has like this insane engine with about 7 billion pieces to it that can, you know, I go, you have three reps, you have 10 reps, you know, like you don't have the structure to be able to do this, but Salesforce did it. My, my VCs are telling me I got to go do what, what they did.

So let's do this. And it's, it's so terrible. Cause like, they're probably good at things that people at larger companies are, are not like, like a couple of years ago, I, I, um, did a training project for like a huge public company. Um, and their biggest issue was being able to sell competitively because they literally never had to do that. Cause they're like, we are the market leader. Everybody knows like we've already got it, but you know, we've got like a, you know, product led growth model, et cetera, et cetera. They're just taking orders and you know, their market changed. They had more people that were coming up and starting to shop their business. Now they had to learn how to sell competitively.

Like if you're in a series A startup, you're selling competitively every single day. Like that's not something that you need a framework, um, for, but I do, um, yeah, I just, I think it's really, I think it's really going to change so much in the next couple of years. And I think that like the way that I kind of teach this to the teams that I work with is I, you know, these are the, these are the things that you should have in your quiver. These are the arrows that you can deploy and you should think of these as tools. And like, you should, the idea is, is to understand how to use all of the tools so that you know them well enough to know which ones you should be using at which time, depending on the situation.

Like, so mirroring to get technical is a really good example of this, right? Like, you know, Chris Voss is mirroring, like you train Salesforce. It was too technical, you know, whatever. Like that's great. And sometimes that can be really good to establish trust. But also sometimes you're in a situation where you need to change the tone of the meeting. And in that case, you actually don't want to mirror the person that you're talking to. You don't want to match their energy. You want to slow it down. Or you want to take things up a notch because you're talking to people at 3.30 p.m. and they have no idea why they're on the meeting. And they're like, what are we doing here? So like you need to like, you know, bring the show.

It's just, you just need to understand like how to assess the energy and then understand where it needs to go and then know how to get it to go in that place. And that's like literally what sales is really. But it sounds very simple to say that. And then that's like years, a lifetime of years. And that's what I'm a little bit worried about right now with this kind of younger generation of sales reps. And to no fault of their own, you know, they grew up in this virtual world. And so they didn't have the chance to go face-to-face, sell in person, watch body language, go to networking events, shake hands. I remember when I, you know, I didn't get really much good training early in my career, but I was around sales all the time.

And I was meeting with people and I would say, you know, I remember going to like networking events when I first figured out what networking events were. And I guess it's like a business, right? I remember, you know, shaking hands, kissing babies. And when I, you know, would shake a hand, I would immediately pitch and I would watch them get uninterested in carrying this conversation with me. I'd watch them look like right here instead of right at my eyes. I'd watch them kind of like fidget when I was given, I'm like, oh, this doesn't feel right. They're obviously not interested in what I'm saying here. I wonder why. Well, oh, it's all about me and I don't care about me. And so all that stuff that I learned through almost osmosis in a lot of ways, just by doing it, I think is being taken.

Away from the majority of sales reps now, because this is really hard to read people. You know what I mean? This in this format, I can, I can seem very interested, but I'm not right. I could pretend right now, like we're having a conversation and have my email up and just be scanning through my email. Totally. And then you just go shh and like, yeah. It's over. And so I worry a little bit. And this is where I think AI is kind of maybe help, you know, expedite some of that stuff, give insights. But you said that, I think one of the things I read, you said that AI is good at helping you avoid doing work, like avoid doing some of the hard stuff. Right. And it frees you up to do the engaged stuff.

But how do you make sure that you balance using the AI for the right reasons? And to do that, so that you, because there's, I don't know if you saw this study that just came up by MIT where, yeah, where chat GPT and how they scan the brains of people who use chat GPT to do something versus people who wrote it down. And like the people who use chat GPT to write something, they couldn't even remember what they wrote, like however many hours later, because they didn't write it. And so how do you balance that with AI right now with how you're coaching people? So I love teaching my teams how to use AI as a research tool, as a research and as a summary tool. So they're using it as a research assistant, essentially.

Like obviously, you know, you don't need to do a manual account research anymore. You should be using perplexity for that. One thing that I wish people would do is like really go and look at all of the tools that are available before creating their stack. And I know that depending on what company you work at, you might not have the ability to do this. You might only have Gemini or you might only have Copilot. That being said, like if you're open to it, spend the $20 a month, like get the thing that you want. Like it's going to be so worth it for you. But like right now, the stack that I like is I really like perplexity for research. Anything that's writing related, I think Anthropic is really the best.

And then everyone should be using a conversational intelligence tool and you should be reporting all of your calls, all your internal calls, all of your customer calls. And like there's no compliance things around that. Like no one's going to tell you anything on a discovery call that like whatever. Like it's so much more important. Like you're going to have I do get this question sometimes from people that work in cybersecurity or that work in like banking or something. You'll get like 10% of people that will ask you not to use it wherever you can then not use it for them. But it's so worth it for you to have that information. I like Obama. I like Sybil. I would recommend getting one that is designed for sales and for customer facing calls because it's not about the transcription.

It's about like the quality of the query and like the way that they're that they're LLM is trained. But I think the thing that people need to really understand is that like AI doesn't know how to think. It does not. And like there's so much there's so much that companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have to gain by making us believe that it does. Like that like every statement that you hear from Sam Altman is PR, right? Like you should not be taking that as like a as like a literal interpretation of what is actually happening right now. Because like this is we're in we're in the arms race phase of AI and like it's a it's it's a big market share play like for these larger companies. So it cannot think all it can do is like play back to you what it knows from you.

So if you use it as an extension of a part of your brain and you use it to like get really good summaries, help you generate new ideas if you give it a lot of context. But it's not going to be able to come up with something for you out of nowhere. So if you ask it something if out of nowhere and you go to like whatever LLM you like to use and you're like, hey, LLM, how should I sell to Quora's Cosmetics or like how should I sell to Ikea? This is what I do. It has no fucking idea. It doesn't know. It is not a salesperson. But if you, you know, create a project and you give it all of the culture inscriptions and you give it like what your value proposition is and you give it a lot of information and you invest time in training.

You should think about it as an extension of your team. You also wouldn't hire an SDR and be like, you know, hey, you just walked into the office. Go create an opportunity with Ikea. You would give them a lot of context and then you would give them a lot of feedback. And so as long as you're doing that, it can be a great tool for you. But, you know, where I see people going wrong is they just get lazy. And I think not just in sales, but in every aspect of the way that people are using AI in the world, one of the effects it's having right now is it's just creating a much higher volume of like very mediocre quality stuff. And in enterprise sales, we can't really afford to do that. So I think that as long as you're like really hooting in on like fewer better and you're and you're using it to cut down on things that it is easier for it to do than you to do, then it's a great tool.

But it's not going to really replace any part of what we are doing as enterprise salespeople for some time. Yeah. Yeah. I think enterprise is the one that still has a ways to go. I think SMB is in trouble. Like SMB sales reps are in trouble. I just I just went through a process that I had to get the guy on the phone, even if I didn't want this. But I do. You know, it's, you know, this Instagram thing, but it was flawless. I went, you know, they pinged me. Obviously, algorithm on Instagram knows me. Pinged me was something I was like, oh, that was interesting. Right. It was a guy and it was a guy explaining what they did from a, you know, how to do this or whatever. I was like, let me go take a look at it.

Went to their website. It said, do it for me. I clicked on that link of a form filled out. There was like an exclusivity. We only you have to apply for us to even work with you. So it played off of exclusivity and scarcity and all this other stuff. Cool. I've been checking. Yeah. And I'm literally walking. It happened to me. I'm like, oh, my God, this is incredible. Right. And then I signed up for this thing. And, you know, I put my I put all my information and it pinged you. Hey, you passed the test. Like, so I felt good about it. Got my little endorphin rush. Gave me the calendar. We've linked it. Scheduled the time on mine. As soon as I did that, a video popped up. Said, thank you so much from the guy I was meeting with.

Said, hey, we're going to have a great. Here's some social proof, social proof, social proof. By the way, you've got to show up on that meeting because we only accept 25 a month. If you don't show up, we kick you out of the queue and you can't come back. So it was like, oh, my God. And it was a flawless experience. Yeah. And in my head for this service, I had a budget range or not a budget range, just my gut of how much I would be willing to kind of spend for something like this. And it was in 15, $20,000 range. And I sat there and I was after I went through that process, I'm like, I just got almost way to the purchase, all the way to the purchase, like all the SDR function, basically, without talking to a human for a product that I was, I'm willing to spend $20,000 on.

And so it's like the human component here is getting squeezed the value of what we bring to the table, which is why we have to, in my opinion, stop selling people and just start solving problems. And unfortunately, solving problems, sometimes you don't have the solution to their problem, at least the root cause of it. But I would say the other thing there is like, that is just getting you to the meeting, that you're a single decision maker, right? Like our job as enterprise salespeople is change management and cat curting, which I think is a really like, is going to be just the complexity of the level of decision making that's involved. You know, one of the hardest problems in like robotics is like pick up this teacup and put it down on the edge of the table, which is something that's really easy for us to do because we automatically know like how much we expect that teacup to weigh and like how to balance it and like where to put it on the edge of the table so it doesn't fall.

And, you know, like we do these sorts of processes all the time and we don't understand how many micro decisions are involved in that. And like the number of micro decisions that are involved in like how to approach a question that we deal with in enterprise sales all the time, which is like, you know, we had this meeting two weeks ago. There were seven people there. We knew three of them. These were the other four. Now they won't get back to us. What do we do? It's like the variables. And, you know, maybe this is something where it's like when quantum computing becomes a real thing and it can crack all of our Coinbase passwords, it's going to be able to run through all of those scenarios in real time and then probably the better answer than you or I can.

And at that point, we're just going to have to reconsider everything. At that point, we're all done, quite frankly. At that point, we're all done. We should all just go farm vegetables or whatever. I mean, EQ is everything over IQ at this point because IQ is over in my opinion and at least in my experience. And so that's where I think we do, you know, you do need. My biggest fear isn't the buyer side. I'm sorry, isn't the seller side. You know, a lot of people talk all these sales tools and all this AI and whatever. I'm not as concerned with that as I used to be. I'm far more concerned with the buyers figuring out AI because, I mean, right? Because think about it, you know, and I've said this before where, you know, there was an acceptance for years of the inexperienced.

So there's always junior reps, right? All that other stuff. And, you know, as buyers, you know, we get a pro, okay, this kid doesn't really know what they're talking about. I have to go through the process because they're growing, you know, they're like, okay, now I get to talk to some, now that's over because I can go into chat GPT. I tell any rep who thinks they're, that's always not that big of a deal, like go into chat GPT and pretend like you're a potential customer. You know, for me, I'd be like, Hey, I'm John, I'm a VP of sales of a 50 person sales team. I got 20 SDRs at 38 E's. I'm looking at prospecting training, the JB sales. Tell me what I need to know about the JB sales prospecting training, pros, cons, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Okay. Tell me how this maps up against the G2s, the top three other vendors, and what are the pros and cons in this? And do me assessment on this. And when you realize in a, in a five minute conversation with chat GPT, you get more value out of some dipshit kid. That's going to ask fucking bank questions and then tell you, answer anything for you. And then tell them that they don't have any competitors. Right. Don't have any competitors. And then we have to wait a week to talk to my AE, who actually is the one who knows what they're talking about, who really isn't. And then they're going to have to wait another week for an SE who's actually the person that can answer their questions. But like, when, when the buyer starts to wake up to the power that they really have now, like, I, that's what scares me.

That's what I'm like, okay, then the sales rep, because now I'm, I'm coming in, people say already 60 to 70% of the way through the sales process. It's like, well, now it could be like 90 to a hundred percent for crying out loud. And not even because it's an inbound anymore. Now, oh, Monica, you just called me. That's kind of interesting. Let's have this conversation in the background. Oh, I'm going to go to your website. Now it's going to be like, you're back channeling, like in real time. Yeah. So, oh, I get an email from Monica. That actually kind of sounds interesting. Or chat GPT. Is this something I should be paying attention to based on my own LLM and what I need in my business and those types of things?

Yes, John. No, John. Cool. What should I need to know about this? Like, okay, thanks for the email, Monica, because you just kind of piqued some interest for me. But now I can go through the process myself. So that's the fear right now for me is when that wakes up. I think that's the thing that also like makes, we were talking about sales methodologies before, makes a lot of that so irrelevant is it assumes like this really like controlling idea of like managing the buying cycle and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I think that for multiple reasons, we should just pretty much start assuming now that like, it's like two, it's like two adults entering a relationship. You know, it's like your buyers are independent, smart people.

They're leading their own lives. They have their own goals, their own ideas about things. You are meeting them at like some point in their journey. And the whole idea is just to kind of gauge where they're at, meet them where they're at if you can. And if not, let it go and like find the next one. You cannot, you've never been able to make anyone do anything, but you're really not going to be able to do that now before we even start to get into the generational component of like, you know, it used to be millennials, um, um, people that are, people that are my age selling to like Gen Z and boomers. And we had such an advantage. Like we were so much more nimble. We knew how to use the internet, all of that stuff.

But now it's like, um, millennials and Gen Z selling to millennials and increasingly Gen Z like they're, you know, some of them are like 30 now, like they're, you know, they can, they're at least influencers in a lot of deals and they're, they're buying habits are very different. Vastly different. Yeah. They're my Gen X, uh, mentality is, uh, is, is struggling these days with, with figuring it out. So, um, all right, let's end on this. You talk a lot about beliefs and how, before you fix anything, you got to kind of do some inner work here on the belief system. Um, what, what are, give me some examples of how, A, what beliefs do you need to change in order to really make a fundamental difference?

And give me, you know, maybe an example or two of, of where you help somebody change their belief system that, that had a direct impact on what they were doing. Yeah. Um, that is a great question. A company that I worked with recently, they were again, like, you know, had been really successful, had gotten past 5 million AR, um, without a sales team really like had a couple of people, but they weren't really performing. And, like, the CEO had this, like, avoidant relationship with sales. Like, he loved, he loved customers. He loved talking to customers. Um, and he was, he was really good at, like, getting into, like, really deep conversations with them. But it was almost like he felt like it would be better if he got out of the way as soon as possible and kind of, like, got other people in there to, like, take that over that could, like, do a better job than him, right?

And I'm like, okay, fair. I get it. You don't have any sales experience. Love the self-awareness. Um, you know, love the, love, love the humbleness. Love the commitment to, like, what needs to happen for your company to grow to the next level, get to 10 million and 12 million and all of that. But I would always tell him, like, you're doing a much better job than you think you are. Like, your QBRs are really good. Like, your calls are really good. Like, that's, like, there's actually, I don't really have a lot of coaching for you in this area. Like, you're actually naturally really good at this. And as I continued to work with them, I, I kind of started to see that it was like that same mentality that was extending to sort of the way that he approached, like, the entire team.

And I think that it's probably, like, I don't know if you've ever heard of, like, A. Hendrix, the upper limit theory, which is where, like, really great, uh, formative concept. Um, basically the idea is that, like, we all have a set amount of, like, what we think we should have in all areas of our life. How much success, how much love, how much happiness, how healthy we should feel, how happy we should be, like, whatever it is. And when you hit the upper limit of, like, whatever your comfortable range is, you start to do subliminal things to, like, bring yourself back down because your body is, your brain is not designed to be happy. Your brain is designed to be comfortable because that's where you feel safe.

So if it's going out of the safe range, it doesn't know if it's, like, bad unsafe or good unsafe. It doesn't have a concept to that. Um, so I think that subconsciously, probably that's kind of what he was doing is he's like, I, this is getting bigger than I was really ready for. And so I'm just going to, like, kind of retreat back over here. And so we, we went through the whole, you know, built the sales team, like, they're bringing in the leader, all of this stuff. And, and then I was like, I think that you really need to, like, spend a lot more time with your executive team. Like, it kind of got to this point where they're like, well, what should we do now? Like, what should we work on? And I'm like, honestly, you guys have all the foundational elements that you need in place.

But the danger that I see is, like, when I go and talk to all of your executives, they all tell me something different about where you guys are going in the market and, you know, what your opportunities are right now and, like, what the vision for the product should be. And I know that you think that you have a vision that you're communicating to people, but that leaves, like, as soon as the Zoom ends. And I have real concern about your ability to execute if you guys aren't all rowing in the same direction. And that was kind of like the last thing that we worked on together. And it was so satisfying because it had nothing to do with sales, but it was like that last little piece that they didn't nail that.

None of the sales, none of the multi-threading trainings and shit that I'm doing, like, is going to make any difference if people aren't actually able to execute at the top. And they took some steps and, like, they're, they're on that path now. And I think that's really why I do this work is, like, you know, like, John, I'll work with a company for, like, almost a year and I'm going through, like, their entire customer journey and I'm doing all the sales stuff. But in my mind, I'm, I'm really, like, looking at the founder and I'm like, how do I get in to, like, your head? And, like, what needs to happen there in order for you guys to really, really want to play? And that, like, unlocking that is, like, the most fun part.

It's different for everybody. I love that. There's a, as you bring that up, there's a really cool thing I saw of, like, I think it was a, it was a teacher at a university or whatever. And have you seen the, the experiment they do with fleas? No. So, you should look this up because it fits right into what you're talking about as far as the ceiling. Apparently, a flea, like, a little tiny flea that you find at dogs and stuff like that, they can jump, like, up to six feet. Like, they, they literally, like, that little tiny flea can jump six feet tall, right? Massive. So, yeah. So, you let, you know, you let fleas go and they'll jump as high in six feet, right? But then if you put a, you put them in a jar and you put a cap on the jar and they try to jump, they bump into the cap, right?

So, they bump it into the cap, they bump it into the cap. Once you, after, I don't know how long they do it, but when, when you take the cap off, the flea will only jump to the height of the cap. As high as the cap. So, because they've now, in their head, they're like, that's as high as I can go. That's as high as I can go. I don't want to, I want to keep mashing my head up against the top of this thing. So, I'm only going to go right here now. Even though they still can, now they're open in the, now, like, it goes six feet again if they wanted to. When released from that, they're going to keep hitting that, that ceiling. So, yeah. And it's a really interesting metaphor, if you will, for this type of scenario.

It's like you reach a certain level and it's interesting you bring it up because I found myself, look, I'm, I'm pretty damn happy in the sense that my lifestyle is pretty cool. Like, would I like to make a shitload more money? Absolutely. Would I like to have extra house here and be able to do so much more for charity? Absolutely. But at the end of the day, most of my needs are met. My family's happy. My, you know, I'm doing all right. And so, I find myself doing, like, doing limiting, like, limiting myself, almost self-destructive things to keep me away from the hard work I know it would take to go from 2 million to 10 million. You know what I mean? And, and it's, and I, and I'm conscious of it.

I look at it. I'm like, I'm avoiding something. I'm not, I don't have a scratch. Like, I haven't reset my goals a little while. I haven't done this because I'm busy work. I'm, I'm keeping it all. I got so much stuff to do. And, and I know if I just flushed all that out and got hardcore with my goals and set that down and said, 10 million, this is where I want to be. And all, how do I get there? Boom, boom, boom. I could do it. But for some reason I've, I've kind of reached that level for me personally. Right. And I think everybody's different. You know, at first, usually there's that a hundred thousand dollar mark, right? It's like, oh, I made six figures. Fucking great. Right. That for me was like, all right, next.

Okay. You're like, okay, I got that next. But a lot of people like, fuck it. I hit a hundred grand, man. Like that's, that's living like, there it is. And so they don't stress themselves very further. And I, and getting rid of those self-destructive tendencies. Once you get to a level of comfort is a really interesting mind game to, to play with yourself. Quite frankly, it really is. And it's like, it's so interesting because it literally never ends. Like you, you get over that stuff to get to a hundred K or to get to whatever the level is. And then like, you don't have to be in constant progress mode all the time. Like it's fine. You can chill for a while, but then, you know, you start to see these things and they start coming back, like start noticing, like, it sounds like you are now.

And you're like, hmm, I'm seeing some edges there. And then you can decide, like, do I want to attack that now? Or, you know, maybe do I want to just ignore it for a little while longer? But I think, you know, when you're talking about it in your business, when you're growing a company versus in your personal life, the time horizon becomes, the time horizon should be as important to you personally as it is if it's for your team. But, you know, it's usually easier for us to be accountable to other people than it is for us to be accountable to ourselves. Accountability is my number one weakness. Number one weakness by far. I don't like holding other people accountable. And I've justified in my head that I'm good enough, that type of thing.

And so holding myself accountable is kind of like, I know I could do that. That's a limiting belief. Right? Exactly. Like, it's like, I know I could, but I just don't want to, you know, at this point. Or, yeah, I know I should do that, but I got other stuff to do. So I can, in my head, I've been able to justify almost every decision I've made in that. But it's, you know, you need, I think that's why people have, you know, personal trainers. They have coaches. They have all these things to force the accountability. And, you know, my challenge has always been on therapy and all that other stuff is, you know, my joke on coaches and therapists and all this other stuff is because I'm a coach and I'm relatively in tune from an EQ standpoint.

I think I have a sense of energy and all that other stuff. Every time I talk to a coach or a therapist, within 10 minutes, I'm like, I could be your coach. I, you know, I could be your therapist. You're like, you're more fucked up than me. Okay. So, so that's my, that's always, and it's an ego thing. There's no question about it. Yeah. You just need to find, I had a trainer, um, one time and she was like, she was like a, you know, 15 year old, like metal winning gymnast from Bulgaria. Like she was amazing. And I remember one time she told me that she had a trainer when she worked out and I was like, Irina, you, why? Like you're amazing. She, she just looked at me and she was like, Monica. Like we're not meant to handle all our own shit in this life, you know?

And like, she's so right. And I just, I, I carry that with me. Cause like a lot of the stuff that I work on with people and probably you too, it's not like we're geniuses. Like, you know, I don't know. It's not like everything I'm saying is something that people don't know on their own, but like you can outsource your brain to somebody else. I'm like, just let them think about that. Totally. Yeah. And that, and that actually to end on that, um, that's also the thing I worry about with founders, right? They outsource stuff because they don't want to deal with it, but they haven't, they don't have an appreciation for it. So it's a set it and forget it. Accountability is the issue. It's like, Oh, I hired somebody for that.

So now I don't have to pay attention to it. It's like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. You still owed all the outcomes. Yeah. You, you are still responsible for the outcome. So my, I've done it. My wife has done it where we've been like, Oh, thank God. Finally, you can deal with that. Now I get to go do this. And then inevitably months later, come back in, there's a fucking rat's nest and it's like, things are falling apart. It's like, what the fuck? I thought you were actually competent in your goddamn job. And then it's like, Oh, apparently not. I guess I should have been paying attention. And that is all on me. That's all on the leader because a hundred percent there's no chance. There's no, under no circumstances, should you outsource something 100% to somebody else until they have come on board, proven their work, you know, done all that stuff and are consistent with it.

And then it's really just checking in. But if you just assume, Oh, sales, I'm going to hire a VP of sales. Now I don't have to deal with it. Oh, operations. I'm going to hire an ops person. I don't have to deal with that anymore. As a founder, that's the worst way you can go. Well, cause they're going to do it the way that they do. And you're expecting them to do it just like you, which they have no concept of and they don't. So awesome. Monica has been a great conversation. Where can people find out more about what you're doing and where do you want to send them and anything else you want to add here? This was so fun. Thank you so much for having me on. I feel like you could keep talking for another.

Oh yeah, absolutely. Um, you can find me on LinkedIn, um, LinkedIn forward slash Monica Stewart. It's in the show notes. Um, if you guys want to chat about what's going on in your business, um, I dropped a link in the show notes for, um, for all of you listening to this right now. Um, you can book a strategy call with me. We can talk about what's going on with sales in your company right now. If that's something you feel like you want to get into at this time. And otherwise I post on LinkedIn every day, um, and continue talking about a lot of the stuff we've been talking about today. I love it. Awesome, Monica. Well, thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. This was so fun.

Likewise. And everybody hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. And like I said, at the end of all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today. Cause no matter how bad your day is going or how bad you think it went, if you make somebody smile today, 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.

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