Transcript 0:00 Daniel, happy birthday, man Happy birthday, dude. I appreciate you always calling me on my birthday and texting me on my birthday, all the gifts. You're a great gift giver. 0:09 Anyone who doesn't know Troy Monson, you kn- you gotta know about him. He's a gift giver. It's his love language. Love language. 0:15 It's, my love language is receiving gifts, so every day on my birthday, which is every time we meet, he gives me a, a gift, so it's nice. [laughs] Yeah. Yeah. Happy birthday, man. 0:23 I hope you enjoy that gift, and, um, all that to say is- I do... right now I do not stand. I don't have a standing desk. It's in storage. I will say when I do put the standing part on, I feel more productive. 0:36 I feel like I get more done. Yeah. But I don't know if I'm weak, I don't know what it is. I get really- Troy, you're weak... exhausted and tired of standing. Yeah. I must be super weak. Probably, yeah. 0:45 You're probably just weak. Yeah. Yeah. You're probably just weak. I mean, uh, it, it happens to the best of us. I know a lot of weak people. 0:51 It doesn't really mean anything about how they are as fathers or husbands, but being weak is just, it's a way of life. And those pe- those weak people don't know what- Not for me. Not for me. 1:01 For, for weak people, but not, not for me. For weak people. That's it. [laughs] But, but I know it's not for you 'cause you're really strong and really- [laughs]... masculine and strong- [laughs]... and manly. 1:12 Oh, goodness. And so, so- Dude, I'm so weak... all that to say, [laughs] what do you, what do you think about, what do you think about weak people since you are so strong and, again, manly? 1:23 Let's talk about strength for a second. So let's just- Do it... caveat this. I just ran a half marathon in two hours and 59 minutes and eight seconds, so I'm like the weakest, like weakest person, okay? 1:36 There are people running full marathons 45 minutes faster [laughs] than I ran my half marathon. So let's just get that out of the way. 1:43 I started the health kick seven months ago, and so I'm trying not to be weak, but I'm still as weak as they come. 1:49 But strength, I think it's funny, we're redefining as a society what strength actually means, particularly, you know, the whole toxic masculinity conversation. 2:00 I don't think the same idea of what our parents and their parents thought of as strong is what people right now think of as strong. 2:09 I mean, even physical strength, you think of people who are running really, really fast marathons, and you look at them and you're like, "Whoa, that..." 2:17 I mean, they're usually very skinny, obviously look like runners, most cases, but they don't look like a strong man. They don't look like Mr. Olympia, you know, bodybuilder champion. 2:27 And I feel like that's the idea of what strength used to be. Anyways, what do I think about strength? I could go on in a lot of different ways and a lot of different tangents. 2:35 That's a, that's a good point, and in a similar vein, strength is also getting stronger, if you know what I mean. Like nowadays you have 14-year-olds putting up like three plates on a bench press, which is absurd. 2:48 It's crazy. And like back in the day, two plates was like, "Holy cow." So it is weird, but yeah, there's, there's so many different forms- Oh... of strength, so. The NFL's talking about it. 2:57 I mean, with all the different new helmets being released and all the different concussions that are happening and all the different sciences behind- Yeah... 3:05 just what should we actually be thinking about these players that are getting permanent brain injuries. When the NFL started, there were no pads and then very low quality pads. Yeah. 3:16 And so the way people were hitting other people was different, but also the size of the humans was on a different playing field. Like, people were not 400 pounds when the NFL started, of just pure thick linemen. 3:32 The, tho- those types of people didn't exist. [laughs] Like we have- Yeah... 3:35 we have bred NFL players in the last several decades to be a completely different type of human being at a level of strength and tenacity that just didn't exist 50 years ago, 60 years ago. It's insane. Yeah. 3:50 The evolution is crazy. Speaking of NFL and concussions and things like that, do you think Tua should have hung his hat, or what are your thoughts though? 4:00 I tell you, every time I see a video of Tua getting rocked and having your concussion reactions, it's bad, and I feel for him because he's, he's young, and he's young as a, as a person, he's young in his career, and he has incredible potential, and he's an incredible athlete. 4:18 So on the one hand, you look at your whole life ahead of you, you're like, "Man, I just started. I worked so hard to get here." 4:24 But on the other hand, people are coming out of concussions and, and traumatic brain injuries decades after the fact, experiencing headaches still, having different learning malfunctions or disabilities even from those concussions earlier in their lives, and I would just hate for him to keep going the way he's going and then 20, 30 years from now there's these permanent effects on his brain or functionality. 4:48 I don't know. Yeah. I don't know what I would do in his shoes. Yeah. I'm so removed from that world, but, uh, it, it sucks, man. Yeah. And I think that you are too strong to become an NFL player. 4:57 That's why you decided not to, but I- They tried to draft me. Yep. First round pick. I, I think- But I said, "You know, I've been asked by the NBA and the MLB to, to date, and the money's just not there. 5:08 I, I'd rather build, uh, B2B tech startups." Yeah. Most people would rather do that, and the money's so much better when you're selling tech versus going into the N- MLB, NFL. That's right. There's so much money. 5:19 I mean, straight out of college, there is nothing I'd rather do than go into tech sales. I think the money is there. It's guaranteed. Whereas in the NFL, you're only guaranteed, what, one, two million minimum? Yeah. 5:31 I just don't think it's... Yeah. I'd rather, I'd rather go into B2B tech sales 10 times out of 10. Speaking of B2B tech sales, what do you think is gonna be the first go-to-market function to be removed by AI? 5:45 That's a good question. I think the, the hot topic is that SDRs will be the first ones removed from go-to-market, and here's why it's a hot topic. If you've ever met a great SDR... 5:58 And, and let me, let me define what I mean by SDR.There are junior SDRs that have no experience that train and get sales enablement on the job. They're going into sales, they've never been in sales. 6:11 They're SDRs because that's the first stepping stone in many different sales organizations. 6:15 But there are really, really good SDRs who chose to be an SDR, who stayed in that role, and they're senior SDR, and they're SDR leaders, and they're SDR directors. Those... I've, I've gotten cold called. 6:29 I've bought products from a cold call before. I know that's like, whoa, y- y- you know, you actually answered a cold call and you had a conversation. Yes. Someone cold called me. 6:38 In one of my prior roles, I was a director of marketing growth, and they called me at just the right time while we were looking for an outsourced, kinda offshore marketing agency that did a very specific thing with Amazon FBA shop creation and marketing optimization on those funnels. 6:57 Called me with the best pitch, because I was just putting stuff on Upwork, and I was like, "Oh, whatever, let me just start here." And I did some interviews in house. 7:06 They're, "Hey, we saw your post on Upwork, figured we'd just give you a call, go behind the scene." They, they had this amazing pitch. 7:11 It threw me off because everyone on Upwork, you get, like, a billion different job posts. 7:16 And anyways, uh, I was like, "You know, this is a really bad time, but no one else has called me and I have about 100 emails from Upwork in my inbox, so let's put something on the calendar. I'd love to hear your pitch." 7:27 And they sold me. They- I think actually the company I hired them with is still working with that team now six years later. And so- Mm-hmm... 7:35 really, really quality cold call that turned into a really longterm relationship. So will SDRs be replaced? 7:42 Yes, SDRs will be replaced by AI, but the good ones will still win, and I, I think the chasm between the good SDRs and the ones that are just kinda scraping by, I think that will show very quickly. 7:57 I agree with that, but one thing that you said was this is a hot topic and a hot conversation of are they gonna be the first to be replaced, or they will be the- Yeah... first to be replaced. 8:07 Do you agree with them being the first ones to be replaced versus any other go-to-market role? And I... There's a reason why I'm asking it this way. Yeah. It's interesting. 8:16 I think actually there are some really fascinating roles that AI can replicate really well that have to do with data and paid acquisition. 8:29 So in a former life, my whole role was paid acquisition and paid growth marketing. It's money pushing. It's optimization. It's AB testing over and over and over again. It's reiteration. 8:40 It's the type of stuff that robots can do all at once, like, in an instant, that humans have to keep measuring and researching and optimizing. So I think that will SDRs... Is it the most likely? 8:53 I think it's the most likely because it's the most understood role, being that the most organizations have SDRs of all the roles I can think of that would probably be replaced by AI. 9:02 But I think there are better roles actually to lean into AI for. Mm. I agree with that. I actually- What about you? Yeah... worked at a... Yeah. I worked at a company that literally did that. It was... 9:12 It's called Metadata, and essentially they just push paid ads out and they look at your spend, and they see which campaigns are doing the best, and AI moves the money around for you so you don't have to measure each campaign. 9:22 Pretty much exactly what you're saying. Yeah. But similar to your take, I also think that there is a role that could be easily replaced and well done by AI, and that's sales enablement. I think that you- Yes... 9:36 can read data on deals and things like that, and truly understand what data, why deals are being lost, and automatically replicate your sales process, whatever that is, and train a robot. 9:47 Of course, it takes time to train them and things like that, but when I go throughout my sales career and I think of the sales enablement people that have hosted trainings for me and things like that, it's all based off of just running reports in Excel and really, like, trying to figure out why are we losing deals. 10:01 Like, data nowadays, like you mentioned, data can easily tell you, "This is why you're losing deals. This is what this rep needs to be trained on. This is why this girl's losing deals. 10:09 That's what she needs to be trained on." And then I think that you can just train that person without ever having a human there. But I could be wrong. I agree with you, though. 10:16 Because it's the most understood, or at least the most talked about, they will probably be the first to be replaced, but as you mentioned, the great SDRs will always have a place to go, and they will always make decent money as an SDR, too. 10:29 Yeah. I think the good SDRs are less and less common, because people want to talk to people less and less often. I mean, you, you don't- Yeah... 10:41 want to go sit down with someone in a coffee shop and have a drink and talk about life without an agenda. Which I think is one of the cool things about this podcast, we don't have an agenda. 10:53 We're two dads talking, and it's so uncommon. I mean, every... Like, 99% of the calls I have are purpose-driven. There's, like, uh, something I'm trying to get out of this call. Yeah. 11:05 As much as I try to be likable, and the law of reciprocity, and how people buy from people they like, and I build real relationships, and obviously I do have real relationships, but when it comes to, like, virtual calls, very seldom am I just having a coffee chat, like, an, an actual coffee chat, even though we all call these things coffee chats. 11:25 Like, okay, everyone here has a motive. What is it? Let's unveil that. And I, I, I think we're gonna see SDRs shine in that future. Yeah. 11:34 I told my wife the one thing I love about recording this podcast, it's an hour out of my day where I don't have to necessarily talk about work or build work relationships- Mm-hmm... or I can completely detach from Demo. 11:44 And of course sometimes we talk about Demo- Yeah... on this podcast, but it's great that I can just- Yeah... remove myself from the daily stuff that I do and just talk, like you said, an actual coffee chat. 11:54 Yes, an actual coffee chat. What do you think about actually meeting up with people in real life to have coffee chats? I just met with my dad and my brother yesterday morning, 6:00 AM, Starbucks, coffee chat. 12:08 No motive, no ulterior things. We're tr- justHey, Dad. Hey, bro. Let's, let's get some coffee. It was awesome. Yeah. It was incredible. We all live in the same city right now. We haven't in probably 15 years. 12:19 Who knows how long we will, ideally permanently, but you know, things happen, people's lives change. So we're like, "Let's, let's make the most of this. Let's meet up for coffee." 12:28 What do you think about actually doing that, and how people are approaching doing that in this very different world we live in in 2024? Yeah. So I think they, like you said, they're awesome. 12:41 I think we are so far removed from the convenience of being able to talk to somebody that you want to talk to over the phone, over text, whatever it is, to the point where it almost feels unnecessary to go get coffee with another human being. 12:53 It's, it's great to do it. So my wife and I, every single Friday, we either get lunch or we get coffee. That's our thing. Love it. 12:58 So we both work from home, and we just gotta get out and detach from work and just chat and hang out. 13:03 But I say that because when I moved to Raleigh, this is, was at a point where I knew I wanted to build something, I knew I wanted to go off on my own, so it was really important for me to meet up with people for literal coffee. 13:14 Now, a lot of those conversations revolved around work, but things like meeting the founder from Pendo, and he went off to go- Yeah... build his own thing. 13:20 But, like, we met for coffee probably 15 times, and we just talked kind of like aspirations, dreams, goals. He was building something new, I was building something new, and we just shared ideas and things like that. 13:32 Now, I don't have family around me to just be like, "Hey Mom, do you wanna go get coffee?" I do have in-laws, which they're badass. Yeah. I, I love my in-laws. They're amazing. 13:41 But that inspires me to be like, "Hey Todd," which is my father. I'm like, "Hey, Todd, you wanna go grab a coffee?" My father-in-law's name is Todd. I swear to God. [laughs] Look at that. [laughs] Oh, I love it. 13:50 That's so cool. Honestly- All right... I think every, every, um, father-in-law's- [laughs]... name is Todd. I think so. I was gonna say, it's the most father-in-law name I can think about, is Todd. That's so funny. 14:01 Oh, God. What, what's your mother-in-law's name? Cheryl. Also the most- Mm... mother-in-law name I can think of. Is yours not Cheryl? Yeah. That, that would be- No, not Cheryl, but it, it's, it's Polly. 14:09 Unreal if it was Cheryl. I don't think Polly's in... Yeah, not Cheryl. No. That's, that's a good name though. That's a good name though. Yeah. Yeah. But, um, but yeah, I think in-person coffee chats, they're awesome. 14:19 Yeah. But I will say, 14:21 uh, maybe it's this point in my life right now, I will say when I go to get coffee or when I go to get lunch or get dinner, and I've even told my wife this and I wish I could remove myself from it, I still at some points of that chat thinking about work and what I could be doing with Demo- Yeah... 14:35 and, and things like... Like, just thinking about other things. Yeah. I have a really bad time removing myself from those thoughts and just being extremely present and intentional, and I'm trying to work on that. 14:44 But yeah, that's- Yeah... that's what I think about. I think they're amazing. I, I need to do it more with family and less with business relationships. Yeah. I, I have the same problem. 14:54 I have the same problem unfortunately even with my family, like my own immediate family. 14:58 We have a tri-level house where there's like a half staircase and some rooms, and then half staircase and the rest, and I work in the middle. 15:05 That's where my office is, and so there's rooms above me and there's rooms below me, and so there's just more or less chaos at any point in the day, and I just expect it and it is what it is. 15:15 But after I'm done with work, all I do is walk down a few steps and there's the kitchen, and dinner's usually close to ready, if not, like, waiting for me, which is awesome. I have an amazing wife. 15:24 She's an incredible cook. I'm very grateful for that. But I find it very difficult to go from I was just on a, you know, six-figure call 15:35 five seconds ago, and now I have two small children and my wife eating dinner at this ta- Like, it's, it's almost, like, surreal. I'm like... 15:43 I, I'm trying even to think through a way I can in my life create a commute or even if it's just five minutes after I'm done working and before I leave my office. It, it's so funny. 15:56 You'd need to put me at gunpoint to commute to work at this stage of my life. I hate commuting. I hate the idea of it. But not commuting actually [laughs] has some downsides. 16:05 Like, I'm still at work mentally for a long period of time after I'm done working for the day. So yeah, it's a battle. Yeah. It's a battle. Hey, shifting gears. Do you know what Comsor is? Very familiar with Comsor. 16:17 Are you familiar with the company? Very familiar. What do you know about Comsor? I know a lot. So Mac and I, the founder of Comsor, we, we go back quite some ways, for years now. Um, so I know a lot. 16:30 I, I know almost everything. [laughs] I love that. I love that. I have a hoodie from Comsor with a little dinosaur, and I also have a hoodie from Demo with a similar [laughs] little dinosaur. Mm. 16:43 And so I was at breakfast with my wife and kids this morning. We also try to do breakfast once a week before work, usually on Fridays, but sometimes it's a different day. 16:51 And I was telling her, yeah, so, you know, this, that, and the other about Comsor, uh, talking with the founder there, trying out some of their platform. 16:58 And then also Troy, and I mentioned you from Demo, and obviously she knows about the podcast, and she's like, "Okay, do they both use dinosaurs for their emoji? 17:09 Because I'm getting confused about which sweatshirt I've been wearing." 17:13 She's been wearing the Comsor sweatshirt, but I think it's so funny, and what I wanted to ask you about is what do you think about branding your company with an emoji that is yours to own? A lot of companies do this. 17:26 A lot of companies do it well, a lot of companies do it poorly. But what are your thoughts on tying your brand and position to an emoji? 17:34 For starters, there's been a lot of confusion about Comsor and Demo, 'cause we both use a dinosaur. 17:40 And when you say emoji, do you specifically mean, like, an iPhone emoji, or do you mean something that you can take and almost use as an emoji, like a cartoon or something? 17:50 Yeah, the latter, so it doesn't necessarily- Okay. Okay... need to be a specific emoji. 'Cause I know, like, the, the Demo dinosaur itself, the character is not an emoji, so I get that. Yeah. Okay. So yeah. Got it. 18:00 Characterization in, in, in reality. Yep. Um, time and place, and I ask that 'cause Trumpet does really well, and they actually do have an e- an emoji. 18:08 But I think that there's a time and place, and I think it all depends on what your target is, like what your target market is and your ICP and stuff.Marketers and salespeople eat up our dinosaur emoji. 18:20 They eat up our dinosaur swag. Like, they eat it up, right? They love it. They think it's cute. It stands out. I actually just got a message yesterday saying, "Who thought of this logo?" I... 18:32 So it's a long story behind, not even a long story, but essentially I, I randomly thought of it one day, but my, my buddy made the emo- or the, um, now I'm calling it an emoji. It's a logo. But- Yeah, a logo, yeah... 18:40 my buddy made the logo. Um, for us, it has stood out. We're a team of four people, and at this point, eyeballs is, is, for us, it's everything. So what's the easiest way to do that? Just blast the dinosaur. 18:53 And that's why when we launched the AI thing and I was like, "Let's create an AI pink dinosaur," and just have, I think we had like 25 people post about it and, and none of them were like LinkedIn influencers. 19:03 I think JC was like the only one that was considered a LinkedIn influencer that posted about it. But the idea for me is how do you get people to correlate a pink dinosaur to Demo? 19:13 And then anytime they see a pink dinosaur, they're like, "Oh, Demo." So if I'm gonna go out and sell financial advising services, I'm probably not going to have a dinosaur, a pink dinosaur more so. But 19:27 I mean, times are changing, you know? Gen Z stepping into the workplace, so people are a little bit more accepting of branding and things like that. But I think in the beginning- Yeah... it helps. 19:35 Of course, Beehive with the bee, that's another one. So- Yeah. Oh, yep... I think it helps a lot in the beginning. Yep. Yeah. 19:40 We've had a lot of success at Beehive with the bee, and I think early days, I don't know that we would have imagined how big the bee emoji would have become in, in, in respect to our brand. 19:56 Just the people who use Beehive know us by the bee. 19:59 It's almost like a, a meme on Twitter and LinkedIn when someone posts about anything newsletters, there's gonna be like 10 or 15 employees with bees connected to their name showing up, answering questions. 20:08 And so there's a time and place. I, I agree. Uh, I don't think financial services needs it necessarily, but for sure. For sure. Yeah. We're... So Daniel, we're about to move into 2025. I know that- Yeah... 20:20 seven months ago you got all into this whole fitness thing. But is there something- Yeah... that you're looking to accomplish or, or do, or a goal that you wanna reach in 2025? Yes. There's a few. There's a few. I just, 20:32 I mentioned this earlier, I just ran my first half marathon. The goal was to finish, so I was running 13 and a half minute pace. I mean, the slowest runner on the planet. I finished. I'm proud of myself. 20:44 In 2025, the goal is to actually set some PRs, and so there's a couple races locked in. There's a Charleston Bridge Run. It's like the biggest 10K in the world. 20:53 There's like 55,000 people that come to Charleston for that. That's in April, 10K. I'll go for a PR, but really just there to have fun. 20:59 But then there's a half I deferred in November of this year to November of next year. 21:04 I would love to get a few half marathons between now and then so that that November half, which is flat, it's familiar, it's in my home city. I've run the, the course, you know, millions of times. 21:17 I would love to just crush that and see an improvement of, like I said, two hours and 59 minutes for a half marathon is terrible. I mean, it's terrible, but I did it. 21:26 To get down to like 2:15, 2:30 in the next 10 months, I actually think that's within my physical capabilities. But it's gonna take a lot. I would also like to do a full marathon. I did the lottery for Chicago. 21:39 I was not accepted. So now I'm trying to wrestle with, okay, do I run a different marathon? I don't know. But yeah, I, I would say a lot of running goals. A lot of running goals. 21:47 The, the second goal I would say is this podcast. I think this is exciting. I think there's a lot we can do with this podcast. Troy and I have a lot of hopes and dreams for it. 21:56 It started as just a, a random idea, really random and very half thought. [laughs] I literally texted Troy, "Yo, you wanna start a podcast?" He said, yes. No context, no conversation. He just committed. It was done. 22:10 Done deal. It was, it was gonna happen. But now we're like, wait, actually there's like a business model here. There's companies who want to be part of this, who want their brand to be part of our talk track. 22:20 There's po- poss- possible websites we can build. There's different partnerships that we can really create with this, and so I'm excited just 2025 to bring a, a lot of different really cool opportunities. Yeah. 22:31 What about you? I love that. And I, I think that you will, you'll hit that 2:15 pace. At this moment feels unreal. Like I don't know that- But-... 2:15, but I, I think I can get there. 22:43 I just gotta run a little bit further and a little bit faster every single week, and then I'll get there. Yep. Are you training? And we'll get to the goals. 22:50 Are you doing some days are long runs and slow, other days are like two miles but fast? Call it, I don't know what fast is. It's all subjective, right. But- Yep... 22:58 are you doing it like that or are you just mainly running long distance, slower pace? Or how are you training? Yeah, I'm doing all of it. I use this app. 23:04 I highly, highly, highly, highly recommend, whether you're a brand new runner who's never run in their life or very, very seasoned, been running your entire life, this app is called Runna. 23:16 This is not an ad, although Runna, if you're watching this, I would love to put you in a future episode. Runna is so good. They use AI, so this is a cool AI kind of meets real life type of use case. 23:30 But you tell them, "This is my experience level. This is how fast I run. If you've run a race in the past, this is what my time was. Here's a future race." And they have a library of literally thousands of races. 23:40 So you can put the date and the distance and they'll say, "Okay. 23:43 Based on your calendar availability, your expertise, what you know about running, how fast you are, how fast you want to be, and the race you're preparing for, here is a day by day running schedule with instructions and videos and real live coaches." 23:59 You can text them. They give you feedback. It's incredible. So they have long runs. Mm-hmm. They have tempo runs. They have easy runs. 24:05 They have, I mean, everything with really, really good instructions because when I started running, a long run, an easy run, like none of it, I didn't know what a tempo run was. I didn't know any of those things. 24:16 I was just like, okay, running is when you go a little faster than you walk. 24:20 [laughs] That's what running meant to me.But they teach you and they're not making you feel like a moron, and there's, I think there's like 100,000 users of Runna now. Like, it's a fairly big app. 24:30 They've done a few series- Yeah... of investments, and so yeah, that's what I use is Runna. Cool. Awesome. I'm gonna check it out. Yeah. Back to my 2025 goals. From a business perspective, I wanna snip a million in ARR. 24:40 Like, I wanna be able to look at it- Ooh, ooh... and know that, yes, we will get there. But from a personal perspective, I was actually on a, a FaceTime with one of my buddies last night. 24:49 We catch up maybe once a quarter, but it's one of those where when you catch up, you never skip a beat, and he's just one of those really good friends. And I told him I wanted to knock out a marathon next year. 25:00 So similar to you- Yeah... I did my first half this year, and so I wanna knock out a full marathon, but I don't want to... I have this mindset that I could just do whatever. 25:10 [laughs] I feel like I could just go out and do whatever. Like, that's what my mind is like. Yeah. And so- Yeah... 25:16 I told him, I was like, "Maybe I'll train for a month or two, and I'll go knock it out," but I have no idea. I think that it actually requires more than that, but I did tell him, I was like- I don't know... "Yeah, true." 25:25 So I wanna run a full just to say that I ran a full, but I probably- Yeah... won't do another full. I don't love running. I love the mental game of running, and I like how it makes me feel. Yeah. 25:35 In the moment, I hate running. I hate it. So yeah. That's how I feel too. Probably knock it out. How fast, how fast was your half? Um, I did it at a 10-minute pace. 25:48 Yeah, I mean, that's fast, and you're not a runner, or do you run pretty regularly as it is? I don't run. Okay. I trained like six weeks before, and so that's why I was like, I feel like I could just go run a full. 25:57 I think you could do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There, some people are built different. If I went and tried to do a full right now, I think I could make it 15 to 20 miles. Yeah. But I would hit the wall, and I would die. 26:07 [laughs] Troy, let's, let's shift gears. We were on LinkedIn yesterday, and one of my buddies, Chris Bach, who you might know, he founded Lasky, he founded a, like a, a Zillow type of company before that. 26:17 He got acquired by X, Twitter, and he just exited that. 26:20 I don't know what his next thing is, but he posted something along the lines of, "If I were to do my career all over again, and for anyone who's just starting their career, the best place to start your career is in tech sales. 26:33 In your first year, if you crush it, you're guaranteed $100,000. In your second year, if you crush it, 200,000, and then every year, three and beyond, you can get 3 to 500,000 if you're doing it right." 26:46 And here's, here's the caveat here. Here's the, the, the context of Chris, 99.9% of the things he says are a meme. Like, he very rarely says true things. 26:56 This post was kind of in between, where you're like, he's like, "If you work 41.4 hours a week and you just know how to email people and follow up well, you're gonna be making 300,000 a year." Obviously, that's not true. 27:11 But what I said on this post is, "Most people will think this is a joke." [laughs] And it, it grinded some gears. 27:18 There's some people tickled by this comment and, and offended even, who are like, "You are not gonna just make a ton of money if you go into tech sales. You have to get lucky." 27:28 So my question for you, and I have a lot of thoughts on this, but I know you have thoughts. I wanna hear your thoughts. 27:33 Are the best sellers, the ones that are making one, two, 300,000 plus in tech sales in commissions, in base, in all the great stuff we know about tech sales, is it all luck, or is there a way to actually calculate becoming a successful seller in tech? 27:49 I think the short answer is it is not all luck. I also think that there is a handful of scenarios in which luck plays a role, and I've been in a few of those scenarios myself. 28:01 I think every seller that has been in the game long enough has gotten a lucky deal where something comes inbound, it was somewhat healthy, they get a nice commission check. I don't believe 28:12 it is all luck to go out there and make a decent amount of money. One really good example is I have a friend who studied mechanical engineering in college at OU. 28:21 He went into mechanical engineering, and he was making 60K right out of college. And at this time, we graduated the same time. 28:28 Um, no, I graduated one year before him, and at this time, I was making a decent amount of money in sales, and I was like, "Dude, you should try out sales. Like, you're a very social person. 28:35 I think that you have what it takes." So I helped him get his first BDR job, and I'll say in the first year, this was like four years ago, so it's a little bit different. 28:43 I think nowadays you can get to six figures in tech sales much sooner than you could've pre-COVID. But- Yeah... he made like 60K the first year. 28:51 Second year, he made 120K, and now he's in his third year making right around that 200K mark, and he's a top performing- Yep... sales rep at, in a mid-market position- Yeah... 28:59 at a company that's not crushing it, like not some brand name company or not a company that's like Gong, and, and this is not a shot at Gong, but of course, Gong had a really big spike when COVID- Yeah... 29:11 was a thing, and even before COVID. Yeah. But it's not like a rocket ship company. It's like just your average- Yeah... Joe Schmo company. They sell e-commerce search bar functionality, and that's all they sell. Yeah. 29:19 And he's clearing just about 200K three years into it. So I think hard work plays more of a role than luck, but I think that it's fun to be lucky, and there are scenarios [laughs] when- It is the best... 29:30 when luck does have its place. On, on the flip side of that, people get really unlucky with the companies they join as well. 29:37 But I do think you can still turn a bad scenario into an okay scenario most of the time, but not all of the time. Yeah. So it's a, it's one of those it depends answers, but I'd love to hear what your thoughts are. 29:47 I have a lot of thoughts on this. Let me preface all this with Troy and I are painfully aware that we are both white men who live in the United States. We can't do anything about that. 29:58 [laughs] So preface everything about this statement with that. I don't think 30:04 all of success in tech sales comes down to whether you just have the lucky charm or you don't, and I think it's a little bit offensive to the people... I mean, I have worked really, really, really hard to get here. 30:17 Troy has. And I know people who have worked even harder, like incomparably hard, to get to where they are, whether it's tech sales or tech in general. 30:26 And when I or those people hear, "Oh man, you just got really lucky-"It almost like discounts like how hard it actually was to get here. 30:35 And I, I'll speak for myself, I have had moments of luck that I'm so grateful for, but I would define 90% of my career journey and my journey just as a man as, dude, like I grind. 30:50 I, I'm like constantly trying to get to the next step, micro steps in my career, in my life. I'm a dad, I'm a husband. None of this stuff just happened to me. 31:02 I mean, winning my wife over was a journey in sales, some might say. Becoming a dad has been a journey in its, in its own way. Knowing how to shift in the startup I work for now, I work at Beehive. 31:15 I was hired around 10 employees and now we're over 80, and my own role and contributions and the needs of Beehive have changed drastically over the last two and a half years. 31:26 And being malleable and being able to shift and being able to change your output, your cadence, what you're working on, what projects you contribute. 31:36 I think a lot of people think, "Oh, that person making, you know, mid six figures, uh, they, they got so lucky. It's all just handed to them on a silver platter." 31:44 It's like anyone who's making that much money, it's because they're really, really good at, at, at plunging the toilet when the toilet needs to be plunged. 31:54 I think a lot of people think they just wake up, make a couple phone calls, strike this eight-figure deal and get a seven-figure commission check, and they're fat and happy. 32:03 Like, yeah, if you're selling private jets, that might be what your life looks like. But in most cases, you're out here grinding, grinding, grinding away. And I don't think luck is what carries that career journey. 32:15 I think luck is a component sometimes, but not in every case. Yeah. 32:20 And I know exactly what comment you're talking about, and I think that person specifically said, "Everyone who's successful and makes this much money is lucky." Yep. 32:29 And maybe like depending on how you look at how luck is defined, yeah, I feel lucky to be in this scenario for sure, but I don't think luck got me in the scenario that I'm in today, right? 32:38 And so one good example is like the largest deal that I've ever closed in sales. You can say it was lucky 'cause I sent an email that was one sentence that simply just said, "Is email security a priority to you?" 32:49 And they said, "Yes. Let's talk." [laughs] Right place, right time. I did the work. Yep. Maybe I was lucky- Yeah... 32:55 'cause it was the right place at the right time for sure, but then it took 10 months for us to close that deal. So it's like, yeah, I guess that's lucky, but at the same time, I did the work. Yeah. 33:03 If that email wasn't sent, who knows? May- they probably would've gone with a different company that, and a different person that sent that email. 33:08 So I think you just have to put yourself in the right place at the right time, and like you said, plunge the toilet- Yep... when the toilet needs to be plunged. Just doing the, the basic stuff over and over and over. 33:18 Yep. And I always write this on LinkedIn. I can't remember where I read it, but it's just doing the common things uncommonly well. And if you do that every single day, you'll be able to be successful in sales. But 33:30 one, the, again, here's another caveat. I have a friend, one of the best sellers I ever met. He's joined a company about four months ago, and now he's already crushing it. 33:37 But he was at this company for 18 months, and he closed about two deals. Three people out of the 50 sales reps at that company hit quota. Nobody was hitting quota. Wow. 33:47 And that is one of those scenarios, but they raised four series in the span of 18 months because the companies that they were closing were like JP Morgans, these massive companies. Yeah, yeah. 33:56 But only three people were eating. The other ones were not. So that's one of those scenarios where he was very unlucky, and the other people that were hitting quota weren't lucky. 34:05 They had just been in sales for 30 years, so they have relationships with- Right... JP Morgan Chase and all, right? So, it, I don't know. It, you can, it's this whole back and forth. 34:12 I think luck plays a role in sales, but I don't think that- Yep... that's what drives success at all. 34:18 And I think it has to do with, uh, for sales specifically, what is the seller willing to do pre-sales and post-sales that other sellers won't do? 34:30 You know, I think there's a lot of more mature companies where a seller is gonna lean into their solutions engineer. They're gonna lean into a, a bridge or post-sales customer success manager. 34:39 They're gonna open tickets with support. They're gonna do all this stuff that is resourceful, and that's why the people are there. 34:46 But I'm- I, I like to call myself a selfish seller, and not, not the way that you would think. Like I, I bring in people as much as I can. 34:55 I'm very collaborative, but until I see money from the sale I made, I'm driving the deal. 35:03 At every single point from the moment we connect with this prospect until they're a paying happy customer, I'm going on site if I have to. 35:11 I'm connecting and looping in and driving conversations with customer success, with solutions, with engineers. I'm looping in C-suite and Beehive if I have to. 35:20 I'm creating proofs of concept or driving and, and, and, uh, uh, collaborating with the solutions engineers who are. 35:27 And now we're a bigger company than when I first joined, and so I do have incredible people who are doing a lot of this with me, but I'm not passing things and just c- shutting my eyes and waiting for them to be done. 35:38 I am driving the deal, and I think that's what the best salespeople I know do. They are making sure the prospect is being held all throughout the buyer journey until there is a full and complete pass off post-sale. 35:52 I think a lot of sellers don't run the, the gamut of all those interoperational sales components in the pre-sales process. That's what sets the two apart. 36:01 I was gonna say, that definitely the differences between a good rep and a great rep. Yeah. I'm gonna switch gears as well a little bit. What does this mean? 36:10 M- I don't know where this came from, and obviously it's a very big thing, but I have no idea what it actually means. But the phrase, "I hope this message finds you well," what does it really mean? 36:23 How this message finds me? Uh, y- all the memes of like a dead skeleton with, you know, how this message finds me, someone's absolutely- Yeah. Yeah... 36:30 ironically hanging.Like I hope you're in a good mood, and I hope I caught you at a good time I don't know What does it mean? 36:36 I don't know who started saying that, at what point in history, but it, it sim- it must mean, one, that the message found them [laughs] like, like that it actually landed in their inbox, and it's the right person. 36:50 Found them well must mean that it found them appropriately, like correctly, like well or not well. If it didn't find you well, then it might not have found you at all, so it found you well. 37:00 But then it found you well, like your, your behaviorally, your attitude when you received this message is like, "Oh," like, "this is the right message. I'm the right person. Let's connect." Do I like that phrase? 37:13 You didn't ask this question, but I'm gonna answer it. No, it's a cop-out. 37:16 It's the easiest one-liner to not include in an email that if you just say something a little differently, I think can be what makes you part of the 1%. Everyone says, "I hope this email finds you well." 37:30 What do you think about it? I mean, what does it mean? I have no idea. I literally wrote this down. It says, "Ask Daniel what does 'I hope this message finds you well' mean?" [laughs] But I will say this. 37:40 You said if you change something, you'll stand out. 37:42 Do you think that if you ran a side-by-side AB test of I hope this message finds you well and I hope this message finds you bad, that the bad one would perform better than- Yeah... the well one? 100%. 37:55 I think if I ran a mass email campaign, uh, with 10,000 contacts, and I AB tested 50% with I hope this message finds you well just, just with the subject line. So I'm not doing any pre-thought on this. 38:08 This is all top of mind. Subject line, I hope this message finds you well. Subject line, I hope this message finds you angry. I hope this message ruins your day. I hope you don't find this message. 38:19 I mean, any of those options for the other 50%, guaranteed that would perform better. And when you're doing cold email, 38:27 most of what you're doing, or at least successful people are doing, is getting someone to open the email. The rest means so much less than that first e- exact moment they click the email and read that first line. 38:41 If the email subject line sucks and the first line is, "I hope this message finds you well," you have just lost. You're done. You're not gonna meet with this person. 38:49 So that subject line and that very first line absolutely has to hit it out of the park. And we should do this. Let's get Apollo to give us 10,000 contacts, and let's AB test this. I think that would be a fun experiment. 39:01 That would be a fun experiment. We're heading into Christmas. Um- Mm-hmm... so we won't do it next week. Let's do it at the start of the year. Let's test out I hope this message finds you. 39:07 Let's do it on December 25th, on December 25th. [laughs] Um- At 8:30 AM Eastern Time. [laughs] Oh, we should. Could you imagine? But- Oh, dude, it'd be so funny. It'd be so funny... 39:17 that would actually be the best time to do it. At, like right as they're opening presents, they just get a notification. [laughs] Sub- subject line, how, how does the gift look? Did you wrap it well? 39:27 And, and then I hope this message ruins your Christmas morning. [laughs] Oh, that'd be great. Oh. And I bet it would get... 39:33 I mean, a lot of people would probably not be thrilled with that, but- I mean, honestly, there's, there's, there's at least a 60% chance I'm gonna do this now because it's so stupid and chaotic, and no one else is gonna do this. 39:43 So- Yeah... I have to be the one that does things that everyone else wants to do it but won't. Do it on a small sample size on Christmas morning. Something- I'm going to... something very interesting. 39:51 One last question before listener questions. Yeah. If you were on your deathbed, and I said, "Daniel, you have one last meal that you can eat before you're done, what would that meal be?" 40:03 And don't say, "Oh, but what if I'm in a healthy mood, then I would probably..." Di- Yeah, yeah. What's that one last meal going to be? Oh, that's a great question. The last meal? 40:14 I mean, I feel like the easy answer is steak, some type of, like, really delicious medium rare, like, like top of the line Wagyu or some cut that's just super rare. But I'm also feeling like Mexican food. 40:28 If someone gave me a huge plate of 12 tacos, like asada with some, maybe some carnitas, like delicious tacos, I would smash those, like in, in an instant, especially if I knew I was about to die. 40:44 Like a steak I would savor. The tacos I would be fisting tacos into my mouth. Fisting. So it depends on the mood I'm in in that exact moment, but what about you? I had Mexican last night, so it resonates for sure. 40:56 Um- I have Mexican like two or three times a week, I think. It's a regular in our house. Yeah. In, in the South you kind of have to have Mexican very often. It's true. It's true. 41:05 My answer is just it's my favorite food ever, and I don't have a specific place or a specific preference I guess, but it's buffalo wings. I'm obsessed with buffalo wings. 41:17 Like- You're gonna, you're gonna die with sticky fingers? No, no, no. I'm going boneless, dude, because of that- Boneless [laughs] come on. Yes. No. I, I am right there with you. I love boneless wings. 41:27 You can dunk the whole thing, and you don't have to get your fingers wet. But people hate on boneless wings, dog. They're like, "Oh, those aren't real chicken wing." I'm like, "It's literally the same meat. 41:36 Get off my back." Yeah. "I'm gonna eat these deliciously, and my hands are gonna be clean the whole time." Yeah. Let me eat some nuggets. And, and so I'm, I'm obsessed. I actually... I haven't in a while. 41:45 I've taken a break. [laughs] No. But for a while there, for about two months, I made them every single day for lunch. I'd go get Costco's- [laughs]... lightly breaded chicken nuggets every day, every single day. 41:56 Mm, nuggies. And because the, the way it was, dude, it was 100 and... It's like 160 calories for like 18 grams of protein or something, so I'd have three servings. 42:05 I'd air fry them, and I'd toss it in buffalo sauce, and I'd use a fork, and I'd eat them. That was my lunch. [laughs] Yeah, so buffalo wings for sure. 42:11 I, I tell my wife, if I wasn't married to my wife, th- what I would consume every day probably forever would be frozen pre-cooked chicken in a rice cooker. That's that, like, double decker rice cooker. 42:25 So there's the white rice, and then at the top you just warm up this pre-cooked frozen chicken, and then in one little portion of it you put broccoli. I made that my whole adult single life before I was married. 42:38 It's gross.Dude, that's disgusting [laughs] After a certain point. It's, it's terrible. That's actually one thing that I can't do. So I've always tried to be somewhat, especially during the weekdays, I try to be- Yeah... 42:50 um, somewhat healthy, right? And I just- Yeah... can't do chicken, rice, and broccoli. I can't. 42:53 Like today, this is disgusting, today I'm gonna eat probably about three-fourths of a pound of ground beef with cheese, and I'll figure out- Oh my goodness... 43:02 like I hate, I hate vegetables, and I need to figure out how to like them. Yeah, same. AG1. I need to... Yeah, did I- You could just stop eating. Just don't eat them and just get some AG1. 43:12 We used to buy, like, the off-brand from Amazon, so it was like 20 bucks instead. And they're not bad, you know. It's, it is what it is. But let's get the listener feedback now. Okay. Cool. 43:21 You know, I was, I was looking at some of our posts. [laughs] Okay. Danson Troberg is, is the name that I've created that combines Troy Monson and Daniel Berg. 43:33 And so this stupid AI image everyone keeps seeing [laughs] of this, like, random fake human being, that is Danson Troberg, just so we all know. Who is Danson Troberg? [laughs] It's this fake human being. 43:47 And so on this recent post of episode two, Alex Christian, head of sales and growth at, what company? I think he's in stealth. But he said, "This is the generic face I see in my dreams." I was absolutely dying. 44:01 That had me on the floor. Because- That is-... ideally you're not seeing Danson Troberg in your dreams, but if you are, I apologize. [laughs] Thanks, Alex Christian. 44:09 I'm glad that we pop up in your dreams [laughs] when you're- Yeah... there's probably nobody, but you see that. It's us. I see a Lori Kane. She said, "Mama to four crazy kids, 16 to 8." Four kids is literally crazy. 44:23 "The days are long, the years are short." I already feel that. I, my son is turning three in about two and a half weeks, and my other son is eight months old, and I feel like I blinked my eyes and three years passed. 44:36 I don't know. Yep. Do you feel anything like that? How do you feel about this comment here? One, four kids, kudos to you. That's a lot. Yeah. Yeah. I feel that way, for sure. I'm like, holy cow, Liam. 44:46 How are you talking like that, and how are you saying these things? And where... The other day he got the animal wrong like an idiot. Just kidding, Liam. But she pointed to a dolphin. I said, "What's that?" 44:54 And he said, "A walrus." And I was like, "I've never taught you what a walrus is, but no, it's not a freaking walrus." [laughs] Just don't show this to your son. Yeah, absolutely. That is so true. 45:04 What other comments do we have? I'm looking at some other reactions from episode one. "The rare B2B podcast I could see regularly tuning in for." Thank you, Cassie Moreno. Let's see. What's up, Cassie? 45:17 So Daria, I'm gonna say this wrong, Gerasimova said, "I wanna hear more rumors about Brian Lamana." Should we start just, just riffing on stuff we've heard about Brian Lamana? 45:29 Like, dude, have you- We should- Did you hear Brian Lamana freaking... [laughs] Did, did you hear that he, he didn't wipe his butt well enough at the last- Stop... COM get together? Brian. What the... 45:42 [laughs] Brian Lamana doesn't wipe. Oh, he has a, he has a puppy. [laughs] Sorry, Brian. Brian does have a puppy, uh, if you listened to, to episode two. That does not make Brian a dad, but he does have a puppy. 45:56 [laughs] Don't even get me started about dog dads again. Don't even, don't even get me started. 46:00 Um, there's, there's a comment right here on, on YouTube that says, "Maybe, [laughs] maybe you can shorten your description to say something like bold, unscripted talk about stuff no one else talks about." 46:09 Um- Do not ever talk about shortening the name or description ever again, whoever said that. [laughs] I used AI to create that description, all right? 46:16 I didn't have time to think of a full description, so that's what it took. And maybe I will. AI software, not a printer. Maybe I'll change it. Maybe I'll change it, but- Courtney Cook. 46:25 I'll say this last one, and then we'll call it a day. Courtney Cook was the director of marketing at a startup about four years ago that I actually interviewed for and was turned down by. So Courtney Cook, shout out. 46:40 You're awesome. I'm not upset. I was at the time. No, I'm just kidding. But she commented. 46:45 She said, "When I interviewed you however many years ago, you undersold yourself, but I'm glad to see you're just crushing it now and enjoying life along the way." That felt pretty good, I'm not gonna lie. 46:56 Someone who didn't hire me years ago in my career saying, "You know what? Like, you, you're a pretty phenomenal person. Like, it, it- you undersold yourself back then." I was like, okay. Like, that's pretty cool to see. 47:08 So thank you to everyone that's tuning into these episodes. It's, it's a fun project of ours, and I, I think it's gonna keep getting bigger and bigger. Yeah, I think it will too. 47:16 And Courtney Cook, you just made Daniel's day. Even though you did not make his day four years ago, you made it today. It's true. So- It's true... we appreciate you... 47:23 my, my children, my children who were not yet alive starved because I didn't have that job. [laughs] And so thank you, Courtney Cook. Just kidding. Um, everybody knows what to do. I think it's what? 47:33 Drop a like, subscribe on YouTube. Please- Do that... comment... um... rate, rate us on podcasts and on Spotify. Please also rate us everywhere else. Uh, give us some comments. We're also... 47:45 We have twodadsintech.com as a website, and we're building up testimonials. So if you give us feedback, drop a comment on LinkedIn, YouTube, elsewhere, you may or may not show up as a testimonial on our website. 47:58 So stay tuned. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, awesome. Well, y'all have a good day. Daniel, I'll see you next week. I'll see you next week, man. Happy birthday. Take care.
