Spend Advantage Podcast

Startup Growth Insights with Scott Leese

March 29, 2023 Varisource Season 1 Episode 33
Spend Advantage Podcast
Startup Growth Insights with Scott Leese
Show Notes Transcript

Welcome to The Did You Know Podcast by Varisource, where we interview founders, executives and experts at amazing technology companies that can help your business save a lot of time, money and grow faster. Especially bring awareness to smarter, better, faster solutions that can transform your business and give you a competitive advantage----https://www.varisource.com

Welcome to the did you know Podcast by Varisource, where we interview founders and executives at amazing technology companies that can help your business save time and money and grow. Especially bring awareness to smarter, better, faster solutions that can transform your business. 1.2s

U1

Hello everyone. This is Victor with Varisource. Welcome to another episode of the Did You Know? Podcast. Today I'm super excited to have Scott Lease, who is the CEO and co founder of Scott Lease Consulting and Surf and Sales, as well as Thursday night sales community. 1s

U2

And Scott is also a super influencer on LinkedIn and the startup sales world. Scott, welcome to the show. As I mentioned, that is the longest intro and Oscar worthy intro I ever done. That's 

U1

a good intro and it's not going to earn you like a Will Smith style slap. Even 1.3s

U2

U1

appreciate the kind. 1.2s Yeah, 1.6s

U2

since we're on podcast, I can't even do that. But that was a good one. 1.6s Obviously you and I chatted while you just even spending some time with you, there's so much insight that you've done. But if you don't mind maybe giving the audience a little background and history of yourself. 1.4s

U1

Yeah, I've been building and scaling sales orgs in the tech and SaaS space for the better part of 20 years. I was the VP of sales a half dozen times and spent all those times in very early stage companies, taking companies from essentially zero to 2020. 5 million 1s in annual recurring revenue. And then I'd always get like a little bit of an Itchy trigger finger and kind of leave and go back towards the next thing. That was super early stage. And along the way I started diversifying my income streams and started doing some side hustle stuff and wrote a few books, started doing some consulting and coaching. 1.3s In 2019, I went all in on myself. So for the last three plus years I've been running my consulting business, the surfing sales business, the Thursday night sales business, and got my hands in a lot of different cookie jars these days. 1.6s

U2

Yeah, for sure. So maybe one of the first question is what makes you I mean, you've done this, like you said, half a dozen times, going from zero to tens of millions and that's not easy, right? You could call it a playbook or there are some so why do you think you've been able to do that to help these companies? What is kind of the high level playbook or how were you able to kind of do that, do you think? Well, the first place that I'd start is I just really had the desire, 1.1s not like a willingness, but a desire to work for an early stage company and be in that kind of environment. I never had the desire to go work for 1.5s Salesforce or Oracle or some big huge company like this and be kind of a cog and machine. I wanted to go someplace where I could make an impact. So I felt like if I go to this early stage startup, victorandscott.com and I close a million dollar deal, they're going to paint a picture with my face on the wall. If I close a million dollar deal at IBM, nobody cares. Just a line item in a spreadsheet, right? So that kind of pressure as well as recognition really appealed to me. And then 1.1s after I had done it once or twice, I kind of locked in my process, and I knew what I needed to do in the beginning and then the types of people that I needed to bring on. And the systems that I needed to put in place and the tools that I needed to use and the way to onboard and coach people continuously. So it just got easier and easier the more times that I did it. And then I parlayed all of my operating 

U1

experience into the work that I do as a consultant and advisor. A lot of people tell you like, well, you got to start at a startup and got to check that box and then you got to go to a big company and check that box. You got to sell to the SMB, check that box. Now you got to sell the enterprise and check that box. I never did that. I always thought it was much more intelligent to get really good at one thing and just be the best at doing that thing and be known for that thing and. And that, I think, has paid off well for me. 

U2

Yeah, no, absolutely. 1.3s A lot of exciting, more questions, especially in this economy. But also there's more startups than ever. Maybe a little less 1.7s

U1

from obviously that terrible situation with Svb, but a lot of new startups, innovative companies coming out dollars. So I think they all are looking to increase their sales and improve their sales. So I think this podcast is a must listen for all of them, for sure. But look, during the intro, we say you're the founder of three top sales communities and 

U2

advisor for a lot of startups. I mean, how do you find the time to do all of that? And do you feel like maybe worried about kind of spreading yourself too thin? Or how do kind of manage all of 

U1

that? I get asked this question quite a bit. I've got a lot of friends who kind of have joked that I may have figured out a way to clone myself. But 1.3s some of the work that you do. 2s A little bit copy paste. Let's say that I'm working with a half dozen startups, all trying to build and scale their sales.org. Well, a lot of that stuff comes second nature to me, and a lot of it is repetitive. We got to do the same thing. We got to lock in our ICP. We got to understand our different buyer personas. We got to figure out our competitive landscape. We've got to understand our go to market approach. We've got to build a comp plan out for reps. And there's like, 50 different things that I could kind of rattle off and say, we have to do this. So that frees up a lot of brain power as far as having to think about what to do. And then the next thing that I'd say is, I am blessed, I think, in that I don't have this gene of perfectionism. I've always kind of believed that B plus a minus is good enough. Let's go and move on to the next thing. So if I'm writing emails, I don't overly edit it and think about it too much. If I'm trying to figure out who to target, I get an idea, I go with it. If I'm trying to generate an idea to launch a business, if I feel like it's a good idea, I go for it. I'll sit on it. So I think I move with a particular speed and level of efficiency that some people struggle with, and I think that that's a big, big advantage. I've said for a long time that one of the things that I'm always trying to do is shrink the delta between idea and action. It. 1.1s I think a lot of people might be able to benefit from doing something similar. 1s Yeah. And I think if you look at video sales, right, people thought, well, hey, you do the email, and then obviously video sales and more personalization. But a lot of people are just concerned about getting in front of a camera. They don't feel comfortable or they don't want to do it. They think a lot about, what should I wear, how should say, yeah, some people just get in front of the camera and they go viral. Right? So I think that same mentality can be applied in so many places, is just overanalyzing and thinking and planning versus just doing. And that's a skill. That's a talent in itself. 1.9s So definitely agree with you there. So you and I talked about all the things that you do, the sales communities, on your consulting, but they all kind of work together and complement each other. Can you kind of maybe spend a couple of minutes? Because I thought that was really fascinating, how you were able to and this is also, I think, a great tip for a lot of founders or 1.4s

U2

businesses is you created a community, but yet your community is also helping your consulting business. And they all kind of work together and and was that something planned? Was that something just kind of came about? But how does it all work together and complement each other? 1.3s Yeah, this is one thing that was a little bit intentional. There's a lot of things that I 1.2s have just stumbled upon and gotten lucky with, but this is something that is a bit intentional. So my consulting business, I work with founders and sometimes heads of sales in early stage companies. 1.1s So 1.2s I know a lot of people. I have a big network. I'm a little bit connected in the VC network. So that, coupled with LinkedIn, that brings me a certain number of leads. Well, for those companies, part of what I do is I help them recruit 

U1

and I place Vps of sales or account executives and things like this. Well, what do I need in order to do that? I need a big network. I need direct access to those people. So what do I do is I build a company like Thursday Night Sales, which creates a community of individual contributors as well as sales leaders. And I talk to them and I give them advice every week for a couple of hours. And I create networking opportunities for people. And I share open roles. So these roles that I share are from my clients and people from the community d often fill those roles, and I can fill those roles really fast. 2s Those people from the community and my network, I make them aware of the events that I run, like surfing sales, for example. So those people from Thursday night sales become people who buy tickets for surfing sales. Surfing sales events spawned off a podcast. So I have listeners from all of these three companies 1.4s and paying attention to the podcast. That podcast generates sponsorships. Those sponsorships spill over into the Thursday night sales business. I go a little bit deeper and I have a relatively new community called Gtm United, which I spun out migrating off of Patreon, which is a little more hyper focused. It's 500 or so aspiring sales leaders. So I do all sorts of direct trainings and things with them. So those people are people who might be private VP of sales coaching clients of mine. They might be working at startups that are early stage and they're trying to build and scale this thing. And they might go to their bosses and say, hey, we could use it some help, we could use a consultant, we could use an advisor. I want to make sure I get this right. And those folks introduced me to founders, which becomes deal flow for my consulting business. So that's a little snapshot of how some of these things kind of. 1s Blend in and feed each other. 1.1s Yeah, 1.3s it's really smart and I think one community can help with your other business, but it's all kind of creating that win win situation, which is why I thought it was genius. 1.1s One fascinating thing I thought of as you were kind of mentioning these things is you talked about VP of Sales, which you would think that they are 1.1s best good at what they do, right? That's why they got to the VP of Sales roles. And I'm sure they've all had different experiences and expertise and successes. Where do you think a sales guru or sales consultant like you can still help these VP of Sales who might have a lot of experience? But like I said, even Michael Jordan has a coach. Michael Jordan has a trainer. So even when you're good at what you do, you still 1.1s

U2

should have a trainer, still have a mentor, still have a consulting. But where do you feel like these VP of Sales can still get value out of learning from you or working with you? You think. 1.3s

U1

Well, I think you hit the nail on the head with even though you're good at something, you still need a coach. But let's talk for a second about the fact that the average tenure of a head of sales is like 16 months. Right? That's not a very long period of time. Six times I was able to do this excuse me. Five times I was able to do this for between two and a half to three years. Only once did I not last that long and go way over the average tenure. So I figured out a way to survive and to thrive that a lot of people have been unable to do. So if you're somebody who's in this role for the first time, or you're somebody who's in this role and has not gotten past that 18 month marker, 16 month marker before into year two and into year three, there's got to be a reason. And sometimes you don't know what you don't know, right? And so I don't know how it would be anything other than beneficial for you to have somebody to help guide you to say, hey, you actually don't want to do that. And here's why. 1.3s You know, there's really no downside to it. The only downside is to your own ego, you know? Yeah. You're like, oh, I got approved. I can do this on my own. I got to do this all myself. Man, I got to tell you, nobody really cares how you get it done. They only care whether or not you got it done right? If you get it done with some help, 1s you did well. You yeah, 

U2

no, I totally agree with you, and I think that applies in a lot of other departments. They feel like, obviously those were the roles you were hired, so if you get help, then 1.5s there are some questions about that, but no, I totally agree with you, and I could probably talk to you for hours just on that topic alone. But the next question we have for you was obviously see you worked with a lot of different startups. As a sales leader and or an advisor. What do you think most startups get wrong about go to market growth or sales in general, do you think? 1.5s

U1

Oh, boy. 2s

U2

I think they often 1.6s don't write the process down or have a process, and so they're just kind of winging it. So they never really know scientifically what's working and what's not working. So they over tinker and they over experiment, and they just try too many different things. So that's one them. I think they try too hard to be everything to everyone. I can't tell you how many times I talk to early Stage startups, and I talk about their ideal customer profile. And their ideal customer profile is like anybody with ten employees to 10,000. That is not an ICP. That is your dream world where you're servicing everybody on the planet, right? So they need to lock in that a little better. And the last thing I'd say is they sell too much like an infomercial, man. Everybody calls people up or emails people, and they say, hey, Victor, this is Scott with Scott Lee's Consulting. How are you today? Well, what I do over here at Scott Lee's Consulting is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 

U1

You sound like a fucking television commercial at 03:00 A.m.. It's terrible. Nobody cares who you are, man. 1.7s They only care about you if they believe that they have a problem that you're helping them identify. 1.6s And that that problem is worthy of being fixed. And not only is it worthy of being fixed, it's worthy of being fixed right now. And then, and only then does somebody give a shit about your product or your solution. So you got to find pain. You got to build value. You got to unearth urgency, and then you can discuss your solution. And people screw that up, the order of that up all the time, and it kills their deals. 

U2

I want to pause there real quick and ask you a follow up on that, because that's a billion dollar question right there. Because I've seen a lot of not just companies with people talking about their product, but even salespeople, right? It's kind of strange, because when you talk to these salespeople, even one on one, they're normal, right? They talk like you're in a bar or whatever, and then they go on these sales calls and boom, they become this totally different person you've never met before. You're like, who are you? Why are you talking like that? But why do you think people do that? You just mentioned hey, like an infomercial. But why do you think there is that switch where companies and you're talking about majority of companies are like this, right? This is not a company problem. But why do you think they do that? Is it because they feel like, well, I'm selling a business. I need to be professional? Is that just like this weird psychological 1.3s roadblock? Like, what do you think it is? 1.1s

U1

Well, certainly some of it is psychological. 1.5s I think people sometimes try to be too formal. And I think people want to be talked to and spoken to in this really 2.3s sophisticated professional kind of way. And I think most people actually don't. Most people would rather just have a chat with somebody. Like we're two people at a bar talking about what we do for work and whether or not we can help each other. So I think they screw that up. I think that they get rattled by the pressure of sales. 1.7s It's a brutal profession. It's the closest thing I can think of to being a professional athlete. You're a professional athlete. You perform well, you get paid. You don't, you don't get paid. You get cut. You're off the team. You don't have a job, you don't earn. And I think that pressure causes people to do weird things. They get desperate. They cut corners. They're like, I don't have the time to talk to Victor about all this stuff. I'm going to try to get right to the point and just be like, do you want this? Great. I'm going to give it to you. I think that screws it up. And I think that it's not helped by companies and sales leaders who put unrealistic quotas on people 1.5s or tell on them to make 5000 calls every single day. 1s It's just not the way that the sales world works anymore. And then the last thing would be that there are sales leaders out there that have gotten to whatever position they're in by 1.3s doing it. 1.2s In a non scalable way. 1.1s I can call you up and make 5000 calls doing something the wrong way and I'll eventually close the deal. Yeah, and too many people have just preached that for too long. The problem is you burn so much runway 1.1s you create a wake of 2.1s pain behind you where you've upset all these people that you've called. You've kind of soured your name and the company's name. By going after people the wrong way, you make it harder for those people to circle back in the future. So I don't think people 1.2s take their time and try to grow at a reasonable pace anymore. I think all those things can contribute to what you're talking about. Yeah. 

U2

Honestly, I love all these angles. So many follow up questions, but so little time. So we have to move on to another hot topic, which is team building. Right. And you've done that again half a dozen times. You be a part of it as advisor. 1.2s So what's your thought on how companies should bill and get the best out of their sales teams? You think? 3.1s

U1

Try to articulate that one more time for me, if you will. 2.1s

U2

How should companies build their sales team and also get the best out of their sales team? What's kind of your high level. Well, I don't think they should build a sales team until they've been able to do some of the selling themselves. 2.2s Not enough founder selling occurs. If you're if you're the founder, you got to figure out how to sell this product. And I know a lot of founders are engineers or product people or big, fancy MBAs. Who think sales is beneath them. But you better figure out how to sell the product, because when you do go to hire somebody, you have to be able to hand them some type of onboarding experience that hires them into success. You can't hire people into failure. You can't hire me today, Victor, and be like, okay, Scott, here's what we sell. And off you go. Good Luck. 1.1s Very few people can thrive in that kind of environment. 1.4s You have to be able to say, okay, listen, here's who we sell to. We're keeping it tight right now. Just this one type of low hanging fruit customer. Here's what these people care about. Here's the pain they're experiencing. Here's why they need to fix it. Here's some email 1.1s templates that have worked for me before. And we personalize these a little bit when we reach out to people. Here's what I say to people when we get them on the phone. Here's my kind of talk track. And here's how we should demo the product. There's 9 million features, but we want to focus on these four or five. First. You have to be able to teach people about 1.8s the sector that you're in, like the industry. You have to be able to teach people about the product. They have to be able to use it in order to demo it and sell it. You have to teach people about the messaging and the pitch. And you have to teach people about the process you're going to use to track all this information. So you can't 

U1

go building a sales team until you've done some of, if not all of that work. Otherwise, you're about to waste a ton of money and burn a lot of runway. 1.5s

U2

And do you see a lot of startups and I feel like startups that we talk to and just work with as well. I see that also where it's kind of in reverse. They feel like I hire you as a salesperson. You're supposed to be the somewhat expert in the sales. You've done sales before. You are supposed to go figure out, I tell you the product and you need to go figure out how to sell it because you are the experienced salesperson. Yet what you're saying is it should be completely like reverse because you're literally putting an impossible task in front of people and then you blame them. How come they're not succeeding because you're expecting them to figure it all out for you. 1.9s

U1

You're essentially asking your first sellers to operate like an early stage of sales VP of Sales would. And I can tell you right now that most head of Sales VP of Salespeople are either unable or unwilling to figure all that stuff out on their own. 1.5s So now you go after people who are far more junior and earlier in their career, and you're asking them to do all of that stuff. They don't know how to do that. They can't do it. They try their best. But this is one of the reasons why it falls flat so much and so many people fail. They're hiring people into failure rather than hiring them into an opportunity for success. 2.5s

U2

So what if, once you have that sales process playbook, as you call it, how would you then recommend building a scalable sales team? So once you have the playbook, let's say founder, let sales, you have the success, a roadmap, do you recommend hiring the first VP of Sales or building A? 1.3s I think a 

U1

better and more cost effective way to do it is to hire a couple of A's or SDRS either, depending on the type of sale that you're doing. I like to hire three people. I don't really care what the industry is. It seems to me that your first couple of hires are always a bit of a gamble. And if you hire three people, one person tends to be great, one person tends to be okay, and one person tends to be terrible. And it's an opportunity to experiment with different types of backgrounds and experience levels to really get better at identifying who your ideal account executive is going to be. You also, with three people, selling initially, get more data faster to know what's working or not. I don't believe in just hiring one person. I want three people. I want them to compete against each other. I want them to learn from each other, and I want to figure out quickly what's working and why and what's great, good and bad. What does all that look like? 1.4s Once you've done that and you see these people having some success now I think there's an opportunity if you're a founder who doesn't want to be managing salespeople, doesn't want to be the acting head of sales. Now I think there's an opportunity to bring in that VP of sales. The system is already working. We've already got a few people. That person is now brought into further the productivity, improve upon the playbook and process a little bit and put their own kind of rubber stamp on it. And that's kind of the most successful way that I've seen 1.4s these startups grow. You can do it by hiring the head of sales first. But you better get that right, because like I said before, there are very few heads of sales who are willing to get in the mud, get their hands dirty, kind of act as an ae for a few months, figure this thing out, and then go to the founder and be like, I got this. I figured it out. It's time for me to hire some people and teach them. That's a lot harder bullseye to hit than doing it the other way. But it is possible. 1.1s Yeah. Everything you talked about I think is a lot of is analytical using data. And even I've seen customers that buy Facebook ads, Google Ads, there's kind of this testing period too, right? I think a lot of people don't understand that. They just feel like if they pay money for X, they should have result y. And there is a learning phase, testing phase, like every Facebook, Google campaign, ad campaign, you do a lot of it. Is that investment upfront to learn? 1.4s You're using that like you said, hire three people when they think about only hiring one, but then they're not getting the data they need, right? And so yeah, it's love kind 

U2

of that approach. First of all, congrats also on being one of the top 18 sales influencers from Salesforce. That really shows the amazing work that you've done. So with that said, how do you think startups should sell in 2023 and specifically in this economy? What are some maybe a couple of tips you think? 1.9s

U1

Them. Well, I think that as I alluded to before, the days are gone where you can just blast off a million phone calls or blast off a million emails, I think you have to be a lot more thoughtful, a lot more intentional, and I think you kind of have to start to partner up. You're going to get a less than 1% response rate on email, less than 1% pickup rate on the phone, maybe a little better through social if you've got an established network. 1.1s But if you can kind of partner up and you find somebody that you know and that person 1.2s is connected to the person that you really want to talk to, 1.6s working that relationship to get an introduction and to get on your decision makers radar. That's the most successful way that I'm seeing people sell you. Call it co selling, call it partner selling, whatever you want to call it. 1.6s This is what seems to be working for some of the best people. They're getting creative in the sense of they're going back to how things used to be years and years ago, where relationships matter more than anything else. 2.1s As I'm talking to you, I just got an email from a seller who says, I see you're connected into a bunch of these different prospects. Let me know if you know any of them well enough to make an intro. 1.1s That's what I'm talking about. That literally just came through in my email right now. Right? Yeah. So people who are leveraging that effectively, I think, are doing things the right way for today's kind of selling environment. 

U2

What do you think about and you've done a great job of this specifically, which is building your own brand. Right. A lot of times you feel like you work for a company, so that is your identity or brand. But obviously, more and more now, because of social media, TikTok and all these things, people are building their own brand even within 1.6s these companies. And I think part of that brand building, that branding is so you can build those relationships and pull on those relationships. So what do you think about that personal brand building aspect for salespeople or anybody individual, regardless of your role to be brand building, you think. 1.3s

U1

I think it's mandatory. I think you absolutely have to do it. And I think that any company that is limiting their employees is truly out of touch and damaging their ability to succeed right now. 

U2

Because you feel like companies are worried that these people are like promoting themselves versus promoting a company. Is that what you mean? Yeah, I think that they do worry about that. But I think the genie is out of the bottle a little bit here. Whether work from home did that or social media did that or COVID did that or whatever, 1.7s some of these people are sort of pining for an older age that is not coming back. 1.6s The gone are the days where you go work at one company for 40 years. Nobody does that anymore. 1.9s My age does that. Nobody half my age is going to do that. My kids sure as hell are not going to do that. 1.4s Yeah, they don't look at I can tell you right now, I have two teenage boys. They do not look at their world and their career as they will go to work for somebody else. They are much more entrepreneurial. They have ideas and angles towards a billion different things that they could be doing as a way to make a living. And how they can do all of at once. And at the center of that is themselves, is their brand. And everything else is just, like, branching off of that brand. Well, I could do this on YouTube. I could do this and teach. I could do this and coach, right? And there are all these spokes off the wheel. 1.8s Nobody wants to go work for this company that says, hey, you can't 1.1s moonlight. What are you talking about? Can't do 

U1

something else on the side. You know what I mean? You're paying me to work from nine to five, and you're paying me this amount. What I do on my own time is none of your goddamn business. Right? These companies get mad because you're building a brand or writing content online. Do you think that they would get mad if you were bartending at night to make ends meet? 1.5s Right? 

U2

Yeah. 

U1

Do you think they'd get mad at you if you were driving a taxi or an Uber at night or on the weekend because you needed some extra money? 1.9s

U2

That's a great point. 1.6s

U1

If the answer is no to those things, then they don't really care what you do on your own time. They only care if what you're doing on your own time is a perceived threat to them. Yeah, well, there's too many options out there. There's too many companies who recognize, I need sellers who have a big personal brand because I need you to network your way into all these deals and I need your network to help market our brand as a company. That's the future. Anybody else who 1.1s is operating differently just simply doesn't get it and they're going to get wiped out. 1.6s

U2

Yeah, no, love all those insights. Yeah. I got two boys myself, they're eleven and eight, and they themselves 1.2s are thinking about those things already, so it's quite interesting. So a couple of last questions as we get close to wrapping up here, and we're saving the best questions for last, for sure, which is critical for every startup. But the next question is obviously, AI has been so hot the last couple of months because of Chat GPT, even though it's been around for like three years and nobody even notices from an overall world perspective. But everything is AI now, right? And so what's kind of your thought on how companies should leverage AI in general, or even in the sales side of things? Explain. 1.7s Man, 2.1s this is a tough one. I think if you're expecting it to do the work for you right now, you're thinking about it the wrong way. I think if you're expecting it to help you do the work, you're thinking about it the right way. There's really cool tools out there like 2.4s

U1

Lavender and Gong and companies like this that have leveraged AI to help you get better at your current role, not replace you in that role. And I think that that's the right way to think about it. 2.9s

U2

Yeah. AI is going to be everywhere on everything. The pace of innovation in the last three months is like what we thought would come in ten years, but or five years. Now it's happening in like, two months. 1s It's pretty exciting. So the last question, which is one of the 1.3s most insightful thing that when you and I spoke before. Want to get your thoughts, couple of minutes on this. You're obviously really good at building equity value for startups, and a lot of people don't know what what that means, right. Because a lot of people look at Uber or a lot of these companies, like they're losing money. It's like, how can you value and revenue are sometimes two different things. And in the startup world, tech world is just not like a traditional business. Right. So obviously, for these founders, how do you help companies build equity value 

U1

in. 

U2

Can you kind of spend a couple of minutes on that? 1.5s

U1

Well, as you're growing revenue, the value of your company should be going up. As long as you're retaining that revenue and don't have a massive customer churn problem, as long as you are putting systems in place 1.1s that show that what you're doing is repeatable and sustainable, that should be helping you increase the value of your company. As the brand grows in recognition and popularity, that should be increasing the value of your company. As your customers experience more and more success and become kind of brand advocates and supporters of yours, testimonials come in and case studies and things like that, all those things are help increasing the value of 1.3s your company. And to me, all of that starts with are you able to acquire customers and are you solving problems for them in a meaningful way? And if the answer is yes. 1.5s You know, the equity increase comes now, whether that's at a 50 x multiple like it's been before, or a three x multiple that is maybe more reasonable. 1.3s The market decides and things kind of go up and go down. But that's where it all stems from. 1.4s Yeah, it's no, I think every startup should definitely join your sales. Communities follow you and hopefully get a chance to work with you. So the very last question we always ask our guests is, 1.9s you've seen a lot. If you had to give one personal and or business advice that you're really passionate about or you believe in very strongly, what do you think that would be? Scott I think right now you got to diversify your income streams. Look what's happened over the last few years. 1s 2020. 1.6s COVID hits, all sorts of people lose their job. Anybody who is on one income stream is totally fucked and has this massive period of panic. Then in the last year you've had valuations crash across technology. You've had all sorts of companies lay people off over the last six months because of that. Then just the other day you have this banking crisis that exposes 65% of startups to potentially not being able to make payroll and things like that. If you are relying on one income stream in this day and age, you are at risk because you are always one move away from losing your job. I don't care how good you are at your job. I know lots of people who were well over quota that lost their job. 1.3s So you have to find a way to take the skills that you have and diversify your income. So if you lose your job today. 1.4s You have ways and means to continue to earn. It doesn't have to be I'm not talking about millions of dollars. Talking about ways to pay some of your most basic needs and bills. And that gives you a little bit of a cushion and a safety net to survive some type of 1.9s negative situation that you might find yourself in. So find a way to the skills and info that you have and monetize that. 1s Yeah, 

U2

and maybe just a quick follow up to that because obviously there's information overload on the Internet of how you can make money 100 different plus ways like doing all these things. So how would you recommend people 1.5s pick something? Because there's so much if you even just search, like different ways to make money, there's 100 different things. And how do you and sometimes that makes it too many choices. And what would you recommend somebody who is interested in taking your advice on that to then pick an area or pick something that they can is it just try it and then try the next thing, see what works? Or what do you recommend to these people? 1.4s

U1

Well, I think some of it is try it and then try the next thing. If you go back to earlier in the episode, one of the things I said was shrink the delta between idea and action. I think you can burn way too much time trying to figure out what's the right thing. Just pick one thing. Think about your cell phone bill. Maybe you pay $100 a month for your cell phone. What can you do to earn $100 a month out side of your regular job so your cell phone bill is covered? And then do that thing, whatever that thing is, and preferably it would be something that you already know how to do and that you already enjoy doing. So there's very little effort and very little barrier to entry. And once you pay one bill off like that, what's the second bill? How do you pay your electricity bill? 1.7s Is it that same thing? Can I do more of that same thing? And if so, how? Or does it have to be something different? 1.1s You need to start stacking these things on top of each other. That's how I think about it. Yeah, 

U2

no, amazing chat, man. I really appreciate you spending time with us. We know you're busy, so yeah, thanks again, and we look forward to partnering with you. Scott. All right, 

U1

Victor. Thanks so much. Bye.