58. Sales Legend Ryan Barretto, President of Social Sprout

Speaker A: Uh,

Speaker B: from People AI. This is the Legends of Sales and Marketing podcast. Each week we'll dive into a story from a different legend of sales and marketing to find out how they changed the game. Visit People AI Legends for more episodes, interviews and profiles on more of these icons of sales and marketing

Speaker C: in this new world where for many of them, with some of the changes that have happened, it's a lot harder to advertise and market. So they're thinking a lot more about how do we engage in our communities, how do we create, uh, one to one relationships, how do we learn more about our customers and actually engage with them in that way, knowing all that information.

Speaker A: Hi, everyone. Check Justin Schreiber here. My guest today is Ryan Barreto, president of Sprout Social. Despite being at the helm of one of the hottest companies in Martech, Ryan maintains a level of humility and perspective that is both surprising and refreshing. Those qualities originate in some of his early childhood experiences as the son of immigrant parents. As he entered university and moved onto his career, he carried with him a profound gratitude for the opportunities and privileges that served as stepping stones to future success. But Ryan also had his fair share of disappointments along the way. On today's show, he'll talk about how a failed attempt at law school and a few imploding startups ultimately paved the way, uh, to the top sales job at a company that's redefining how brands engage their customers. Let's jump into the conversation. Ryan, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker C: Thank you, Justin. Great to be here.

Speaker A: Well, you have some fascinating stories and I'm excited to get into them. As is always the case, though, we start off, we talk about Ryan as a child, and in your case, your parents are a really important part of your story and they've got kind of a unique story, bit of a unique journey. So maybe we could start off and you could tell me a little bit about who they are and how they got where they are today.

Speaker C: Yeah, happy to start there. So I'm very fortunate to be a first generation Canadian and the child of immigrant hardworking parents. So, um, my folks were with both, both sides of the family were born, were born in Nairobi, Ken. Uh, our ancestors are from a place called Goa, India, Portuguese colony within India. And they met and married in the UK and eventually made their way to Canada for better opportunity and a place to raise their family. And so that was kind of the starting point, which, uh, meant that I was born and my sister were born in Toronto and then raised in a suburb just north of the City.

Speaker A: So it's always interesting to talk to the children of immigrant parents. I think that they bring a slightly different point of view. How did your parents experience shape who you were, especially as you were growing up?

Speaker C: Yeah, it was, it was a lot of fun. I mean, I think for, for them there was so much learning in the experience. You're moving to this new place. We had a little bit of family, uh, but not a lot there. Building a network. You're in this brand new culture. I mean, I think about the culture of Canada and hockey was so intertwined with it. And we've got these, these pictures and videos of, of me out there as a little kid learning how to play hockey with our neighbor who happened to be a coach. But that was something that was so brand new for people who'd really grown up in Africa and India. Um, but it was also this opportunity for us to share our culture with the local folks in this suburb called Newmarket, which was mostly white Canadians. And so for us, we were definitely one of the very few families that were people of color. Um, and my folks came to the country really without the same sort of network as people have when you're born and grow up in a place. And so dad, uh, was actually bussing tables at a nightclub when he first came with the goal of getting into it at some point. And his first job within the corporate world was actually working the night shift at one of the banks, making sure that the servers didn't crash. Uh, and my mom was running a daycare at our house. It was really important for the family for her to be around and to be with, with the kids and to do that while also making some money. She would take care of other kids and families at our house. So it was this awesome balance of, of, uh, of both folks that worked incredibly hard but were doing very different

Speaker A: things, you know, in order just to uproot, uh, yourself, move to a new country, establish roots once again. It takes an incredible amount of tenacity. It takes an incredible amount of agility and flexibility. And I think that, you know, oftentimes when we settle in and we get into our comfort zone, we don't stretch a lot of the muscles that just by nature you have to stretch when you're relocating yourself like that. So clearly your parents have ambition. Um, they've got drive, but they've got to basically start out where they are. So your dad's working the night shift. From an IT perspective, I think as adults, we kind of understand that that's a hard job and that's a hard way to reset. But as a kid, my guess is you probably saw it a little bit differently. What was it like to have a dad that was ostensibly in charge of this big server room?

Speaker C: Yeah, I don't know that I fully understood or grasped what he was doing, but we knew that he worked really, really hard. And, um, we didn't see him all that much in those early days, but the time that we had together, we really cherished. And, you know, back in those days, he had to carry around the pager, and if the pager went off, he would have to head in. And so he moved eventually from working the night shift to working regular days, but he would still have that pager, and that pager would go off, and we'd wake up sometimes in the morning and dad wouldn't be there. He'd already be gone to work. And sometimes that happened on the weekend. Uh, but again, growing up as a kid, it also gave me this opportunity occasionally to go in with him from Newmarket to Toronto when he had to take care of these servers. And. And sometimes that would mean going in on the weekend. And I really just appreciated that time. We got this extra time together, driving in an hour to get into the city, and you get there and you'd look around and there was no one else in this office except him working. And so you started to realize just that, the sacrifice in the grind. But again, he made it fun for me. Right. We brought. Brought the video games in. He'd set it up in a conference room while he went and did his work. He'd take me to my favorite Italian sandwich shop on the way home. It was. It was just an awesome opportunity. And you realize later in life, not a lot of your own work ethic and the way you think about things is rooted in these examples that you saw really early on when it didn't really resonate in the same way as it does for me today.

Speaker A: Yeah, I brought my kids into work when they were really young on occasion, kind of similar situation where my wife was out and about and I had to get work done. I had to make sure I was taking care of them. And I would always feel bad initially because, you know, back in the day, I was in this standard office with the cubicles, uh, not much to look at. And I remember feeling bad that my kids were going to have to come in and hang out. Years later, they told me that they had the absolute best time going to work with me. And I was like, what did you like about hanging out in a bunch of Cubicles, they're like, dad, it was the best. You had this guy that sat next to you, and he had this Eminem M man on his desk.

Speaker B: And.

Speaker A: And when you pulled the arm, these M, M and Ms. Came out. And then we would play hide and go seek in the cubicles, and you had these little, like, Cheetos in the. And they talked about all these things, which I knew about, but I really didn't think they were a big deal. I had, you know, no recollection of them, um, initially, and then they came back to mind. But it's funny how through the eyes of a child, everything is new. And just being there with your parent and seeing what they do and feeling kind of important because you get to be a part of that and share that. I think sometimes as adults, we. We forget about that and how special that is.

Speaker C: Totally agree. Those moments matter.

Speaker A: All right, so your mom was, uh, also driven, but in a different way and pursued a slightly different line of work. Tell us about her.

Speaker C: Yeah, my mom is just an amazing person. And oftentimes when I'm, I'm having conversations, she doesn't come up as much because she wasn't in the corporate world per se. But her journey is just so inspiring for me. Um, so she ran the daycare at home. We always had kids around our house. When we woke up in the morning getting ready for school, there was. There was kids there. When we were getting ready to go to bed, there was kids there, um, because she was helping out other families who, who were working and they needed someone to take care of their kids. And later on in life, she actually went back to college and she did early childhood education. So it was, it was really neat to see her, as we are getting older, go back to college and prioritize that. Um, one of her jobs later on, after she moved the daycare out of the house, was to work at a place called the Rose of Sharon. And it was a home for teenage moms. And my mom would take care of the kids for these teenage moms so that they could either go work or go to school. And so when we would have days off from school, there was nowhere else to go. So we would end up going in with her to the Rosa Sharon, and we'd help her in that daycare or spend time with. With some of the moms that were there. And it was just unbelievable to just see the way that she was with both the kids and the mothers. She was just an incredible resource and sounding board, um, person for these people to rely on. And for us it was also just this unique experience because we were getting to build relationships and meet people who had had very different lives so far. A lot of these, these young women were for, from low income families. Their families had abandoned them and they were trying to figure it out and they were just incredible people who, who were so kind and spending time with myself and my sister, uh, and it was just an amazing experience. So we learned a lot from my mom in those days and she probably didn't appreciate that either. Similar to the story you just shared in that those things were meaningful for, for myself and my sister.

Speaker A: Did you at any point feel a little bit resentful that you had to share your mom and you had to share your home with all these other kids?

Speaker C: Yes. Yeah, I mean we, um, well, one the days off from school, all you wanted to do was hang out and sleep in and you had to get up as early as you did on any school day to go with her. And uh, so some of those were hard, but we'd always have so much fun and my mom would make it fun for us those days and we'd get to meet amazing people. Um, um, and then with the kids coming over, they ended up becoming like our siblings. There's, there's a few families that are still really close to, to us and stay connected, but they really were there when we woke up in the morning. They had dinner with us at night. They became our extended family. So you probably get frustrated a little bit like you do with your own siblings and family, but it ended up being just a really rich experience for all of us.

Speaker A: I think that definitely shapes your perspective on life when, when early on you do need to learn that hey, it's not all about me. I can't monopolize my parents time. I, uh, need to share my home. And while I imagine it was difficult, uh, at the same time it probably gave you a different perspective and a different set of skills than you would have had in a situation where that you weren't exposed to those things 100%.

Speaker C: And, and there was an expectation for myself and my sister especially. You know, sometimes back in the day you would have on top of Your own kids, 5, 6, 7 kids at your house. And we're talking about babies to toddlers to school age. So there was an expectation for my sister and I when we get home from school that we would help out. Right? That might be feeding someone or changing someone or keeping someone busy while someone else was having a meltdown. Um, so you do realize that that, that is part of the responsibility that you have within the household.

Speaker A: You know, we're, uh, going through a bit of a remodel right now, as are many people out of the COVID era. And ah, I love, I love woodworking. I love working on projects. And I intentionally carved out a portion of the remodel and said, I'll take care of this. And I went to my kids and I said, guys, I can't do this by myself. I really need your help. And so they walk into this part of the house that's completely torn up and they look around and I'm saying, I need your help. And they recognize that, like, I'm not making that up. Like, they know I can't do it. And it's been amazing how, you know, sometimes as parents, you'll ask kids to do work and they don't really feel like they have to do it, like you're just kind of asking them to do it. But when they know that you're counting on them, you don't even need to explain it that much. They just know that they're needed and they step up and they have a sense of responsibility that I think is actually really healthy and in many respects missing in our society.

Speaker C: I totally agree with you. And uh, my, my wife and I talk about this all the time. You know, she, she's also, uh, from an immigrant family. And there's a different level of expectation and hustle for your, yourself and your kids. And we talk about it just like you. How do, how do we ensure that we create these opportunities for our own kids? How do we create this expectation and resilience for them? Because they are going to have different opportunities and different challenges than we did growing up.

Speaker A: Yeah, you know, I think about social media a lot and just the impact that that's had on self esteem. There's been a lot of articles published lately. It is so hard when you're in front of that screen and you're seeing these images that are, uh, in many cases not connected to reality. And that's kind of your focus. I see something different happen when people are together working on constructive jobs. There's not as much time to worry about what's going on on insta. Like you're trying to do something and then you turn around at the end of the day and you look back at what you've accomplished individually and together. And there's just a huge amount of self esteem that happens there. And uh, I mean, these are real issues in society related to self esteem and anxiety. But I Can't help but believe that at least part of the solution to that is helping people to find meaningful work where they can take pride in it, make a real contribution, and walk away realizing what they're capable of.

Speaker C: Yeah, totally agree.

Speaker A: That's Ryan Barreto, president at Sprout Social. When we come back, Ryan talks about how his legal career got derailed before it even launched and the incredible experiences that followed. Stay with us. I'm Justin Schreiber, and you're listening to Legends of Sales and Marketing. No one's ever going to criticize a young person for going into law. For Ryan, corporate law represented, uh, a safe but respectable career choice. But as he soon discovered, life had other plans for him. And while he may have been a lousy lawyer, his brief flirtation with the profession ultimately made him a better executive. Let's get back to the conversation. So you also had aspirations. You see your parents growing up, and, uh, uh, they're doing great things. I think you mentioned that you wanted to be a lawyer early in life. How did you land on that particular profession?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think, like most immigrant kids, your grandparents and your parents view professions like doctors and lawyers as a thing you should aspire to be and dream of. And so, from a young age, I somehow got caught up with this idea that I was going to become a corporate lawyer. Not just a lawyer, a corporate lawyer.

Speaker A: A corporate lawyer, of course. Yeah.

Speaker C: I still don't really know what that means. Uh, but somehow I used to tell people that all the time, and I really did. When I got to high school, I really enjoyed debate and my law classes. Uh, but I didn't really think about it again until I was getting to the end of college, and I really didn't know what I was going to do with my life. I had a lot of friends around me that had figured out what they wanted to do. I, uh, had a friend who was a pilot. I had friends that were going into finance, people who are actually going into law. But I felt lost. I did an undergrad in business, but I didn't really know what I was going to do when I came out. And so I thought, hey, you know what? Maybe I should actually make my parents, my grandparents proud and I'll go be a lawyer. And so, yeah, I went out and decided I was going to do that. And, um, took the LSAT once and did not. Did not do so well. So I took the LSAT twice and, uh, did not do any better. And I quickly realized that I either needed to really, really work hard on Figuring out how to nail this LSAT to actually give myself a chance to go, um, or I needed to move on. And I realized that my heart actually wasn't really into it. And also I just didn't know if I was ever going to be able to score well enough to make that an option. So, uh, sadly my corporate lawyer dreams ended, uh, at the end of college there.

Speaker A: Well, clearly it's worked out. So I guess we can thank the LSAT for helping you to take a slight detour in your career journey. Um, I can't help but ask, you know, a lawyer is interesting because nobody's going to criticize you for saying I want to be a lawyer. And nobody's going to criticize you when you're in law school. But I got to imagine that there are certainly, ah, more than one person that's there because they're either biting their time, they don't know what they're doing, they want to get their parents off their backs. So, uh, your, uh, your dream follow, started to follow a different point. And the rest obviously is history. All right, so you don't become a lawyer. Where, where does your career go from there then?

Speaker C: Yeah. So plan B. Still didn't know what I wanted to do, knew I wasn't going to be a lawyer and, but I wasn't, I wasn't still sure what was next. And I felt like maybe some more education could be on the horizon. That, you know, my family, the idea of backpacking and going to find yourself was, was never going to be something that was going to be welco. Uh, so I got this idea that maybe I would go deeper into marketing. I really enjoyed all my marketing classes and maybe there was an opportunity to go study somewhere else, study abroad in marketing. And so I set out to try and find a program somewhere else besides Canada where I could study marketing and could also get a little bit of travel and international experience. And in my search, I found a school called the University of Strathclyde, which I had never heard of before, uh, which was in Glasgow. But they had the most international student body in Europe and they had a master's in international marketing. And so I'd never been to Scotland, uh, before and I'd never heard of that school. But it seemed like a good place to kill two birds with one stone. Getting a little bit more education and getting a chance to live somewhere else. So I ended up going there after my undergrad.

Speaker A: So it's fascinating that you chose that explicitly for the international profile of the student body. Did you get your money's worth.

Speaker C: I did and more. It was, it was an unbelievable program. So it was a program that had 70 students representing 35 different countries. So it truly, truly was international. And I get a chance to just meet and interact with so many incredible people from around the world that still keep in touch today. Um, and you know, for me, going over, it was eye opening and getting a chance to, to not just go to school and meet other people, but to live with people from all around the world. So when, when I was applying, it was, it was still pretty expensive to go over there and it was going to be expensive to live somewhere else. So I tried to find the cheapest dorm they had available and it ended up being this off site campus that was where all the international students stayed. And it was actually an old hospital that they converted. So just um, really, really old and very sterile. And when I say old, I mean this thing had heating cards. You had to go into the city and buy these heating cards that you needed to use to be able to turn on not just the heat, but the electricity. And that's how you warmed up your water. So it was far different than any experience I had had living in Canada. But it also gave me this amazing opportunity. My roommates were from Spain and Ghana and, and China. And so you've got all these cultures colliding, all these languages colliding, very different expectations on, on how you live together and share washrooms and fridges and um, and have parties and all that good stuff. So it was, it was just a, an incredible experience for me. And uh, and honestly just a reminder of how lucky I was, but also how selfish I was back at that age.

Speaker A: That opportunity to not just get to know, but live with people from other cultures, to your point, really does bring home what we have here in the United States, the benefits that we have. You know, I think about my business, uh, school experience, it was a little bit different than that. Uh, to say that I was probably spoiled would be an understatement. And then you roll into some of these tech jobs and lunch is provided and all of these perks and I don't know, there's something to be said for, um, really getting down to what's real, having to kind of fight through some things and get an honest point of view on kind of how the world operates. Um, it sounds like it was hard, but in some respects really set you up for success later on in your career.

Speaker C: Yeah, it was. And I mean, there's one example that used to drive me nuts When I was there, which was then, I talked about the heating cards. Well, I'd go to the gym in the evenings, and I was fortunate enough to play on the varsity basketball team at Strathclyde, which meant that I got to meet all these incredible people. Um, I didn't play very much. I rode the bench. But it was an awesome opportunity. But we practice in the evenings, and I'd always come back and shower at night. The problem was it was more expensive to turn on the heater at night. And so my roommates would always be so mad at me that I came home and. And showered. And I felt, in my very, uh, selfish, spoiled North American ways that, you know, I'm paying for this place as well. But what I didn't realize is that, um, for them, that was a real big cost. And the fact that I was showering in the evenings was actually more expensive for all of them. And they're already struggling to make it work. And you start to just realize that you need to think about other people besides yourself, and you need to show some empathy and compassion. And I also just started to realize that while I was, you know, thinking about my own experience for my roommates, especially my roommate from China, that the language and the culture was such a big challenge for him. And, uh, and it just reminded me that I could be doing more to actually just make his experience better. And I needed to stop focusing in on myself. And certainly I think about those things, uh, a lot. And those lessons have. Have absolutely impacted the rest of my life.

Speaker A: You've shared a couple of stories thus far about real people, real relationships that you've built, whether it was working with some of the clients that your mother helped out or this experience that you had in, uh, getting your advanced degree. How do you think that shaped you as an executive today, those experiences?

Speaker C: It's been an awesome balance. If I think just going back to my folks. My dad is a very, uh, From a. The disc profile, he's a d. He's a driver. He's. He's very type A, uh, um, excellence is an expectation. My mom would be an S. She's on that supportive side. She's very compassionate. She cares a ton about people. And then you've got these other experiences that you've had through life where you're. You're just spending time with. With other people that. That totally change your experience. And so for me, I feel like I've got this healthy balance between high expectations for myself and my team, as well as realizing that empathy matters a ton. Deeply caring about the people around you and caring about them personally before professionally matters most. And so that has certainly helped help me and I think probably like you and everybody else, when you add kids into the mix, it just totally changes that dynamic even more.

Speaker A: So it may not have felt like it at the time, but it seems like you've built an awesome foundation. You've got this drive, you've got this compassion, you've got this Internet international point of view fairly well grounded in terms of just your expectations of life and your willingness to work for it. And I know you were studying marketing, so my assumption is out of school, straight into a marketing job. Is that how it worked out?

Speaker C: That was supposed to be the plan. So I came back from Scotland and started to interview and was lucky enough to land a job at SAP in corporate communications. And it was pretty awesome job with a well, uh, known company. I was, I was really excited about it. I called my dad and shared that I got this amazing job and I think at the time it paid $60,000, which is more money than I knew what to do with. And he paused and said to me, you know what, uh, I would really have you think about if you should be taking this job. Because I think that to be a great executive you need to learn how to sell. And when I look around at everybody that I've seen within my own work experience, they've all had sales experience. And so you can always fall back on your marketing degree. But I wouldn't take this job. I think about going out and finding a sales job. And so that, that one kind of threw me for a loop. And I kept thinking, dad, maybe you could have told me that before I went and did a master's degree in marketing. So anyway, I figured he knew a lot more than, than I did, especially as it, uh, related to the corporate world and business. So I turned down that higher paying job and went out to look for a sales job. And I ended up landing a sales job with a company called Ceridian. And it was a job that was a lot less money and that lost a lot less money. Half of it was actually based in the other half you had to go out and get in commission. But it ended up being the best decision of my career because it gave me all the other opportunities I've had within sales and go to market.

Speaker A: I've had conversations with a lot of people that are starting off in their career and they're faced with a similar question. I've got these two jobs, uh, one job. There's A lot of experience, but I'm not going to make as much the other job. I'm going to make more. And for me it's a no brainer. You're early in your career, go for as much experience as you can, and if you do it right, there's going to be an inflection point in your career which to a large extent will be driven by those early experiences and the foundation that you've built for yourself.

Speaker C: Yeah, I totally agree with that. And I think about the people that you're going to get to work with, the people you're going to get to work for and the money will come, especially if you're in a place where you feel well supported, where you're motivated and excited. That will all come. I didn't appreciate that back then, but certainly have more appreciation for that now.

Speaker A: Well, I spent a portion of my career in sales as well. Obviously I'm in marketing at this point, but I think about the decisions I make on a daily basis and to such a large extent those are informed by my experience as a salesperson. What's important, what's going to move the needle? How does business really work? It's hard to understand that to the degree that you can, if you've actually been in front of the customer, if you've carried a quota, if you know what it means to try to hit that number every quarter.

Speaker C: Yeah, I love that. And I love marketing folks that have had that empathy and being in front of customers and having to make that cold call and do all the things that you shared. Um, because they just make for so much better partners. Right. They know exactly what we need to do in front of customers and they know the trials and tribulations of being in the other person's shoes.

Speaker A: I have a daughter that is about to graduate from college. She was going to get an internship and I gave her the same advice. I said, you know, spend some time in sales, it may not be your calling and if it's not, that's okay, but at least do an internship and understand how it works. And she ended up having a great experience. And what she learned was that what she was doing, she was an inside salesperson. What she was doing on the phone, in terms of assessing the pain of the customer, proposing a solution, delivering it in a, uh, in a codified way. As marketers, we're doing the same thing, it's just a different form factors, there's a slightly different context, but at the end of the day, all of these go to market functions. Need to center around the customer, you need to get really adept at understanding where are they, what do they need, and how can we uniquely solve that problem.

Speaker C: Yeah, totally agree.

Speaker A: So you, uh, took, uh, a little bit of a detour out of Ceridian. I understand that you started a couple of companies. Why are you not off in the Bahamas sailing in your yacht at this point? I'm sure that these startups were wildly successful. What happened there?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think like everybody who's had a startup that implodes, that fails, you go to the. It was a great learning experience. Uh, so, yeah, I had, I had two, two companies that I tried. One right away, uh, after Ceridian, and one later. One was a tech company, one was a food company. Totally, totally different things. I had no idea what I was doing both times, but I was passionate about the idea and believed it could work and was willing to put my own money in savings and time to, to try it. And in both cases, the things I was getting to work on, I didn't have experience with before, certainly at that time. And that, that's, that's things like building your own website, running events, cold calling people without a recognizable brand behind you, trying to manage and create a budget, or P and L trying to sell other people on a vision. Um, it was, it was an awesome experience. It was really hard though. And I got a ton wrong. Uh, I got a ton wrong. Otherwise I would be in the Bahamas. But, uh, but you do, you do learn really fast when you go through it. And I felt for me later on as a salesperson, sales leader, it gave you a lot more appreciation for other business leaders and entrepreneurs and just appreciation for, for successful businesses. Um, so, yeah, those things both went to zero and it had to figure out how to build myself back up after that. But it also was the jump off, jumping off point for me and finding salesforce.

Speaker A: So just, uh, out of curiosity, what was the food business?

Speaker C: The food business was again, like most entrepreneurs, it was well ahead of its time. It was, it actually, it actually came from, uh, my experience living in the uk and so there were some entrepreneurs that were creating this business for chef inspired prepared meals that were going to be, um, totally custom created and, and available and ready within minutes. So as a normal consumer, I could go buy this packaging and it would have all the ingredients, your proteins, your vegetables, your sauces, and in 15 minutes in a skillet or oven, you would make this chef, uh, quality meal. And so that was the business. And I was one of the early investors. And then I had With a partner. The first store that we opened up in, in Toronto. And so it was, the food was incredible and uh, and the product was great, but people were not consuming food at that time. Certainly in North America, in, in the uk, people are very used to buying food that way. And fridges were small so you're out every day grocery shopping and getting your food. But in North America with these massive fridges, you, you buy for the week or two weeks and you weren't used to these types of retail outlets and food. So cool, uh, idea, uh, didn't work. And it drives me crazy because nowadays I get flyers all the time for these businesses that exist all around and are clearly successful. Those people are probably in the Bahamas.

Speaker A: So there's so much to be said for great ideas need to meet, great execution and timing. You know the market, you want to be ahead, but you don't want to be too far ahead. So when I was in business school actually this was 99. My wife came up with a similar idea. She loves to cook and she's like, it's really hard to prepare great meals every day. So, you know, similar concept that we see all over the place. Pre prepared meals, you know, two servings. And this, this was at a time when the Internet was really just coming on the scene. And I remember there was this one business which actually Inspired her called cosmo.com. this was in Boston. And these guys were insane. Anything you want to deliver, they would deliver. It was like a pre doordash but there was no minimum. You paid like peanuts. And I remember one day thinking, I want a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream. And I swear these guys were like hiding in the bushes because five minutes later there was a dude standing on my doorstep with a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream. And they didn't quite figure the model out. They couldn't get the economics right and the infrastructure wasn't quite there yet. But um, obviously today something like that is just part of our everyday reality. There were many people that got washed out though, because either they couldn't figure out the model, the market wasn't ready for it. So timing is everything for sure. Let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsors and then we'll jump back into the conversation. Welcome back. You're listening to Legends of Sales and Marketing and I'm your host, Justin Schreiber. Let's get back to the discussion. All right, so you, uh, you fall back on Salesforce, A pretty good fallback plan. What Was it like to be at what? First of all, when were you there? What stage was Salesforce at and what was it like?

Speaker C: Yeah, so super lucky to have ended up there. I joined when the company was about 180 million 800 employees. They just opened up the office in Toronto and I got lucky because I was actually winding uh, down my first startup. I had not had a paycheck in almost a couple years, had burned through my savings and I was playing basketball with a friend and that friend Darrell actually had said to me, hey, I just got a job at this company called Salesforce and apparently salespeople can make a hundred K there. And for somebody who hadn't got a paycheck in two years, hadn't taken Maya out to dinner in two years, any amount of money sounded, sounded great, didn't, didn't sound real. But I was able to get an interview thanks to Darrell and they were uh, nice enough to give me an opportunity to get started. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know what cloud computing or on demand computing was. I didn't really know what CRM was, but I just knew that they were building something incredibly special. And so I was in there early and uh, spent ten and a half years there from, from AE to, to getting to lead one of the business units later on in my career there.

Speaker A: Salesforce on the outside is known as an exceptionally run company. Having spent 10 years on the inside, what is it that makes that company so unique?

Speaker C: They, they do so many, so many things well. But uh, I'll maybe highlight two things that stood out for me. The first one is just the expectation of excellence and it actually, I think the part of the reason I loved it so much is it reminded me a lot of just the way I grew up and the expectation that, that my, my dad specifically had in terms of working hard, work ethic, expecting, uh, expecting more of yourself. And that was Salesforce. The bar was incredibly high. 100% was, was the expectation. And I felt really lucky to be in leadership early there. So a couple of years in I got a chance to run an SMB team and that meant that I was invited to some of the leadership meetings. And at those meetings back then you'd have Marc Benioff on the mic for two days straight running the meetings. And what I always really appreciated about his approach was he was incredibly direct and very critical on the things that he expected from himself and his executives. And so he had no problem highlighting if a business or uh, an executive wasn't necessarily Living up to the expectations. And when you saw that level of expectation and that bar at the highest level from executives, it just inspired you to know that when you went back to your own individual team, in my case was running the very small business team in Toronto, you, you had a different level of accountability for the performance that you needed to deliver and the excellence that was expected of you. And so that, that was just something that was across the organization. People moved really fast, there was a ton of urgency and people expected you to over deliver on the goals that they put in front of you. So that, that was one thing that I think just still rings true today. And then the second piece for me was just the idea that leadership needs to start with vision and inspiration. So you often hear leader versus manager again being at those meetings and also just getting a chance to spend time with other people that were on, um, Mark's leadership team. They were really incredible at painting a vision for all of us. And sometimes it was just really hard to understand where they were going or what they saw. But they looked out at the market and they looked years in advance and shared their vision for where Salesforce was going to be. And I started when it was just Salesforce Automation. But Mark was from the very early days talking about full CRM, talking about creating a platform, creating an ecosystem, creating this community of customers. And so they really did a great job inspiring everybody with division of how amazing this company would be and how impactful it would be for customers. And then the second thing that they did on top of it was they realized that it wasn't good enough for Mark to be able to deliver that vision. Every single person needed to be able to stand and deliver in their own authentic voice, the same quality of messaging. And so they used to certify us on, on all of the messaging and the products. And it was a stand and deliver where you would have to present in front of your peers and you would be stack ranked. And even at the leadership meetings with, with Mark's most senior leaders, it would, it would be like a March Madness tournament of you presenting the messaging. They would write down the stack rank from your group and they would post it around the walls of the meeting rooms you were in. So everyone showed up with just a different level of preparation, um, and nerves when you would present because we knew how important this stuff was. But that was the second piece that, that vision and inspiration and then executing all the way through to make sure that everyone got it.

Speaker A: I can just see these conference rooms with the winner's bracket and the loser's bracket and you're following the teams through.

Speaker C: You did not want to be on the bottom of those pages, that is for sure.

Speaker A: How, uh, how, how did Salesforce create a constructive environment given the, the competition, the internal competition that was created sounds like the pressure that was there. How did Salesforce keep it constructive and make sure that that didn't turn into a toxic environment where you were pitting one person against another?

Speaker C: I think the biggest thing was they, they rallied the team on the vision of what the company could be if we were all successful. And, uh, even if I think about in the sales organization, just the way that they approached club, those club trips in the early days were huge. There was tons of people who were really successful, still is today. And you would be cheering even if you got to your number. You would be cheering for your peers to get over the line. You would be trying to help them in closing deals to ensure that they got there. I can think back to, to so many year ends where you would have other people running reports, trying to find good opportunities for their peers who were so close to hitting their number. And it was, it was very much a collaborative environment because you knew that your success wasn't going to come at the cost of your peers. And so I think they just did a really great job of, of encouraging us and incenting us all in that way. But again, it goes back to that vision of what the company was going to be from the very, very early days. Mark just, just set this vision that this was going to be one of those special companies that you'd be telling your kids and grandkids about. And so I think everybody was just bought into that, that mission. And still today, you can see it in their, in their marketing and in the way they show up. People are just so proud to be, uh, be involved. And I'm so proud and lucky to have been part of that journey.

Speaker A: Salesforce, to your point, continues to do a great job. And I think as we think about Salesforce today, we see them as the company they are, the size they are, the influence they're exerting in the marketplace. I'm intrigued though, by you. Go back to the Salesforce of the early aughts, 2004, 2005. It's fascinating once they went public, to listen to some of Mark's earnings calls, because on those calls he does an incredible job of, as you were saying, painting this picture not of who Salesforce is, but who they will become. And, and then he brings this evidence. I remember the first Time you started talking about the seven figure deals and then it was the first eight figure deal and at first it was one or two and then it was four or five and that number would continue to grow. And Mark just believed in it so much and brought that to life in a way that whether you were an investor or an employer, a customer, it was a tangible thing. Um, you know, feel the dreams. If you build it, they will come. He, he was really a practitioner of that. And a lot of people aren't able to achieve obviously what sales. Few people are able to achieve what Salesforce did. But that company is a testament to the power of vision and the power of someone bringing to life something that doesn't exist today but that they can see in their mind's eye.

Speaker C: Uh, yeah, I totally agree. And I mean, there's so many people like myself that have been in and around the orbit that are taking all these lessons to other places within the industry because of all the things that they've accomplished and continue to accomplish.

Speaker A: Well, let's talk about your latest gig, Sprout Social. You're the president. What is Sprout Social?

Speaker C: Yeah, so, so today, and this actually ties a lot to Salesforce in that in the early days and later stage, Mark, Mark would talk about cloud and mobile and social and where the world was going. And, and we've seen that especially during this pandemic, half the world's population, population is on social today. They're using it more than ever before. And it's evolved over time. What used to be, you know, kind of a cute tool that people thought about to, uh, to share pictures with their friends or find a date has, is really transformed into a new mode of communication. Right. It's where marketing's happening. Customer support, market intelligence. And increasingly now with what we're seeing from the social networks, social commerce, e commerce strategies, moving to social media. And you know, for us as consumers, we've been using it for a long time, so it's very approachable. But we forget that for businesses this is still new and they typically don't have the tools to be able to manage this new platform. And so that's where we come in. At Sprout, we help businesses harness the power of social to create stronger brands and communities and to grow their business. And we're doing this for businesses from SMB to some of the most important brands in the world, like the Four Seasons or Electronic Arts or Kraft Heinz or Taco bell, and for 30,000 customers, uh, around the world. And so that's A little bit about what we do. And I'm fortunate enough to run the go to market motions for Sprout across marketing and sales and customer success and services and partnerships.

Speaker A: We live in a world where expectations are higher than ever. Individual consumers expect that brands will know who they are on an individual level, and yet there are so many different channels where they're sending out information. It's becoming really complicated to just wrangle that information, let alone respond to it. So you guys are absolutely at the forefront in terms of being able to keep your finger on the pulse of what customers are talking about. Uh, one of my colleagues had the fortune to go to an Obama, an intimate Obama, uh, dinner. And she said it was fascinating to watch him operate because he was out in San Francisco. He was among many people whom he had never met before. And yet he could go up to each individual, know them by name, know some things to talk about. It was, uh, it was almost as if he knew each of these people, had known them for years. And uh, she was a comms person. She said, as a comms person, I was fascinated to find out how was he able to do that? Well, he had an entire infrastructure behind the scenes that was briefing him and even in the moment, in an inconspicuous way, feeding him information as he was approaching these people so that he was on point. That's, that's how companies have to be today. They though they have to rise to that same level. And it's tools like Sprout Social that are feeding them the intel that they need to make every customer feel special.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's uh, it's amazing. When you talked about that, it reminded me of an episode of Veep. Uh, but it is just awesome to think about that. And we hear this every single day from our customers and brands and in this new world where for many of them, with some of the changes that have happened, it's a lot harder to advertise and market. So they're thinking a lot more about how do we engage in our communities, how do we create, uh, one to one relationships, how do we learn more about our customers and actually engage with them in that way, knowing all that information. And so we think a lot about social CRM and how do we help our customers capture that information to empower them to do that.

Speaker A: So I know that for Sprout, the customer focus is paramount. And a lot of people, a lot of companies talk about this. What are you guys doing to make that real?

Speaker C: It starts for us. So we have, uh, five standards at the company and the first standard and they're in priority order is we start with the customer. So that's something that is just in the fabric of the DNA for the company. We talk a lot about this idea that we expect to add value in every interaction, that we want to deliver more value than is expected of us. And I really do think it starts with our executive team, our founding team. They, from the very early days before they had a sales team, thought a lot about how do we create a product that is going to be incredible for customers where it's going to be low friction, it's going to enable them to get up and running and get value right away. And then over time, as we've added complementary resources like sales and success and support, we've tried to ensure that that's, that's tied to our culture. M A few years ago, Justin, our CEO, framed it as we want to make sure that we're easy to do business with. So how do we, similar to our product, how do we make sure at every touch point with the customer that we're reducing friction and adding value. And then a couple of years ago at kickoff, he said, as we are starting that easy to do business with is too low a bar for the company. We want to be, we need to be a joy to do business with. And I just love that, I love that word joy because it conjures up all of these images of what is a joyful experience, especially in B2B. How do you create this differentiated experience? Experience where you're doing more from for a customer than they expected. And so we think about that every day. We, we certainly highlight the examples of it when we see it on social from our customer. Um, but we encourage people to go above and beyond. And I'll give you a couple quick examples. During the pandemic, one of our customers, um, that is a company that, that runs ski hills suddenly closed during COVID and they needed to. And it wasn't planned. They didn't have time to set up press releases and create a communication plan. It happened and it happened on a weekend. And he had a couple people that were managing social and they just had thousands upon thousands of messages coming in. And they reached out to our team and our team, not just support, but the customer success organization and the sales organization all jumped in and within hours help that customer create chatbots to enable those two people to manage all of those incoming social messages to help these customers. We had another example a couple years ago where a large Fortune 500, uh, suddenly had their access turned off from another solution and they called us during our kickoff and our team that was assigned to the account all left kickoff and started working on implementing this customer one by one. And those are the things that we expect of our team. And the cool thing about it is when you create that type of culture, you don't have, ah, to ask people, they just, they go and they do it because they take a ton of pride in it. So that, that's something that we, we thought a ton about and I think it's, it's really, really critical, especially in the environment that we're working in today where you do have a lot of choice.

Speaker A: Those stories also become part of the culture. They're the stories that are passed on and they become essentially the standards that other people aspire to meet. So you continue to raise that bar. I know also a big emphasis for you is just building great teams. And that's something that's top of mind for every leader these days, especially at a time when the workforce is more fluid than ever, it has more opportunity than ever. What are some of the unique things that you do to build great teams?

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I, uh, think the first thing is just what you said. The environment has changed. Um, now years ago they used to call this the war for talent. And I really do feel like we're back at that. And the best people you want to work with their heads down, they're not looking, they're doing great in their current job. You have to go find them. And we've realized that if we don't end up rolling up our sleeves as leaders and getting in and engaging, it's going to be a whole lot harder for us. And so we've really tried to partner with our recruiting team to figure out who are the best people that we want to, to go work with. And we ask our leaders, myself included, to go out and prospect to go out on LinkedIn and find the profiles who are inspiring to us, with people who have experiences that would be game changing for the company, who seem to have a culture that would fit with us and we reach out directly. And so I do this all the time. Um, there's a ton of people in, uh, in our company as well as, as people that have just become part of our network that I haven't got a chance to work with yet, that I've reached out to on LinkedIn and I try and inspire them with the vision of what we're building. And my team does an amazing job with this as well. Um, but what we're sharing with people is that we're trying to build something pretty special here. We are looking for people who want to do more than just their job description. And the value prop for folks coming in is that we don't have it all figured out. We've. We've done well as a company so far, but we want people who want to be builders who are excited about the idea of scaling out. So I think the biggest thing is just for every leader right now, if you want to, uh, if you want to grow and scale your team, you've got to roll up your sleeves and get out there and engage with the type of people that you want to have come in. And I get this feedback all the time from the folks that I reached out to is that they responded because I reached out. And they're used to headhunters or recruiters. They're not used to executives reaching out, uh, directly to them. And so that's why they took the call.

Speaker A: Virtually every leader, particularly in sales that I've talked to that is successful has this active cadence where they are building networks not simply because they have a position they need to fill, but because they want to know the best people in each city. Uh, we had a great discussion with John McMahon earlier in the year, and John said, I could tell you in Chicago and Atlanta and Austin and Boston who the best salespeople were. I wasn't necessarily in a position to hire them, but when I was in those cities, I'd have lunch with them, I'd grab drinks with them. I kept my network warm. And then when you do need to hire someone, there's already a relationship and a rapport that's been established.

Speaker C: Yeah, 100% agree with you. I've just learned so much in reaching out, and oftentimes it doesn't result in the person coming to, to work for you. Maybe they're just not ready or it's not a perfect fit fit. But I've learned so much from those folks, and the network's getting richer and bigger because of, of those interactions. So I completely agree.

Speaker A: Well, Ryan, it's been an awesome conversation. Let's go ahead and wrap up with my favorite question. And that is, as you look back over your life, when all is said and done, what would you say has had the biggest impact on who you are today? What's made the most difference?

Speaker C: It would definitely be the family. And there's. There's kind of two parts to it. I think that the starting part for my life and career is obviously my mom and dad. And we've talked a lot about them here today. But they just instilled these values of working your butt off, always learning, expecting excellence and treating people really well, being a kind person. And that's helped me a ton in getting my career started and certainly helps me today. And then the other piece is my girls is my wife Maya, my two little girls. And this pandemic has been incredibly hard for, for so many. I will say that for our family, the silver lining has been the relationships and the time that I've been able to, to spend and develop with, with my girls. And I wouldn't trade it for, for anything. And I've had more opportunities in the last two years to enjoy these little moments that I was missing before I realized that I was sacrificing a lot, getting up really early to get into the to the office and staying on and oftentimes not getting home till they're heading to bed. And today I get my girls up every morning. I do their hair. Um, they come into my office as soon as they get home, regardless if I'm on a zoom or not. And I've even had a chance to do a little bit of coaching. And for me, they've brought just a ton of joy to work. It's made work even more fun and it's just made me realize, um, the importance of balancing out, finding harmony in your life. So it's definitely family on both sides for me.

Speaker A: Well, great advice and great experiences. Thanks so much.

Speaker C: It's my pleasure. Thanks for the time.

Speaker A: M thanks for tuning in today to Legends of Sales and Marketing for more

Speaker C: inspiring stories about how today's most influential

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