Episode 67: Cross-Collaborating with Department Heads Effectively

Speaker A: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Sales Rx podcast. My name is Chet Lovgren, AKA the Sales Doctor, and here as always, in the Englewood Studios with my co host, Billy Stein. Today is our season three finale. Um, so we're pretty excited to kind of put a bow on this thing. We really appreciate all the engagement over the last, uh, 11 episodes. You know, we run these seasons in quarterly. 12, 12, uh, installment episodes. And so it'll be exciting to see what we cook up for season four. But we've been really appreciative of the podcast gross growth over, uh, season three here. Uh, and today we're going to be talking about one of the final things we wanted to kind of wrap a bow about. Uh, put a bow on and wrap it up. This, this, uh, this season is cross collaborating with department heads effectively. Um, you know, especially when you have departments that are relying on you for support and you're relying on them for support, uh, it's really important to be able to understand how to basically work with people at a different level. It's not like you're selling or you're an individual contributor anymore and you're just learning to work alongside colleagues. You have to manage people who might have a title higher than you or might have a similar level of title in another department who may not like the idea that they have to kind of be managed, but, you know, group projects. Who's actually putting in all the work and who's not. So it can be, it can be a tricky thing, right? It's like in high school when you'd have a group science project and one person would just be like, yeah, that sounds good. And they're not really doing anything. And then that one kid is like, doing all the equations.

Speaker B: I was that person.

Speaker A: You were the, the, the heavy lifter or the person like. Yeah, that all. No, no, no.

Speaker B: It was the engaged for like the first 10 minutes of the group project and then, you know, staring out the window and this certainly not going to impede on my N64 time after.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Ah, I, I was not the heavy lifter. I was the one who was just frustrated that it wasn't getting done. And I was like, let's just get it done. Like, I really want to talk about it. And it's funny how that, I think that translates into my career is we'll get in a meeting and talk about something. And I'm like, okay, are we just gonna talk about it the whole time or what are we gonna do action on it?

Speaker B: Definitely.

Speaker A: Just Like, I don't care if it's not even perfect. Like, that's probably one of my shortcomings, too, is I'm not. Like, I want to understand what the big red button does before I push it, but I'm not gonna, like, wait until it's too late to press the big red button. Yeah, I see the asteroid coming. We're in the spaceship. I think we need to eject. But let's make sure this is the eject button. I'm not gonna wait till the asteroids already hit me, which I feel like is a big problem that happens in a lot of orgs is takes them a long time to move or they move too quick. You got to find a healthy balance. So, yeah, we're really excited. Uh, we're really thankful for Kixie and their partnership with us this season. Um, but luckily, we're gonna have some new sponsors next season, which we're pretty excited for. Uh, still working some things out with a couple people, but pretty excited to see who we're going to partner with in the next season. But we do thank Kixie for their continued support this season. Uh, you know, production costs are not cheap. Uh, even, you know, opportunity costs are not cheap. And so it's really nice to be able to find someone in the space to partner with. And we're excited to, uh, you know, show you who we're partnering with next, uh, season when the time comes. But other than that, Billy, it's Saturday. We've actually got some Diet Pepsi in our mugs, which is changing it up a little bit. Yeah, a little bit of a change. You're from Atlanta, so you're like, I'm a Coke guy.

Speaker B: So this was not planned.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: This morning when I got here, not

Speaker A: enough coffee, and I pulled out a Diet Pepsi. He goes, ooh, can I have one of those? And I was like, I'm literally about to tell you at 9:30, don't judge me for drinking a Diet Pepsi. And you're like, no, actually, can I have one?

Speaker B: Well, the good news is, like, I'm going to get away with this for a few weeks with my group chat of my boys from Atlanta. But they all do watch this. They all do critique me.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Even though most of them couldn't care less about what we talk about.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: I'm definitely going to get cooked in the group chat for admittingly drinking a Diet Pepsi. And I'm also going to say, tastes pretty much like a Diet Coke.

Speaker A: You know what you're not gonna get cooked for is that awesome. Hat that you.

Speaker B: Oh, this hat is great.

Speaker A: You're wearing.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Huh.

Speaker B: Huh. No, I was, I was gonna say it to you too. You, uh, when I pulled up this morning, you had this sales doctor hat on.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And I was like, man, one thing I don't think I have enough of is black trucker hats.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So can I get one? What's the story with these?

Speaker A: Anyway, so, uh, just great relationship I have with John Morris over at Club Colors. And continually I'll shout out their brand, engage with everything, and they post. They had me on their podcast. I had John on my podcast, uh, back when he was virtual. And, you know, they reached out to me and said, hey, we want to bless you. Let's get you some hats. And did, uh, a little collab video, which, with them, which was kind of fun. So John Morris and the team over at Club Colors, they work on promotional products and printing. And as event season's coming up, if you need stuff, I would reach out to them because they do great and these hats look fantastic.

Speaker B: Yeah, this hat's great.

Speaker A: And this is, this is again, like, I think even if it's free, they still work just as hard and want to make it look just as nice. But we all know that I'm not. I didn't pay for these. They gave these to me. And this is how good the free stuff looks. So imagine, like, when you're paying them for, like, high quality printing and services, how awesome everything can look. So if you need promotional items, swag, branded materials, I would reach out to John Morris and the team of club callers because they're freaking awesome. I got to do a tour when I was there for their podcast at their old factory.

Speaker B: Now where's their factory?

Speaker A: Uh, I think it was in Schomberg. They've moved since then, but it was when I went to Chicago last March.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: And the podcast, they do it there. Like, they have the sales team there, the marketing team, so they have the whole office, and then they have the, the whole warehouse and then the factory and then the podcast studio kind, um, of off to the side. And he gave me a whole tour. And man, what an operation. Like, it's not just like some people in a 1200 square foot area with a couple printing machines. It's like a whole. I mean, they got like these things picking up shirts and like, it was like watching, you know, Mr. Rogers when he used to do the VCR and he'd, like, show you manufacturing. It was kind of like that. It was kind of cool.

Speaker B: You know how I Know it's good quality. Like, I always. When I get a. When I get a snap back like this, I take the teeth and I do the even right, so there's no overlap coming off the side of the hat. And, like, how does my head feel 10 minutes after? Because you can always tell when it's, like, digging into your. In your head if you're wearing it too tight. Fits like a glove.

Speaker A: Yep. Great work. So, Billy, what's going on with you this week, man? Welcome to the studio. What's up with you?

Speaker B: Good to be back in Englewood, man. What a week. So at the. At the time we're filming this, my company's fiscal year ended on Wednesday night, And to the members of my team, they absolutely beasted it. For the last three days, they performed like legends, and we were on an incredible high. And then, unfortunately, on Thursday morning, first thing, I found out that there was a reduction in force at my company, and my name was called. So Jekyll and Hyde. Kind of weak, but, yeah, it's good, uh, when you. When you go through these circumstances, it's good to have consistency. So it's good to be back in the Inglewood studios. Cannot wait to talk about whatever we're going to talk about today.

Speaker A: Whatever we're going to talk about today. Meaning I totally blanked out. Well, two things. Number one, you're not going to be a free agent for long. I know that, um, you have a great network, you have a lot of people around you that want to see you win, including myself. And so I'm sure that you'll be, you know, making waves, doing good things somewhere pretty soon. The good thing is that I'm sure it's not anything about performance. It's purely about tenure, which is.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Which. Which is shitty. It sucks. Like, that's, you know, but that's the name of the game sometimes when those things happen. And, um, you know, hopefully this isn't something that happens at the next place because you're the new guy there. But I know. I know you're gonna make an impact, and you won't be gone for long. And second thing, um, maybe we'll be able to drown any pain that you have in those chicken wings we're gonna get after this or whatever we decide to go eat. But talk has been chicken wings.

Speaker B: So, you know, I. I, uh. I feel like it with all the layoffs that have been occurring, and there's been a lot of them already in 2024, and a lot of these companies are starting their fiscal years I mean, Thursday, Friday, let's be honest, sales teams probably did not do very much. Most of them m are probably waiting to go full court swing on Monday. But you, uh, know, I, I think a lot of people are being a lot more real about the way they feel about things. And you know, this is the second time now during this kind of market downswing that this has happened in my position and it sucks. And nobody likes to be in that position. Nobody likes to have to put a green banner on their LinkedIn. Nobody likes to have to admit, for purposes within or without of your control, that, hey, I don't have a job anymore. And like, I am waiting on a box to send a company back my laptop. But I do think my, from my personal perspective, I had a great time at seismic. I had, I had the best direct reports I could have ever asked for. I had great leadership. I had many, many people that became friends along the way. And it's just an ugly chapter in the book of tech. And I hope it's ending soon. But even if it's not, I don't harbor any bad feelings about it. The only thing that I hate is that it is in fact over. So having said all that, I am going to be looking for something new. And there's a lot of amazing people that have already reached out directly to me and I hope that continues. And I can't wait to get back to work. And I know my wife feels the same because she's already sick of me pacing around the apartment.

Speaker A: At least now when I ask you to golf on a Wednesday morning, we can go.

Speaker B: Well, hang on. I don't know if you saw the weather report coming. Yeah, might, uh, be a couple weeks.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, we're going. We're doing something special for my son's birthday this week, so I better not rain because it's contingent on good weather. All right, we're going to jump into our first segment, but before we do, here's a word from our sponsor. Kixie.

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Speaker A: So head over to Kixie. Click slash sales doc, that's K I X I E. Click slash salesdoc or click the link in the description. Get a fully loaded 10 day extended free trial for your entire team. You don't even need to put down a credit card and the trial comes with hours of call credits included. So keeping in line with what we've been doing more recently and hint, hint, maybe the vision of the future of the show or a another show functioning asynchronously of this one. We'll see. That's what we're going to talk about at lunch today. Uh, we've been talking a lot more about like the world of economics and business. Kind of how it applies a little bit to this whole world of tech, uh, that we talk about and go to market and all the things that, you know, I like being more educational and not just like when we can find a clip that has to do with a specific tactical topic. I like it. We, the, the, the more niche and nuanced our topics have been getting, the harder it's been to find stuff which is mind blowing.

Speaker B: You mean like cross departmental collaboration for sales orgs at tech companies?

Speaker A: Yeah, or, or like. Yeah, like uh, you know this is why we don't have 50,000 listeners, we have 10 because.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: It's very micro niche but it's relevant. Um, because I mean there's at least 500 people I know off the top of my head that listen to the show and probably are pulling nuggets from this. So that's good. Um, you know. Yeah. What was the other one? We had a hard time with the post onboarding. Like yeah, there's like nothing about that.

Speaker B: Yeah. Sales enablement has not really made its way to Tick tock.

Speaker A: Mhm or YouTube or even LinkedIn. Like maybe it's just like it's still

Speaker B: just the Lamborghini Renner crowd that we are not talk about their 67 point success system or whatever.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, but this one is interesting because it has a lot to do with tech. It has a lot to do with jobs. It has a lot to do with the first thing we talked about in this season, which is AI and so this is an article. Uh, we'll. We'll ping the article. People want to read it. But essentially there's this company called Miso Robotics, and they've created a fully automated AI line cook that can work burgers, a fryer, fries, onion rings, chicken tendies, chicken nuggies. Um, and it's called Flippy. And right now in Pasadena, which is pretty close to us, maybe we should go there today. You want to try to pass it?

Speaker B: No, I know.

Speaker A: That's. My wife was just saying. I'm like, don't take them up there.

Speaker B: Because first of all, Pasadena will take us like three hours to get to from Englewood on a Saturday at lunchtime.

Speaker A: Everything going on the 110 right now. Um, but this restaurant is called Cali Express in the heart of Pasadena, and it's the first restaurant to fully implement this technology. Um, it can make £250 of french fries in an hour. The robot can K. Cook 100 patties at a time without needing a, um, m. The machine neither needs a break or a day off. And what's interesting to me is this restaurant owner, Vic, uh, Apu. I'm not even gonna try. His name is Vic. Something he, um, says, and I can read this, but I can't see his last name. For some reason, we can't get enough people to come out and work on the fryer and the grills. They're dangerous jobs. And this automation helps solve a lot of those issues we're having. So here's why I think this is interesting, and I want to kind of get your opinions on some of this stuff. The jobs report comes out as we're recording this first week of February, this was like middle of January. Jobs report comes out, talks about this insane job growth.

Speaker B: Big spike.

Speaker A: Yeah, I know that also happens because politically it's important with what's going on right now for that to be there for the current administration. But literally two weeks before that, it's all over LinkedIn. On the news side, I can't remember if it's Harvard or Yale, but research has shown that MBA post grads are finding jobs. There's. There's two times, not 2%, two times fewer employed MBA post grads than there were in 2020. So when the world shut down, now, right now, compared to now there are two times less employed post grad, mba, uh, post grads. So people that have an MBA are getting hired. Two times less of those people are getting hired than in when the world was shut down in 2020. But yet the jobs report says, oh, boom. And then we look at tech, we know what's going on there. I think you were calling out finance as well. So we know the industries that are not hot right now for jobs. And so you see a jobs report and you got to think to yourself as someone who's not plugged in on the frontline society, well, where are those jobs? My first take is maybe they're in more manual labor jobs. You know, manual labor intensive. Warehouses, manufacturing, restaurants. But then you read stuff like this where people are saying, we can't get any help. You go to a grocery store, there's only one person in the checkout line. There's now seven to eight self checkout lanes. And my Ralph's up here, my local Kroger grocery store, they actually took the express checkouts next to the self checkout and they turned them into self checkouts where you literally have to walk on the other side, run the belt and do your own thing. Like you work there. It's insane. So nobody can get enough help. But for some reason jobs are booming. But we in our certain industries know that jobs aren't booming. Everybody's getting, it feels like a lot of people are getting laid off. And so this comes along and I love how it says it doesn't need a break or time off. So AI is essentially free slave labor in that regard. Uh, I look at this as what's crazy and revolutionary about this too is workers compensation insurance is based on the amount of payroll that you have. So now if you go from having a quarter of a million in payroll, running a, uh, running a, you know, a Cali Express burger joint to, you know, I have one person that works

Speaker B: during the week and the rest are licensed robotics that I rent from Miso Robotics.

Speaker A: Yeah, now my payroll is 100 grand a year. Your insurance cost is going to go way down. Your liability for a potential lawsuit is going to go way down. Maybe you're not as concerned about your employee contracts anymore. So now you just leverage CHAD GPT to write all your, your employee contracts. You don't need to actually pay a lawyer to that. Ton of implications just aside from labor with something like this happening. So what do you, what do you think about when you see something like this? A fully automated, like, we're here. This works too And I'll tell you, I knew this is going to work. I invested in this company when they did a crowdfunding thing like two and a half years ago, I was like, yeah. The second, because they were in like they had a, uh. The first time they tested this was in a shake shack.

Speaker B: Well, no, no wonder you wanted to talk about this today.

Speaker A: No, but I think it's really cool because now we're actually seeing it. But I think the implications are crazy because we're hearing so much different information. It's like, okay, here's a restaurant owner saying, I can't get anybody to work. Jobs report saying people can work. Harvard is saying there's nobody getting, getting jobs. We're seeing a bunch of people get laid off, you know, in tech and finance. What the heck? What do you think? Uh, give me your. I just gave you a bunch of word salad. Digest it. What do you think?

Speaker B: Well, first of all, I hate everything about this. I hate the Amazon delivery robot. Okay. I hate the idea of Amazon and Domino's and all these other people wanting to use drones to deliver things to people's front door. I think this is a very slippery path. So here's the way I think about it. Number one. Yes. Like it, it. It's been a problem for a while in the hospitality industry that workers are just hard to come by. Reason for that? Nobody wants the jobs. There's been a narrative that's always been talked about that's like, oh well, nobody wants to work hard in a kitchen and like, it's not a flattering job to have. So like, it's really hard to get people in. But like, in reality, like, who's responsible for making a job worth having? Not everybody wants a white collar spreadsheet jockey position.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: So you already have a problem in the restaurant industry with, as the guy even calls that the proprietor, uh, calls out like these are dangerous jobs. Like, well, it's incumbent on you to make them safe and to provide an environment where the kitchen staff can be safe and also pay their bills.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Compounded on this problem. You talked about workers comp. Right? And like overall insurance, like, it really helps and like we get it. And like, look, the, the uh, okta layoffs that were announced, like the CEO even spelled out in the note that went viral, like our costs are too high. But this goes back to the first conversation you and I had the first episode of the season when we were talking about AI. There's generative AI that has, you know, dominated the world that we live in for the last, what, 16 months.

Speaker A: What most people think AI is, which AI goes above, right?

Speaker B: Totally.

Speaker A: Everybody would say AI. They really talk about generative in our world.

Speaker B: But like generative AI doesn't solve any novel problems that don't that haven't already been solved because all it really does is compile massive databases of information and summarize it in a quick synopsis for who's ever looking at it.

Speaker A: Yeah, to me it's like a cheat code or a hack.

Speaker B: This is a different kind of AI completely.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And you know, my issue with it is you already had a problem. You know, it's not total solutionism, it's not a, uh, solution without a problem. You have a problem, you don't pay kitchen workers enough money, they cannot get by. But now you're taking it from an opportunity. They could at least attempt to get by and just completely removing the opportunity to work. That's a problem. And I don't want to go to this, I mean personally, I don't want to go to this restaurant because I don't want to perpetuate anything that takes jobs away from human beings. And I'm not just salty on that because of what happened to me this week. I'm salty about that in general because I used to work at a company that created software that people like Miso Robotics would use to build their robots, which the knock on effect of it is this puts people out of work. I hate it.

Speaker A: I think. No, I'm not going to get into a big conspiracy theory about this, but I do think that this is all a push to get the average person out of bigger cities so that they're only attractive as tourist destinations and places for medium to high net worth individuals. Because like, you know what it costs to live in la?

Speaker B: I do, unfortunately.

Speaker A: So without trying to get too political or whatever you want to call it, haven't you ever wondered how certain service like does it surprise you that certain service workers might live in a two bedroom apartment with their wife, their kids, their grandma, their grandpa, their uncle and their aunt and they work at a restaurant in LA when people are making 15 an hour, like could you imagine how you would have to live making 15 an hour? Could you and your wife live in your apartment by yourselves? No, you'd have to have nieces, nephews, sisters, cousins, people staying with you sharing that load. So when I lived in a three bedroom apartment with my brother and we, you know, sometimes the other space was, we'd have a roommate for six months. We never had like long Term roommates. It was usually somebody just moved here and they're there for six months and then it'd be an office space for two months and then the activity room. So much activity, uh, so many room for activities. But it didn't surprise me that our downstairs neighbor, there were eight people living in a two bedroom apartment and literally they'd have all their windows open and when you'd walk by, there were beds lined up, you know, across the walls. And they just put them down at night, I'd assume, and they'd all just lay down there in, in the living room. And we're like, dude, because there's always new people coming and going. But it didn't surprise me because, you know, they were there a lot during the day too. So I think it was like a community thing where it's like, either all of us can work 40, 50 hours a week in these service jobs, or we can all work part time 20 hours a week and just share the bills. And I used to wonder like when I worked in food service and I'd be like, man, these busers make 12, 50 an hour plus maybe $50 a night in tips. And I look at that, I'm like, that's like 40 grand a year. How do you live on 40 grand a year? I'm making 86k as a bar manager and I'm wondering, how can I get better? Like, I'm wondering like, what am I going to do with my money?

Speaker B: And it's funny, it's funny you say that because while we're on this topic, so one of the perpetual jokes in my house is that, you know, my wife is from San Jose, I grew up in the flyover states. Sometimes we'll just like pick a place I used to live, we'll look at Knoxville, Tennessee. We'll be like, man, we know it's cheaper to live there than it is LA. Cost of a house in Knoxville is still 300 grand. Like that's just the world we live in now. If you're making $40,000 a year, which a lot of people in the restaurant industry do, or less, that's a decade almost of, of take home pay in order to afford a house. Mhm.

Speaker A: So that's, that's what I'm saying is it feels like, okay, but if we get all these people that aren't making, I mean, what do they say? It almost feels like 100k is the new minimum wage. It's like a thing going around.

Speaker B: Okay, I've heard it's the new middle class is 100k.

Speaker A: I've heard it's like the new minimum wage.

Speaker B: Either way, I think the point states that 100k is not what it used to be.

Speaker A: Of course, not even close. But it's like if all these people making, you know, 40 to 50k a year, if they left then who's going to be working in these kitchens? Who's going to be working on the front lines in the service and hospitality industry? Well, hey, no worries, we got it solved. I think this is part of a bigger five year plan and if you want to get deeper and you live in LA and you understand, like I bet I would venture to say your building is pretty vacant for the most part. I wouldn't imagine it's not full because there's this whole thing going around, investigative journalism about vacancy rates and these big buildings that get spun up because your building's new. Right. It's one of those new builds over

Speaker B: three years old, but it's pretty full.

Speaker A: Oh, that's interesting because yeah, this guy was showing all this stuff, especially in like the arts district downtown about how there's like 90 occup, uh, vacancy rates in these, you know, really nice new

Speaker B: apartment buildings and they're probably still $8,000 a month.

Speaker A: Yeah. Because it's all a part of like land investment, the Robert Kiyosaki thing and Grant Cardone thing, leveraging that for more money. And that's just perpetual debt. And then yeah, it's a whole thing. It's really actually pretty scary. But I think this is the precipice of some of that stuff. Uh, so you're saying you're going to give it a cap?

Speaker B: Obviously I'm definitely giving it a cap. And like I, I, I just think that this creates a very slippery slope for what the future of these quote unquote essential jobs are. That 4 years ago people couldn't get enough of praising the people that work them. Um, now we're replacing them with Flippy the Robot.

Speaker A: Look, I'm all, I'm all fine for it if it helps cut costs. And now my twelve dollar burger meal is now eight dollars. But that's the thing is that's not going to happen. And it was actually right big discussion point on a finance guy's tick tock about how even if inflation goes down, you're never going to pay less than you're paying for eggs now. Because that's the whole point is once we get people.

Speaker B: Absolutely. It's precedent now.

Speaker A: Yeah, now it's gonna, it's just that's the new norm. It is now. Now your dozen eggs are going to be $7. They're never going to go back to 499. It's going to be 6.99 and then if anything it's going to go up. So the whole thing of like, oh, let's get inflation down. Well, you think once they get it down, Jimmy John's is going to go, oh, our food costs are lower. You don't have to pay $12 for a sandwich anymore. You can pay $8 and oh, we just installed a slapper, the automated robot sandwich assembly machine. You can now, you can now pay $8. That's, that's the problem is it's not going to cut costs. It's only going to fill the pocketbooks of people. But I think, and I don't know what this restaurateurs, uh, background is, but I know a lot of like restaurateurs who would be considered a small business because it's just they own one restaurant.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: And it is their, their margins are very small right now, especially in California where the wages keep going up for these workers and the service is not getting any better. And so this is a solve for some of those people. But I could also see it being like McDonald's being like, Bye. You know what I mean? Like, see ya. Uh, now it's just every McDonald's is using these and there's no more, there's no more line cooks, no more fry cooks, nobody even taking orders anymore because now we have synthesia, AI or AI

Speaker B: from the first episode to your point about that, like let's call, let's call McDonald's what it is. It's barely classified as food, the quality of food there. So I don't know, maybe a Big Mac doesn't ever become a 12 burger. And because you're selling what you sell there. Yeah. Maybe you get robots. And they've already been doing restaurants that are like fully machine automated where you go in and you don't interact with a human. You like do a touch screen or

Speaker A: vending machine foods like in Japan. Those are huge.

Speaker B: But the thing about what strikes this with me and where I'm so triggered by this as a consumer is like you talked about eggs. So compare eggs for a second to a car. You remember a few years ago, cars just shot up in price because of the scarcity created around them. And then what happened? People stopped buying cars. They were able to start producing more inventory and now cars are becoming more reasonable. The interest rates, if you finance Them are still not great.

Speaker A: Terrible.

Speaker B: But at least the cash price of a car. If you ball that hard and you can just buy a car, cash, pretty fair. You look at eggs, though, there's no scarcity there. I mean, there's a lot more eggs than there are Audi A4s. So you talk about, like, they could just stay at $7. It's kind of like Snickers bars were, like, a nickel when our parents were kids, and now they're like $3 at the gas station. Why would big food ever change it back? You know what I'm saying? Like, so that same. On that same token, like, I don't want to go to that restaurant. Not because I have anything against the human being that runs it. He's probably a fine human for all I know, but to still have to pay to commute to Pasadena, which, again, if you don't live in Los Angeles. Yeah, you measure everything in minutes, not miles here.

Speaker A: Yeah, you do. But you talk about two hours of commute.

Speaker B: But on top of it, if that. If that place was right next to a shake shack in Culver City, where I live and Culver City as humans, and that place does robots, I'm gonna go to shake shack every time because I would rather pay the same and pay a human than pay the same and take care of the rental fee for a robot. And that's just the way I feel about it.

Speaker A: I almost don't even want to talk about what we're going to talk about today because you said so many things, but, you know, Culver's.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah. A better.

Speaker A: How is there a better brand to be.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Butterburger.

Speaker A: Those are not a Culver's in Culver City. Right. Like you say these things, it does

Speaker B: feel like a genuine missed opportunity. And like, uh, a lot of my friends in Culver City are from Detroit or Milwaukee or Chicago. Like, it just seems to be the natural landing spot for Midwest people. So I think a Culver's would do very well in Culver City.

Speaker A: Well, I could be wrong, but Culver City is named after John Culver. That's the guy who. The statue is in downtown Culver City.

Speaker B: No clue.

Speaker A: But he's from the Midwest. And there's a tie in of Culver's actually being named for him to some extent.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: If I'm not mistaken, like, there's a whole. That's why a lot of the middle. Like, if you look at the actual heart pre. Like, any updates of Culver City, it looks a lot like neighborhoods in the Midwest. Because this guy was from the Midwest, I think specifically Omaha, because this Omaha actors thing that I used to go to met at the Culver Hotel because it was built by John Culver. It looks like hotels in the Midwest that are old. There's a whole thing. But yeah, there's like a tie in a little bit there too, which is why it's so interesting where it's like, well, why there? Culver's there. Um, yeah. Absolutely crazy. Um, I. I love it. I love it. And I'm all for it, just purely because. Oh, yeah. And the. The video that I had seen of the restaurant, by the way, you talked about the. Just. It's not just the line cooks too. There's nobody that works at that restaurant other than maybe the person that serves you the food. Like bring, like, puts your order in front of you, but you walk up and there's literally like three big white screens where you type in what you want. So they. They got. But they've already been doing that for a long time everywhere. Right? That was. That was the plan in year one. Then in year three, we're gonna roll out the robots. Then by year five, it's just gonna be a bunch of people, just one person. We're sitting in a little kiosk like a security guard just in case the robots aren't working. They can kick it or shut it on and shut it back on, or unplug it and plug it back in. You know what's.

Speaker B: Well, I'll tell you what. Here's where I'll draw the line. I am all for AI plugins in enterprise platforms, clicking buttons and making things a lot faster for end users. Totally fine with that. But if you go to this restaurant, don't let me know how it is, but actually let me know how it is in case we end up wanting to invest in a restaurant like this in the future.

Speaker A: Totally going to that restaurant. All right, let's move on to our next topic.

Speaker B: Sorry.

Speaker A: Uh, let's move on to our next. Uh, let's move on to our next segment is Billy's Black Book.

Speaker B: You're probably wondering how we can both work full time, produce a podcast from the Inglewood studios, and still find time to enjoy our lives.

Speaker A: It's because we partnered with Content Quarterbacks to help produce our weekly podcast.

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Speaker A: So stop thinking about creating content and start doing it now. Let's get back to the show. So this next segment is called Billy's Black Book. This is the part of the show where Billy takes us through a professional happening. He feels worth documenting and educates us on what it is, why it's important, and how you can get ahead on any potential impact it can have on you and your career. And so today we're talking about recognition and empathy in cross departmental meetings. So, Billy, what's going on?

Speaker B: Yeah, so when we were talking about this conversation, we were trying to figure out how does this actually affect my day to day when I think about cross departmental partnerships? I think an important distinction. So many of the topics we discuss in our point of view, when you come into things like you work a lot more in the startup world than I do, and I've worked in some startups where you might have a VP of marketing who also is the only member of that department and thereby they're doing a lot of citizen soldier work for the business in a larger company. Some of these cross departmental meetings you're dealing with, you're working with specialists rather than the absolute head of a department. And while they represent the bigger collective, the prism of the world, they see everything through. It's just like, what am I doing for the business? What are my actions that I need to take? And just coming from the world of sales for which I do, and having worked in a more enterprise style sales motion where meeting management and juggling the needs of 15 people on the other end of the call, very similar approach that you end up taking to some of these internal meetings. And a lot of the same things exist in both circumstances.

Speaker A: How so?

Speaker B: Yeah, so like when you're dealing in cross collaboration, I think one thing that sticks out to me, coming from the world of sales, like our okrs and our goals are pretty plain invisible for everybody. But every department that you work with that supports the sales team or supports whatever organization you're in, they all have okrs, but those aren't plainly visible to the enterprise, which means if you're working with somebody, you need to recognize that whatever project you're doing better. Satisfy both. Another thing I think about is, like, when you're dealing with specialists in an organization, we can talk a little bit about some of the folks that I worked hand in hand with. But like, every individual has their own agenda for not just like this project you're working on, but their career and their aspirations. And it's, it's affected by certain things, like whatever silos they work in that you may not have any idea about, whatever timelines they're pressed up against, uh, whatever their expertise actually is within their department, or even conflicts they have, like with a data silo or a deliverable or maybe a conflict they have with somebody else in their organization that's also attached to this project that may not be in the room with with them or who may be in the room with them. And I think like, the most important thing from all this that I take away when I go into meetings is like, mutual benefit is not guaranteed in any project. And that's why, like, when you're working cross departmentally, it's so important to be mindful of anything that may exist, whatever baggage somebody's carrying with them, because that can affect the results of your project.

Speaker A: So in your most recent role as an rvp, who are some of the people that you would meet with regularly?

Speaker B: I met with sales dev leadership weekly. You know, they, they were our partners in pipeline and we would talk about, you know, how my sales team's relationships were with their BDRs. We would talk about pipeline approaches we're taking, we'd share best practices, we would plan for things in the future. That was a weekly meeting and probably one of my most important ones. I also met with demand, uh, gen pretty frequently, uh, to have an idea of what kind of efforts we're taking off at the top of the funnel, but also marketing within our existing accounts and opportunities. SE leadership. We would meet, we would talk about, you know, how things are going, what the SEs were saying about my AES, what my AES were saying about the SES. That's generally pretty kumbaya, uh, because there was such a close relationship there. But also we would talk about, you know, here's a beta program we're running, here's what it is. Let me show you how it works. Here's what to tell your AES on how to work with it. And that was a really important piece of it because SES had their own quotas and they relied on us that be able to help them hit it. We work with sales enablement, you know, Sales enablement company selling to sales enablers. They had a very, very big role in how we would go to market and how we would be effective. We talked to our product team about the product roadmap. We'd work with the product marketing team to discuss, like, all right, as a result of what's on the product roadmap or what already exists, like, here are assets we need to be able to send to these customers now. Mhm. And what's the timeline look like? Those were some of the common people that I would work with either on a weekly, monthly, quarterly basis.

Speaker A: So did you have like a program or like a specific approach that you would take to these meetings that you think would be valuable for people to hear? Like, what was your framework?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's a real, like, framework was pretty simple. Um, just keeping in mind, like, context is king now. My company was hybrid but primarily distributed, and I was always distributed, which meant if I went into the office, I was normally there to work with my team directly, which means I didn't get a ton of face time with everybody. So if you only know me as a Slack avatar or an email name or, you know, somebody on a calendar invite, the more context I can give you is like, hey, this is what we aim to accomplish, the better. And when I look at context, like, can't just be like, hey, we're meeting to talk about pipeline. There has to be a catalyst for why we're all getting together to talk about something. And there has to be an end result that's desired. And when I think about that, like, whatever action items are going to come out of this, those are good. But names are better for who you're going to work with. Because really, if you have a catalyst and you have an end result, that means you have a left and right boundary and you got to start working backwards in order to accomplish it. And like, really just like the last thing and just like the overall way to carry it out was like, find a common goal with everybody that's in that room. Because if there's not a common goal and Chet and I really don't have mutually aligned OKRs, then you just end up doing favors for people or people do favors for you. And that can have a good effect or it can have consternation that comes as a result of it.

Speaker A: Consternation.

Speaker B: SAT word.

Speaker A: Oh my goodness, I could barely spell

Speaker B: SAT at the time I took that test.

Speaker A: Sometimes when we podcast, I feel like a Neanderthal next to Billy because I'm like, words good, do great. Lots of Work, sales money. He's over here pulling out the dictionary on me. Um, I love what you said about the okrs because you also said, like, everybody's got their own needs and desires and sometimes selfish reasons for getting things done. And it's like, yeah, if you don't have that alignment, it's like, why would this person ever help me? Or vice versa.

Speaker B: Why am I, why am I in this meeting with you? And what exactly are you going to expect me to get? And like, obviously two in sales, right. Like we want everything the moment we want it, which means we are more likely to go into a cross departmental meeting and set an irrational timeline.

Speaker A: As much as. Yeah, for the company, for the team, it's kind of like. Yeah. But also like for me. Yeah. I mean, I got, I got to take care of myself as well. I get it. But at the end of the day, you know, if something happens to me, it doesn't happen to everybody. You know, like, we're all in this together until we're not. Right. So I, I get that and I like that you say that because it's about looking at those okrs and where are we aligned and what are we trying to solve for? And that might help you understand. Is this the best person I need to work with on this? Maybe there's somebody else that might, you know, hey, maybe marketing. You don't really need to work with me or the sales dev team on this. You need to go actually go work with demand gen on this. You know what I'm saying? Like, this is more aligned with what you two are trying to accompl. Yeah, it's going to trickle down to us. Happy to put input, but I was on a call, say, uh, a call, but a podcast yesterday with Connie, uh, Whitman, uh, runs an awesome podcast and one of the things I was talking about when I was talking about like managing up is and like being put on too many meetings was saying, am I going to make this meeting 40 or more better by being on it? Because if I'm not, there's no point me being on it because I can still make a 10 to 30% difference by looking at a memo and answering any questions anybody has. You know what I mean?

Speaker B: Follow up question. Is 40 an arbitrary number when you're trying to establish value in a meeting?

Speaker A: Uh, well, it breaks the pattern because I think about it, am I, am I going to be, am I going to add 50% more value to this meeting? But if you say 50%, like everybody goes, yeah, because that's like half Half is good. If it's the half full, half, empty, we like half. That's a good baseline. So you go a little bit under that. Because when someone goes, uh, no, you're really not. Or they're going to be like, yeah, you're like, this is going to impact like 80%. Like you, you, you being there because we're talking about this also helps justify why I should be on a meeting when like a CEO, founder, VP of sales throws me on something. It's like, well, justify why, you know, am I just here because I'm generally part of the go to market team and we're talking about product, or am I here because this is actually going to have to impact with how we list, build and go to market with a certain product that we're about to release in two weeks. Am I going to make this meeting 40% or more better by being on it? If not, then I'm just an attendee and I don't really need to be here. Cause nobody's going to ask me any questions.

Speaker B: So then it could just be an email.

Speaker A: Yep, you can just send me an email or asynchronously message me on Slack if you have a question during the meeting and I can answer it, you know.

Speaker B: All right, so moving on to our third and final segment, Doctor's orders. This is the part of the show where you, the listener, submit your questions and go to market challenges to get a prescriptive, tactical and practical approach by the sales doctor himself. Today's topic is about creating honest conflict instead of dishonest harmony. So this one says, hey, Chet, I'm struggling with all the projects that are thrown on my team but seemingly go nowhere. And when it's my turn to look for help on a project, I get cast aside. I'm worried that my opinion has no weight and I have nobody to turn to and don't know if I've wasted my favors on people or, or projects that don't matter. What would you do?

Speaker A: And you just called out the favor line doing favors for people.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's a real thing.

Speaker A: So if you've been listening to the podcast, you know that I'm a bit more of a pessimist when it comes to these things. And I talk about more about when it comes to this managing up stuff or cross managing people. I get a little bit more tactical to. I. I'm more of like the protect your own skin kind of guy. And I say that because like, if I was the CEO of a big company, I would want to create Something like this, because I think people should think this way and it helps people look at things a little bit more holistically. There is this term about, you know, having honest conflict over dishonest harmony that I, I love to think about. And with all the corporate books that talk about radical candor and transparent leadership and all these things, it's, it's more just about like, I'm sorry, but it's. How can I be a professional, you know, in corporate? To me, and I hate that because that's not. It's like, let's call it what it is. You know, even I love Brene Brown, but sometimes she toes that line too, where it's like, let's have a rumble session. Okay, you mean like, let's, let's get real. Yeah, let's rumble session. That's like, so, so I'm not a fan of this, like, massive corporate stuff. I love Brene Brown, though. I think Dare to Lead is a fantastic book for anybody that wants to be a leader. But I do think I look at things for a bit more transparent, let's call it what it is. And maybe it's because I wasn't, you know, I went to school to be a pastor and I minored in grief counseling. You know, I didn't go to school and get an MBA and think I was going to work a white collar job someday. I'm a blue collar guy who works with the white collar people, so to speak. So I, I think I see things a little differently. Uh, so I apologize for what this may come off as in advance, but four big steps here. I think, number one, the way to solve this is in any job that you have where you're cross collaborating with people and you're in a position where you have to make decisions and it feels like the decisions you're making are you're either on the losing side of every decision. Like, I voted for this software and so do some other people, but the majority takes the other software. You know, when we're thinking about what's going to help, like, why did I invest all this time with the team, being on discovery calls, looking at demos. Like, I had that at one point I said, we bought four softwares and I was on the losing side of every decision, even though I'm the one who's actually going to be using it all the time. You know what I'm saying? Like, uh, it can be really frustrating and I get it. And so I think the first thing you have to do when you're cross collaborating with People is you have to identify your advocates, your opposers, and the chameleons and know who's who, um, and nurture them. Like, I'm not going to spend a bunch of time trying to win over an opposer. I just know that's never going to happen. I'll spend a little bit more time trying to identify who's really a chameleon than I would trying to nurture an opposer. But I'm going to spend the majority of my time with my advocates. And what are those people? I think it's pretty easy to see what an advocate is. It's people that, you know, respect your opinion and will push you if they don't align with your opinion. Like, they'll give you that. They'll. They'll be healthy about it. Be like, look, I get where you're coming from, but the reason we're looking at it this way is this. I've had sometimes those people are, you know, above you. I think getting your, your direct report, you know, the person you're responding to directly, uh, is important to make them an advocate for you. But they can also sometimes be in a chameleon, which is kind of tough because they want to save face and play the department nice guy, you know, you know, or nice gal, whatever that might be. Like, hey, I, I get it, Billy. You know, you work for me and I want to make you happy and make you feel like I'm on your side. But I'm also, like, secretly having conversations with marketing and rev ops about what we're doing, you know, so that, that can be tough. But you want to find those people who respect your opinion and will push you, uh, when you push, if they don't align with your proposed outcome. Uh, then there are the opposers. Obviously these are. But these are the people that are going to want their outcome and their outcome only. Uh, and nobody knows better, regardless. And unfortunately for me, that's every CMO I've ever worked with when it comes to pipeline generation. It's like, okay, yeah, sure, all right. That's why we got three inbounds all year last year. Uh, you know who you are. Uh, so that's, that's a very tough one because these people are going, they, they just. I've been in this long enough. I know what I'm doing. Nobody else is going to know anything better. Who's this kid who's been in leadership for two years gonna know better than someone who's been in marketing for a decade about pipeline generation? Well, enough that I'm here, right? And we're supposed to work together. So those people are tough. And that's why I say, like, don't even mess with them. Don't even worry about them. They should be at the bottom of your, like, prioritization thoughts, whatever. And there, there are those people in Org, so identify those people. I, you know, some people would say, oh, well, you, you know, keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and maybe you work to find common ground. There are going to be those people in Oryx. You're just never going to find that with. It's never going to go anywhere. Um, and then the chameleons. So these are people that act like advocates on the surface, but are kind of opposers behind closed doors. Somebody will always go, well, how do I identify if someone is an advocate or a chameleon? You know, if I don't know any better because behind closed doors they're opposing my ideas or they're, you know, trying to play the politics of the game. Look at who's in either the center or within the center of influence on every decision that negatively affects your outcome. And if that person is someone that you think is an advocate, they're actually a chameleon. So, hey, these people had to make this decision, or these people were involved with this project and it didn't go the way you're supposed to, but yet then they're telling you in your face, oh, yes, this, that, the other. You kind of know what you have. So I would say, uh, what is, what is that phrase about like, you know, things being a pattern and a coincidence. And if somebody's like a recurring theme,

Speaker B: one's a coincidence, two's a streak, three's a pattern.

Speaker A: Yeah. So if they're involved in something that happens multiple times, you're kind of like, oh, okay, well, maybe this person has something to do with what's going on. Right. Even though on the surface they're like, chad, I love that you brought that up, or I'm all for that, or, yeah, let's get that done. But it's like, you're involved in this too, and it's going south. Right? So, like, where is your vote? You know, where is your opinion for me and your advocacy? Um, the second one is a big one. And I think this is one of the reasons, like hate him or love him, I think that guy Vivek, I think this is why so many people love him, you know, and he's like, so well received on social media is because when he's debating, he's not trying to get anybody to understand this is why I feel the way I feel about abortion or guns or.

Speaker B: We're talking about Vivek Ramaswamy right now. Just. Yeah, I'm clear.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: He's, I mean, whatever you want to think he is, he is an incredible debater. He, he controls the room. And the reason people like him, um, and the reason he's well received by the general public, as I can see on social media, is because he is the one of the first politicians that's not trying to get people to understand his position. He'll ask questions and make people think critically. And I think that's where we fall short so many times in, in the politic game of business is we try to get somebody to understand this is why I'm making this decision, this is why this is my position instead of asking critical questions. And you can see the difference between, hey, Billy, this is. I'm thinking this way because of my experience and my, my tenure and this and that the other. And don't you understand that this stat says this? And so we should try to align this instead of going, billy, if we do what you're proposing and XYZ happens, what is that going to do for your SDR team? Third one. Document everything. So document your plans, your correspondence, the outcomes, whether you, you know, it was your recommendation or not. And again, if you find yourself on the wrong side of things, more often than not, you might want to pull back your position and reevaluate your things more often. Be like, wow, why am I wrong every single time here? You, you might actually, that might be an internal thing where you can actually see if this is like, I'm not collaborating, right? And I may be the person that's kind of trying to force my opinions without any validity to them. Um, but if you find yourself self on the right side of history more often than not, you know, you might want to leverage that as the crystal ball for why you need more responsibility. Um, for me, it didn't work out when I was at Pavilion because we launched SDR community. And they were like, oh, let's do SDR community. Let's do it. $1,000 a year. And I was like, dude, no SDR is going to pay $1,000 a year.

Speaker B: That's a big ass from an SDR.

Speaker A: That's what you're charging people for the middle community, which are like sales leaders and tenured AES. You know, nobody. He's going to pay. I said, well, what if, what if you make it more in line with, like, what people are already paying for LinkedIn Premium. That's a cost they're already paying. And this promises things in tandem with that for their professional development, job security, things of that nature. What are you charging, like $25 a month? You know, link cream's like 40. What if you charge them like 25 that you. They could justify that, right? It's not a big deal. Think the annual price that was proposing was 600 foot down. No sick, you know, thousand dollars a year. We launched that in October 2021. I think we got like 30 paid signups, and it was awful. In November was even worse. Those are two worst months for enrollment on a single community. And then in December, it comes back, you know, we've rethought it, and we're going to make it $600 a year. Okay. And unfortunately for me, I tried to leverage that as a reason to justify a couple other things I was making opinions on that ended up on the right side of history. But it, you know, my. That's one of the reasons my time was limited. There was. I was in a place where I was on the right side of things, and I was always like, I can tell you this, and here's why, you know, where I failed, though, in that job and why my tenure was so short there, despite being right and doing well in that job, is I failed at number two. And that's where number two comes into play for me in my career. And I learned, oh, my problem was that I kept trying to get everybody to understand instead of critically asking questions, I was just saying, oh, you know, they're not going to pay a thousand dollars a year for this because, you know, they don't have money this year. I should have said, hey, Sam, if an SDR is already paying $40 a month for LinkedIn Premium, why do you think they would pay more than that for this? Get the CEO of the company to justify what they're going to get out of this versus LinkedIn Premium and why that price point can be higher.

Speaker B: I think this is an important question to intervene with, and I apologize for thwarting your rhythm here, but no, do it. What? SDR pays $40 for premium? Don't companies pay for that for SDRs?

Speaker A: I don't know. I've never had a company pay for my LinkedIn Premium.

Speaker B: I've never had a company not pay for it.

Speaker A: Well, I'm getting screwed

Speaker B: now.

Speaker A: I know what to ask for if I ever. If I ever get another gig. Hey, yeah, part of My benefit. I need my LinkedIn premium paid for.

Speaker B: Everybody in sales should have their LinkedIn premium paid for or their sales nav. Which premium?

Speaker A: Sales nav. Yeah, but LinkedIn Premium, I think that's more of like an individual career thing. I don't know. That's. That's pretty cool that you've had that, though. I. I've never had that. But even then and there, if you think about a company paying for it. Sam, what's going to be different between LinkedIn Premium and Pavilion that you're going to sell to these companies, why they should pay more? Because we also don't have it. We don't have any one third of the whole thing, which is the schools and universities. You don't even have a school for this yet. This was before, you know, this is when I already floated the idea of SDR school. I'd already built out a bunch of curriculum. They just hadn't like taken that and then secured Kyle Coleman so they could get a bunch of people to sign up because, like, oh, Kyle Coleman's teaching something. You know what I mean? Actually, part of my original agreement with Pavilion was I was going to be the, like, the dean and the leader of this SDR school, uh, which didn't pan out. And I get it. I mean, I had 8, 000 LinkedIn followers. Kyle Coleman has like 50,000. You know, of course you're going to get the guy that has a bigger LinkedIn a little bit more reach. Yeah. Uh, you're not going to take the old chat. You might take his content, but you're not going to take chat. Um, and then number four. So this is another one is, and this is something I learned at Pavilion too, that I got better at when I was at Jelly smack is pick your battles and don't major in minor things. Um, you know, same thing with like the 40 rule. If the scale, if your teams, if the impact of something that, that something's going to have is less than a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10, don't bother with it. Yeah, who cares?

Speaker B: It's not even a problem.

Speaker A: Deal with it. Let it be. Work it the best of your ability. If you think it's not going to work out, let it not end up working out. It's not going to be on. I mean, it might be on you, but then you can leverage. Well, hey, this was the opinion I had on it because I documented everything. I just want to let that be clear. Um, and if you find yourself somewhere where it's a five between A seven. Definitely outline your concerns to the stakeholders. That's above and beyond just documenting your opinion. Let it be known. Hey, want to let you know I have these concerns about this go to market plan here. Some of the red flags. Here's some of the ways I'm proposing we solve these red flags if they come up. But these are also some things I want us just to think about. Hey, if a couple of these red flags keep happening, maybe we'll shut this down. You know what I'm saying? Like, outline those concerns. It takes a little bit more because your team's gonna be a little bit more involved. I think of how I met your mother on this last one. Eight or higher. You know, when Marshall and Lily have their first kid and they keep going to them with their problems like, eight or higher, bro. Eight or higher. And that's a, uh, that's a bad example because they end up caving and they're like, oh, we want to know everything, you know, So I get it. But that's how I look at this then is when it's 8 or higher, you got to get heavily involved. This is where you pick that battle, you major in that. But everything else, it's kind of in levels. Anything under five, it's like, here's my opinion, I'm letting you know, I'm documenting it five to seven. Hey, here's some things, you know, I'm a little concerned about this, this and this. Have we thought about how we're going to approach it if this, this and this happens? Here's some red flags that could happen. Here's some things I recommend we do. If this starts happening. Eight or higher. You gotta get in the trenches and go to war. Make sure that your side of things is heard, understood, and potentially taken into account in the outcome. So, um, there's your weekly doctor's orders of the internal politics of cross collaborative department, uh, conversations and how to run them effectively. So sorry, to this person that seems like they don't get any support, uh, I would personally just say go look for a new job then. Because if you've been doing what you've been doing and you're still not getting that support, that's tough. But, um, you know, in your next role, maybe take some of these things. And these aren't things that I all figured out at once. I learned some things at 3 Pl Central. I learned a lot of Pavilion, and then I learned even more at Jelly Smack. And I feel like it's given me a really good way of cross collaboratively Working with people, uh, when I, when, even when I go in, I mean, it can be tough for me too. You know, somebody brings me in because they're not hitting their revenue number. How do you think that makes a VP of sales feel? Or they're marketing people who are like, this guy doesn't even work here. He's going to tell us how to do some stuff. He doesn't even work here. You know what I mean? He's just here to advise. It's like, well, if I was just here to advice and be a little different, that's not what the people pay me for. They're paying me for a little more than advice. But, but it can be tough for me too. And so I have to like remind myself of these things, document my findings, document what my concerns are and things. And I get brought into conversations and it's really tough for me now because I don't, I'm not a W2 employee there. So it's a very tough thing for someone to be like, why do we have to listen to this guy at all in any form or fashion? You know? And so I get a lot of, I get a lot of back chatter with other departments because I get it, I'm not a full time employee there. But the best is when I work with people and it doesn't feel that way. And they're like, I never thought about it that way. I love when I get like inciting feel good comments from people who really, you can generally tell, they're just like, man, we haven't thought about it that way before. This is great because ultimately at the end of the day, like you said, if you're aligned on the OKRs, this can affect them too. Like I'm not trying to like shove my own opinions and everything. I don't know every single industry and every single uh, ICP for companies I go and I work with, I have to learn those a little bit. And I have to say, hey, I'm not the expert in that. I'm the expert in this process, but I want to provide as much information on the process as I can relatable to what you're doing. And you know, if, if you learn a thing or two and we try something and it works, or we want to a B test, that's great. But I'm not here to fully make the decision for you either. I'm here to do the work. You know, I'm an, I'm a part time operator. That's what fractional is, you know, and uh, it can be really tough. But these things have really helped me with just documenting, knowing who my advocates are, trying um, to get people to think critically instead of understand why I'm saying what I'm saying or what my position is. And then also just not majoring in minor things people do some. You want to go spend a bunch of money on ppc, that's probably not going to work. And what you're doing and there's other ways you can make more money doing it. Fine, that's fine. We'll figure out a way to generate pipeline anyway. You know, they're going to dump their money in something that's not going to work with the marketing team regardless. I just need to get the SDRs and the AES getting their own, getting those opportunities on the board. Right. So, uh, I got to go figure that out now. When you talk about changing the structure and having like SDR's reporting of marketing, that's something that really affect my fractional work. So let's have a talk about it. That's an A or higher, you know, um, so I hope that was helpful. Maybe you learned a thing. Maybe you skipped this whole part in the. That's okay too. Well, that's a wrap for season three. Uh, again, we appreciate everybody that's been listening to the podcast, watching it on YouTube, watching the videos on Spotify. If you're interested in engaging with us or the podcast further, uh, you can check out all the links to our LinkedIn profiles, newsletters, uh, free resources that we have that are downloadable. Uh, just go to the show description below. Don't forget to check out past episodes. 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Uh, we look forward to seeing you here on Wednesdays at 10:00am Pacific, uh, for another installment of the same those Arcs podcast. We'll see you next season.