Making those dreaded sales calls is a daunting task. But what if there was another way?
Wendy Harris (host of this podcast) is a highly experienced telemarketing trainer.
And frankly, she has something of an unfair disadvantage when it comes to making sales calls.
She knows exactly how to approach the calls, and how to ensure the prospect gets the best possible experience through the format of a great conversation.
But it’s not quite that simple.
Prefer to listen?
Here’s the episode page!
- ‘Enjoying’ the sales calls process
- Having ‘cool’ conversations
- No scripts please!
- Resist equity in place of comp
- Values based selling
- John’s conversation that counted (with cameo’s from GE’s Jack Welsh and Staples’ Jay Baitler)
Wendy
I know from reading some of the stuff that you put online is that sales was never on the radar as the vocation for you. Yet here we are, fast forward to quite a good career in a book and a podcast and successful mentorships of people that are going off and doing their own things. So how did that all come about, John? You clearly share a passion for picking up the phone and talking to people. You're clearly good at that.
John
I don't quite frankly, I'm definitely more of an introvert than I am an extrovert. I've learned recently. Apparently, I'm more of an Ambivert. An Ambivert is somebody who kind of adjusts to the situation, right. But for me, I think I inherently understand what I have to do in order to get to where I want to be, and so therefore, I'll make myself do it. But the joy? To say I enjoy making cold calls and getting told no 99 out of 100 times and you hung up on and tell me they're going to go kill myself and everything else, I don't think anybody enjoys that. So I enjoy, let's put it this way….
Wendy
The one in 100.
John
Yes. I mean, look, I enjoy helping people solve problems and achieve goals, and to me, that's what sales is about, right? If you think of cold calling as trying to convince somebody to take a call with you or that type of stuff, that's the part I don't enjoy. I don't enjoy the game of sales, the back and forth and the clients not telling you stuff and you trying to figure it out and you lying to the clients. I don't like this. I'm a very transparent person and a very transparent seller. So just in general, I've always been kind of cut through the bullshit and it's like, can we just have a conversation here? Because I tell clients when I get them on the phone or something, look, give me five minutes and you're going to benefit either way. And the reason is we're either going to find out that I can actually really make a difference for you with what I have, or we're going to find out that I can't and I go away. So either 1 you get to have a cool conversation. I share some insights with you, and we can continue this and solve some problems for you, 2 – You knock one more cold caller off your list, but give me five minutes and I promise at the end of these five minutes, you'll see some value out of it one way or the other. And I think that's the mentality I take, just like everybody. I mean, sales isn't something that most people that's the reason I wrote the book. I want to be in sales when I grow because no kid ever says that. And then they get into college and I'm growing deeper and deeper disdain for universities and the way they're managed. I think undergraduate education is a great social education for children, but I think it's a terrible actual education for young adults because to go… here in the States, to go three, $400,000 into debt to get a $50,000 a year job that you're going to have to pay back for the rest of your life. Also have to determine at the ripe old age of 18 years old what you want to do for the rest of your life. I just think that is insulting. And so for me, I look at sales as a way to even the playing field for a lot of different people. People… underprivileged women, people of color, all these people who don't have the advantages that I do that a parent allowed me to go to college without debt because they paid for it and all that stuff. Sales is a career that can really I mean, there's no barrier to entry. You don't need a college education to do it. You just need to understand the fundamentals of it and have a desire to help and have a desire to obviously, money motivation is a piece of that. But I think it's really as I evolved and realised that marketing was not what I wanted to do, and sales kind of fell into it through a transition with event, marketing kind of clouded as sales in some ways and then got into Xerox and really learned, like, hey, I like this. The harder I work, the more I get paid. Because that was something that always really stuck with me and frustrated me was when I was getting a salary for my first job and thinking about when I was able to get a promotion. It was like, wait a minute, I'm working harder than everybody else here, I'm better than everybody else here, but I'm still getting paid the same amount of money that everybody else is, and I'm still going to get the opportunity for a promotion that everybody else is. So what in the world is my motivation to work hard? And so when I got that's, why like, the DeWalt job, that was more of a salary job, whereas even though it was sales…
Wendy
My husband is in construction and he's a Milwaukee guy, you know. I think he's just, you know, probably he's just a bit tight, but just try it, and I'll come back and see what you think of it. That, to me, it's common sense. That's obvious. It's trusting that somebody will look after it for you and not do a runner and that it ought to do a better job because, you know, it this is half the battle with sales, isn't it? Is that belief in what it is that you're doing.
John
More than half the battle? Because I don't think you can truly be successful, so you can be monetarily successful in sales, but I think it depends on what your definition of success looks like. Mine is doing things with integrity, making sure that, yes, you make money, but you're not doing it despite other people is believing in what you sell makes it so much easier because somebody had said to me earlier in my career that the sales is the transfer of enthusiasm, right? And I still believe that to this day that if you believe in what you're selling, then it's about transferring that enthusiasm over to somebody still, that statistics and psychology is still the same. People buy on emotion. They back it up with facts, right? I mean, just look at where we are in our political world. Literally no one believes in facts anymore. I mean, facts are like you can't believe a single thing that you read on the Internet that even looks like it's scientifically backed because people just don't believe it. It's all emotion. So if you can tap into that when you have the emotion and you genuinely believe in what you're doing and you find the right person that you know you can help, then I don't want to say it's easy, but, man, is it easier.
Wendy
No. But when that does happen, doesn't it Feel like magic?
John
When you make that connection? Like I said, you don't end up selling. You end up having a real conversation. You end up solving real problems. You end up making a real difference, right? You don't have to use any of the techniques or, you know, any of the tactics that even I talk about.
Wendy
For me, it is these words of influence and persuasion and strategies and tactics, all of those things, and I just go, why couldn't you not just ask us an open and honest question?
John
I think it's because we're past the point of no return on that the trust factor's disappeared. You know what I mean? I hear a lot of sales influencers kind of talking about, oh, just have a conversation and don't use tactic. You don't need to use a tactic. You have to I wish that Wendy, I could call you and you would just pick up the phone because you figured, oh, who's going to call me today? And we can get into a really nice conversation and I could ask you some real questions and you could tell me your real problems and I could build a little rapport with you and then we can move to the next step. But that's just not reality, right? So where I talk about where I play, the techniques are important and the reason the techniques are important is because of that exact scenario that I just painted there. I tell people that I live between the world of the give a shit factor and the unconscious competence level, right? So you know the whole journey of competence, right? You start your unconsciously incompetent. You don't know what you don't know when you start something, then you move to consciously incompetent, you know? You don't know. Then you move to consciously incompetent, then consciously competent, then unconsciously competent. That unconsciously competent where you just do it. You just are that level. So the give a shit factor first, I cannot get you to give a shit first. That's on you. You either care or you don't. I can help you care. I can show you why you should care. But unless you care, it's like you can eat a horse of water, but you can't make a drink, right?
John
You can't help an alcoholic unless an alcoholic legitimately raises their hand and says, I need help. Right? So once that happens, though, once you're there, man, I will give you as many techniques, tactics and tips as you can possibly imagine so that you can figure out how to get to the point where you're unconsciously competent with a lot of the stuff that you do. And that's where it turns into the real conversation. Like, I don't technically use any of the techniques that I train anymore and it's because they're embedded in me. I just do them when I hold a conversation. I know how to set the stage. I know how to manage a conversation, I know how to follow up. I inherently get a next step for what I do. Like, all these little pieces that I've learned over the past 25 years in selling, I just do now. But I had to have that technique to get me to figure out how to do it my way.
Wendy
That's the point, though, I think, isn't it, is that these tactics and strategies are so blatantly copied to other people's cardboard cutout that then you're not going to be in alignment because you don't even sound like you. That's what really sticks, isn't it?
John
And I think that's the challenge, right? I've always talked about my disdain for scripts, right? Like a script, like a cold call script. I've always hated it. I've always loved structure because you can play within the structure and you can make it your own and everything else. The problem though, is, again, we have to look at the evolution of a sales professional getting into the career. When you start in sales, you literally have no idea what you're doing or what to even say. So as much as I hate scripts, I think they do have a place in a sales reps evolution. Right? I'll give you an example here with a JB sales. We do sales training, right? And I have a slide deck. It is a slide deck of our training that goes slide one through however many. When a new trainer comes on board, I need them to learn how to deliver that entire slide deck. And you're going to have to deliver it with my stories, my examples, and all that other stuff because you just don't have them yet. Right. So that's how I kind of give you your badge and feel like, okay, at least he or she can get through the entire program here. Good. Now, though, if I come back and audit your course two months later, three months later, and you're still delivering the exact same slides, the exact same way that I was delivering them and telling them the exact same jokes that I deliver, then I'm going to be disappointed because you need to make it your own. So I think there's a starting point with a script to give us, okay. But then very quickly figure out move to structure and make it your own.
Wendy
I know when I've been training people on the phone is that they've come into a role, and half of the battle is that they don't even understand the computer system. The CRM. They're not quite sure what they've got to track where and at what point. So they're conscious that they've got all of this technology that they've got to master and handle whilst they're trying to listen and speak and hold down a conversation all at the same time. So you do need that structure to layer them up.
John
Yeah, exactly. And I think that's the other part that I think is getting in the way. All this technology that we invest in for sales professionals, nine times out of ten, in my experience, it gets in the way of productivity. It does not help with productivity. And the reps get so focused on the technology that they stop focusing on the client. These cadence tools, I have a hard time with these cadence tools because when used correctly, I think they're really good efficiency tools for sales reps who are experienced and understand how to use them and understand how to engage with people. But for inexperienced reps, it's a crutch, and they end up just pushing buttons. And I go back to the give a shit factor. I use the example. When Morgan worked for me, we had started off and we were doing all this stuff, and I was helping him with his messaging, and he was getting pretty good results with his cadences and his approaches. But then he plateaued, and he came to me and he said, I don't understand. I feel like I'm doing all the right stuff, and I'm just not getting the responses that I'd expect based on the stuff that we're doing. And I said, Morgan, your results aren't going to change until one thing does. And he said what? I'm like, until you start giving a shit. And I said that, and I'm like, Look, I understand you give a shit about this job and all that stuff. I get that. But until you actually start caring about the person on the other end of that phone number that you're looking at or the other end of that email that you're looking at, until that happens and you start having empathy for that person and thinking about that day in the life of what they're faced with every day and how many times they get hit up by certain things and what their bosses are yelling at them for. Until you really care, your results are going to be mediocre at best. But once you break through that care factor and you actually start throwing away the technology and looking at somebody as a human being, you start to see some pretty impressive results.
Wendy
And I think you can easily have that curve that's going upwards with results and get comfortable in that and actually just start sleepwalking through it. You think you've cracked it. You think, well, this is all I need to do. That's kind of where the conversation starts to fall flat, doesn't it? It goes two-dimensional.
John
So many sales shows get stuck going through the motions, right? And I use whether it's Cadences or presentations. I mean, presentations like demos are one of my least favorite things in sales. They literally are, because every demo is exactly the same. Rep starts off, thanks so much. Do we still have 30 minutes here? No, they don't say that. They'll say, Is this still a good time? Right? Which is a dumb question to ask. 100%. They'll get on and say, Is this still a good time? Even though it's a scheduled call that's on the calendar, right? And then they'll go through and they'll drone through the first three slides about their history, their backgrounds, their logos, and all great all about them. Then they'll drone through every single slide, and they'll stop intermittently saying, does that make sense? Does that make sense? Does that make sense? Which is a dumb thing to ask again. And even if they say yes, it doesn't tell you whether or not it made sense. And at the end and you know, I always joke on this one. If you ever hear this at the end of one of your demos, you know you've done a miserable job. And it's the word digest. I'm just gonna need time to digest what you just told me right there. Why don't we circle back in a couple of weeks where if you hear that you've done a horrible job, as a sales professional because it is our job to help them digest the information. If they walk out of the conversation more confused than they were walking in, we've done a pretty terrible job as a sales professional. So all these reps are on autopilot because that's how we're training them. That's how we on board them. We stuff them with product knowledge. We don't give them soft skills. We don't give them an understanding of how to engage with a customer and then we throw them out into the world and we tell here's your quote, good luck, you know, go. And we expect them to be the super dynamic sales professional that's really going to be thoughtful about the needs of the client. We're setting them up for failure.
Wendy
There is a place that bosses out there when sales is kind of the lifeblood… That's the mentality that I don't understand is teaching this and to say, well, yeah, well, 4% month on return, that's good enough for us.
John
I think it's pure laziness and I think it's also the short term mentality we all have in today's world. The instant gratification component to it. It is very hard to coach on quality. It is very hard to coach on the real nuances. It's really easy to coach on numbers, right? 50, dials, 100 cadences, whatever it is. And also the pressure. And I live mostly in the SaaS and tech world, right? So the pressure from the top, from the VCs down to grow at all costs is pretty significant. And so that's why managers are more deal chasers than they are coaches because they know how to close a deal. So they're going to jump in and close a deal before they're actually going to coach the rep on how to close the deal. And so I think there's a lot of factors in it that have put in us in a pretty tough spot to really do it the right way. Quotas, all that stuff is stuff that is easy to easy to manage from an objectivity standpoint. But the subjective part is where the magic happens.
Wendy
Would you say that in sales… I know that at the moment we're seeing an awful lot of people moving around in jobs that the market is struggling to recruit good people and people are commanding bigger salaries and things like this. I know that you've said it's uncapped earnings, but do you see that there's a place for market share in the business for the employees is a good way of getting them invested in what you're doing?
John
No, I'll be straightforward. I see so many companies in the SaaS world play with that exact thing. Like oh, we'll give you shares, we're going to give you equity. And unfortunately most reps have no idea what that actually means. And so it sounds very sexy and it feels really good to sound like you have shares of a business and that type of thing. But I think it's like 2% of companies actually… The reps actually realize that, and that's only if they stay long enough to have some sort of major exit with the company. So I think there's a lot in the SaaS world going around of that false narrative of, oh no, we'll give you equity, we'll give you shares, and that's going to be part of your package. Most reps are getting savvy to that now and realizing that really is, that's a promise that is almost never realized for most and even still. And I'll put myself in this bucket. I was ignorant. When I was 23 years old, I started with my first startup, and it was a friend of mine, it was two friends of mine and another person that started a company. And I came on board as the fifth employee and they gave. And I didn't know anything about startups. I literally knew nothing about startups. And so I called my uncle in San Francisco, this was 20 years ago. I said, hey, I'm thinking about leaving Xerox and going to this startup. What do you think? And he's like, yeah, make sure you get equity though, right? And I was like, okay, well, what should I ask for? He's like, well, you're not a founding member, so ask for two, expect 1% and go from there, right? I was like, okay. So I did, right? And I got my 1%, which was more than anybody else got in the business outside of those three founders, okay?
Wendy
Did anybody else ask?
John
Yeah, I'm sure they did. People got a half percent, people got whatever, but I got a 1%. So let's fast forward. After the first two or three years of the business, me and the other Director levels, right? We were the ones that put the company on our back and basically brought this company to acquisition, right? And we worked seven days a week, like 14, 15 hours a day type of stuff, for seven years, okay? And I was underpaid, quite frankly, from a salary standpoint or in a total comp standpoint. I mean, I was at one point responsible for 75% of the revenue that came into a business that was doing $10 million a year. And I was getting paid probably 60, 70, $80,000 a year. I didn't break six figures until I was five, six years into it. Now we had an exit. We sold to Staples. And I knew it was going to be bittersweet because we sold for 12 million, okay? My little 1% of that ultimately was worth $80,000, which $80,000 is a lot of money. I'm not discounting that and having to get a down payment on my house. But if you take that $80,000, let's round it to eight years I was there because let's just do some easy math. Well, that means $10,000 a year on top of what I made, and I was averaging $60,000 a year. So for eight years, I basically averaged $70,000 a year. I could have gone to any other sales organization and made over $100,000 a year based on what I was doing in those ten years. And don't give me equity at all. Just give me commissions and let me go, and I would have made far more money. So my point is that lore of equity, I think, is actually a very dangerous thing for executives to play around with and present to without the knowledge, because these kids coming out of school, they have no they have no real understanding of what, ultimately, that is going to look like dependent based on the exit. And so therefore, it sounds great to them, and so they'll say yes and potentially take less as a total comp because of that guarantee. I think you answered the question of why people don't invest that much and why time management don't care if it's the lifeblood of the business. Well, I think the average tenure of a sales rep right now is, like, 16, 17,18 months or something. So if I'm a business leader, why would I invest all this money into somebody? But it's like the chicken and the egg scenario, right? Because if I don't invest in them, they're going to leave. But if I do invest them and they leave, I don't get the ROI on that investment, so what do I do?
Wendy
Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, you're in business, and everything's a risk, right?
John
Yeah. And that's why I think what my approach to this is and why we have had very little turnover. We only have 15 people here, but we hire on values, period, right? I built this company on values, on my personal values, and then we've evolved into our business values, and that's what we hire on. I don't hire an experience. I don't hire on skill. I mean, all that stuff is important, don't get me wrong, but I can teach skill. I can teach technique. I can teach all that other stuff. I can't teach values. I can't teach drive. I can't teach passion. Those are things I have to hire for. And when you hire for those and you look for customers that share those values, you start to get long term commitments from people and customers and everybody else, and it starts to work really, really well.
Wendy
I do listen to your podcast. I don't listen to many, but you're on my list. And I love the soul searching that you do with your guests as you're looking to open your own eyes and everybody else's eyes to the world and what's going on, and that unconsciousness that a lot of us are asleep walking through. There's that word again.
John
It's so true, and it's sad for me to watch people who go through… A quick example, I'm on TikTok, right? I get my ass handed to me on TikTok by a bunch of kids who yell at me, and for everything I put out. There, which is fine. But one of the things that was really saddened to me is I did this post, and it went viral. Over 2 million views, I think, at this point. And it was a little piece of a podcast that I was doing with my friend Amy Volas about recruiting and hiring and applying for jobs. And I said, if you're just applying for jobs by sending a resume out to a million people and I probably shouldn't use the word, but I said I said you're pathetic if you're just basically clicking a button, sending and doing nothing more than that to find a job, and you're complaining that nobody's ever getting back to you. I think that's pathetic, right? And I said, hey. And I did a B to B approach to getting a job, which is, hey, go on a company's website, look at their values, figure out how they connect with yours, make sure they do, and then fire off an email to one of the executives and say, hey, I'm looking for my next career option here. Your values align directly with what I want to do with my career in mind. And I was wondering, who could I have a conversation with about a potential opportunity here? I didn't want to just submit my resume. I want to see if this right. So something basic like, that I've done it a bunch of times before. I've helped hundreds of people get jobs that way, right? And TikTok just exploded on me about, you're ridiculous. Like, oh, yeah, sure, I'm just going to email Jeff Bezos. I'm going to email… But then it got into, like, companies don't care about their employees. I just want a job. I just want a paycheck. I'm just like and I get it. Don't get me wrong. I mean, I literally have privilege tattooed on my… I understand my privilege as a white male in this world. I understand, hopefully, I think more than most the privilege that I've been granted just by being a white male in this world today, okay? But I know so many people, and I've talked to so many examples of people that do not have anywhere near my privilege, that grew up in the ghetto, that were in terrible situations growing up, and they changed their mindset to say, I don't accept this. I want to be better. I want to get to that next level, and they've done it. And so it's this limiting mindset that I think so many people have that forced them to go through the motions and just kind of give up, basically saying, there's nothing I can do about this. And today's world right now, I mean, there are more opportunities in today's world than there ever has been in the history of human civilization to make money, to do what you want to do, to get on the Internet and be a YouTuber, you know, like, be an Amazon reseller. Like, there's a million different ways if you decide you want to change your situation. But let's go back to what we had said earlier. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink, right? And that's the problem I think this limiting mindset has on a lot of people. They've been so beaten down and so discouraged that they just don't believe that there is an option for them. And my hope is that some of the content I share and stories I share through those soul searching on my own and others that I bring on the show help connect to other people who might have that limiting mindset and might be able to say, well, they did it, maybe I can. Right?
Wendy
Yeah. Well, I mean, I was a latch door key at seven, had to use tin opener, toast toppers, use the grill, gas, could have burned the house down, whatever. And I understand that mindset is that I knew that there was better and it was mine. And that was all. I told myself, there is better than this, and it's mine. What surprises me is that this new generation, this Gen Zed, I don't even understand where that came from. Old it's the extremes that people push back on. Oh, yeah, I'm going to email Jeff Bezos. Well, like, you get like anybody's going to do that, right? And the other extremists, nobody gives us shit. Well, it's kind of like where's the middle ground gone?
John
No, we've lost the middle. The world has lost the middle. I mean, it's the fringes, the fringes that dictate everything right now. I firmly believe that the vast majority of us, and I'm going to say over 70% to 80%, are just good people trying to do good work, make a decent living, take a few vacations, take care of their family. You know what I mean? We might lean a little bit one way or the other, have different opinions about social things versus others, but it's the loudest people that get the news, right? Example here is I remember, and this is a horrible one because I hate this person, but back when he actually had a show that I thought was kind of cool, Trump, when he had The Apprentice, right, with The Apprentice show here, when I saw it, I was like, this is awesome. It was an entrepreneurial thing, and I was like, in it. My wife was like, you gotta join that show, right? And this is actually when I pseudo respected Trump, right. And I didn't realize what type of a person he actually was. But I remember going and there were ten people you had to interview, right? You had to interview to get from the 10,000 people down to the mountain. And we went in at ten at a time, and there were two interviewing women, interviewing the ten of us. And they would throw out questions and they would see how people would react to them and then they would say, okay, this person's good, this person's bad, whatever. And they said they said, okay, this is going to be it's a business interview. We want serious business people. So I was like, all right, I got my suit and tie there. I'm ready to give a business oriented answer. And the first question they throw out there is, what do you think about gays in the workplace? And I just rolled my eyes and I'm like, oh, Jesus. Really? And I gave what I thought was a very thoughtful answer, basically, like, who cares about their gender? Like, what do they do? And all this other stuff. And all of a sudden, two or three people on the end started screaming and yelling about how it's ridiculous and all this other stuff. And you literally saw the interviewers look over and take and look through and find their resumes and put them in the green box. The people who are just throwing absolute rubbish out of their mouth, right? That's what they wanted, because that's what people are interested in. That's what people care about. They care about controversy. They're attracted to it. Negative stuff gets ten times more exposure than positive stuff. We're in a world right now where 80% there was a study done on this that 80% of the tweets that get sent out don't even get clicked on. They just get reposted based on the title and the title alone. So you combine the laziness factor with the we've lost giving, the better we've gamified it. We've absolutely now it's like, how many likes and how many this can you get? And there's the endorphin rush there, and we've also lost giving people the benefit of the doubt. You know what I mean? If somebody offends you now, it's no longer like, well, hold on a second. Let me explain to you why that offended me, right? It's all, you're the worst person on the planet, and it drives me absolutely crazy. I'll give you a quick example for me, and I'll be again, open on this, the pronouns piece, okay? All right, cool. Like, he shied, a, whatever. The day when I have a really hard I'm really trying to understand, and so when I make a mistake, for instance, say, Wendy, you were somebody who identified as they, okay? And if I said, oh, she right. And in a conversation and I was explaining, and you were here, and I was like, oh, yeah, Wendy, she did this. But if you identify as they, there's two approaches, right? One is an educated one, which is, hey, John, I just want to maybe take me aside afterwards and be like, hey, John, I just want to let you know I identify as a day. This is how I appreciate. If you're moving forward, you can do that. And if you did that to me, I'd be like, oh, my God, Wendy, I'm so sorry. I'm a little curious on this. Could you help a little bit more?
Wendy
It's understanding, right?
John
But that's never the response. It's, how dare you call me she. How dare you call me how dare you assume my pronoun? And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You know what I mean? Like, this is a new thing for everybody here. Can we all help each other out and get better together here? But we've lost that. We've lost giving people the benefit out. And look, I understand people are trying to get represented. I understand that there's been a whole host of people that have been suppressed for years and brutally so. But it doesn't switch overnight.
Wendy
It's time in the show where I ask every guest to share that one conversation that changed everything.
John
A few, but I'll go back to… I actually wrote a blog post on this a while back. It's called the biggest lesson I've ever learned in my entire life. And it was when let's go back to my first startup where I was the fifth person and we sold so we sold the staples. And when we were selling the staples, the executives were doing interviews with our executive team. And none of us we were all so young. We were like 27, 26, 27. And we had no idea. So we brought a consultant in to tell us what to do, basically, right? And they basically said, these are the type of questions they're going to ask and this is the answers you should give. Now, me being a minority shareholder, I did not want to screw this up. So I went with it, right? So when it was my time to interview with this gentleman, Jay Baitler, who was running a $12 billion part of Staples, who was buying us, I sat night. I told the company mayne. He asked, hey, what do you think about this acquisition? And I was like, oh, it's going to be great. In the back of my head, I'm going, you guys are going to chew us up and spit us out. We're all probably going to get fired here in six months, right? But I presented as if I was on board with all this. Now, I told you, transparency is probably a superpower of mine. Good or bad, I'm one of the worst liars you'll ever come across. And so it was pretty evident to him that I was full of shit. And needless to say, he had a negative impression of me. Of all the leaders, he came back to my CEO, and my CEO is like, so what do you think? And he was like, oh, you got a great team here. He's like, I got one concern though, and it's John. And my CEO was like, wait a minute, what? He's like, out of all the people, I thought you were going to have a problem with… John is like the heart and soul of this company. He literally stands up every single month and gives the rah rah speech, what's going on? And Jay's like, no, he's not your guy. So my CEO protected me, but I stayed on board. But it was a struggle. I was not the right fit. Jay was right in a lot of ways. I'm not a corporate guy. I don't fit in the corporate structure. I have zero filter, and I don't play politics. And so long, story, short a year in, they fire me, okay? They offer me another position, but they fired me. It's a little tip for everybody listening here. If you're ever a VP of anything in a startup that gets your company to a certain level, and then the company hires an SVP of that role, that's the organization firing you. So that's just a little tip for everybody out there. So anyways, about a year afterwards.. so I got fired, and it took me a couple of weeks to kind of digest what had happened. But then I reached out to Jay, and I said, hey, Jay, for my own personal and professional development, would you mind if I had some time on your calendar to talk about what actually happened? And so I could learn from this? And this person, who I had been pretty much afraid of for a year, was so open and generous with his time. And when I showed up at his office, he goes, John Barrows, get in here. And I was like, uh oh. And he goes, no, no, no. He goes, Let me tell you this. He goes, the fact that you reached out to me after what happened to you and you want to have this conversation tells me more about you than I knew about you in the year working with you. He's like, I'm here. I will answer any question that you have. And my favorite thing to do is mentor young leadership, and so the time is yours. And so I said, Jay, I got ten questions for you. You can answer them as candidly as you want. You don't have to answer them if you don't want to. And one of the questions, he's like, I will answer them as candidly as you want me to. And so I said one question I said is, would you have been open to this type of conversation when I was working for you? And he's like, well, yeah. Why wouldn't I have been? I was like, Well, Jay, I was kind of told that I wasn't allowed to speak with you. And he goes, John, let me paint two pictures for you. He's like, I'm going to ask you, first of all, what's the risk? And I was like, what do you mean, what's the risk? The risk is I get fired. I got a family. I got employees that rely on me. I'm like that's the risk. He goes, well, let me ask you something. Say you did this, say, midway through your career, a year ago, you went over your boss, above your CEO's head, and you asked for this meeting with me, and I annihilated you. You know what? I was like, this is ridiculous. I rattled you out to your boss, and it was a bad meeting. He's like, would you have wanted to work for me after that? And I was like, well, probably not. He goes, do you think you would have been made a decision to leave the organization based on your terms instead of ours? I was like, yeah, probably. He goes, okay, now let's paint the other picture. Say you came to me, you went over your boss head, and we had this conversation and went just like this. He's like, do you think the last year of your life would have been a lot easier and we could have done a lot more cool things together? He goes, and I'm going to ask you again, what's the risk? That conversation was basically my MBA. I now look at things completely different. When I make decisions. I used to say, always have a plan b. I disagree with always have a plan b because I think your plan b distracts from your plan a. I'm a burn the boat type of guy. You know what I mean? Put me on the island, burn the boat, and I have to figure out a way to get off. But when I make decisions now, I ask myself, what's the absolute worst case scenario here? Let's go tactically here. From the sales standpoint. Say you're dealing with somebody below the power line, and you have to go over somebody's head, right, to get to their boss. Well, what's the worst case scenario? Well, you lose the deal, right? Okay. Well, if you're okay with losing the deal, then go over that person's head. If you're not okay with losing that deal, come up with a different strategy. So that one conversation changed a lot of how I make decisions and how I think about things. And by the way, as a cherry on top of that example, fast forward. I had an opportunity to work for Jack Welsh, like GE black welsh. When him and Suzy Welsh started their online MBA program, they needed a VP of sales. So I had the opportunity to go work for him, and I did for a couple of months. But as I was going through the interview process, they asked for references. Guess who I gave him as a reference? Jay Baitler, the guy who fired me from Staples I gave as a reference. And you know what Jay Baitler told jack welsh? When Jack Welsh calls to ask about me, he said, if you don't hire John barrows, you're an idiot. So because of that conversation, not only did I learn from that conversation, but I also had the opportunity to work for one of the greatest CEOs of all time for three months as we figured out his online MBA program. So came full circle.
Wendy
That was a conversation that was meant to happen. Even though it could have been a little less painful for a year.
John
It needed to be painful for a year.
Wendy
No pain, no gain, isn't it? It's like the gym.
John
One of my dad's favorite lines.