The Transaction

TT - 049 - Eric Spett
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Eric Spett: [00:00:00] we like both kind of looked at each other. We're like, Oh man, we didn't even consider that somebody was going to want to buy this and how much we should charge.

We had no idea. founder CEOs, go to market executives are so quick to put a lot of focus and eggs in experimental baskets when the thing that they're doing really well is still working really well, do it and keep doing it, keep your focus.

my hot take is, man, It's just hard to be on LinkedIn. this is someone whose sole go to market strategy is on LinkedIn, but it's just a real challenge.

And I'm just really bullish on the need for human community and human connection.

Craig Rosenberg: By the way, I'm gonna eat So, we have these, just for you guys. So one of the things we these are, uh, the Valentine's Day promotion for Scale, and it's the, what are these things called?

These, these little hearts?

Eric Spett: uh, sweet sweethearts.

Craig Rosenberg: hearts. they have, like, uh, you know, sort of fun, uh, founder slash tech little messages on them. So, I have them because I have to give them out, but I've been eating them. [00:01:00] And I'm gonna eat, yeah, Dale's gonna be so pissed, but I'm gonna eat one right now

Matt Amundson: I received them in the mail, and I thought they were fabulous. And then Corinne ate one and was like, This tastes terrible.

Craig Rosenberg: really? His daughter! Who would be the one who would most likely like it? Oh man, that's not good.

Matt Amundson: Well, I think she was expecting, like, a sweet tart,

so

​

Craig Rosenberg: so everyone, this, uh, this, this was a, a treat because of what Matt just found out, which is Eric is coming in hot at 10 p.

m. from South Africa with us. So today's guest is a [00:02:00] buddy of ours. We met Eric because he was the founder of Terminus. Which was not just a software company, but one of the, uh, leaders pushing account based The Hill. And, um, uh, and the other thing, by the way, the example of the, um, What was the name of the conference?

Fill the funnel.

Eric Spett: Flip

Matt Amundson: No, flip my funnel. Come on,

Craig Rosenberg: Flip My Funnel. That was jesus criminy. All right. Well, wait, is that a saving jimus jesus criminy? I don't

even know what that is I don't know

where that came from

So, uh, but but also, um, that conference was not just You know, one of the things that drove, you know, ABM up the hill, but was an example of 100 percent value to the community and customer as a way to bring people to you, which is something that I think is, it's really hard, especially for young companies to embrace.

so it wasn't [00:03:00] just that you guys were mavericks in terms of thinking differently about go to market. But how you did that was, um, you, you had, you know, you were valuable to the community first and almost in a, in a way, you know, Terminus came second, which allowed Terminus to be top of mind for everyone that was, you know, looking into doing ABM and that, that, that you should really be proud of.

And I will turn off my Slack notifications. Um, and I, you know, I, we watched you and I certainly did. We spent a lot of time, you know, as you were. a young founder building a company and what you learned and now you're taking those learnings at scale bound, working with founders, helping them, um, you know, go from zero to whatever they want to go to.

And so that's just really cool. And so everyone, we're welcoming Eric Spett from South Africa to the transaction.

Eric Spett: Happy to be here. Am I the first, first guests from the continent of Africa?

Matt Amundson: Whoa. I [00:04:00] think the answer is yes.

Craig Rosenberg: yeah, I think so.

Matt Amundson: we had the European continent.

Eric Spett: there we go. That's worldwide

Craig Rosenberg: the good news is your Internet's really

good.

we did a European one. We couldn't

hear anything.

Eric Spett: Don't, don't worry. I'm going to, I'm going to heavily venture backed startups office. We, we got, we got redundancy

Sam Guertin: Mm.

Eric Spett: here.

Craig Rosenberg: Atta

Eric Spett: I got a Wi Fi port beaming into my brain.

Craig Rosenberg: Alright, so let's kick this off with, um, the, uh, the first thing we lead with is to ask you to tell us, uh, Amazing go to market story could be funny, could be, uh, heroic and, you know, tell us the story and what we can learn from it

Eric Spett: Yeah, absolutely. I've got the story ready. I'm going to have to figure out what we can learn from it. But,

Craig Rosenberg: while we can figure that out together as

a group.

Eric Spett: I like that.

Craig Rosenberg: Um,

Eric Spett: That's perfect. So

Craig Rosenberg: hold on, Eric, before before you go, Sam would like to jump in and say to the listeners, Eric is about to jump into his story. Thank you. No, you're not doing that. Okay, go

Sam Guertin: Oh, I [00:05:00] was just surprised you didn't, uh, say the name of the question. We've got it branded for a

Craig Rosenberg: I know I stopped Matt. I feel like Matt that that was early product marketing and now we don't

need it. It's part of the

Eric Spett: Well, what, what was it?

Craig Rosenberg: Well, basically, it was Matt's idea to be like, because the stories we were, we would get the shows with stories where the shows that one and Matt's like, well, then just ask him to tell a story up front.

And so we were calling it the 2. 1 version of the transaction because it was Matt's feature enhancement and it's been amazing. Like, we get the best stories. Yeah. And so,

okay,

Eric Spett: I, that makes sense

Craig Rosenberg: Great job as a product

later.

Eric Spett: With scale bound, you know, in our, in our coaching groups and in the one on one coaching, we, we try to distill as much knowledge as possible through stories because they stick and they're, they're far more fun for everyone that has to listen. So with that in mind, um, let's see the story.

So I'll go back to the first ever deal. [00:06:00] In terminus history, the first ever software recurring revenue SaaS deal. Uh, we had started as a, uh, tech enabled service. We knew that we were trying to get to be a software product. Um, but our path to get there was just to start selling whatever we could. And those were managed ad campaigns at the beginning.

And so we had built a bunch of modules and components of software. And we were like, finally at the point where we, we thought we could package up as a, like automation software product. We called it, we called it a terminus automation. And we, uh, me and my co founder Sangram, we were in a little tiny huddle room at the Atlanta tech village, um, talking to this customer.

I don't even remember who it was. And we, we, we gave them this demo and they were like, yes, like this looks awesome. We want to buy, how much is it? And we realized we like both kind of looked at each other. We're like, Oh man, [00:07:00] we didn't even consider that somebody was going to want to buy this and how much we should charge.

We had no idea. We hadn't even discussed it. So we literally, we, we kind of like messed with the laptop a little bit. We jiggled the screen a little bit like that. And we put it on mute, um, and turned off the video for a second. Just like, Hey, we think it's breaking up a little bit while we like figured out like hand signals, what are we doing here?

250. We were like, okay, great, great, great. We turned the video back on. We were like, Hey, sorry. Like internet was breaking up a bit. It's 250 a month. And they, you know, they probably laughed because they knew that they were getting a deal, but that was the, that was the first, first MRR coming into the business, 250 cold, hard cash.

And, uh, I don't know what we learned from that. Other than before you try to sell something, you should probably know what you're going to charge, but it is a good

Craig Rosenberg: I don't know. I

Eric Spett: And stories count.

Craig Rosenberg: by the way, yes, absolutely. And in your defense, you know, for two years, I [00:08:00] played, paid Marketo 1 a month, uh, because we were employee number five and it ended when Phil Fernandes calls Albert and he's like, Hey, uh, I'd love to do something a little more interesting with you guys, which was and Scott's like dude Of course, we'll pay, you know, whatever and it was like they didn't probably didn't make it up and go like get off and go Hey, let's do 1 a month.

But like, you know you guys that that I still think there's something to take from Just go out and frickin sell shit And you and frankly, you don't and even with product like figuring out product everyone tries to get it So far down the line, but the reality is until you try to ask people for money, you really don't know what you got, you know, no focus group, no feedback sessions are going to get there until you know what you got.

Eric Spett: you got to throw some spaghetti until you know what sticks. I wish that spaghetti was a little bit more expensive than 250 bucks a month. Um, [00:09:00]

it was, it was a win.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah. Hey, by the way, when we started Topo, we had the opposite. Like, we didn't even mean to start Topo. We, we were just trying to do a deal in between. It was like a, someone's like, uh, was looking for sales enablement, like a training session. And we're like, yeah, we do that. And then the customer comes in.

It was our first customer and she's telling us the thing. And we're like, yep, we can help you with that. And she goes, great. How much is it? And I just go 80, 000. I just made it up and she goes, great. And she bought it and Scott's like, Whoa, like, how'd you get that number? I go, I have no idea. I just made that

shit

up. and

then they're like, okay,

can we, can we, can we see the materials? We're like, well, we may have to go. Yes. Yes. You will get you the materials. They're at the printer right now. They're going through copy. And then for the next two nights, we just wrote all the materials and did it. So anyway, uh, I hope that person's not listening.

Matt Amundson: we had a similar situation at EverString, uh, once, uh, I won't say the name of the customer, but it was a very [00:10:00] large bank, uh, based on the East Coast as most large banks are. And, you know, at EverString, we were trying to sell like, you know, sort of like machine learning and, uh, you know, sort of the predecessor to AI, like, hey, like these are the right accounts to go after.

And we had sort of walked them through this very long presentation on here's all the underlying data that we've built and we match it to your account. So that way, like if your data and CRM is messed up, you're taking care of. And they're like, uh, Oh, well, we just want that data. We don't, we don't want the insights, you know, we don't, we don't want the data science layer or nothing.

Just, just give us that data. How much is it? Our sales rep is like 400 grand. And they're like, sweet. And we were like, Oh, right. Like we hadn't sold anything over six figures yet. And we're like, Oh, right. That's amazing. And then later we're like, uh, they're like, Oh yeah, 400 grand. This is, it's a good deal.

I'm like, Oh, what do you pay? What do you pay Dun and Bradstreet? And they're like, Oh, [00:11:00] 17 and a half million dollars a year. And we're like, shit.

Craig Rosenberg: yeah. Basically free. I mean, that, that, that, that's amazing. I, I love all this that we are exposing right now about our ourselves and our early

Eric Spett: did that Matt, did that get through procurement? Was that, that, that go through?

Matt Amundson: it did. It did. The procurement was like, how'd you get such a sweet deal?

Craig Rosenberg: You know, I got it. Just one more thing. So I. In San Mateo, I was having a garage sale and there's these cute, uh, little young elementary school girls that lived down the street who came, they were friends with, you know, my wife, Wendy and whatever, and they came down and they're like, we want to be in the garage sale.

She's like, great. What do you want to do? We want to sell lemonade. We're like, oh my God, perfect. So they worked all day on their sign, right? It was the next day. The sign said lemonade, 1 or 25 cents. It was incredible. [00:12:00] We're like, guys, okay, just leave it. Everyone paid the dollar because it was so cute. But yeah, there are other sales reps who do the or 25 cents.

I'm actually glad your sales are up throughout the

400 K.

I

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Eric Spett: so my, uh, my, my late grandfather, this is one of the few memories I have from, I was probably like. Six years old and we were over at their house on a Saturday and before we leave, there was always like, you know, you get a couple bucks it was, it was, it was the big leagues and uh, you know, I didn't realize at the time I thought I thought I made a great decision.

There was a 20 bill and that was like a ton of money at the time or there was five ones. And I took the five ones. I didn't get it. I didn't get it just yet. Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: That is incredible. The flexibility of the 1 bill though, you can't, you can't mess with.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. All right, cool. Well, I [00:13:00] love that. We ended up with a bunch of stories there. The, um, Keep it flowing. All right. So let's do the big one, which is, um, and by the way, you have a really, you're going to have a fresh perspective. Now you're working with all these founders and stuff.

You've seen kind of how they're, um, how they're rolling. So, you know, you know, with that, like, what's something that the market's doing today? Methodology approach, uh, you know, tactics, whatever that might be. Uh, and they're actually wrong. Um, you know, what is it and what should they be doing

differently?

Eric Spett: Yeah. I mean, and as you all know, it's a wild world out there right now. Things are a changing and very fast. But one, one of the things that I I've seen. You know, and it's something that I think we were guilty of as well, especially in, let's call it earlier stage, uh, CEOs, you know, sub 10 million ARR is I've had this conversation twice in the last two weeks.

Um, like this same specific [00:14:00] conversation. And it's, I think oftentimes companies go to market teams, sales leader, sales executives, all the way CEOs are very quick. To try to get to a second channel for growth when their existing channel is still working. They're looking at LinkedIn, they're talking to friends, they're going to conferences.

That's like, you know, there's shiny objects everywhere. They feel like they, you know, if they're doing inbound, they need to be doing outbound. If they're doing social selling, then they need to be doing more cold calling, like, and in these specific situations. Um, in, in one, uh, uh, social CEO driven, organic social selling via LinkedIn demand just going nuts.

And the CEO was bringing up that it was time to, to start ramping up outbound and we need to go get the outbound process going. And I was like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, wait a second. We're talking about. Not having enough time to even do the demos on the books right now [00:15:00] and get the follow up and even take a step back to do some better pre qualification so that the calls are, are right.

Um, and the CEO just looked at me and she was like, you're 100 percent right. I don't know why I feel like I have to do out. But like, I got so much room to run here. And in the other scenario, it was a CEO and he sells into, um, home services businesses like a, a less technology driven, uh, ICP. And they're a cold calling machine.

They hardly email, like, just cold call. And they're selling software, and they're selling. Like, the company is growing at a healthy tick. Um, and it was a similar conversation. That he was asking about going in to digital advertising. And I was like, why, why are we talking about digital advertising for this type of audience?

He was like, I don't know. It just feels like we're going to need to be in a second channel. And you know, what we're doing right now is probably not going to last forever. I was like, well, how many cold callers do you have? It's like two shown any signs of [00:16:00] slowing down? No. How many cold callers do you think you could have? I don't know. Easily 10, maybe 20. I don't, we could probably just keep doing this for a long time. People seem pretty responsive. It was like, great, just do that. And so, you know, Matt, I'd be curious your take on this because. Certainly you do need to be experimenting and you, you do need to have solutions.

When a channel stops working, founder CEOs, go to market executives are so quick to put a lot of focus and eggs in experimental baskets when like the thing that they're doing really well is still working really well, do it and keep doing it, keep your focus. So I, I, I see it all the time and it's just, that one's come up twice in the last two weeks.

And it was like. The same exact

conversation.

Craig Rosenberg: I think, that's a really good one, man. I mean, honestly, like, well, Matt was going to talk. I just wanted to tell you that, uh, that's a great example. What you had nothing to [00:17:00] say? Well, I mean, what just

Matt Amundson: I mean, I think, I think he said it best, right? Like, uh, I got advice once from, you know, really, really

smart marketer who

said every early stage.

Eric Spett: not advice from Craig.

Craig Rosenberg: No.

Yeah.

Matt Amundson: I've got a, I've got a lot of advice from Craig. I'm not sure how good any of it's been, but no, but I got, I got great advice early on in my career, uh, which is that like, uh, one mute your phone too. Um, the startups usually can have a single superpower, right? Like, startups are good at having a single superpower.

Rushing out to try to accumulate more of those is almost always a mistake. And that superpower can be, hey, we're great at outbound. You know, like, hey, ZoomInfo built a pretty great business purely on outbound. Two, we're great at inbound, right? Like, you know, Marketo built a great inbound business. I'm sure, I don't remember exactly

Terminus's

Eric Spett: We were, we were an outbound [00:18:00] machine, outbound

machine. We drove, we drove the demand through flip my funnel and the category creation play. And we were just an SDR and AE outbound machine.

Matt Amundson: All right. Yeah. And then, you know, some companies are great at field or events since they build all their pipeline there. And then I think the mistake that a lot of people make early on, a lot of marketers make early on is like marketers believe that they need to do all the things and have this really mature marketing mix.

Immediately, like I gotta have a content strategy. I have to have a field strategy. I have to have a digital strategy. I have to support the BDR team. And it's like, yeah, you can't do all those things both from like a budget and from a headcount perspective. What ends up happening is you do Five things 20 percent well as opposed to focusing on one thing that you're doing.

That's really great and Usually there's really early indications in a business as to what that thing is And so I I you know, I I don't always know the right time to start branching out into new things Of course, I I always advocate for companies to [00:19:00] experiment but like, you know, hey if you don't have a proven second Uh, demand gen engine or pipeline engine.

Like, don't go build your next year's plan thinking like, Oh, well, you know, we've been outbound. Then we're going to like, we're going to kick off this inbound stuff. It's going to drive 50 percent of our, our pipe or whatever. That's a recipe for disaster. I think, I think you should be experimenting with that stuff, but like, you know, it's okay to leave your eggs in a single basket in the early days of a business.

If that's the path, that's going to get you the most ARR as quickly as possible.

Eric Spett: especially if you don't, if you can't articulate a reason why you think that channel is going to dry up or stop working. If there's a great argument for it, so be it. But more times than not, there's no rationale other than Something related to FOMO, something I saw on LinkedIn, something I heard on a conference.

Oh, it just feels as if.

Craig Rosenberg: I think we, you know, by the way, another, uh, guest on the show, David Palis, you probably know him 'cause he is ATL slash [00:20:00] New York, you know, he is working with the founders. He brought up the same thing and his example was events where one of the folks he was working with, they were doing great on events and they're like, okay, so now we're gonna go do, do this.

And he's like, well wait, how. You're doing great at events. And how many are you doing next year? He's like five. He's like, well, wait, if we're doing great on events, why don't we do 20? And like when you said, like the, the guy doing outbound, he's got two outbound guys. If you know, I, by the way, I learned this years ago from the SEO, like early days, paid search guys, because they were all consumer.

And I tip it, we brought them in and we were all enterprise B2B guys. We're learning from them. They just walked in the room and they said, The color pink with a, I'm making this up, 10 font on these channels is working great. And we'd be like, why? Let's talk about it. He goes, no, there's nothing to talk about.

I want budget to go 10x that until it dries up. And what they taught us was like, if you find something that works, you beat the shit out of it. Until it doesn't work [00:21:00] anymore and like if you only have two outbounders, you don't go create a new digital. You go get more outbounders. You do this. Like, that's the thing is like the expansion of pipeline.

If you found a channel that works, beat it till it can no longer get be, you know, can no longer be beaten. And that that's That's, that's really, it's interesting, like I, I feel like, um, the experience that Eric just brought up, I've seen multiple times, but then I've seen from companies that have grown really well, remember Gigia?

Matt Amundson: Oh,

Eric Spett: Yeah. dude, they were just cold calling ridiculous machines, it's because it worked. I remember like we were talking, I was talking, I forget his name, he was running it, he's like, well why would I? He had a different point of view, he's like, why would we stop, why would we add that? I would rather have 20 more cold callers this year because they were just killing it.

Craig Rosenberg: And, you know, they grew and got bought by SAP and it's like, they found the channel that worked, they beat the crap out of it. Now, at some point you do have to expand and you should [00:22:00] test, but it should not take resources away from something that's working right now and you just beat the crap out of it until it doesn't work anymore.

Especially now, Eric, are you seeing folks struggling with pipeline in general?

Eric Spett: It depends on the business. You know, I, I, on a weekly basis between, you know, my private clients and our scale bound CEOs, I'm, I'm speaking to about 50 CEOs a week. And it's about the same as it's always been. Um, some companies are alive and well and thriving. Others are struggling and trying to find their channel mix and still trying to, you know, Some have some are just thrown spaghetti and nothing has stuck yet.

While others, you know, some of that spaghetti has stuck. Um, I would say the majority of CEOs that that we work with are doing fairly well. Um, and like are able to generate pipeline and are hitting growth targets. But Um, we're also keeping them, you know, trying to keep them really focused. I, I would say overall, the biggest [00:23:00] thing, one of the biggest things, and you know, we coach from 100 K and I've got CEOs that I coach privately that are.

You know, 60, 70 million AR companies. It all comes down to prioritization and focus. And in the earlier stages that helps drive, um, iteration speed and that iteration speed, whether it's on the product side or the go to market side, that's how you find the product market fit or the channel mix fit so that you can pump money in and, you know, build a repeatable machine

Craig Rosenberg: Unscientifically though, just talking to 50 CEOs per what, what, what are their biggest go to market challenges that they're faced with right

now?

Eric Spett: Yeah, I think. From the most part, what I'm hearing is people, it's always about growth. Like growth is always the top of mind. It's, are we hitting numbers? Are we, are we hitting plan as you get beneath it? It varies a lot. You know, we have businesses that have, you know, within B2B SaaS, there's all sorts of [00:24:00] different revenue motions and, and go to market models.

And so I would say less than a specific go to market tactic or strategy. Like, I think what everyone is trying to figure out right now is. And you all see this on LinkedIn. I'm sure this has been talked about, like, is AI the real deal? Should I be using robot SDR? Should I be having robots write my content?

Should I be integrating these 16 data sources into clay to run this 17 step enrichment funnel to build this lead magnet that 3, 700 people are going to comment on on LinkedIn, like, I think people are in the swirl of these new tools and processes, so I think some people are wasting a lot of time. On trying to figure stuff out when, like, again, getting back to it.

It's like, what's the channel that's going to work that you are uniquely suited to execute on. And there's, it's a difficult balance and it's very stage dependent on, should we be experimenting or should we just be dialing in to what's working? So I, [00:25:00] the biggest problem I see is the problem of focus. And that problem of focus is intensified by a whole new tool set, basically coming online overnight and you seeing nothing but that type of content and thought leadership out there right now.

It's like, that's almost all there is like, what else are you all seeing? Other than how I use an AI tool to drive more pipeline demos, content, conversions, calls, you know, dates online, whatever it is. It's like, it's crazy. It's overwhelming. And my problem is it takes away focus from CEOs who just need to focus themselves and focus their business.

It's

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah. So, uh, I believe you, uh, inadvertently, I believe, uh, led up to a hot take that you have about LinkedIn there. Because you're talking about the noise that's in everyone's head. By the way, speaking of noises in everyone's head, is that [00:26:00] mine? Is there like a Mac truck going through right now or no? It's only in my

headset.

Eric Spett: always you,

Craig Rosenberg: I'm hearing shit.

Eric Spett: you have to ask.

Craig Rosenberg: that's messed up.

Matt Amundson: Voices? Ha

ha ha ha

Craig Rosenberg: Craig. Please do better than what you're doing. Oh, wait, hold on. That's my mom. Uh, no, but, uh, but, but, but you did when we were talking before you did have this hot take, which I thought was really important. And then you were talking about the clutter we all are.

Everyone's faced with the clutter. And I think it's a really good point, but you were hot taking on linked in. So I think you've, you've skewed

yourself up. Let's hit it

Eric Spett: yeah, well, honestly, I think what I was doing was projecting, but, um, I'm, I'm guessing, so, so listen, here, here's the deal. I've never been a social media person. I've avoided. All personal social media. You know, I dabbled in like Facebook in college and was on Instagram for like a year and got on and off a few times, but like by and large, I've been no social media kind of human being and realize that like, for me personally, and this is [00:27:00] no judgment, but like the cons outweighed the pros.

And I realized that every time I tried to dabble in, and so. Now building scale bounds, especially with with what we're doing. And so, you know, we're selling knowledge. We're selling perspective We're you know selling stories And so the place to do that is where all the b2b software CEOs are which is on LinkedIn And so when you talk about our channel of focus, we are a hundred.

We're not we're not sending emails. We're not doing newsletters We're not there yet. You know, we started Uh, scale bound groups. About six months ago, we've got about 35 members, 350 K of ARR. It's going great, but it's still super scrappy and super bootstrapped. And there's just not, there's money, you know, we can fund this thing all day, but there's not time to go broad.

And so I'm spending a ton of time on LinkedIn and it's awesome and it's working, but boy, like it takes maybe one scroll max. For the hedonic treadmill to kick in and to see [00:28:00] someone who's doing better than you and to see someone who started six months ago and has, you know, 37 million in ARR and, you know, a thousand comments.

It's like, you know, and I'm exaggerating here, but it's, um, it's become something different than it was for a long time. I think for a long time, it was more of a business forum with very business specific posts and format. And, you know, over the last few years, it's become. it, it is a highlight reel and it's about, you know, hooks.

And you know, when you, when you try to figure out how to write good content, it's all about the hook. And what is the hook? Something that's going to, it's like writing a headline for the news. Um, it's, it's meant to draw out emotion and provocation and you know, all the psychological stuff that gets you to pay attention to something.

So I guess my hot take is, man, it's, It's just hard to be on LinkedIn. And this is someone whose sole go to market [00:29:00] strategy is on LinkedIn, but it's just a real challenge. And for me, it's anxiety producing, and I know what it is for so many others. And, you know, I also know it's a highlight reel and I know CEOs who are posting these things that look so glamorous and I know the real stories and they're just like all of us.

And yes, there's some great success out there, but it. It's, it's, you know, no different than Instagram. It's no different than YouTube. We might have to delete this segment because I don't want to get on. I don't want to get like hit on my algorithm for saying this stuff. They're probably, yeah, they're probably having their algorithm at their robots are crawling the transaction and now I'm going to be screwed.

So we might have to bleep some of this out.

Craig Rosenberg: Oh, man. Yeah, I mean

Eric Spett: It's in my head. You see,

Sam Guertin: Yeah,

Matt Amundson: ha

Eric Spett: I'll change my tagline to a competitor. That'd be great.

That what, what. Let's tag LinkedIn on

this post. [00:30:00] actually, what a great, what a great idea with the deepfake stuff. You just go in there and you have your competitors just kill their algorithms. Uh, I'm the CEO, I'm Jim Smith, CEO of Eric's big competitor. And here's the thing. No, actually, but, but to your point, though, if you, uh, you, what you're, what you're saying is that Is bucks conventional wisdom, you know, and linkedin is, is a, you know, uh, is a place where a lot of people are sort of, uh, if you take just the preach comment or the go for it, go, you go girl, like everyone's there as it's like their, their biases sort of come out like any social media.

Craig Rosenberg: I think the way to stand out would be to, to, to go with the contrary opinion, like a challenger. We're going to start calling them challenger posts and linkedin's not going to do it. But, but, but I knew you were just kidding. But I do think it's, I think it's, you're, you're bringing up, uh. a tough one for the folks [00:31:00] that aren't sort of socially, uh, inclined before this, which is you got to be on LinkedIn right now, right?

And you, you have to do well on LinkedIn. So you got to be in there producing, uh, but not always scrolling. Cause otherwise, you know,

Eric Spett: And for me, the lesson, you know, it's like any of this stuff that the thing that will set you free is having a process, you know, having a reason why you're using it, having a process for how you use it, you know, having understanding this, the, the threats or the barriers for, for you personally. And just being aware of when you're getting into that.

It's like these days when I get on there and I'm going to scroll, cause I'm going to, you know, engage with my community and. Show you guys some love. It's like, I'm literally telling myself before I start scrolling that feed, I'm like, this is an opportunity to practice being grateful for all that you have and to be happy for all that other people have to share.

And let's leave it at that today. Let's just leave it at that. It's, it's like [00:32:00] a mental training ground. That's how I look at it now. Like it doesn't always work,

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah, but by the way, I've also found some of the most amazing content in some folks long form stuff that's been produced on LinkedIn. I mean, I, I don't know how I got it because I don't know how to keep scrolling. I can do like the it's actually not me. I'm not purposeful. I just, you know, you may or may not know this, but I have a short attention span.

So I, Look at the front page and maybe one and that's just because of now I'm doing something else But I found some of the best stuff I mean like and we found some of our best guests from the work they're doing on on LinkedIn, too So it's it's amazing balance that you have to go through And, uh, the other social feeds are ridiculous, by the way, too.

I mean, like, X is just, I mean, I, I don't even know what's going on in that feed. That's not even, that's definitely not my feed. I'm like, what, what, what is this? Like, there's, there's fights all the time on there and, like, political stuff. And I used to just [00:33:00] go on there to figure out, 24 seven sports and football scoop and try to figure out where the, you know, all the football action and basketball.

It was like sports place, but it's like, it's so interesting. The feed has always been a suck and you got to be careful. I worry about that with my kids, man. I watched them on. I don't know about you, Matt, but it's like, and they go fast. I mean, I try to, I try to get my older boy who used to love movies to watch a movie with me the other night.

That was tough, man. Unless they're locked in the theater, man. It's hard because

they're they're thinking at a speed, the speed, they're thinking like a

feed.

Eric Spett: I had, I had a friend showing me that they are now consuming, uh, like almost like TV shows or short movies, one minute at a time, and every swipe is like a small micro payment. And like, that's now the way that like a TV show is being consumed and like 31 minute bites where you're paying 10 cents per bite.

It's like, it's a, it's a wild world out there.

Craig Rosenberg: [00:34:00] Yeah.

Eric Spett: And that's why like one of the things, and I'm curious what you all are saying, it's like one of the things that we're excited about with what we're building at Scalebound is like the community aspect. Like you've got all this noise. There's so much going on digitally.

That like having these small curated groups and you know, there's, there's tons of them out there, pavilions doing great work. There's, there's now a bunch, but I'm, I'm really bullish on with how much is happening technologically and digitally. I'm just really bullish on the need for like human community and human connection.

You know, as we keep moving forward to break neck speed

Matt Amundson: Yeah. Matt's been talking about that for a year or two yeah. Yeah. So at my new place, we have a community and there is, you know, there is a digital side to it, but it's primarily a real life, like in real life events, community. Um, and we've been able to go from like zero to over a [00:35:00] thousand members in a very short period of time. I think mostly because it's in, um, It's, it's, it's in real life, like people get together physically and have conversations.

And what's interesting is, you know, during the pandemic and sort of the era, the era, just post pandemic, everybody wanted to build these, these online communities. And for the most part, like they could get people to join, but they couldn't get much engagement. What we see is if we have an event in Austin or D.

C. or San Francisco. Those people will come to the event, and then they'll engage a ton in the online community. So having the IRL and online combined actually strengthens one another. So, for anybody who's thinking about building a community, what I'll tell you is like, One, doing community based events is really, really inexpensive.

Other than, you know, the travel aspect to it. But if you have people on the ground, you can benefit from it. And if you're thinking about, I don't know, that seems like a lot of work, then you probably shouldn't do a community. I'm telling you, like, [00:36:00] just standing up like a Slack channel or some other, you know, bit of software around a community will, I would say with 99.

9 percent certainty, it will fail.

Eric Spett: a hundred percent.

Craig Rosenberg: But, but Eric is done. I mean, I actually think it's how long have you guys been doing scale about?

Eric Spett: So from a coaching perspective, I've been coaching CEOs for four and a half years now, which is wild. Um, scale bound, the ideation started about a year ago and we came to market about seven months ago.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah. So the, I mean, you may not know this, but the amount of people you have in the community are ready considering who you're serving as founders. is great. And what that tells you is that they is exactly what your thesis is. Is these, these folks want to talk in a curated group without the noise about the things that matter to them.

And frankly, gravitate towards the advice that they get from those same people, or, you know, the idea of sharing. And, uh, yeah, I [00:37:00] mean, that, I, uh, I think it's a big deal. So I, I, I think that is going to be the benefit of all this, all the noise in this world of feeds. Is that like, you know, uh, that folks that are able to have and find communities where they can, you know, have this type of, these types of engagements, they're, they're, they're, they're gravitating to it.

It's all, it's always been a thing. I mean, Matt likes to point to Marketo Nation and, uh, that was remarkable. That was, yeah. 12 years ago, right? Or something like that. But now, now the noise is deafening. And so having that we have really good communities here at scale that Matt helped me build in the first place and they're just thriving, you know, um, I Had we sort of we haven't done a ton of the digital side because I believe you start with the physical and then bring in the digital once those relationships are built Um, and, you know, we'll, we'll, we'll do more with that [00:38:00] tour, you know, this year.

But like the community side has been amazing and people really appreciate it. And the other thing, you know, it's like, you know, every time people do events are like, and it's the networking, but it's not really the network because you're kind of in a big event and you don't really know anybody and there's all these randoms, there's consultants everywhere, people try to sell you shit.

That's the other thing is like Eric and your group and you know, Matt's is like, that's real networking. You know, I've seen that right now firsthand at my events. Like people actually leave going, no, actually I did network and people are meeting like their front, you know, like these are folks that they can count on.

It's actually really hard to do in a random event. You know, and so that, that's another really

cool thing.

Eric Spett: Yeah, it was interesting. We, we were having a conversation and. Um, my business partner at Scalebound is, uh, yeah, you guys probably know him, Rob Foreman. He was the co founder, president, COO of SalesLoft,

mega exit, mega man, great dude. I've known him, you know, 10 plus years and just salt of the [00:39:00] earth. And we, uh, we threw together like last minute, like.

two weeks notice, uh, December 9th, I think it was like right in the thick of holidays. We threw together, you know, a scale bound breakfast event at in town golf club in Buckhead in Atlanta. And, you know, within a, we, we had 120 register. We had like 90 show up for a breakfast, you know, in the thick of holiday season. And. Rob and I were just, you know, huddled together for a second and he looked at me. He was like, why are all these people here? Like, why, why are they here? Like, and, and when we, you know, had our leadership meeting the, the Monday after it was like, all right there, you know, Rob loves to say, uh, he likes to use the term there, there it's like, there's a, there, there, now we just need to figure

out what it, what it is. And it was so interesting because the quality of people was so high and they came together so quick. And We're like, don't they have better stuff to do than be at [00:40:00] like our event on like breakfast in the middle of the holidays? And most of these people have kids like what's going on here? And it's like people are so hungry for great curation

Matt Amundson: Yes. And I think that's that need is only going to get stronger.

Eric Spett: By the way, Craig, that we live in a world of feeds I don't know if that's like a common nomenclature, but that's brilliant I've never heard that well, don't mind if I do. that's, that's a keeper.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah. Oh, I appreciate that. Sam, write that down. Um, Sam will chime in, uh, to the audience. I'm currently writing that down. The, uh, by the way, that was great. And one note on Rob Foreman, the greatest guy of all time. And I, you know, it's funny because those events you guys used to have in Atlanta. You, I mean, I'm, I was older than everyone there and you got these guys like to drink. I mean, I, I'd go to the dinner. I'd always sit next to Rob because he's the most interesting guy doing real things [00:41:00] for the world, not just business like this. He, he is, and I just be there and I'd have to hang out with like all these 20 something taking tequila shots and whatever.

And I just keep looking at him going, dude. I know you're going to think I'm drunk or crazy, but you are the greatest guy I've ever met. And he's so humble. That would piss him off, but I didn't know what else to say. He really was. He really was. And so I, Rob, this is my message to you. I, it had nothing to do with the fact that I was hanging around 20 somethings rolling around Atlanta the night before and the next morning.

You are

Eric Spett: different times. Alcohol, alcohol and alcohol was in, in those days, no longer in.

That was the, that was the thing to be doing. Alcohol is

out and you can't even, can't even talk about it anymore. You can get, you're gonna get shadow

Craig Rosenberg: Is This going to get censored? I'm going to

get shadow

Eric Spett: Yeah. You're not gonna be able

to

Craig Rosenberg: we'll save this.

Eric Spett: Yeah, we're definitely not gonna be able to

Craig Rosenberg: we'll see. well,

Matt Amundson: yeah, there goes the Heineken sponsor.

Yeah,

Craig Rosenberg: [00:42:00] Um, you know, and by the way, I, I, I just going back on your holiday event, I love the quote that, you know, Rob was like, wow, you know. You guys are saying something really interesting, which is, you know, for some, when you're starting, or you're just doing events with people that have not created that community attachment to you, you have to really be extravagant. But if you're, if you've really built a community, you know, you can. You know, have impromptu events at, I mean, you wouldn't have it at Waffle House, but

you might,

Eric Spett: and by extravagant by extravagant you mean like having like Craig Rosenberg come speak keynote

Craig Rosenberg: no, you should do that. No matter what you should do that. No matter what. It's 25, 000 per keynote. Uh, no, what I mean by extravagant is like, it's got to be the most expensive place in town. Um, and it doesn't,

Eric Spett: that we spent, we spent, we spent 1, 200 on that thing. Awesome

Craig Rosenberg: So it wasn't waffle. [00:43:00] You got massive ROI. There's there there, as you guys like to say, I mean, I'll test this, but like, yeah, like this this weekend, we're doing, uh, that'll go, you know, you know, obviously I couldn't get the all star game tickets, but I got. The celebrity game which sounds fun and the practice and like we're full like everyone's gonna come and it's like that's something unique, but it wasn't I didn't have to get a You know a suite at the all star game for 150, 000 and serve, you know

champagne and caviar

Eric Spett: think it comes down to the curation of people. It comes down to the

Matt Amundson: yeah,

Craig Rosenberg: does. It does.

Eric Spett: bring a bunch of great people to a sterile conference room and facilitate a great conversation and that's great. People will enjoy it.

Craig Rosenberg: yeah,

I mean, I, I totally 100 percent agree when you build a reputation that you're going to have this curated room of people that they can't wait to talk. They're going to come. And, uh, and as you said, in a [00:44:00] sterile, uh, conference room, I, I did. You didn't. React to the Waffle House rent references for

your events.

Eric Spett: You know, I'm, I'm,

Matt Amundson: I would go. I would it, the clock

Craig Rosenberg: I go to Waffle.

I got it

Eric Spett: the clock is about to strike 11pm for me, I might, I might be slowing down cognitively. We appreciate the Atlanta Southeast Waffle House reference.

Now you need to drop some out gas.

We'll take some outcasts and then we'll call this thing a wrap.

Matt Amundson: Dude, speaking of outcasts. All right. All right. This is my favorite, like, because I used to be in Atlanta all the time, you know, I was hanging out with you. I was hanging out with Kyle. I was always down there. And, uh, I went to, um, uh, Shake Shack right there in Buckhead. Right. It's like in that

Craig Rosenberg: he loved that Shake Shack. It was unreal I tried to get him go somewhere else and he made me go to the Shake Yeah.

Matt Amundson: You wanted to go to Gus's. Um,

Craig Rosenberg: love Gus's, but

Matt Amundson: I know you do. I know you do. But who, who was there at the Shake Shack? And, uh, we will add this to the show notes. I will [00:45:00] send this photo to Sam.

Andre 3000. Andre

Eric Spett: Andre 3k.

Matt Amundson: Shake Shack.

Craig Rosenberg: What was he eating, if I might ask?

Matt Amundson: He was waiting for his food. So I didn't get to see.

Craig Rosenberg: Damn it. I'm always curious, man. I mean, uh, I would go big if I were a star at Shake Shack. I would just try everything and just, maybe I wouldn't finish, you know. That first time I went to Shake Shack, I thought I was ordering a hamburger with mushrooms. I ordered a mushroom burger. It was made of mushroom.

I was like, oh, this place sucks. Oh, Jesus, man. Yeah, that was, I mean, that was a rookie maneuver. That sucked, man. I did that that's character C. and

then

Eric Spett: It's character building unless you're a vegetarian, in which case it was a great move.

Craig Rosenberg: Well, you know, the good news is I got to tell vegetarians that, no, you should go to Shake Shack and get the mushroom. Whatever. I love it.

It's great.

Eric Spett: Craig Rosenberg, [00:46:00] man of the people.

You're running for

Craig Rosenberg: that's right. No, definitely not. And I can't wait to imagine the kind of X, the hit pieces that would come out on me. That would suck.

Matt Amundson: Oh yeah, I'd be lining up to sell the stories.

Craig Rosenberg: yeah. So as we wrap up, I do think, um, there was 22 big things that I really liked. Um, one was pick a lane. And stay focused and I would say, as you kept talking, I realized you're telling them to stay focused across the board. Like, we're talking specifically about demand channels, but, you know, you're trying to keep them focused on, you know, the product, the market, all these things.

I think that's that's a great message. And I do think we get distracted by the shiny object on across everything, right? It's like if you're at the different channels like you brought up, you know, the go to market tools are seen on LinkedIn. We get distracted because our. Our [00:47:00] competitors lie about their successes on LinkedIn that stuff throws us off a new feature request.

Sales comes in and complains that we don't have this and you gotta have focus. You gotta make really good decision. I think that's a really that's a really big message. The other one is like the future of demand and customer capture and customer retention is about community building and curated audiences.

And I don't think that's reserved just for expertise selling like that's. Part of, you know, your software product, your, you know, I'd caterpillar or whatever that is. I think I think that's we all have to take that into account and I would say the only thing I've seen is like the people that just throw up a digital community that doesn't work like you have to build.

That, you know, if you, you can start with the digital community, but you have to curate content and the people and all those things. And when you do, the net results are incredible.

Eric Spett: And communities break if they [00:48:00] grow too fast. You know, there's a, it's an, you kind of need to figure out what the rate limit is to keep the curation and keep some friction and keep the quality high.

Craig Rosenberg: I love it. Let's end on that. Eric, coming in hot from South Africa. How about them apples? We're global. We're worldwide. I'll be home in a

Worldwide.

Yeah, yeah, we'll see you then. Okay, so, uh, everyone, that's the transaction. Let's go. [00:49:00]