Advocating for the Little Guy: A Frank Talk with Dan Goodman, Warrior of The Sales Rep

Hi, I'm Warren Zenna, founder and CEO of The CRO Collective, and welcome to the CRO Spotlight Podcast. This show is focused exclusively on the success of chief revenue officers. Each week we have an open, frank, and freeform conversation with top experts in the revenue space about the CRO role and its critical impact on B2B businesses. This podcast is the place to be for CROs, sales and marketing leaders who aspire to become CROs, and founders who are looking to appoint a CRO or want to support their CRO to succeed. Thanks for listening. Now let's go mix it up. Welcome to this episode of the CRO Spotlight Podcast. I'm Warren Zenna, the founder of the CRO Collective. And, you know, As I mentioned before many times, a lot of people that I get on the show are people that I just follow on LinkedIn because they're really great. And Dan Goodman is someone who I tell him all the time, he's doing what I call God's work. He helps with, you know, employment issues, right? People who have, particularly salespeople who are getting screwed over by their companies, are not getting the compensation that they deserve, or they're getting let go for reasons that they can't understand. I mean, everyone's been through this stuff. And so I thought, you know, Dan, and I should talk because similarly, the CRO Collective, what we do is we help CROs navigate this stuff from that specific role. And Dan brings an incredible amount of, uh, intelligence and compassion to this situation. He knows so much. So, um, I'm excited to have him here today. So Dan and I had a great conversation. Listen to it. He's brilliant. He's great. And, uh, I think you get a lot out of it. So, you know, I would, I'd be interested in kind of learning a little bit. I know that like you're sort of like, I would describe you as like you're a, you know, you're like a corporate insider who switched sides, you know, and I'd love to know a bit sort of how that journey happened. Maybe even it's possible that maybe even you had some of this stuff happen to you and it turned you into this sort of, you know, advocate. So if you don't mind, I'd love to just get more interested in more background, if you will, on why you are now the warrior the worker?

Yeah, man, it's literally how I've been wired since I was a kid. I never took things at face value. I always questioned things. I always wanted to understand what was going on behind the scenes and the motivations. You know, this journey really started off in supporting salespeople, supporting my wife. My wife was a rockstar sales rep in the VAR market for 20 years. She made President's Club 18 out of 20 years. The only 2 years she didn't make it is when she was pregnant.

Of course.

Um, and, you know, I helped her identify and recover hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars of earned but unpaid commissions, and did that for friends and colleagues, and did it manually for like 20 years, just, you know, because I love, you know, modeling and spreadsheets and uncovering things and, and, and standing up for what's right and helping people. Um, you know, everyone is just taken advantage of. It's such a one-sided system in every way, every aspect of employment. So, you know, fast forward 20 years and, uh, you know, technology and social media, it's just the, the, the barrier to entry to start a business is almost nothing right now. And 20 years ago it was huge, and I just wasn't ready to take that leap. And now this, it's almost risk-free to do it. So I, I, you know, I started this company called True Comish, and I had a developer and I had a buddy from college, and, uh, we built up this amazing application for salespeople to verify commission pay. Identify pay errors, quantify those errors based on their comp plan, and go back to their employer and get paid for what they were owed. And so we built up this incredible app, and it was like pushing a snowball up a hill in a desert, trying to get salespeople to engage, to do some work, to share the information. I think most people have just sort of come to accept that this is sort of how sales works, and it's such a broken one-sided system that they don't bother to fight it too much. So, you know, we did that. My my business partner, one of them, uh, needed to have a heart transplant. He couldn't continue with the business, and he was going to be the social media guy. And I've never used social media in my life, hated with a passion. It's really about making other people jealous about what you really don't have. Um, and so I said, I've come too far, and this has been too much of a passion just to abandon this. So 3 years ago, had no idea what I'm doing, I put my first post on any social media platform on LinkedIn. And, you know, you know, the first one or two were like really bad advertisements that I just had no clue what I was doing. But once someone told me like, this is what posting is supposed to be like— I told the story about how I helped my wife recover like $56,000 in commissions, and it got 138,000 impressions on my first post. And I had no— someone had to explain to me what an impression was. And I just have this natural thing where I want to kind of tell stories and kind of build it up, and it's just how I think and talk and write. And it, it just resonated greatly with people. So I'm posting and I fast forward 4 months, I post about severance and, um, it got over 400,000 impressions. And I had like a dozen people reach out to me pleading with me to help them with their severance. So I did this for free for like 4 months. And I have a call with a guy from Israel and he's got a, a joint venture with a US company that they're proposing that he, you know, open up a, an office there. And then he's asked me to review the agreement. And I said, this is the most one-sided thing I've ever seen. You blow this thing out and they terminate you. You've got nothing. You need to have an agreement where there are certain KPIs that are met, will automatically trigger an agreement that you have a 50% ownership of this joint venture that you just created from the blue. He thought it was the most incredible advice he'd ever heard. He says, Dan, how much do I owe you? I said, well, I kind of do this thing for free. He openly laughs in my face and calls me some name in Hebrew. And I don't even know what he said. So what did you say? He said— and we go back and forth— he says, you're a sucker. I said, why are you calling me a sucker? Says, you add great value and you don't charge anything for it. So wait, we go back and forth. He demands that I give him my wife's Venmo because I don't even have one, and he sends me $300 for 40 minutes. And the very next day was February 1st, 2023. I started charging for my time. I've now had 4,600 paid client engagements since that time period, and it was a business that I never planned to start. I'm just out here sharing ideas, questioning things. I got this sort of East Coast mentality where I kind of like to, you know, you know what I'm talking about.

I do.

And it just resonated. I literally have people reaching out to me dozens and dozens of times every single day that my content speaks to them. They're like, you must have cameras in my house because you're literally writing this, is exactly what I'm experiencing. It's amazing. And when I first started this business It wasn't about— it was about helping people to stand up and to get what was theirs. And it's become so much more than that. That's almost secondary at this point. It's changing people's lives. People are traumatized. They're lied to. They're gaslit. They've given years and decades of loyalty, and now they're just stunned. And they've never been through it. They have no idea what happened, and they're left to interpret it, and they start to spiral. All the people I work with are top performers. They're not going to come to me otherwise. And they've never been through anything like this. And they just start to internalize it, even when it's so apparent that what's happening. And it's the most incredible thing right now, what's, what's going on here. And I'm extremely blessed and lucky to be able to do this. I help people in 8 areas, really. I help them with employment agreements, which I think your CROs absolutely benefit greatly from that. Yep. I help with restrictive clauses, which can be a big issue, with severance, with PIPs, with stock equity grants, with comp plans, with commission or wage disputes, and general coaching, guidance, and advice. So I work on an hourly consultative basis on those 8 areas. And then we work on a contingency model with a one-time flat fee to help you negotiate severance packages or exits from your employer.

Gotcha. Well, like I said, it's great. It's really amazing. And so let's get into this a bit. So I see a lot of interesting sort of dynamics in this whole scenario and like why it is that someone like Dan Goodman is even needed in the world today. Okay. And what one thing I would say is, in your view, how much of the, let's say, the issues that sales— let's, for the sake of the conversation, let's just talk about salespeople for the time being. So the ones that are being compensated based on their efforts as opposed to like just being given a salary, right? That's where that issue comes in, right? How much of this you think is just pure incompetence and how much of it is evil?

So, so I, I've had almost 5,000 paid client engagements. I've probably talked to 8,000 people in the last 4 or 5 years, honestly. You know, less than 5% of the people that I'm talking to, that it's not evil, that it's not intentional, that it's the, the way that employers go around terminating employees is never transparently. And if you're in sales, it's often because you are outperforming the comp plan. They're not going to pay you more than the CEO or the C-suite. They don't want to break the comp plan and then have to redo it mid-year and do retroactive comp plans and screw up for the whole team. Maybe they'll do a windfall clause and take 3/4 of it, or they'll create some scenario and lies and terminate you, whether it's a phony thing for cause, whether it's claims of performance that you just returned from President's Club 3 months ago. It doesn't really matter what it is. They want to reduce separation costs at all costs. They don't want to pay out huge lucrative payouts to salespeople. And they will basically position this in a way that they make you miserable so that you'll want to leave. You don't even know what's happening. You know, at first it starts off where they stop asking about your weekends or personal life. Then they start questioning things and nitpicking about things that never mattered before. And then they start escalating beyond that, stealing compensation, questioning things that never mattered, humiliation, isolation. Exclusion, discrimination, targeting, retaliation, whatever it is. Oftentimes it's because a new manager has come in or a new leader has come in and they want to bring in their own people. And I've just seen the same thing plays out over and over and over again. And that's why I'm able to immediately assess what's gone on and help guide the employee through through the situation to achieve their desired outcome.

So basically, at the core of this, I understand, you know, I don't want to get like sound biblical or anything like that, you know, just greed, right? These people just want more money. And you know what they're doing, right? It's not really ultimately some balance sheet person at the organization is saying, look, you know, this guy is just going to make too much money here, uh, we probably, you know, didn't hit the mark, uh, which then leads to the other conclusion, which is that it exposes the reality that comp plans are designed for people not to hit them because— or over-exceed them, right? I mean, there's sort of like a weird balance here. They want them hit because there's a profit margin inherent in those comp plans that make the organizations hum. But they can't pay out too much. So there's a throttling that's going on. And, you know, I would imagine— again, I'm making up things. You could probably help correct me where I'm wrong here. But having been through this myself, right, so I'm speaking to some degree of expertise, is And I've also advised companies that are in this situation too, which we'll get into in a second, which is— so there's, there's this idea that we want you to make money but not too much money, right? Like, like we sort of want to control your income so we're protected, right?

They want to do whatever they want to do whenever they want to do it. It's a completely one-sided— whether it's your comp plan or your employment agreement or your restrictive clauses, there are clauses in there that offset it for the employer. So for example, with your employment agreement It will literally say that you're an employee at will. You can be terminated anytime with or without cause, even if you're a gay Black female over the age of 40 with a military disability. There's 6 protected classes I just listed, but they'll make you sign that agreement to make you think there's nothing you can do. Same thing with the comp plan that, you know, there's information about windfall clauses that they can change the plan at any time for the benefit of the company, right? So it's so that you abide by it so that they don't have to, you know. The same thing with, you know, across the board. So what you need to realize is that the, the game is fixed. It's set up in such a way with attorneys writing these things on behalf of the employers to, to, to protect and benefit them at the expense of the employee, of which 90% of them don't even realize it. And they're just working within this, this confine. So that's really what's going on. You know, they, they wanna give you enough to dangle in front of you to motivate you to wanna sell as much as you can. But then they don't want to pay you out as much as you could potentially earn. And they create scenarios in these agreements to allow them to get away with it, whether it's legal or not.

So, okay, I get it, and I agree with all of it. What are some of the, um, ways in which a salesperson today is getting into a new role? Right, here's the issue, like it's sort of a hostage situation for many of the people I speak to, right? So as you probably can appreciate Right now in particular, I'm getting more phone calls right now from people asking me if I know of any good jobs, right, than I have in a long time. And these are senior-level people. These are all like VPs of sales and CROs who are saying, hey, look, you know, it's weird out there right now. And so I point to that because what that indicates to me is that there's a vulnerability and exposure on the behalf of the employee because they're desperate and they're looking for new work. And they have, like you and I both, right, they've got covenants at home, right? They've got homes and they've got taxes they got to pay and all the stuff that pulls hair— your hair out of your head. And so they're less inclined to put too much scrutiny in the jobs that they're looking at because they don't want to be considered to be, you know, annoying or a problem. So they want to be compliant and just say yes to everything so they can get the job and get the paycheck and run home and say, look, everything's all taken care of, and provide them with that sense of security that they're looking for that we need in order to be successful. And in so, they miss things that if they pushed on, they may not get hired. So what's the way in which someone can kind of navigate the sandwich between, I want this job, but I don't want to be too scrutinizing because they'll never hire me. How do you navigate that space for someone?

Yeah, I mean, that's one of several things that we can talk about today about really targeting at the CRO and, and how we can most help them and what they should be most concerned with.

Sure. I mean, because I, I help them with this too, right? I mean, this is, I just need to be clear. I mean, what it is that we're doing, this is, I I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I think it's important that we discuss this because your point is correct. Is this— when I'm talking to my clients about the CRO role, your, your role or your like piece of it is in the comp plan and the money. My comp— my programs are designed more around the design, authorities, scope, permissions, time frames, deliverables, of the agreement that they make functionally for the job, right? Because what happens with CROs is they are offered a job that has a certain level of authority in its title. And then when they get the job, they realize in fact that that's all they have is a title. They don't really have the ability to actually do the things that they were hired to do. And they're constrained by forces that they have no control over because the system that they've inherited is one that now they have to work inside of. And the CRO uniquely, when hired properly, can actually build a new system and actually make one that works better for the organization. Your situation, however, where I would like collaborate with you potentially, is to say, well, let's talk about the way you're going to be compensated for this. So I'm a new CRO. Let's create the scenario coming in. I've already spoke to Warren. I've already got clarity on how to talk to my company about my permissions, my authority, my autonomy, my resource allocations, my timelines, and my all that. 'But now I want to know how I'm going to be compensated and how I protect that.' What's the way in which Dan Goodman would be speaking to this person from that perspective?

Yeah, so the first thing I would— I advise people with in this situation was to find out whether they have leverage. It's all about leverage. Are you leaving a job and resigning from one that you would be willing to stay at? Have you been unemployed for 6 or 12 or 18 months? You know, how badly do you want this job? How great is the opportunity? So you need to find out, do I have leverage? You know, am I— who has the best BATNA, the best alternative to a negotiated agreement? And whoever has the best BATNA often will win in negotiations. You have to be willing to use your leverage once you identify that you have it. A lot of people are afraid to even use it once they know they have it. Um, so that's the first thing. So if you have leverage, you can in essence write your own ticket. And now you need to know, what should I be writing about? What should I be worried about? What should I negotiate for? And it's really across the gamut. You know, you can talk about equity, for example. Oftentimes for CROs, that's an important thing. Are you working for a PE company? Are you signing up for phantom equity, of which you'll never have anything because you have to be there when a transaction happens? Even if you vest the duration, you need to be there for the performance vest, which is when a transaction happens. You can have a 4-year equity vest for duration with a 1-year cliff. You can work there for 5 years. You leave after 5 years. The transaction happens in year 6. And you've got nothing. So, you know, you want to know. You also want to be able to negotiate the time to exercise the vest. The standard is 90 days. I've worked with people that had to lay out $600,000 to vest that equity and didn't have it. And we ended up negotiating as part of their severance to extend that to a 3-year window. Do that in advance. You know, 83(b) elections are something you might want to consider if you're going to a startup where you can prepay the, the capital gains, uh, the, the unvested equity in advance of investing, and then paid everything out as a capital gain. You could potentially save hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes doing that. Um, you know, if there's a— if you're coming in as a CRO, you don't want to have the rug pulled out from underneath you. You want to negotiate terms that offset those terms in the agreement. Every standard employment agreement says that they can change your job, your pay, your title, your responsibilities whenever they want. If you're a CRO resigning from a job, do you want to go into that situation? So I advise people to set— to create clauses to offset these things. So if there's a material change in your job, then that invokes a clause as if the company terminated you that you have 90 days to invoke, um, which would then act as if the company terminated you and then invoke that severance agreement that you should pre-negotiate. So let's talk about the severance for a minute. You know, is an employee at will You know, you can be terminated at any time. No one has an employment contract. You'd be shocked at the number of people that I've spoken to that think that they have an employment contract, and when I look at it with them, it's an employment at will contract— agreement, not a contract. Um, so, you know, you, you need to offset those clauses. You, you need some assurances. You know, they can terminate you at any time. A lot of people I work with are terminated at, you know, 3 months, 6 months. I've had one— someone I I had someone who relocated, sold his house, relocated his 2 young kids and his wife from Florida to Arizona and was terminated on the 3rd day of employment because he had an attitude during training, supposedly. Literally, you need to build protections in place. So what I— and I've seen a lot of these big PE companies even offer this up to high-level executives without even having to ask for it. You know, if you're there 3 months, they owe you 9 months severance. If you're there 6 months, they give you a 6-month severance. If you're a CRO, a C-suite member of a significant company, you're getting friggin' a year of compensation if they let you go. That's salary, equity vest, uh, healthcare, uh, outplacement services, um, you know, everything, whatever that is. Full year of compensation. You know, if you're a C-suite executive at a relatively decent-sized company, it's going to take you at least a year to replace that income. You should not have to take a step back and pay job title or responsibilities because they've discarded you. And when people at that level are typically given that amount of runway, especially when they're being let go through no fault of their own, through a merger or an acquisition, through a reduction in force or a long-term savings for the company. So those are all things that you want to look at from an employment agreement standpoint. Um, you know, good, I've been talking for a bit.

Okay. Thanks again for listening to the CRO Spotlight podcast. We're excited about all the great guests we have, and more importantly, we're excited mostly about you for being avid listeners and supporting the work that we do here. Feel free, please, to share the CRO Spotlight podcast with any of your colleagues. We just think there's a great wealth of information here and want to get the word out to as many people as possible, and your, your support of the show is really appreciated. I wanted to share information about a program that we offer called the CRO Masters Council. The CRO Masters Council is a bimonthly group of 6 seasoned Chief Revenue Officers who are looking for a Chief Revenue Officer board of directors, so to speak, that they could share what's going on with them, collaborate with ideas, get some feedback on what's going on in their current role. And, um, these are great conversations. I facilitate them. The CRO Masters Councils, again, they're twice a month and, uh, they last for at least 6 months to a year. So if you're interested in having your own CRO suite, your own board of directors of chief revenue officers, it's a private confidential conversation that we have. It's infinitely useful. Imagine having a room full of other chief revenue officers you can talk to and say, hey, I'm working on this, or have you guys figured that out? Or I'm having this issue right now with my business or my results. These are just invaluable conversations with chief revenue officers. Chief revenue officers have a very, very unique role. It's a very lonely job and only other CROs understand what you're going through. So that's why we created this program. So if you're interested in being a member of the next CRO Masters Council, which we have a number of 'em being put together right now, just go to my LinkedIn and, uh, DM me, uh, Masters or Masters Council, and I'll follow up with you and set up a call or send you some more information about it. Looking forward to seeing you there and thank you. Points you made there are great. They're all really great pieces of advice. They're all interesting, right, for people to be looking at. But they're all predicated on the notion that you mentioned at the beginning, which is that they have some leverage, right, where they're wanted enough, right, that they could— I don't want to say kind of like have the potential employer like over a barrel, but you said it yourself, right? There's some leverage there where some, to some degree, they've identified that what you have is something they want, and now you have negotiating room. That's not the case most of the time. I mean, I don't see this a lot. What I see actually is most of the time is that they've got a really great job, at least on paper, and they've got a lot of people they're talking to who are willing to take this job. They have a slew of candidates, and we've got a weird dynamic, right?

Right.

Which is, on one hand, because I talk to the employee side too, the employer side too, a lot, which is they're like really overly scrutinizing all the time. They're like, well, you know, this guy's not perfect. And so there's some degree of unicorn searching to some degree, which makes them not really good. But the other side too is they do have a lot of people who want this job. And so the dynamic is, and to the point you made, if I'm going to be smart enough to come to them with all these, you know, negotiations and other prevarications that I want this and that in place of that, they may just say, yeah, this guy's gonna be too much trouble for us. We could just see already this person's gonna be someone that we're never gonna be able to control, or we could see that all these scenarios remove our leverage from this relationship. We don't want that. So this— these person's no good. I'd rather find someone who's naive it doesn't understand these things. Well, it's true.

I mean, I know, I agree. I'm laughing because I hear this. I think that, I think they just did you a favor.

Well, look, you and I both obviously know that, right? And I tell my clients this all the time, like, you just walked away from a bullet, but the person still doesn't have a job. And so, you know, what they're doing is they're saying, do I take the bullet or the job? And in many cases, as you already know, the reason why people come to you in the first place is because the issues they're dealing with are really, really existentially vital for them, right? They need work and they need income and they need stability, and they have all sorts of reasons why. It's very emotional. This is all lizard brain stuff that's going on here, you know, and it's really difficult for someone to make a very rational decision when they're faced with someone saying, hey, we're going to give you a $500,000 comp plus X, Y, and Z, and you can start tomorrow. And then, you know, me or you go to them, go, look, dude, there's a lot of like landmines here. You should say these 5 things. Do I really want to risk taking this job. I understand, Dan, you're really smart, but I don't want to—

my advice—

yeah—

is once you get the offer in writing, okay, now flip the switch and turn around and ask all the tough questions that you're unwilling or uncomfortable to ask before you have it in writing. Okay, technically they can't withdraw the offer legally unless you refuse to sign it because there's an arbitration agreement in it. That's another weird thing. But I mean, if they send you an offer and you're simply, you know, asking questions, looking to verify things, making sure it's a good fit, you know, that's when you have— you're more comfortable doing so. You know, sure, the money can be enticing, but you really need to assess the likelihood of achieving it.

Sure.

And why did they let the previous person go? Are you the first person in line? And the stuff that you were talking about that you help with out a lot, you know, I talk about that all the time with folks. I mean, you got to assess the CEO and their mindset 100%, you know, and have they— in their ego and their potential level of narcissism and how much rope you're going to have. I can't even begin to tell you the number of C-suite executives that got terminated 3 or 6 months because stuff is going bad and you just happen to be in the line of sight of the CEO when something bad happened and you got terminated.

Literally 100%.

And they're looking for scapegoats. They're looking to deflect. They want to kick the can down the road to buy more time with their board and blame you for what's happened. And you need to get on the same page with the CEO. You need to assess who they are and what their character is like and, you know, what kind of culture exists there and what kind of level of accountability that they take. You know, in assessing all that, there's no doubt. And also what you need to assess— and I tell— I've had so many people come to me and want me to assess their employment agreement, and they've been out of work for friggin' 12 months. I'm like, what are we doing here? Take the job. You know, you don't have a choice. You can— you're an employee at will. You can leave anytime you want. If some, something great happens to come up, go grab it. They'll discard you in a moment anyway. You know, you shouldn't feel guilty about it. You gotta look out for yourself. And if you've been outta work for 12 months, take the job and, you know, and, and, and continue to look. That would be my advice.

Yeah, no, it's a good point. I, I agree with that. I think that there's the other side of it too, which is that, you know, uh, a lot of people unfortunately still can't fathom the idea. They understand it maybe intellectually, but they can't viscerally understand the fact that they really are an apparatus for an organization that can be easily ripped out and replaced and will be at a moment when many times it feels really inappropriate. And at the same time, they're like, well, you know, loyalty is really important. I don't want my reputation to be besmirched. You know, if I go work at an organization and I just bail for another job, that's going to get around that I sort of like don't commit to things and it's going to make me look bad. And I don't want to operate that way. I'm a person of my word. And if I take a job, I'm going to keep it. I don't want to go into an— into a situation where I think I might be promiscuous. It doesn't work for me. And your— and my advice would be, well, you know, maybe you got to be a bit more pragmatic here, you know, and understand that that's not the way we're going to be— that they're always going to be thinking about you. And you have to equal the playing board a bit by bringing— unfortunately, as much as it might be horribly cynical to bring the same attitude to these situations, because the reality is that you're not an owner of the company, you're not an officer of the company from, you know, an ownership standpoint. Somebody else is. You're being hired to fulfill on And look, I think it's fair, by the way. Like, if I take all the risk and I build a big business, I invest in all this stuff and I hire people, you know, I, I, it is the risk I'm taking. And I'm hiring people and I'm paying them what should be a fair wage and making them feel compensated for being able to fill, fulfill on components of the business. And if they're happy with that agreement, fine. If I fill out, fulfill on my side of it, then it's a good relationship. These types of jobs are good. And I think that that's an important thing too, because you're pointing out the obvious negative things that occur within, you know, corporate America. But at the same time too, I'm, am a believer that I'm grateful that there are people out there whom are willing to start businesses and employ people at the same time. It just, there needs to be some balance between, right?

It's very one-sided. You know what I'd love to chat about a little bit?

Sure.

Is that you're a CRO in a company, you've been there for 6, 9, 12, 15 months, and things are now different. And it feels like you're being managed out of the business, and what should you do? Okay, I think that happens to a lot of people and they don't even know it's happening and they don't know what options they have.

So let's talk about that because this is a big topic with my clients and we talk about this a lot too. So let's compare notes. So you're in the job, you got the honeymoon phase, it's like 3, 6, 3, 3 to 4 months, right? Everyone loves you, pat you on the back, we're so excited you're here. And then all of a sudden, you know, my clients start feeling like 6 months into the job, this really weird sort of spider sense, like their hair on the back of their neck is up. They're like, you know, it wasn't I wasn't invited to that meeting, or, you know, I didn't know that decision was made, or what, where did this come from, sort of stuff. And they sort of, uh, figure out a way to emotionally compartmentalize and say, yeah, I'm just being paranoid, or that doesn't mean anything. So what are the ways in which you advise people around that switch that you just referenced? It's a really, really good point.

Well, I mean, so you, you need to assess what's going on. You need to assess your standing. It's never transparent, uh, for some reason. I don't know, I don't understand why, you know, perhaps because of protected classes or lawyers or being afraid to get sued or whatever it is. But, you know, things change, you know, like you said, that honeymoon period. And you can tell where they— you're no longer part of the in-crowd, where you're being excluded from things, where, you know, you're, you know, think you're being nitpicked, you know, they stop showing interest in you as a person or your personal life. And it's, it's no longer as fun as it used to be. And they, they do this intentionally, slowly, so that you start to maybe want to think about moving on, on your own, or, or looking around. Um, you know what, what you need to do is instead of like internalizing everything, instead of trying to react to what's coming at you, you need to take a step back and look at the forest through the trees. And look at it from the top down and assess what's gone on. And it doesn't matter what level you're at. The same thing plays out every single time. They want to make you miserable. They want to make you question yourself. They want to sap you of your confidence, you know, and then make you react to that. Instead, you want to build a case against your employer, how that— for how they're managing you out of the business and use their own actions against them to make them defend themselves against your claims. Instead of you spinning your wheels trying to rationalize the intentionally irrational. And, you know, people don't— when you're so deep into it, you can't see it, and you're, you're playing right into their hand. So instead, you want to take a step back and use their own actions against them, because their words really match their actions when they've made that decision that they want to cut ways, and they don't want to pay you some big lucrative package to leave. They want you to go look on your own. Because when you do, there's no severance, there's no unemployment, there's no claims of wrongful termination, and you just move on. And they'll spend months and months and months doing this to— for just that reason. And rather than you suffering in this and trying to make sense of it and rationalize it, uh, and having your mental health suffer as a result, you want to take a step back and build a plan. And whether that plan is to go on FMLA because your mental health is suffering, well, that plan is to ride this thing out or whether it's to bring it to a head and negotiate your own exit. And those are the sort of three paths that I help coach people with to achieve just that. Um, we determine what your desired outcome is, whether that's to stay and figure out a way to make it work, or whether that's to leave, and the timing and plan to do so, and what options you have to achieve that.

Yeah, so let's, let's— great, I want to talk about those three things. So, because I've been in this situation, right? So it's a bit nuanced, right? I mean, it's easy to sort of characterize or narrate narrative these things like it's some evil organization and you're just a good person being victimized. I mean, sometimes it's, you know, you've got, you've got your shit too. You know, you're not the best person to be around either, right? That completely happens, you know. And maybe even there are issues where maybe you go into a job, all right, like I'd say let's like break it up into competencies and culture, right? So you go into an organization, you get hired, you have the right resume, you do a good job of negotiating your package You displayed the right competencies and experience that is required for the role. Generally speaking, everyone thinks this is a good idea. They bring you on. And then, you know, like anything, you know, you buy the car, the test drive isn't really sufficient. I mean, you'd get in the car and you drive it like up the block or on the highway. You know, you don't really use it in your everyday life to test drive it, you know, and then you get it home and like in your environment, you know, oh my God, there's all kind of problems with this vehicle I didn't really see before, and I didn't have a chance to know that. So now I don't want the vehicle anymore because it doesn't suit my lifestyle. And the only way I would know that is if I had it in my house for, you know, a month or two. So this person's in my garage, and I'm like, you know, God, like, you know, I really— this doesn't work. Like, I, I, I'm really upset about it, but no one gets along with this person. Or, you know, there's just some way in which this person thinks that doesn't jive with us. Or there's certain things that they're good at, but they're not good at these. And I have buyer's remorse right now, and I want to do something about it, and I don't have the legal means to do so because I don't want this person to litigate because that's going to be difficult for us. I'm going to put myself in a really vulnerable position. This is executive now. So what we're going to do is we're going to isolate this person. We're going to be sort of like, let's say, uh, the word I would use is sort of passive-aggressive. We're not going to tell the person we don't like them. We're not going to say we manage them out. Okay, fine. So now you feel this happening. Right, so it may in fact be, Dan, that there are things that I need to do differently. Like, I, I'm not just sitting around like benignly getting victimized. I can be belligerent. I don't listen sometimes. I sometimes I don't do certain things properly. Where is the opportunity there for that gap to be closed before it comes to the point where I'm like, you know what, these guys don't want me here anymore and I'm out of here, or Or is it usually just they've already made their decision? There's really no room for any— like, where does that live? I'm curious, though, because like, these are interesting little nuances that are interesting, and they come up a lot in the conversations I'm having with my clients, which is, is this a situation where I can get the truth out of these folks so we could figure out a way to balance it? Or is it over and I should just sort of like figure out how to move on from here?

Yeah, I didn't know where you were going with this. I've gone from this side to this side and back to this side. I've had thoughts that I wanted to share on.

Yeah, yeah, whatever.

Yeah. Man. It's about intent, right? I mean, which doesn't exist in the corporate world because the attorneys tell them not to. They, they, they, they, they're worried about lawsuits, they're worried about violating rights and things like that, whether regardless of how legitimate it is. I mean, why do you think references don't exist anymore? Is it because attorneys tell them just that? You know, if, if you're an employee— employer and you don't want that employee there any longer, regardless of what the level is, be honest with them instead of trying to force them out and resign and make them miserable for 2 or 3 months and pay them to do it. Go up to them on day 1 and say, look, you're an employee at will, whether you really are or not. You know, we appreciate your time here. Um, you know, we've made a decision to go in another direction. We're not just going to pull the rug out from underneath you today. We're going to let you continue to work here for the next 2 months. If you want to continue to work on the projects you're doing, great. If you don't, that's fine too. We'll transition them and you'll have a job while you look for one. We'll support you. And after the end of that 2-month period, or whatever that is, We're going to let you go. And if you haven't gotten a job yet, we'll give you a severance package. This is what it looks like. And it doesn't have to be a great severance package because you just gave them 2 or 3 months to look for a job while you had one. They feel trusted. They feel valued. You know, and they're being communicated with. And now they're going to look back on that and say, wow, this employer treated me with respect. And they're going to think highly of them and be an advocate for them. I actually got let go from a job in the late '80s or early '90s. Just like that. And they gave me 2 or 3 months. They gave me a severance package afterwards. I got another job. I double dipped, and I got like nothing. And there was, there was a whole bunch of stuff that went on prior to that that I had to grind with. But you know what was left in my mind looking back decades later is how well they took care of me on the way out. And I don't even think about all the nasty shit that went on that led up to that, you know what I'm saying? And you know what, I will argue that it will cost you less to do it that way than to have HR and the business partner and the manager and the employee going through the coaching plan and the PIP and the termination and the severance negotiation. And this crap is going on for months even before any of that stuff.

Hey everyone, I want to thank you again for listening. Get great comments across LinkedIn and other channels about the show, and it's really gratifying to see that we're having an impact on you. Another thing I wanted to let everybody know is that we also produce events. About 2 and a half years ago, we started these CRO roundtables predicated on the idea that— well, two premises. One is CROs are looking for other CROs to talk to, which is really true. It's a very lonely job. How do we get a bunch of CROs in a room where they're not being, let's say, disintermediated by panel discussions and sponsorship events and demos and stuff and really give them a chance to talk to each other. So we created a roundtable event that is essentially that. It's a 3.5, 4-hour discussion between 20 and 30 chief revenue officers. And these are amazing events. The format took off, people love them, and I get requests all the time as to when is your next CRO event. So to that end, I just want to let you all know that we have a number of roundtables coming up over next year. Over the next, like, 2026. I wanna share 'em with you so you can, if you're in, if they're in your market, you can come. So the next one we're having is gonna be in London, actually, in February, February 24th in London. So if you happen to be a chief revenue officer in the UK or even in Europe and you wanna come by, you'll be hearing about it more on my, on my website and my, and, and LinkedIn, but put it on your calendar. And then following that, we're probably going to be doing an event in San Francisco in March. There's going to be one in New York in March. I'm going to do another one in Chicago probably in April, and then I'm going to do an event in Boston. I'll do an event in Atlanta. I'm going to do an event in Salt Lake City. I'm going to do an event in Austin, and I'm going to do an event in Los Angeles or the Southern California area. So Those dates are to be determined, but they'll be going across all, all next year. And these events are taking on huge momentum. They're the place to be if you're a Chief Revenue Officer and you want to be in a room with no interruptions and have an opportunity to really share with each other in a sort of a private and confidential open discussion about everything that you want to talk about as a Chief Revenue Officer and collaborate with great people. So thank you. And thanks for supporting the show. And I look forward to seeing you at the events. I've had a conversation with a client of mine, this exact conversation where I said to them, look, you know what you probably gotta do if you can, you gotta figure out what's really going on and bring the solution to them because they're probably not gonna do it. So, you know, having a conversation with your boss, the context of the conversation needs to be, let's be honest. I know I'm being isolated. I know I'm being ostracized. Okay, fine. Um, if you have anything you want to share with me that I need to hear, I'll listen because I'm coachable. However, if you've already made your decision, tell me and let's just figure it out. I don't want to have this long thing. It doesn't make sense for you. It doesn't make sense for me. This way we can both just sort of move on. That way you're sort of forcing to bring it to a conclusion as opposed to waiting for them to, because they probably won't, you know. And you, you may need to just be the catalyst to say, look, I'm smart enough to see that something's going on here. You haven't told me about it. And I can make up 5 or 6 things that I'm probably directionally correct on. Let's figure this out, you know. And the thing is that most of the clients I work with are afraid to do that because, like you said, they're, they're afraid they're not going to be treated fairly. They're going to just be kicked out the door.

I'm not a fan of that approach, honestly. I mean, I, I'm a little bit more confrontational, um, you know. Usually when thing— people are coming to me and paying me my rates, you know, it's well beyond that. You know what I'm saying? And, and, and that's, you know, you're an advocate for someone, right?

You're, you're operating in a way that you can do that.

Yeah, I mean, what I would rather do is show the employer why it's in their best interest to negotiate a fair and equitable separation. I want to show them how their own actions for the last several months, it's clear to any reasonable person that they are in fact managing you out and pushing you out. And rather than continuing down this harmful path that's frankly reputationally damaging to the company and how they're treating you Well, let's be adults here and communicative and figure out a path that we can both feel good about it while the company takes accountability. So when you were talking about that new car in the garage, yeah, that's fine. It's an object. But we're talking about people and lives.

You're being treated like an object. That's the point.

I know you are. Exactly. So when you say, you know, never mind. I mean, I say this all the time. You know, it's like, it's like, never mind. I'm going to wash my hands of it. And, you know, the consequences of repercussions are on the employee. And the employer thinks that they have no accountability.

Yeah.

And I help in a very strong way, whether it's based on empathy, the threat of public exposure, legality, or your ability to escalate within the organization and beyond, to show the employer based on all of these factors why it's in their best interest to resolve it amicably. And that we show them beyond any doubt that you're more of a pain in the ass than you're worth, that how you will fully pursue it through the strength and authority and conviction of your writing.

Gotcha. So what about the— you just said repercussions. Interesting question, right? So I've had some people say to me things like, well, you know, I get it, and I, I know that I should fight, but, you know, these things follow you. All of a sudden, you know, other employers see that you were a pain in the neck, and now they don't want to hire you because they think you're litigious or you're going to be a problem, you know. And it's going to make me seem like, you know, undesirable. Who needs this interloper here who's just going to be a pain in the neck? I need somebody who's more compliant. As I said earlier, they sort of want to find people that are less of a quote-unquote problem, you know. So you win the battle, right? You get out with a good thing. But now, you know, it's like, oh, you're that guy.

Let me respond to that. I literally have this conversation 10 times a day, every single day. I think I posted about it as well. Uh, I, I, I, we're talking about backchanneling references, right? So when it, when it comes to backchanneling, backchanneling happens. There's nothing you can do about it. You don't know what would be said. You don't know if it was said. And there's no ability for you to stop it from being said or not. So in my mind, spending 2 seconds worrying about if backchanneling happens is a fruitless exercise. Okay. And the second point would be is if an employer goes down the path with you to hire you and they're interested in you, they want to bring you on, and now you're doing references and backchanneling. And now because a previous employer said that you stood up to or called out, stood up for yourself or called out wrongdoing, and now they don't want to hire you because of it. They just did you a favor and saved you 3 or 6 months of heartache and wasted opportunity. That would be my take on this. Yeah, as far as references go, you know, lawyers have— you know, the lawyers have gotten to the employers a long time ago, back in some, frankly, last century. They confirm start date, end date, and last job title, and anything else they won't do, uh, because the last thing they want to do is get sued because you said something bad about a reference, and then now the employee didn't get that job and now want to come after you for it. Uh, they treat— it's the same thing with terminations. They treat you like a criminal when it's time to let you go. They walk you out, they shut you out of your system, uh, before you even— off the termination call sometimes. Um, you know, 5 minutes ago you were a trusted, you know, advisor, trusted leader, and now all of a sudden you're treated like a criminal and escorted out. And it's— this is what the attorneys tell them to do. It just lacks the humanity and decency and leaves a horrible taste in everyone's mouth. And now they have regret for the loyalty and and the, and, and the, and the value and, and the sacrifices that they've made on behalf of the company. And now this is how they're treated when they no longer need them.

Thank you so much again for listening to the CRO Spotlight podcast. This podcast is an important plank in the CRO Collective communication strategy, and we're really thrilled to have such great guests on here. So listening and sharing the podcast with other people is really vital because we want to get as many people listening to this great stuff as possible. Couple things to note. If you're an aspiring CRO or a recently hired CRO or even an old salty CRO and you're looking to either become a chief revenue officer or improve your chops and gain some more insights and improve your competencies as a chief revenue officer, we offer the CRO Accelerator course. It's 5 years now. It's the first CRO-focused course that was out there. It's a 15-week course that is populated by aspiring chief revenue officers and CROs. We're pretty selective in terms of who can be a member of the CRO Accelerator course. It's people who are probably like more like ready to be a CRO right now. They have a number of years under their belt as a revenue leader, whether it be a sales leader or a marketing leader or even a RevOps leader, and they either want to move into the C-suite or they're CROs that want to just make sure that they win in the role. So if you are interested in being a member of the next cohort, Please just write me a note on LinkedIn, just DM me, CRO Accelerator, and we'll set up a time to talk and then I can send you more information to give you a brochure of the course. So again, CRO Accelerator course, 15-week program for aspiring and newly hired CROs. Take advantage of it. It's been great. And you'll see some more information about it on the website.

Thanks.

Do you see this stuff getting worse or better?

What I see happening is, is that we have been brainwashed as a society for generations to blindly trust authority figures, whether it's doctors or lawyers or religious figures or police officers or employers. And because we just accept what is given, employers are more emboldened and empowered than ever to do so. Where maybe years ago they might have thought twice about it, now it's not even a second thought. And so I I say it's our own fault, frankly, that we sit there and accept it and do nothing about it and walk away with regret and anger and silence and carry that to the next job and into our home life. And we allow it to happen. And I'm trying to change this one person at a time through hundreds of thousands of people through my posts. I've generated over 100 million impressions in my content in the last 3 years doing this. And I'm sending a message out there to people. And it's being heard. I mean, I've gotten DMs from managers and leaders that say that they've taken my content and that it's changed the way that they're approaching things and that they've used my content to show another leader who was looking to screw a sales rep out of a commission and shared some of the stories that I've shared and now changed their view as a result of it. When I get this feedback in my DMs, it's probably the greatest part about my job that I do every day.

Nothing— Well, I love your stuff because, as you said, it's incredibly emotional. I mean, these are the things that people are most emotionally connected to is their livelihood, right?

Yeah.

And I think also too, there's a lot of other aspects of it, which is, you know, when you join an organization, you know, human beings have a desire to want to be included, right? Part of things, right? They want to be valued. They want to be acknowledged. They want to contribute. They want to know their contributions matter. And when all of a sudden that doesn't happen, it's extremely isolating. It's torture, you know, for a lot of people. And I think people get the emotional component of this is what gets people to start making bad decisions because they're not thinking about things clearly. They need a third party to help them figure out like how to— okay, look, I understand how you feel, that's great, but I don't feel that way. I'm going to advocate on your behalf because I don't feel that way, and I can be more clear about this.

So yeah, one of the most supportive parts, I think, is that— and it doesn't matter who you are, your age— they need to feel validated. It's like this has been going on for months and months, they've got it all internalized, they've got no one to talk to about it because they don't understand. And they— and then they— I literally tell them what's happening behind the scenes that they've suspected but can't put their finger on it. And now they just, they feel so heard and the therapeutic aspect of that can't even be measured. It's incredible by the way I see it and the way I can see it, the transition. It's amazing.

So what do you think the future here is of this stuff? Right?

So you've got, you know, I, I, oh, you're talking about how we fix the broken system?

Well, you know, it's not that I would say, because look, things are dynamic, right? I mean, the corporate sort of, let's say culture that you and I are talking about, we're both old dudes, you know? It's, it's, it's, it's changing in a lot of ways because there's a lot more, like you said it before in the beginning of this conversation, it's easier to start a business now, right? You can just get on the market, you can just create a business and you can live okay. And, you know, people who are a bit, you know, entrepreneurial and enterprising can make a living and they don't need to go work for these big companies, right? And so the corporate, the allure of the job is not as necessary as it used to be, right? It used to be the only way you can make money, you got to go work for somebody, right? And now entrepreneurship has been packaged to someone who can start a business very quickly. So in that respect, then there's options, but people still get jobs that people want these. I mean, I have a business because people want to achieve revenue officer role. That's why they work with me because they want this job. But how much is this, like I asked you before, like, is there any shift you're seeing? Is it going to just get worse? Because now we have AI and all these other tools that create other interesting components to how things are being done today, where now my job can be eliminated just because they don't need as many people anymore. And how much of this is being seen in terms of the modernization of the way businesses are working and the differences and the types of things you're hearing from the people you work with, maybe from even 2 or 3 years ago? Is there, are you seeing any trends and changes?

Yeah. I mean, you know, it's all about leadership, man. It's all about, you know, doing the right thing and having positive intent and doing right by your people and not trying to pull a fast one over on someone based on lack of information or misinformation, which seems to be the foundation of employment. Am I seeing some changes? Yeah. I talk to up-and-comers all the time. People are at director or VP-level roles that are working their way to the C-suite that want to do the right thing, that want to know how to stand up and advocate for their people while threading that needle and not alienating themselves with leadership. I've had dozens of cases of people that were terminated because they refused to wrongly terminate their employees because they wanted to support and train them that they were hired to do and not being given the opportunity. Uh, I mean, the patterns that exist in the business is just mind-boggling. All the employers, they play off the same playbook. I see the same things repeating over and over again. You know, all these crazy cases that I talk about in my posts, yep, I don't do outliers. I've seen the same thing happen 3, 4, 5, 6 times before I'll do a post about it, right? You know what I'm saying?

And crazy. Okay, well, look, as I said, I mean, this is— you're— you— where are you located, by the way? Where are you physically?

Just outside of Boston.

I got you. Okay, so we're both— we're both, uh, Northeast people. Yes, where we have a little rough feathers, rough, rough around the edges, which is a good thing. Um, so, um, how do people get a hold of you? How do people work with you? I know your company is, uh, Dan Goodman Employment Advisory, DGEA. Yeah. And I certainly know people can find you on LinkedIn. But, uh, what's the way in which you engage with your clients? How do they work with you? What's a typical engagement look like? What's sort of the process? Because I'm sure you probably get a lot of it.

Yeah. So like I said at the beginning, there's— I, I do 15, 30, 60-minute consultations, um, for people across 8 practice areas. You know, whether it's your employment agreement that you want to help negotiate or understand, uh, whether it's the restrictive clauses that you're either leaving a company and going to a new one and want to know what kind of restrictions are in place, or you negotiating terms of a new agreement with those restrictions. You know, whether it's, you know, wanting to review your severance agreement and understand the clauses that you, you know, you want to sign it, but you want to have another set of eyes on it to see, you know, make sure there's no one-sided terms in there that shouldn't be there. You know, whether you're on a PIP or being managed out of the business, either formally or informally, and you want to know how to navigate that process and identify your desired outcome and put together a plan to do that. Whether you've gotten a stock equity grant and you, and it's written like Chinese where you can't understand anything it says in there. It's written that, you know, very legalese with 25 pages and you don't really know what you've got there. Um, you know, whether it's a compensation plan that you're getting screwed over, they're doing mid-year changes or retroactive changes and they're asking you to sign it, and you know, you're trying to figure out how to navigate that situation and what you should do and what you're giving up by signing that new plan versus, you know, coming off of the old one. Um, you know, whether it's a compensation theft, you know, whether it's commissions or bonuses that aren't getting paid out or whatever that is, and how to navigate that. And then just sort of general coaching, guidance, and advice as you're navigating issues that come up. I mean, I literally, I've worked with so many people that I've probably seen thousands and thousands of different scenarios at this point. And it's mind-boggling. If some of these employers use the same level of creativity in screwing over their employees, they would never have as many issues with their company as they do, as they do, as a reason to have to do these things. I mean, all of my stuff is 100% inbound on LinkedIn, believe it or not. I don't do any advertising, uh, I don't do any reach out, I don't do any chasing. I just post content every day on LinkedIn. I attract people to me, they go to my website, they fill out my background form. That 12,000 people have filled out my background form in 2 and a half years. It's mind-boggling.

Amazing.

Um, you know, I, I, you know, they can reach me at email, my website, LinkedIn. Um, I personally respond to every DM, I personally respond to every comment on all of my posts. I, I love what I do every day and I'm just blessed to be able to do this.

Well, God bless you for doing it. It's, uh, it's like I said, you're doing God's work. So it was really, really nice to meet you. And, uh, I know you're busy. I appreciate your time. This is a great conversation. And, uh, I hope we talk again.

Thank you. I'd love to, Warren. Thanks so much for having me on. It was great. I, I've been a big fan of yours for a long time. I see you out there and what you're doing and a lot of respect here for you and, uh, Yeah, if there's a way that we can sort of collaborate together sometime in the future, I'd love to explore that.

Great. Well, thank you so much. Thank you for listening to the CRO Spotlight podcast. The CRO Collective's mission is to help CROs succeed and help founders and CEOs build CRO-ready organizations.

You can find out more information about our services at thecrocollective.com.

Collective.com. That's thecrocollective.com. And we look forward to having you join us next time.