S4E16 - How to stop wage theft in your comp plan.

What's up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Surf and Sales podcast. I'm one of your co hosts, Scott Lees, here with my good friend and partner in the Surf and Sales summit, Richard Harris. How's it going, Richard?

It's good, man. Are you alive? You sound really tired today. You good?

I was speaking at an event last night in downtown Austin, which I rarely venture into downtown Austin. So got home, you know.

How was it?

Pretty good. It was put on by this company called Howdy, who's been a client of mine, and Women in Tech, I think is the name of the group who.

I saw that one. Right.

Yeah, it was at the. At the Capital Factory in downtown Austin. Pretty good turnout. Maybe 50, 60 people there. Nice personal branding and things like that.

Yeah. You wore a suit and tie, I presume.

Yeah, yeah, I wore a suit and tie. That's right.

Does he own one?

I look like one of the men in black is what I look like. We're joined today by a good friend and founder CEO of trucommish. His name is Dan Goodman. He's been fighting the good fight on behalf of employees and employers, which we'll probably dig into in a little bit. But before we bring Dan on, Richard, let's talk about our wonderful sponsor, HubSpot. Let people know what they need to know here.

Yeah, I do want to answer Dan's question. Yes, he does own a suit, and it's been a long time since I've seen him in a tie, but I have seen him in a suit.

I got. I got three or four. Three or four.

So thank you to HubSpot, as always. We also want to share some insights with another podcast who's on the HubSpot Podcast network. If you haven't checked it out, you should. They've got all kinds of categories, from sales and marketing to leadership. So it's a. It's a. It's a powerful, powerful place to go to the HubSpot Podcast Network. But we want to talk about our friend Scott Clary and his podcast success story. He does a lot of Q A. Very similar to what Scott and I do with business leaders and startups and entrepreneurs. And he's. He's done some great sessions that are really fun to listen to. I think Scott's favorite one is liquidity and liquor, two of Scott's favorite topics with.

Actually, there's only one other topic I like to talk about, and that's probably sports. That's it.

That's true. That's true.

Very limited game. Actually. I've got three moves, I think.

Yeah. So liquidity and liquor. He covers with Reeve Collins, who's the co founder of Smart Media Tech and founder of Tether.

And he's both been a, you know, Reeves been in digital marketing and bitcoin and blockchain, which are not necessarily something I'm, you know, I sort of follow. Right. Like, I think Scott and I jumped on the bandwagon a couple years ago and I don't know if I've ever looked at the account ever since, but probably should have listened to this first. I should listen to an expert before I listened to Scott or Scott, listen to me about.

Yeah. By saying we know what we were talking about in that arena. What it means is we spent some money and lost most of it.

Yes, agreed.

That's the extent of your knowledge in this.

So. Which is also why, you know, again, we just, you know, go check out Reeve Collins episode with Scott Clary on success story and they talk about that. And then, you know, there's no mention about this liquidity and liquor thing. So I'm curious what that part is too. So, you know, we'll see. We should probably have him on Scott and see what kind of tequila he likes. We should test him.

We should.

So anyway, I'll turn it back to you, Dan. Good to see you. Dan Goodman. I want to give people the. The lowdown of who you are, what you do, so they have context as we jump into this, this conversation.

Absolutely. First of all, great to be here. Thank you both Richard and Scott. Appreciate it. I'm Dan Goodman. I'm the founder and CEO of True Commission. I am the advocate for employees everywhere. I provide them the data, the information to stand up for themselves, to not be bullied and intimidated, to not be stolen from. What we built is a commission audit service for sales reps to be able to go in there, answer questions about their comp plan, for our system, to replicate it, upload their bookings and commission information. And not only we identify deals that appear that they weren't paid properly on, we'll actually put a value on those deals based on where you are in your comp plan, your performance for the year. Now you actually have the data to go back to your company to go and say, hey, I have not been paid on these deals and this is how much you owe me on them. And now they can't play these games like, you know, what are you talking about? Or we'll look into that, or what have you. In addition to that, I've kind of taken on this Role to be an advocate for employees in every setting. I've been consulting and helping folks with severance agreements, employment offers, PIPs, comp plans, commission audits, stock equity grants, and the like. So it's been. It's been wonderful to be able to kind of fill this role, especially in this time right now where a lot of bad behavior by employers are happening and employees are left wondering what they can do about it.

I think the first question some people may ask and ask themselves is, is this really prevalent? Is this just like, you know, one in a million this happens? How often is this kind of stuff occurring? Can you talk about that a little bit?

Absolutely. I actually kind of had that idea, you know, maybe three years ago, and I'm shocked. You know, initially I thought this issue with commission pay and commission transparency, you know, was an issue really with more complex, a high transaction volume settings. What I'm finding right now is that if you're in sales, it's not a question of if, but when, you know, you will have experienced wage theft. It's just, it happens everywhere. Go ahead.

Yeah, but does it. Do you think it's intentional or do you think it's unintentional? But then the company intentionally doesn't want to solve the problem.

So there's two separate issues here. So as it relates to commissions and complex compensation, a portion of it is intentional, Majority of it, probably not. I believe that they intentionally make the comm plan so complex and difficult to track that employees are just left sort of having to rely on blind faith and trust that it's right with very little way of checking it. So I believe that part's intentional. And then the more complex it is, the more likely there are errors and difficulty to track and report on it. So that, by its nature will lead to these errors. On the other side of the thing, when we're talking about employee behavior outside of compensation, you know, around, you know, your bonuses, your large payouts, your employment, your stock equity grants, I am seeing very, very intentional, bad, bad behavior around severance and PIPs and terminations to avoid paying out large variable compensation. And those absolutely are intentional.

So what are. What are one or two of those? I know I probably derailed this from Scott, but what are some of the bad behaviors I put out?

I mean, I have so many to choose from. I could give you dozens and dozens. I put out a post today. There was a rep who was recruited from a prior company, had been there for a while. If he was still there, he'd have a job. He was given some RSU's with a four year vesting with a one year cliff. The sales cycle for the products that he was selling was anywhere from six to 12 months. He was there about 10, 11 months. They come to him on the last few days before his equity is going to vest and they terminate him for no reason. He had built up a pipeline, worked his butt off for 10 months. There's about almost $100,000 in pipeline for commissions that was going to pop for him and now he's left with nothing. So I mean there's a perfect example of one. I mean I can give you so many. I mean there was a rep that was about to close a $10 million deal. He was a rock star rep in a startup. Just before they were about to close the deal, they fired him outright. He was would have been do $1 million commission on that deal. The, the vet, the vendor, the customer found out about it and they pulled the $10 million deal and they pulled the existing contract that they had with the company because they had an out clause in it and the rep was out $1 million and the company didn't have that deal. And now they laid off 25% of the company as a result of that. There's an unlimited number of examples. I can provide you, Richard, all with different stories, all people reaching out to me every day, wanting to share their story and put some light on it.

But I think that begs the next question, which is like, what is somebody's recourse? Like what am I supposed to do if I'm a seller, vp, whatever the role is, if I feel like.

I'm owed money and based on the comp plan and everything, I really feel like, hey, I deserve this. They're bending the rules here. Intentionally or not, what the heck am I supposed to do about it? Because I think a lot of people go to do I need to get a lawyer? And then that's expensive and all that stressful and I don't want to deal with all of this and can get kind of, you know, overwhelmed. Right? So what should somebody do? What's like a good first step?

So that's really why I started my consulting practice. Because there's nowhere else for anyone to go to other than litigation, which immediately becomes combative, confrontational, expensive, time consuming, and nobody wins with it other than the attorneys. So what I seek to do, whether it's around a commission issue, a comp plan issue, a severance, a pip, whatever it is, I seek compromise. So what I do is I have a framework that I use when it comes to any issues around an employer employee issue. And basically it lays out the entire situation. It talks about the employee, you know, their character, their morals, their values, their ethic, their, their success throughout their career, how they came to the employer, what the issue is here at hand and we kind of lay the whole thing out and what the options are at this point. You know, what can we do? Should we, should we go the legal route? Because I will go the legal route if I have to because I owe it to myself and my family to pursue this. Or I could have years and years of regret. So, you know, what I seek is a compromise, a win win based on empathy and doing the right thing and lay out the entire case as if it were going to go to an attorney. And now if they refuse to work with you, you can hand this over to an attorney. The case is pretty much written up, you know, maybe a 15 minute interview with the employee and maybe some legalese to throw in there. And it's enough to put the scare in the employer to say, hey, Scott's actually going to take action. He's not just full of baloney. He's not just saying he's got to do something. He's showing us that he's going to take action and we better take him seriously.

Scott, have you ever experienced this?

Yeah, I have.

Not to the extreme levels that Dan has seen and heard and kind of alluded to before. But I've had to go back and go to my founder and finance person and been like, hey, hold on a second. This commission check is for $5,000. And I thought based on what I've done, it's supposed to be 7,000. Like, what's going on here? I've had to do that before. Sometimes it was a, oops, I don't know what happened. Sometimes it was a, well, actually, here's our explanation for why we took these away from you. It wasn't your deal or so. And so got 50% on this deal because of these reasons, or this deal is a clawback and sorry we never told you about it. Right. And I've had reps who've come to me and said, hey, you know, my commission check doesn't look right. And I'm like, well, okay, let me look at my records here. It looks like you're due $10,000 for April's sales, so your May commission check should be 10 grand. And they're like, yeah, it shows 4 grand. And I'm like, okay, well, let me go dig in. And then I have to go dig in with founder and finance person, all that. So I've been a part of it.

I would say in every single company that I ever was an operator at, there was instances like this. Every single one of them.

So, Scott, I was going to interject, but you covered the point. You were talking about you as a sales leader having this issue. I have spoken to dozens and dozens of sales leaders who are so frustrated that their reps come to them, show them these pay errors. They go to bat with the CEO or the CFO about it, and the CFO is telling them, pound sand, we're not going to pay it. Even though it states in the comp plan and the monies are due. The sales leader ends up leaving on their own because they don't want to work for leadership. That's so unethical.

So. So talk about.

Let'S say it gets to that, that part, you know, where you have to send this document. Do you think that. Do you think the founders are. And it's not founders. Do you think it's the. Let's call it the company. Do you think they really just don't care? They're malicious towards sales? Like, does that. Here's the better question. Is it happening to marketing?

Is it.

Is marketing getting screwed too, on their bonuses for not getting, you know, the leads or whatever it is? Like, are you seeing it across other channels?

Yeah, I mean, obviously we're focused on sales, but yeah, I've had at least a dozen customers of marketing leaders and product leaders and in different roles. They don't have to be leaders. I've worked with SDRs. I've, you know, worked with marketing reps and so on and so forth. It is across the board. It's not specific to sales, but I think with. With people outside of sales, you're talking about more MBOs and equity. It's a lot easier to mess with commissions because commissions can be so confusing based on these overly complicated, complex, you know, these other areas, they're a little bit more straightforward, but, you know, they're based on someone's objective view of it, you know, so it's really up to them to make that decision.

They also happen less frequently. Right. Like, the first thing that I think about is all of Uncle Elon's Twitter firings and all of those engineers and employees over there that got let go a day before they were supposed to vest all these options. They were due big, huge bonuses and stuff like that. And those are all tied up in massive lawsuits, class action suit One on one lawsuits. You're talking about big money in those. Yeah. So at what point in this journey, Dan, did you decide like I need to really evangelize.

This topic and I need to get out in front and that requires me to start building my brand and making myself more seen. Because you've done a tremendous job. I mean you've gone from, I don't know the exact number, I mean it's called zero followers to you know, over 10,000, over 15,000. I think you might be around 20 now.

23, Scott. 23.

There you go, 23,000. And this is, you know, I'd call it in around a year from my recollection. I mean that's incredible growth.

At what point were you like this is the way for me to kind of get the message out there? Because it's a very different, you know, kind of modern go to market type strategy because you don't have a huge sales or organization or anything like that. So talk a little bit about, about that choice.

Yeah, I mean, you know, so I initially, I've been bootstrapping the business, you know, haven't really raised much other than friends and family not taking salary because I'm just so passionate about being that advocate, being that resource, bringing the solution to market for salespeople. It's just been such an uneven setting for so long, such a one sided relationship and everyone just sort of takes it. And I've always been someone who, you know, likes to stand up to things and doesn't like to be bullied and intimidated and will have regret for a long time if I, if I don't do that. And you know, so I want to bring that forward to other people. So I started posting on LinkedIn. It was never my desire. I've never used social media before, if you can believe it. You know, one of my first posts that I ever put out was this past August. It got 128,000 impressions and it was about a guy who got screwed out of $36,000 that I helped get back for them. And we're able to successfully never had.

A post, have a hundred thousand views. Like I've never really nothing. No, no, I'm not, that's going to.

Lead, that's actually going to lead to the next thing I was going to say. So as a way to promote true commission, I started just posting about all these topics. So I put a post out about severance like three months ago and it got 400,000 impressions off of that one post. And then within two weeks I had 20 people reaching out to me, asking me if I would review their severance agreement for a fee. And I'm like, sure. So since January 31st, I've had 90 paid customers around comp plans, commission audits, severance, employment agreements, PIPs, stock equity grants. I've negotiated compensation plans for folks. I've gone on calls with their legal and HR departments and negotiate severance agreements. And it was never a plan, it was never an intent. People came to me and it was never a goal to do this. My goal was to bring true commission to the market. So salespeople had pay transparency and this kind of evolved as a result.

I want to. I love what you said really early in this conversation was, you know, you. The strategy is to come in with empathy, not anger. And that's really hard because you're talking about people's money, right? What are the kinds of things, let's say someone can't afford a Dan Goodman or a lawyer, but they want to go in with empathy and have this conversation. What are the kinds of things one can say that are meant to be positive around trying to create a compromise? Like, are there so many scripts you can share? Because there's probably a lot of people listening to this, hopefully, please, obviously, aside from checking out HubSpot, please check out Dan. If you need this help, he's there.

The first thing I do is at the end of the document I have two sections. One is sort of what I refer to as the human impact, and the second one is my summary. So the human impact talks things like, richard, through no fault of your own, you find yourself in the worst job market in 20 years, with the highest inflation rate in 40 years, that now is taking two to three times longer to secure a job. And all you did was buy into their promises. You left a good job to come here based on these promises, based on these assurances and that you relied on in making this decision. They never came through with their side of these assurances. And as a result, you find yourself unemployed through no fault of your own other than successfully executing on the responsibilities of the job as you've been asked to. So that's sort of one piece of it. And then we talk about, you know, the time it takes to get a job, how severance is meant to bridge the gap from being let go to finding that next job. And that, you know, severance offers now are reflecting that, that we seek a win win solution where both parties can walk away with their head held high so that you can now speak positively about your experience while working there, as well as how you were treated on your departure. Instead of being someone who's going to be looking to grind with that company and be a negative voice as frequently as they can. So that's kind of where we approach it. And then it's sort of, the last section is sort of a summary where we're seeking sort of a compromise. It's better for that money to go to the employee rather than to attorneys. Oftentimes the difference between what the employee seeks and what's offered is not that big of a difference in the big picture of things. So that's all. That's just part of the narrative that I share as part of this process and part of this document. It's been extremely successful.

I have share that first part with their. So again, you're going into this conversation. Let's say I'm going into my conversation with my founder, Scott Lees, who screwed me on millions of dollars. Um, cause he's a greedy motherfucker. But.

I always love it when Scott laughs out loud but he's on mute because then it makes it seem like I'm not that fun.

So are you going in with that human piece of like, hey, look, you know, I came here based on these promises. I did the job. Like, what are you saying to the employer? Like, what, what I, how I interpreted what you said was what you say to me is the person who's.

No, no, this is the document that we create. I have a 10 step framework that.

In some cases question is, what do you, you go into this conversation with the employer, what do you say? How do you start the conversation there in a hopefully non combative tone?

Well, I guess it depends what the topic is. I mean, if it's a commission issue or if it's a, you know, you know, oftentimes, you know, it's, it's, you know, the last thing you want to do is put them into a corner, Right. And then have them become defensive and then strike back at you. Right. So I always kind of do it some sort of thing like, you know, this must be some sort of an oversight or this must be some sort of a mistake or it really was someone else that you were looking to PIP or terminate because, you know, my record and my performance has been nothing but outstanding here based on the, you know, the equity grants and the bonuses and the raises that I received. So that's kind of the look that I do. I do a first pass that's very gentle. And then if we don't get the response that we're looking there. Then it's a much more aggressive approach in a second document that's about a quarter of the length. And it basically is the equivalent of a legal demand letter, not coming from an attorney so that they can preview what the case is going to look like and what they're in for.

Got it. But that's what I was trying to get to. For those who can't really get into it, where can they sort of get started so they can at least try? And I agree with you of that. Hey, I just want to make sure there's not a miscommunication or misunderstanding and, you know, best of intentions to have this conversation. You know, I think that's a smart, smart play, which is also, as Scott knows, very anti. Richard. That's the last thing. You know, Richard probably goes of step 10 of your 10 steps. Richard probably starts at 11, right? Is that fair to say, Scott?

That's probably true, yes.

I mean, the last thing that people want to do is go down this litigious path. It's just uncomfortable. I mean, they see I love root.

I love to punch people and say, that's my problem. Scott and I just had this conversation the other day. I was working on a deal, and I'm like, here's my situation. And he goes, you know, my challenge is that I want to be right, you know, and when. And Scott's like, well, which do you want? Do you want to be right or do you want to win? And I, you know, that is the essence of Richard, you know, and. And that's why I. And I encourage everybody to have someone like Scott in your life.

So, Richard, you and I think you and I think very alike like that. And when I aligned with Scott way back when, and I was early on in the platform, and he was telling me how to engage in the platform and not to pitch slap and to just be entertaining and be educational, inspirational, and expect nothing and just give. It took me a long time to get that mindset, but I am completely bought in, in every way. And in the very beginning, I would say to Scott on a call we have, I say, you know, Scott, you just see what this person wrote. And then I would, like, want to go after him. I want to just destroy them. And he, you know, he would tell me the same thing that he told you. And after a while, it finally stuck, and I just kind of just brush it off and just, you know, just dismiss it.

I'm sure this episode will make my mother very happy to know that I'm Calming. I have a calming influence on people.

At least me. Scott. I mean, look what you started with.

Scott, your mother already knows this about you. She's, you know. You know, your mom knows how wonderful you are and she loves to talk about it, so.

Well, we're giving her ammo. We're giving her ammo about me. Calming. Calming you too, guys.

You know, Scott's blushing when he can't look straight in the camera.

Yeah, yeah. It happens a lot, actually. That happens a lot, actually.

That is, that's how, you know you're getting to Scott. That's so true, Dan.

Like, there's like, he's got the hat down low. He's looking away. He feels really good about it.

Yeah. All right, we got to pause here for a second because I got to do a HubSpot blurb, but we'll come back and ask Dan some more questions. And Dan, certainly, you know, feel free to hammer us with questions and stuff like that. So it's meant to be a two way street, you know, Again, thanking HubSpot for all the support they provide us as well as the sales community in general. They really know how under pressure people are, which is very apropos for this conversation with Dan. The business leaders are under pressure. The reps are under pressures. Everything from more leads, faster sales, better insights, nurturing customers, all that kind of stuff matters. And HubSpot is one of those one stop integrations where you can kind of get that stuff done. You can drag and drop stuff. They got about 1300 integrations that are easy to add. I do wonder what the maximum number a human can actually contend with. Like, I, you know, I think it's about four, at least for me. You know, I don't know. Scott's about one because he doesn't, you know, you know, he's still on a, on a different kind of spreadsheet world, but, but we really do appreciate HubSpot and their. And their tools to help not just salespeople, but marketers too. And it's really all in one. So, you know, again, thank you so much to HubSpot for being here and certainly really appropriate to talk with Dan about commissions and CRM and stuff like that. Here's a question for you based on this.

Theoretically, at an easy level.

Should it be easier for people to track their commissions in the CRM instead of having to do it in some big Excel spreadsheet? Like, wouldn't it be cool for teams to be able to see their commission daily in the CRM? Have you seen good examples of that?

Yeah, I mean, so it really, There's a reason why they don't. So the CRM is basically the employee owns the CRM, they're entering all the data, they're putting it all in, so on and so forth, and then it basically gets, once the deal is closed, it gets thrown over to the wall, to the production system or the invoicing system or what have you, and then it's built off of that. So it's kind of two separate things. I would love to see someone build a CRM that provided true pay transparency all the way from start to finish. So the problem is that the CRM ends at the book deal, and then it gets thrown over the wall to the rest, and they never meet in the middle. And that's what True Commission tries to do. We want to track the deal from inception, from the time it was initially closed, and that customer agreed on it. I mean, to me, if you're trying to close and penetrate a large enterprise account for the first time, it can literally take you 12, 18 months to do so. The customer finally shakes your hand, agrees on a dollar amount, and now the company has no obligation to report to you based on that dollar amount. They only reported what the customer ends up getting invoiced months and months later. So if somehow we could tie that all into one view, one system, and that's really what True Commission is trying to be, to be that platform. So we have integrations with the CRMs, with the Commission softwares, we can upload Excel spreadsheets, and now it's all in one place, and we can track that deal from inception all the way to the end.

Cool. Cool.

All right, Scott, you're up.

Yeah. I want to know why. Let's say I'm a startup founder, I'm a startup cfo, whatever. I might be sitting here thinking, okay, well, I can see why this tool will be great for the employees.

Right.

Why is it great for me? Why is it important for me to get this stuff right from the get go and not have these kind of issues? Because one could argue that some of these tools.

Around Commission software and stuff like that, that's been around for a while, one could argue that they are employer friendly.

And one could maybe argue that some of what you're doing is employee friendly, and those two things are disparate. But I want to hear you kind of talk about how what you're doing, how it's actually.

Employer friendly as well.

Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, there's a whole. There's a whole number of topics. We can talk about that. We'll talk about the earlier stage startup, right, that are using QuickBooks and manual processes and Excel spreadsheets that are prone to human error. Right. The amount of wasted time that they're doing every month from an accounting and sales perspective doing that. How about, how about the legal obligation to actually pay employees correctly in the liability that might be associated with that? Right. You know, those would be some things, you know, and as you work your way up, you know, as smaller companies are transitioning from QuickBooks, you know, they want to try to automate that and be able to create compensation plans that will drive certain employee behavior. You don't want to have a flat plan so that you're paying the same rates out for, you know, a high margin, you know, long sales cycle, you know, product versus a commodity item that, you know, low margins. You want to be able to drive behavior based on the comp plan. A lot of these smaller companies don't have the ability to do that because they don't have the technology and the automation to do so. So that's something that True Commission commission software companies can come in to do. So as far as the employer goes, I mean, the amount of wasted time that employees spend complaining to their sales manager about pay errors, complex complaints, lack of responses from the accounting department, complaining amongst themselves about, you know, the crappy deals and the comp plan, the errors, or spending time trying to check the information. You know, if we were just all transparent and all honest with each other, I mean, we are talking about people's pay here, right? You know, it shouldn't be a game to guess if you're paid right or not. So if we got everybody on the same page, made it transparent, everybody wins. With pay transparency at the enterprise level, I see True Commission basically being a third party overlay that would be an independent verification service to ensure that errors are not happening in either direction.

Right.

And it could also be a recruitment and retainment tool that you could offer this as part of an employee benefit package. Right. So if you come here, you'll know that you will never have to worry about pay transparency. It will both be able to recruit and retain top talent.

That's great. What are. We're going to move to wrap in a second, so I'm going to ask you a quick question, but. And of course you can turn around and ask us some questions. But you know, for people listening here, like, aside from reaching out to you on True Commission. Right. That's easy. Dan Goodman on LinkedIn, you can find him and his 400,000 view posts as I cry.

And there's no bitterness or jealousy there.

I've got that one teardrop Richard.

I do do LinkedIn training too, you know. I'm just kidding.

Apparently. What are three quick tips people should think about coming out of here? Okay, like, I just listened to this thing. Dan gave us this great idea. Like, what are three quick things that you tell people to think about coming if they listen to this episode?

Yeah, I, I, I like to raise it up a little bit higher. Like, like talk about life. Right? Talk about not having regret. You know, that's the biggest thing that I'm hearing from people. You know, I had a call with someone a couple of months ago. They had $60,000 stolen from them and wage theft from commission pay. They didn't get any, any positive outcome. It was 13 years ago and it sounded like it happened last week. So this, this stays with you. If you don't stand up for yourself, if you allow yourself to be bullied and intimidated, you will have regret either now or down the road, and it will stay with you. So what I tell people is to stand up for yourself. Don't be bullied and intimidated. Don't have regret. This is your rights. You're being mistreated by bad people who are doing bad things. Don't walk away with your tail between your legs. You'll regret it. My process is an extremely therapeutic process. When you can document your feelings and reflect back on what happened to you and put it through a different lens than what the employer is giving you, it's an extremely therapeutic process to help you move forward.

So that's step one. All right, what's step, what's, what's, that's tip one. What's tip two or three?

You know, set yourself up for success. I mean, if you're going into a new company, don't. I mean, when you have the most leverage is when they want you, when they're recruiting you. Right? So, you know, I always tell people to plan their exit before they arrive. I tell people to make believe tomorrow they're going to be terminated and walked out the door and all shut out from all their systems. So gather up all of your data, all of your information today so that you don't have regret for not being prepared for it in the future. Anticipate bad behavior that may happen. That's exactly why I put out these posts every day, Richard, because, no, a lot of people don't know that these things exist. They're shocked to hear them. Some People don't believe it. And then you got reps coming on and saying, yes, this happened to me over and over again. So the reason why I post this is to a. So people don't feel alone, that this is a reflection on them, that they've done something wrong, that this happens to a lot of people all the time for bad reasons. That has nothing to do with them. And it makes them feel empowered to now be able to not strike back, but to stand up for themselves and to fight back for what's theirs.

That's awesome. That's awesome. All right, so that's the second one. Is there a third one?

I thought I put like three in that last one, but let me see, let me, let me, let me dig a little deeper here. You know, the other thing I would say is, is that, you know, get outside of your comfort zone. And that has to do with also standing up for yourself, you know, to go out there, leverage LinkedIn, become part of a community, you know, continue to learn and to question things, you know, to make yourself uncomfortable with things. You know, just like it's uncomfortable to stand up for payers and fight for yourself. Well, oftentimes it's uncomfortable to do other things, whether it's about challenging yourself. I mean, I'm scared of heights. You know, I was, I didn't want to play golf forever because I wouldn't hit the ball and, you know, embarrass myself. And now it's like my favorite thing in the world to do. So, you know, trying new things. Get outside your comfort zone. Life is short. Don't have regrets, Move forward.

What do you, what do you want to ask us?

Well, I'd love to ask you sort of like, you know how like the, the Surf and Sales podcast has evolved over time and where you guys see it going to and you know, what type of feedback have you gotten from the community on it and some of the benefits that people have gotten from it.

Good question, actually.

So a lot of people don't know that.

The Surf and Sales Summit, our actual event, which by the way, we have a couple of tickets left for late November, early December, so check out surf and sales.com.

The events happened for years before we started the podcast. It was Richard's idea to start the podcast. I didn't really want to do it. I thought it would take too much time, too much effort. I don't know how to deal with all this back end stuff. I have no desire to learn how to. How to do.

Was Richard's idea that we do it, and what we did in the first season was basically try to.

We called it like this Netflix style approach where we dropped like 200 episodes, like, you know, a full season, and just kind of overwhelmed the market with like, content and information. So that was what we did the first year. We did over 200 episodes, which was just like insane. Then we did over 100 something the next year. Then we did over 50 something last year. So we're kind of slowing down on the volume approach, getting more to a cadence of like one, one and a half on average per week. That's a, that's a big difference. You know, we've gone from, I mean, numbers wise, we've gone from, you know, almost no Downloads to like 200,000 downloads in the last few months.

Our downloads per episode and per month are like double what they, what they have historically been. So we're over here, you know, pretty excited to see some of that growth. I'm sure some of it has to do with our friends at HubSpot and being a part of the HubSpot podcast network. But, you know, I think, I think that we are kind of Steady Eddie. Like, we have done a very good job of being consistent in getting good guests and getting new episodes out. What do you think, Richard? What am I missing?

I think that's the bulk of it. I think that.

We'Re getting wiser about things we can do better. We're getting wiser about seeing these things as assets, which we've always said, you know, if you ever go on a podcast, right, this is an asset, right? Dan, you could go take this episode and make 10 blog posts, right? And you don't have to write any more blog posts for 10 weeks. You could go and do the same thing with LinkedIn content from this episode alone.

And so trying to treat these things as assets and other ways so that we can keep growing, I think is, is our biggest.

Challenge because Scott and I just, you know, we love the ideas of things, but it, it's not hard. It's just takes time. And, you know, we've, you know, we got families like, kudos to our, kudos to our families for letting US record 200 episodes the first year.

Yeah, no, no, I mean, I think, I mean, it's incredible across all of your platforms that the value that you guys bring back and, and how you guys encourage folks and lift them up, it's, you know, it's incredible. So I guess what I'd like to ask is if you can each talk about a little bit, sort of some of the feedback that you've gotten from folks and how it makes you feel to be able to impact people's lives and get that feedback and change their trajectory.

We've gotten lots of nice messages of people saying, this is super informative. Thanks for dealing with this subject. That doesn't get talked about enough. I bet we get some of that feedback on this episode, frankly, because we've never talked about pay transparency on the episode in 500 something episodes that we've done. But we also get some feedback about the entertainment value. And people are like, you two are funny. You kind of half goofy, half serious, half educational. You banter back and forth. And I've had people say they've stopped in the middle of their jog and laughed out loud before and stuff like that. And, you know, that stuff makes me feel good because.

For me, like, this platform doesn't need to be super serious all the time. Shouldn't be super serious all the time. Should be a mixture of education, entertainment, inspiration. Those are my three big bullet points that I try to hit upon.

Yeah, I think this is the same thing. We.

You know, people like our sort of, you know, old married couple banter back and forth. I think they like the fact that we, we really do dig in on questions. We try to sort of go deeper and deeper and deeper. You know, sort of like, you know, me asking you repeatedly, what are your three tips? Right? Because some of that stuff repeated. But there's something different in the perspectives of those things. Or when people use buzzwords, which I hate, I'll call them out on it. Although I've gotten better about such a jerk when, when buzzwords come up.

But.

Have you guys ever seen that cartoon Mutton Jeff? Way back in the day? I know that the younger folks didn't, but you, you look it up. You guys are Mutton Jeff. You guys are. It's like, is that your era, Richard.

Or is Dan even older than you?

Maybe a little bit of both. I know of Mutt and Jeff, but I don't. I never.

I'm gonna have to check it out now.

It was my favorite cartoon. It was the only one that I would read in the comics. Every Sunday when it came out, I would run to read that one cartoon.

When you go to share this episode, Dan, you can put a little image of Mutton Jeff and see how many people in the. In the LinkedIn community know what you're talking about there, right?

Yeah, I think I'm showing my age here, Scott.

Well, we appreciate you spending time with us, Dan. We wish you all the best with true commission and continued growth. And you're doing, you know, the Lord's work over here, helping, helping people out. So appreciate everything that you do in the community. And if you want to check out more about what Dan's up to, connect with him. Message him on LinkedIn. I know he'll get back to you. And check out truecomish. T R U C O M M I S H True commission. All right, Dan, we'll see you.

Thank you, guys. Really appreciate it. Guys, have a great time. Take care.

And thanks to HubSpot as well for sponsoring us. Check them out.

Thank you.