S7E5 - The Brutal Truth About Layoffs, Severance Negotiation & Why High Performers Still Need Coaching

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What is happening, people? It is Richard Harris along with my partner in crime, uh, co-host and co-founder of the Surf and Sales. Although I should give him 51% credit for the Surf and Sales event, like, he deserves that much. Um, I'm just the guy. Yeah, I, I, I just— I'm just the guy who pokes them and pokes the bear to make them do shit. So, uh, welcome to the Surf and Sales Podcast as we get to, uh, closer and closer to our 500th episode. Um, it's been a minute. We got to hang out a few weeks ago at our mastermind, uh, but Scott, haven't, haven't really caught up with you since then. How are you? What is the latest?

I'm doing pretty good, man. I'm, uh, sprinting towards the end of the school year here for my kids. Talking a little bit offline, I'll be half an empty nester in a couple, couple months. Yeah, I'm not too sad. Are you pretty excited about it? To be honest with you, I'm pretty excited about it.

But are you, are you going to be left with the easy one or the more challenging one?

That's a great question. Is this, is this being recorded? It is being recorded. Yeah.

Yeah.

You don't have to answer.

I'm not going to answer that.

Tap out on that. Yeah, I know the answer. So how much you going to pay me not to say? No, just kidding. Well, good, man. Well, I, I wanna start with this thing we just mentioned. I mentioned about this mastermind, right? So for what people, you know, if you haven't ever done this, you get a group of people, you know, in your industry. Oftentimes you're already friends at this point. You could be a group of SDRs, you could be a group of AEs. For us, it was, it was a, it was a bunch of fractional coaching and, uh, training leaders, right? It was all, it was me, it was Scott, it was John Barrows, Marcus Chan, um, Justin J. Johnson, Mike Simmons, um, Adam J. Like, who else? Who am I missing? I don't want to leave anybody out.

Nigel Green, Dale.

Nigel Green, Dale. Yep. And, uh, yeah, Jake showed up. Yep. And so it was really fun because A, it's always good to do stuff in person, right? The other good thing is that we are all very highly opinionated people who think we do everything perfectly. You know, with the exception, probably me more than anyone, even though I'm probably the least perfect of everyone. But we sat down, we got to hang out, we played some golf, we had nice meals, we had good conversations. But everybody got to sit down and present what their challenge is and hear from their peers' ideas how to do things better. And one of the most surprising things to me, I don't know if it was to you, Scott, is if you heard You brought up the things that you were working on, which we'll let you share in a second. But if you were coaching someone, you would have given the advice we gave you. But so often as humans, we're too close to the forest to see the trees, right? Or sorry, we're too close. We see only the trees. We can't see the forest. And so to me, that was a big takeaway of like, aren't we just giving the same advice we give everybody else who asks us these questions? You know, but we're so caught up in our own shit that we can't figure our way out. Did you— was that your sense of it, or did you— what, what was your biggest takeaway aside from what you got from the group?

Yeah, well, the, the big takeaway is every single person has big challenges in front of them in, in, in their, in their minds, and I think everybody kind of agreed. So everybody that looks like they're kill— everybody looks like they're killing it is, uh, yeah, they're doing, they're doing good, but they're also scared a little bit and nervous a little bit and don't have everything sorted out. So yeah, there's comfort, there's comfort in that, you know, to have a dozen other people who are also doing well say, yeah, I don't really know what I'm gonna do about XYZ either. So that was, that, that was comforting, like I said. Um, I think every single person, when they walk through their challenges, I felt like, well, this is fucking obvious to know how to solve, right? And it's like, right, everybody was like sort of blinded to their own sort of issue, or aware of their own issue but just unable to like get out of the, the way and take action and do something about it, you know. Um, everybody needed like an extra kind of kick in the pants. You can hear it here, hearing it from 10 other people telling you the same thing that you're kind of telling yourself.

Um, do you feel like—

so it just—

go ahead, go ahead.

Well, I just felt— it just felt like I— like I was saying, like, it didn't feel hard to diagnose other people, and it suddenly feels very— suddenly felt very hard to diagnose yourself. That was a big— that was a big takeaway.

Yeah. And I think the common thread underneath all of it, and I think it's oftentimes what we all do, and it's part of the advice we give, is that we're so busy caught up in the busy work of accomplishing or working on these 4 or 5 projects that we forget to step back and take a look at it. And even when we try to, it's hard, right? Because we don't want to admit that it's a problem.

Sure.

We feel like, why should I do this? I'm making money. Money's coming in. I don't need to take time now to do that. I'll do it later when it's slower. Which— that's when you panic and you can't even think through the problem at that point. At least this is my experience with these things, right? So, um, so I think— I thought it was super interesting.

I think another unique aspect was to watch how each person dealt with feedback. There's a lot of differences between this group, this group, and, and how everybody took in the feedback. You know, some people, some people kind of bristle and, and push back and challenge the feedback really hard. Other people sort of sit there dumbfounded and are like, damn, how did I not think of that? And just immediately were receptive to it. Other people kind of wanted to deliberate and like keep talking through it. And other people who got feedback were like, well, I know what to do, I'm done, you know, I yield the floor. Yeah, right. Yep. Um, so there was the way people took in the feedback, I think, was very unique. And the way people delivered the feedback was not as unique as I expected. Maybe it's just the nature of who everybody is and what they all do and the fact that we all know each other or whatever. But, you know, there wasn't much variance. It was— nobody was like softening the blow or you know, trying to—

But we also weren't dicks about it. We also weren't being like, fuck it, you're so stupid, right?

No, no, no. But everybody was direct though. And like, hey, come on, you know, nobody was dancing around the subject like, well, maybe you should consider—

No, it wasn't. Here's what it is. Yeah. So, um, I'd like to give a little structure to people and I don't care if you're an SDR or an AE, um, you know, I kind of call this having your personal board of directors, right? Sometimes you needed someone on your board of directors to help you with your financial decisions or your, uh, spirituality, whatever that is, whether it's organized religion or, or just a spirituality, or relationship advice. This was our board of directors for our business advice, right? And we brought our board of directors together. One thing that I think I know we should have done better, and again, it's one of those things where it's like, Scott, we've done this at Surf and Sail so many times, we should have known better, was telling people to come a little bit more prepared. Right. Only one person showed up super— well, two did. I thought you came in super prepared. You just didn't have a deck around it. But coming in prepared with, these are my 2 or 3 challenges I want feedback on. Right. And making sure that when you're expressing your challenge, you're not telling long stories. People will ask for the details. So if you're ever going to go do this and try and organize one, Make sure people come prepared knowing what's gonna happen, that, hey, everybody's gonna take a turn. It's the circle of trust. No one's recording it. Although I've done one before where we recorded it because we wanted to get our personal feedback. We just didn't publicize it. But people need to come prepared with what they want to talk about and be brilliant, be brief, and be gone as you explain your challenge. So that there's more time for people to give you advice than for you to tell what you're looking for and tell long story. So that's the first thing I would tell people to do. One person did a deck, nobody else did. You did a whiteboard diagram like you brought out a little whiteboard diagram to express your things. So I think that's the first thing. And then the next thing we did is as people— after people gave their, their request, we had that person leave the room and we sat for 10 minutes. What are the top 3 things we're going to tell them and who's going to tell them? And that took us about 10 or— and then we brought the person back in and did it. So I just want to get people like, if you're like, God, that sounds cool. And boy, a mastermind like that, that word can scare people, you know, particularly people who might be early in their career, never have done this. It's like, nah, man, you're just getting people together to give you feedback. So I would encourage people to do it. I'd encourage people to do it in person if you can. We're fortunate enough that Scott has a beautiful lake house, so that made it easy. But if you can't, there's nothing wrong with doing a a mini Zoom session, right? Or figuring out a way to do it asynchronous with your peers. So anyway, that's just my feedback that people want to do it. Scott, what feedback would you give to people on if they were going to try and do this? Or is that, you know, in terms of organizing it and structuring it?

I think you need to do it in a location that is outside of the norm and allows you to break away from your everyday routine. Like, none of us were taking calls, none of us were quote-unquote on our computers working our, our day job and whatever. Everybody was like very, very present. So I think, I think that's a necessity. I think jumping into heavy-duty conversations like that on day one is not smart. Uh, we waited until day 3 before we had any of these kind of conversations. So I think you You let people warm up, you let people acclimate, you let people socialize. Uh, yeah, you let people connect. Maybe people, some people don't know each other as well, right? That way it's a little easier to kind of open up, give feedback, receive feedback. Um, so I think you need to wait a little bit to allow people to kind of get used to the environment.

Yeah.

And then this is not really a, maybe it is advice, uh, I'm consistently shocked how many people come to certain things like this or events like Surf and Sales Summit not prepared, as you said, to talk about things or share things or, or have questions that they want answers to. I mean, it's just like a given for me. So you said, well, we should have told people. Yes, you blame me all you want, that's fine. But my, my expectation is like, well, why would you not know that that's what you're supposed to do? Like, why do I, why do I have to tell you? Like, you're a grown adult. Like, you should— whatever you want to get out of this, you should come but prepared for that. Like, so yeah, that's, that's my, that's my take. Like, if I get invited today to somebody's event somewhere similar to this. Like, I'm going to show up and with like, okay, I want to get these couple things out of this. I'll prepare on my own. I don't need somebody to tell me what to do.

But I also think, I also think you're far more evolved. You've also had more—

I doubt that. I doubt that.

No, but you are, dude. Like, you are, because you've always been. I've known you long enough to know this about you. You're very strategic about every single thing you do. You have always been that way from the first day, and not everybody has learned how to do that.

Well, that's the advice then. That's the advice is like, look at everything through a lens strategically and think, how do I get out of this what I need to get out of this in order to better myself or better my business?

Everything.

Every opportunity, every, every event. Every room—

what's one thing you're gonna try and get out of this? Yep, I agree.

That's right.

Yeah, so, you know, if I— if I— we have a friend, Richard and I have a friend who hosted a golf tournament, uh, in the Bay Area last week. Um, if I was able to go to that, I would have showed up to that with like one thing that I want to learn, or one person that I need to meet, or one thing I need to get out of that. Other than just showing up and playing golf.

And that's what I got.

I don't know what that— I don't know what that thing would be yet because I wasn't able to go to that thing. But if I did go, I would have been looking at, at it strategically like that.

Well, you would have been trying to figure out how to steal that surfboard I won in the putting contest. That's—

well, I mean, there's strategy involved in that. Congrats, by the way, Rich. This is a true story. Richard won a surfboard, a brand new surfboard in the putting contest at this 100-foot putt.

I made it to 36 inches.

Yeah, but that's, that's the advice for people. Yeah, take advantage of opportunities.

The funny part is, Scott, if, if I had to sink the second putt at 36 inches, you would have missed it. It's probably a 50-50 shot, right? Yeah, don't mess this up.

Yeah, that's great.

Uh, all right, so let's, uh, let's move on to this topic. We're going to talk a little bit about layoffs and some interview tips and some things like that. Where did you want to start that one?

Well, I, you know, I woke up yesterday morning to this text message screenshot of, hey, 20% of ZoomInfo's workforce just got laid off via text message. And I just, I don't know if I was shocked, surprised, expected it. But I think the, the scary thing is like the layoffs are coming sort of like an IV drip, just a little bit here, a little bit— they're consistent, but they're consistent, you know. It's almost desensitizing everybody to what's happening. You're talking about I'm gonna screw the math up, but I think it was like 1,000 people, something like that.

Um, are you more upset that it is— are you— what's your take on the fact it was done by text message? Is it like, that's just the world we live in now? Does that make it more irritable, or is it— was it the layoffs, or both?

Like, I can't blame them for the layoff in general, because I don't know enough about what's going on with that business, how successful they are or not successful they are, how needed it was or not. I think you, you fire somebody via text, to me it's like, what are we in fucking middle school? Like, I would break up with my middle school girlfriend via text message, or, or maybe I would just ghost her. So it just felt— it feels very juvenile, like I don't know, you wake up on Monday morning, you have—

I just leave her on read.

Yeah, you leave her on, right? I wake up Monday morning, I have a text message, it's like, hey, sorry it didn't work out, adios, you're fired, here's your fucking 2-week severance or whatever. It's like, right, it's terrible. I think it's terrible, you know?

Yeah, you can't—

you can't find time to call somebody and have a conversation. You can't find time to even have a Zoom call or conversation. Mm-hmm.

Um, so I—

the text, the delivery mechanism of text, I found offensive. And really, I would think— I think I'm surprised because, you know, the founder and CEO of ZoomInfo, from my perspective, has a really good reputation.

He's a good— I mean, we know Henry.

You know him. I don't really know. I never talked to him before, but he has a really good reputation. And I just was like, What? This, this doesn't feel— this doesn't feel on brand. It doesn't feel right to me. So yeah, that was what I was thinking. What, what was your reaction?

Uh, you know, it was like, here we go again, right? Um, I think we see this every time. I think the, the interesting thing that's unique in this round of layoffs is that the economy is statistically doing well, right? That's what all the news is saying, whether you look at the stock market or those things. But then if you get in certain social circles, you know, uh, everybody's saying it's really hard to find a job, and I— and then other people are saying they can't fill jobs in sales, you know. And you and I live in a sales bubble, right? So we, we know that. Um, so that part is interesting. So some of it is true, I think we also all gravitate to the negative, right? By— I think Dr.

Rick Hanson, who says, you know, like the shock value of it all.

Yeah. He's like, your brain is like Teflon for positivity and Velcro for negativity. Like, that's just how the human psyche works, right? So we get in this bubble and we hear everybody getting laid off and things, but you're starting to hear people do side hustles outside of SaaS. Right? Completely outside. But I never hear anybody saying they want a sales job outside of SaaS or technology, right? Someone's still gotta go sell Sherwin-Williams paint to the local hardware store.

Yeah, they should.

Right?

I wouldn't mind being, I wouldn't mind being a drone salesperson right now in the, in the defense, in the defense contract.

Yeah. No shit. Right?

Yeah.

So I, so, so there's a little bit of truth to all of it. Right. You know, I think it's just disappointing.

Well, maybe, maybe the next question becomes then, what do you think those 1,000 people do? You think they go sell Sherman Williams paint? I don't know.

I first, I first think they, they go through the shock and the grief of it all. I think that they start to update their resumes. They call everybody they know. They start applying at places. Right. You know, it also depends on how even, you know, even with a 1,000-person exit, you know, do you try to negotiate severance, right? Which is a topic I'm always very passionate about alongside our friend Dan Goodman. So I often wonder, you know, do those people get a chance to negotiate? Which my guess is they don't in most cases.

Well, I would imagine there was sort of a blanket here's the severance package for everybody, right? Yeah, type situation. What is the— is the tone and tenor of the DMs you get and the emails you get and the text messages— text messages you get from people who have just been laid off or who don't have a job right now?

What is it?

Is it like terrified? Is it frantic?

Is it—

it's a little bit of everything, right? Um, Oh, it's a little bit of everything. One is there's a lot of panic, right? I think it's very different, you know, look, if I'm— and I've been through this, how you and I met, you know, if I'm a parent or a spouse and I've got a mortgage and rent, you know, that and healthcare, that stuff is immediate. Like, those bills don't stop, period. And so there's that level. If I'm younger, earlier in my career, potentially single at the moment, it's still scary. I think there's a different approach of what to do. Like, if it's— look, if it's me and you and we're in our 40s and 50s, you feel like, oh my God, I'm old now. How am I going to get hired at these early-stage startups, right? Which is where I like to live. How do I value my experience? So there's certainly a lot of panic. There's certainly a lot of fear. I don't see a lot of optimism, right? Um, which in my own experience, I've never had optimism when I got laid off, right? Like, it's, it's, it's not a, a great thing.

Um, that's interesting because I, I don't have that same mentality.

Oh yes, you do.

I don't think I do. I think I have it for like 24 hours. I, I need 24 hours to like to process Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I think, I think you and I have the experience of what, what it takes though, because I've been through it enough. I now have a process that I need to go through. And you and I, when there were a couple of times where we were both looking for jobs and we actually enjoyed the process because we—

Yeah, that part is fun.

Interviews. Yeah, that part is fun. Right. We loved it. So I think that's, that's a big piece of it. I think, I think I want to bring up a topic about You know, so when it does happen, trying to negotiate severance, right? Everybody seems to think you can't negotiate. They think that they try too hard, they're going to get the negotiate— the severance package revoked. Have you ever seen a severance package revoked?

I cannot say that I have. Yeah, I can't say that I have personally.

Yeah. And have you ever negotiated your severance outside of when you were a VP and negotiating it ahead of time? You know, which is at a higher—

yeah, no, no, I never, I never, I never had that happen even.

Yeah, yeah. So I've always had this theory that, you know, when you negotiate severance, they're bribing you to pay to, to shut up. They're telling you, we'll give you this money if you don't speak badly about it or disclose anything. So the first thing I always tell people is You need to make that bi-directional because that's an easy thing for them to give. It's a fucking template. Same lawyer uses the same template, everything.

Meaning don't say anything bad about me then, right?

Yep, yep. I would negotiate a letter of recommendation. You're going to sign this letter, my boss is going to sign this letter, and I want a physical letter that I can scan, okay? And then I'm going to ask for double what they offered me.

Double.

And I know I'm not— double, at least. At least. What's— what is their reputation worth? And this is the part that I really love, but I'm gonna pause. What, what is their rep— if they offer me, you know, 4 weeks salary, I'm gonna— why wouldn't I ask for 8?

I mean, I mean, do you want an answer? I— the reason you wouldn't ask for 8 is because Somebody offered you 4 and asking for 8 sounds unreasonable. Maybe you don't deserve it. Uh, why would a mid-low-level individual contributor deserve an 8-week severance? Uh, if everybody else in the organization got 4, why would I deserve 8? I don't know, maybe they'll— fear of being— having it revoked. I don't know.

These days we just said you've never heard it be revoked.

I never have, but maybe this is what's going through people's head.

Yeah, so remember, they're paying you for silence. And by the way, one of the reasons people don't do it is because it's very scary. And, uh, you know, look, a bird in the hand's worth two in the bush, right? And look, if I'm a family and I got bills to pay and I need healthcare for my family and this is going to take 6 or 8 weeks or longer to negotiate, I can absolutely support anybody just saying, yep, I'll sign. I would at least encourage people to ask for the bidirectional part.

Yeah, that's true. That feels easy. Are you going to ask for— at what point do you not ask for a double? If somebody offers you 6 months severance, are you asking for double? Are you just— that's just like your automatic go-to? If somebody offers you a year, you're gonna ask for 2?

No, I don't think I would. So, so, so then, so then what's the cutoff?

It's conditional then.

Yeah. But here's the thing. And I read this was the article I sent you yesterday that you were too cheap to buy Apple News to read. But it was this fantastic article. And look, what is your leverage? Your leverage is you can go blast them on social media. Right. And you will cost them way more in brand.

Yes.

Then.

Right. And you will make it harder for them to hire a good person, which costs them money. I don't care if you're fucking Clorox. Right. It will hurt them to a certain extent. You're not going to bring them down. You also have to decide if you want to play that game. But the interesting thing, there was this article in The Wall Street Journal yesterday, or it might have been The New York Times, talking about more companies are actually negotiating severance. They actually are. And here's why. Here's the thing you and I have never talked about. We've always talked about you could hurt the brand. Right. What if I say to you, yeah, um, Scott, I'm gonna blast you all over social media so it's forever hard for you to hire people and/or get another job because I'm going to tell them what a shitty manager you are because you were, and I've got the evidence. It's not about just hitting up the company, it's about your immediate boss.

Oh, about the person.

Yes.

You're talking about playing— you're playing offense now.

Yeah. Now I'm playing offense and I'm aggressively—

that's aggressive. That's aggressive.

That's a bold fucking move, right? And I was— and I loved it. And I was like, boy, we never thought about that one, Scott, because I never, I never had—

I never really had to do that.

No, you didn't. There were a couple of times I had— I wish I had— I wish I had done a better job of negotiating severance.

But anyway, I thought that was fascinating that You know, do you know anybody who's taken this aggressive route and had a positive outcome?

I have not, but I would love to ask Dan what he thinks. Those of you don't know Dan Goodman, this is what he does. He's built a business around helping people negotiate severance for all kinds of reasons, and he wins a ton. Like, he's really good at it. Um, so if you're ever going through this and someone's offering you severance and you think it's, you know, terrible, he'll, uh, he'll— this is what he does as a business.

He'll help you out. He'll help you out.

Yeah. So anyway, so I just thought that one was fascinating.

So anyway, it is, it is. Well, before we get out of here today, yeah, I, I would be remiss not to bring up the fact that for the first time in your 30-plus year work life, 30-plus year career, you have ditched Windows. Yeah. And you are now a Mac user.

Yeah, yeah.

You have to, you have to, you, you have to tell me what finally tipped you over the edge.

Um, what finally tipped me over the edge was it was time to get a new computer, and I've seen my friends, including you, like Oh, your text message comes through on your computer and you can respond there. Or all these little things, right? The headphone thing of connecting, it just automatically connects, right? Because I've been an iPhone user for years. And I also realized that I moved away from Microsoft Office in terms of like Word and Excel and stuff, and I do everything in Google Sheets. So having to do that more those, it just became a more seamless integration.

Yeah.

Well, I finally bought in. And as you know, my wife Kathy was like, I can't believe you're doing this. Like, I think she didn't say it, but she might have been thinking, you know what, I wonder how long this will last.

So she doesn't think it's gonna stick.

She thinks she does now. Because she did. I rave about it. Like, oh my god, I'm so happy. That's so funny.

Back to how we started the conversation off. It's amazing how you get all this advice from people for years, for a long time, and you just, you just can't do it sometimes until, until you're finally ready. Can't listen.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Well, welcome, welcome to the, welcome to the squad, I guess.

Thanks, man. I appreciate it.

This is a momentous occasion for me.

I can't believe it.

I've had, can't even remember how many conversations we've had about this.

Exactly, exactly.

So, uh, well, tell everybody about, uh, November. Where are we at?

Yes, so November, we are, uh, next Surf and Sales. I don't know, is it pi r squared number of Surf and Sales? We've had so many. Um, it's been fantastic. Yeah, it is, uh, almost mid-May, and we usually sell out by the 1st of July, so there's still a few slots left. Um, it is from what everybody tells us— this is not us bragging— is life-changing for them because it gets them out of their comfort zone. It gets them to meet people they would never have met. It gets them to focus on things that they've always wanted to focus on or needed to focus on but never made the time for. And you walk away with lifetime friendships and you learn a ton. And yeah, we're actually on the beach in Costa Rica. Yeah, we actually have surf lessons included. It's all inclusive. It's everything. So if you haven't done it or you put it on your bucket list, it's time to get this thing off your bucket list and it's time to put it out there sooner than later. Look, it's not till November. Easily go surfandsails.com, check it out, read about it. We've got some videos floating around and by all means, you know, I mean, at minimum, put down a deposit, like commit. Make— if you're not going to commit to yourself, why would you expect your company to commit to you? And if you do work at a company that has education funds, great place to do it.

So no-brainer.

Great place.

No-brainer at that point.

No-brainer.

No-brainer.

We'll, we'll even write a letter of recommendation for the company for you. Yes.

Richard will write a handwritten—

Scott Leese will absolutely do it in blood. Sign it in blood.

Yeah, in cursive. Cursive blood.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

All right everybody, thanks so much for joining us. This has been another quick episode of the Surf and Sales podcast, and we'll see you again real soon. Oh yeah, I'm recording.

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