E.86 - Job Security is a Lie! How to Protect Your Career from AI & Layoffs w/Jacob Warwick

We were talking about what would be a topic that's gonna add like the most value to people, and it's about this employment crisis. So many people that I talk to are just completely frustrated, completely lost, completely burned out, don't know what they should do, and whatever they've been trying before isn't working anymore, and they feel like they've been lied to about job security.

I'm a little contrarian in this because I've never thought of a job as security. Security in any way, it's, it's quite literally the equivalent of putting all of your eggs in someone else's basket and asking them to gently carry your career for you. Part of this, I think, is mindset. I think your mindset needs to be very positive, glass half full, regardless of what's happening. We can't put ourselves in a victim mindset. My first question that pisses people off is typically, how much of this is your fault? I need to get people to a growth mindset, not a victim mindset, as soon as possible, because they need to feel that there's hope.

Welcome to a What Makes You Tick special. We have Jacob Warwick on the podcast today. Jacob, thank you for joining.

Hey, thank you for having me, guys.

And we also have Rich. So Rich, why don't you take us away into the topic we're going to be discussing today?

So everyone who follows our podcast knows that Jacob is our number one podcast guest in terms of data, but probably also in terms of impact. And there's just so many things I love about when we get Jacob on. And we were talking about what would be a topic that's going to add like the most value to people, because it's like a huge thing that's going on in the market today. We've both got perspectives on it, particularly Jacob's perspectives, I think, that people would love to hear. And it's about this employment crisis. So many people that I talk to are just completely frustrated, completely lost, completely burned out, don't know what they should do. And whatever they've been trying before isn't working anymore. And they feel like they've been lied to about job security. And so I wanted to get Jacob on to talk about those two topics, the employment crisis and the fact that just people feel like they're just being lied to about this whole concept that a job is for life and they can be secure through their career. So Jacob, why is this topic one that you want to talk about today?

Oh goodness. Well, first of all, I don't know who told you that job security was real, unless we were just looking at historical data on how the way the world used to work, right? Grandpa had a job for 25 years manufacturing and he could supply for his family. And I think that's those stories are bubbling up a little bit more because it's very difficult in this market. Um, we're into a situation where you need two full-time breadwinners to pay the bills, and that becomes very difficult and taxing on a family. And then you have a movement where people recognize that you need to spend more time with family, but you can't because now you got to pay for daycare and you got to pay for these other things and you got to pay for college. And all of a sudden we're very stressed out and Naturally, I think when that happens, we revert to simpler times. It's like, hey, wouldn't it be nice to have just had one of us going into the office and making enough money to, uh, to survive? And there's— I think there's a lot of these challenges, uh, circulating, especially with my age group, which is kind of the 35 and younger crowd, um, experiencing some frustration there with, uh, what other people have that they don't have yet. Partly it's, you know, we, we do still have to pay our dues to a degree, and, and make it through that. But I'm a little contrarian in this 'cause I've never thought of a job as security in any way. It's quite literally the equivalent of putting all of your eggs in someone else's basket and asking them to gently carry your career for you. That doesn't sit right with me. So if I'm working for you and all of my money and all of my income and everything is in your hands, And historically speaking, even the best and most consistent companies lay off 5 to 10% a year, right? The odds that you're one of those people, especially the more money you make, starts to become higher. You start to become what they call the tall poppy, right? But I don't want to put all my eggs in your basket because you dropped those baskets and I got a messy omelet and I'm scrambling. Geez, this is getting out of hand, but I'm scrambling to figure out what to do to pay for my family, right? And given that there's immense pressure, especially if you have just a single breadwinner in your family versus two, like, that pressure intensifies. I think this also plays pretty heavy onto the male psyche as well, as men tend to want to be providers and nurturers in that regard of their family and make the corporate sacrifices. That kind of is baked into our DNA. Um, not to say that women don't do that, but I know that I work with a lot of men that are almost frustrated that they can't provide in the way that they are accustomed to or the way that, you know, their body is telling them they should be. And that can be mentally exhausting and draining too. But for me, I thought, you know, if I have 10 clients and one of them's an asshole and I fire one, I lose one egg, not my entire set of eggs, so to speak. So I've always found entrepreneurship, which is what they call the riskiest endeavor, as the safest endeavor, which is very contrarian to kind of what we've been taught. Um, I think there's a lot of different ways we can go to the, uh, the being lied to phase. So I'm curious, like, do you want to talk more about being lied to as an early career and how hard it is to break in? Or are you working more with like executive and leadership talent who's now feeling the frustration in this market, thinking that they were their skills were good enough to keep rising and now feeling some stagnation or plateau in their career?

Yeah, I certainly think it's the latter. I think that what we see from a tech sales perspective particularly is that people that have got the right personality and attitude are still able to break into tech roles. That doesn't really seem to be the gap. It's more people coming to me and saying, this is the third time I've been riffed in the last 3 years. My, you know, my resume started to look patchy. I start to feel like it's, it's working against me, and what was working before just isn't there. And they're just lost, like, where on earth do we even start? But there's just this overwhelming feeling of frustration and particularly resentment building around how people feel like they're being treated in the market.

Yeah, I have a couple notes on that. So part of this, I think, is mindset. I think your mindset needs to be very positive, glass half full, regardless of what's happening. And I think a lot of my clients internalize these challenges. So there's something wrong with me now, I can't hold down the job. And in some cases, there's always some ownership to take with that. But there's also these macro changes that are happening. And when I look back at— we were talking a little bit about this in the green room, but let's say you're in your mid-30s, go say like 2010.

Right?

You're mid-30s, you're catching your stride in your career. The 10 years that were in between like 2010 and 2020 was one of the largest bull markets we've ever seen in the world. Like, you could be really bad at your job and still keep it because they were scrambling for talent, right? Everything was up and to the right and growing at these paces. So even if you were mediocre, you would have probably been rewarded with decent compensation and decent salaries. Like, there was a period where almost like every house was getting snatched out from under us in that period. But they were also acquiring talent like that. Oh, you've been a VP at Google, like, boom, just throw in big cash signing bonuses, big, like, and you can see this now. Also during that period, we've had a significant rise in social media, in Instagram and LinkedIn, and these are all the highlight reels of what people are doing at their best. So you're seeing the remote worker making 7 figures on a beach in Hawaii or in Madeira or wherever, Right? They're in Spain or Portugal or living abroad. They're making all of this money. And that's what you're inundated with constantly. Right? Which is a vast difference from what we were expecting, like a long time ago, which was being in an office, you're in a cubicle, pay your dues, rub shoulder to shoulder. Like, so the entire dynamic has shifted. Now, since the pandemic, things obviously got a little bit turned upside down with the amount of money printing and inflation that happened. Like, money is not worth nearly what it used to be. And so you see the average raise of 5%, but money was devalued like 30% or something. Obviously, these are just arbitrary numbers, but there's a lot of this change that we're working through on a global economic level. And now we're forced to say, maybe we should be a little bit more pragmatic about our growth expectations. You know, and I think we're also a little biased in that we tend to work in earlier stage software companies like this group here on this podcast. So I've heard this from clients too, that they don't want to work with a VC because 1 out of 20 VC deals needs to work. So if you're working for a VC-founded company, you should expect that 19 out of 20 times you're going to fail, right? And then when you look at the statistics on what's actually successful in a startup world, it's like 0.0006% actually equate to something. So naturally, not only are you putting your eggs all in one basket, you're putting it in the riskiest basket possible. And if you're older or needing to be really mindful about how much you're saving and putting away for retirement, or you're trying to get a big unicorn exit plan, that risk is amplified significantly. Whereas I think those earlier stage VC positions are better when you're in your 20s or early 30s. You don't have the family commitments yet.

You're—

you can be a little bit more reckless because you're going to learn faster in those environments right now. I have— the more senior clients I have, the more they almost expect to go to a private equity-backed company because private equity wins 9 out of 10 deals, right? That's a big difference. And so I've, and I've listened to these calls with big PE investors, some of the biggest in the world, like Blackstone and Vista Equity and Insight Partners and those types interviewing in that group, and they say, look, 9 out of 10 need to work, right? And so what they do in those instances is they're much more cutthroat, almost more of an authoritarian-type process, but the maturity, the business maturity level is significantly higher. So for like, my clients tend to be de-risking when they're in their late 40s and early 50s, risking by going to things that are more of a sure thing, midsize and larger companies. And that still holds some risk there because if you negotiate an exceptionally high compensation, you are the tall poppy and you better be able to back it up. I'm not sure I answered the question there, but I, these are some things like competing levers that I'm seeing. And with companies needing to go more towards that cutthroat, proving market value and those types of things to keep the stock market going up and to the right, they're going to be more cutthroat with their hires. They're going to be more selective. There's going to be a contraction in the market and you have to be positioned absolutely flawlessly to win those deals. I've seen scenarios where the, the finalists, like, say, two C-suite candidates out of a pool of 400 or 500 competing for that, were both spending over $100,000 on career coaches to win that deal. That's how competitive it was at the end. And so, like, that's just— sometimes there's folks here like, hey, I haven't invested in any coaching. And this, this isn't a blanket statement to just invest in a coach. It's just that there are people that are so hungry to be competitive for that job, they will put $100,000 down. To have the opportunity. And again, I'm not saying you have to do that to compete. I'm just saying there are people in that stage. So I think a lot of times people are frustrated. They're like, oh, well, I didn't go to Harvard or I didn't go to, you know, this big school, London School of Business, you know, those, those types. And therefore I'm losing to those candidates. Like, that could be one factor, right? I just assume with all my clients, you're not the most qualified. We have to win anyway.

All right.

And you have to be very competitive. You need to have a growth mindset. You need to really get after it in a different way. You can't rely on your credibility. Ability and your credentials. There's a lot of elements that you can't lean on that used to be enough in the past. Like, almost previously, it's, I was a VP at a tech company, and then a recruiter would come, be like, great, we need a VP at a tech company, here's an offer, here's an offer. And they're like getting inundated with inbound, and that's all stopped. Now it's shifting. You need to be outbound. Your narrative needs to be very good. Now it's proving, like, your EQ needs to be significantly stronger. Especially as IQ is getting commoditized by AI right now. That's a lot of two-letter acronyms for us, right? But as AI is almost making us all look the same from an IQ perspective, how are we going to win over on a behavioral psychology and emotional quotient?

I have a question for you. So you mentioned the tall poppy a couple of times, right? And what is the solution that you're seeing for still negotiating exceptional salaries, but not being one of the first people that's let go? Because I know that your advice isn't going to be, well, don't get as high of a salary so that you're not as tall of a poppy. So what are you seeing successful people doing that's getting them that right salary, but also keeping them in their jobs and not getting them laid off?

Yeah, I want to be clear, I'm not suggesting not to be the tall poppy, because trust me, I would much rather. My whole thought was, man, if I can get paid twice as much, if I get fired in 6 months, it would kind of be like getting fired in a year.

Yeah, right.

So you get a little bit more. You know, I learned this when I was getting married. I met with this woman who said, you should negotiate the terms of your divorce before you get married. And I thought, that's very grim.

A little bit.

Yeah, it's a little not romantic. And she's like, oh, believe me, I— by the time I was on my third husband, I figured this out. I'm like, okay, thanks for that. But in terms of how we talk about employment, What I found is I could negotiate a tall poppy and then make it painful to fire them. And that's where we're negotiating the terms of the severance ahead of time. So in order to fire me, for me to not work 6 months, you have to pay me $350,000, right? So you have to be damn well sure you're committed to me. And if not, you're going to have to pay for the risk that you put me through. And I think that's very reasonable. It wasn't It wasn't that long ago that there were metrics and statistics that say for every $10,000 you make, expect 1 month of job search time. Now, with inflation, I'd say, let's say it's every $25,000. So for every $25,000 you choose to make in your salary, expect 1 month of search time. So if you make $300,000 a year, that's a year, right? A year of search time at least. Right. And back then it would have probably been a year and a half, 2 years. Like corporate jobs take that long. And it's not that every deal you get is going to take that long. It's that in order to find the right fit with the right alignment where you can make the most impact, where you can secure the severance, it might take you 2 years to make that happen. Now, knowing that that's your deal flow and knowing that your average tenure in a position is only a year and a half, it would behoove you to be more proactive, to always be putting feelers out there, to always have the habit of looking for work when you don't need it. That way, if you are going to put your eggs in one basket, at least there are other people that are interested in carrying that basket for you at all times. So that can de-risk your situation and increase your leverage. So I think that's an important point for people to consider. But what I mean, make it painful to fire you, right? So negotiating severance is a little bit easier when you're already employed. A little bit easier when you're pulling someone over. That's easier to get a signing bonus and retention bonus. Like, you have a little bit more leverage in terms of, let's say, objective leverage. If you don't have that, you have to be more influential and persuasive to get the leverage, um, which either way we can find success. But this is easier if you already have a job. And so the, the claim— let's say you work at Microsoft and you make $1 million a year, but Facebook wants to hire you right now. It's risky for me to take a— let's say it's a lateral move, $1 million to $1 million, right? I have consistency. I know what I'm going to make year in and year out. I know you're asking me to move to another team for the same price. How are you going to de-risk this for me? Right. And that's where we negotiate things like severance. Like, if you are to let me go, I get 18 months paid. Right, or something like that. And so sometimes what we do is, let's say the role at Facebook is $2 million a year. That in itself shows, okay, that's de-risked in itself because I'm making twice as much. Now I might want to on top of that add a severance to de-risk it even more because everything's at-will employment. So if I'm only there for 3 months and then they fire me, I let go of a sure thing where I was guaranteed going to get $1 million a year to now I made $2 million a year but only for 3 months and they fired me with impunity. Now you're stuck in that year and a half, 2-year window to find another job, and now you're out several million, right? So we de-risk that by adding severance. So I want people to negotiate the tall poppy and also their exit clause. And the timing of that is after you're ready to sign the offer, then say, hey, I didn't happen to see your severance policy. Can you forward that to me? Right. We assume that we're going to get it and force that process to happen a little bit later. So the timing of how you do that is pretty important. Important.

What would you say to someone who's already— like, let's say they didn't do that at the beginning, you're in your role now. How do you— because the way I'm almost imagining is being the tall poppy but with deep roots with thorns underneath, so that if you pull me out, it's going to be real painful. How can they deepen those roots if they're already in a company? What can they do?

So if you're already in the company, first of all, it's, it's very difficult to negotiate severance after because you don't have the leverage anymore, and the company already knows what you're willing to take. Right? So you're pretty trapped. Now, if I wanted to deepen my roots, I would become cross-functionally dependent. Like, everybody needs to be dependent on me. So if I may, I know a lot of the listeners are sales leaders or revenue leaders. I would want the product leader to be an advocate. I would want the finance leader to be an advocate, the ops leader. Like, it's not enough to just be functionally excellent at sales and always hit your number. You need whoever's in the CEO's ear or the board's ear to say, you know what, I can't live without Tolu on my team. Like when you're looking at making cuts, it can't be Tolu. And so this is a behavioral psychology piece. Like if I want— and this is especially helpful for marketers because they're last to hire, first to fire, usually over sales folks. So a marketer should be kissing the sales leader's ass and the finance leader's ass. And the product, like they need to be indispensable across the entire stack, not just functionally excellent. And I think this is a big problem that we have, that we're over-indexed in our own functional stew. And what I mean by that is, let's say you are a member of Pavilion. I think we've all worked with Pavilion. Pavilion tends to be sales-dominated and sales-focused, right? And that's great. You functionally pick up your sales skills, learn more about customer success, learn a little bit more about marketing. Great. Like you're building that function. Now, if the product leader is the one that has the influence, what are you learning about with them? Not a lot, right? So you need to— like, if you spend all of your time in your own echo chamber, you will only know about that one thing, right? But you need to be spending time with CEOs and knowing what they care about, COOs and what they care about, and so on to keep your job. So being in Pavilion is great. But it's not enough, right? You might want something more cross-functionally focused too. Same with like CMO huddles. Like, you could learn to be a great CMO, but how do you have that conversation with finance, right? You're only getting the perspective of what marketers think about finance, not what finance thinks about marketers. And so if I were to protect myself, I would make sure that everybody loved me, right? And this is where influence and behavioral psychology comes in. And I might go to the board and say, look, I've always had a great relationship working with the board. Like, from your perspective, what makes a great revenue leader? How do I make sure that when you look at everyone on the team, you know that Tolu is indispensable? What are some of the things you're looking for? And I listen and I do those things and I make sure other people on the team are doing those things. And that's going to protect myself even if I am the tall poppy.

Mm-hmm.

Because one of the things that I wonder is, you know, we see like Facebook making loads of cuts, we see big like Google making lots of cuts, and it just makes you wonder, is anybody really indispensable anymore?

No. The companies have been there long before you and they will be there long after you, right? Some of these machines are so big, like, and that's also why that should give you leverage, not fear.

Interesting. Explain that a bit more.

It should give you— I mean, the thing is, you'd— if you're stuck in this mindset that you need to be loyal to the company, you'll be disappointed when they break your eggs. But if you realize that you're just as replaceable as they are, right? You do that by creating alternatives for yourself. You create a reputation and a brand. You go on podcasts, you have people know about you and say your name and share that. If you have 10 coals in the fire, I don't care if Facebook fires me, Google will hire me or whatever. Like, you have to be planting these seeds constantly. It's just like an enterprise sales deal. If you had an AE come to you and said, Tolu, I'm going to make my quarter on one deal, you'd say, great, don't work the next 2 and a half months. No, you would say, great, build more pipeline. Yeah, right. Especially if you didn't know when that deal was going to close, right? Because you couldn't hit your quota. Well, yourself is just a sales pipeline too. Now, the other thing that I think gives you incredible value, especially as you get older in your career, and I share this quite a bit, I actually was told that I changed someone's worldview when I shared this with them. But I think that, and this is going to be blasphemy for negotiators, I think that every employment engagement that you enter in, especially later in your career, is a win-lose negotiation. So even when you negotiate tall poppy, you negotiate severance, you negotiate all this, I still think you lose, and there's a few reasons why. So one, if you're on W-2, you pay the most taxes, period. So you're automatically paying the most, and that significantly takes away from your quality of life, and you're at someone else's beck and call all the time. But from the highest level, they're trading you something that is infinite for your something that is finite. So they're giving you money, which is infinite. And I mean that not that everybody has infinite money, but that they can print more of it. They can appear out of thin air. It's constantly being devalued with inflation or with taxes or with whatever. So they're giving you something infinite in availability that is constantly being devalued. You're giving them something finite in availability, your time. And the older you get, the more valuable time becomes. Right, because you run out of it. So if you put that on a matrix, or like they're giving you money and you're giving them time, it gets completely backwards, right? So I can give you something infinite for something you can't give back. So you always lose that deal. So you might as well put yourself like, what's gonna make me happy? What's gonna make this job fulfilling? What's gonna, and be able to communicate that so that you can at least justify that time exchange. If you're gonna take 2 hours from me being a father to my boys, I'm not gonna have a problem charging $2,000 an hour 'cause my time with my boys is more important than that, right? You could also say no to my price, that's fine, but it's better to anchor high than it is to settle 'cause no deal is better than a bad deal, right? And now we're not all privileged to be in that position, but the older you get, the more people recognize that, especially as they start to build some financial security for themselves and a foundation where they can have more leverage.

I've got something on this part of the group that might be listening, and we can, we can focus on people maybe at the earlier stage of their career and how that's, that's shifting with cultural changes and expectations. But there was a report that I saw, McKinsey said that 400 million jobs will be at risk by 2030, you know, the impact of AI, of the macroeconomic conditions, inflation, Do you believe we're headed for a full-blown employment collapse or just a reckoning?

I'm not Nostradamus on this with the crystal ball. I'm surprised that 400 million is so low. So I don't know if that means total collapse. I just know this from my own evidence. So I'll speak anecdotally for a minute. I have in my career, I kind of grew up as a content marketer. I started as a journalist, did— I was the AV nerd in high school. I was a copywriter that led me into a marketing career that led me to be a director of content marketing for a Fortune 500 and so on. So like I built my marketing career first and then eventually was a CMO and now I'm running a very lean team at over 7 figures in revenue, like 2, 3 people on my team. And I can replace the teams of 8, my marketing team of 8 that I had before. I can replace them entirely with AI and I can do all that work in one day with no marketing briefs, with no brand guidelines, with no— I don't need any of that shit that slows me down. I can just do it in a day. If I need a website coded, I can get a landing page up in a day. Impossible. I can get it out to market. I can get the domain set up. I can do all of this without another person. So that's 8 people out of a job on my side. Now, before this business, I had a business called Discover Podium, and I had 25 employees on my team, and we were a multimillion-dollar-a-year team. We were providing agent services for executives. So picture having your own agent go out and look for a job for you and say, hey, Tolu, are you interested in this or this or this? Oh, great.

You are.

Like, I'll help you apply for those. And here's the messaging you should use and so on. So I built a team like that, 25 employees, a couple million dollars a year in revenue. I have replaced all but one of those employees with AI. I think I can replace all of the resume writers and LinkedIn writers, and I can replace all of the agents and the SDRs. All of that has been replaced. Now, I would argue like outbound SDR work is not there yet, right? I'm not, I'm not saying that they're replaced in that context. I'm saying that I actually don't need it now because the marketing is so much better. So my inbound attention is way better than my outbound. Um, the amount of content that I can create at scale is significantly greater. Uh, I can and have trained systems that go through multiple LLMs, so multiple agents. So using things like recording a call, transcribing that into, uh, a database, reading it and saying, you should write a LinkedIn article about this, you should do a newsletter on this, you should do a YouTube video about this, Oh, by the way, here's the script for you based off of your tone and guidelines. We went to Perplexity to do fact-checking and get you some statistics for it. We went to Gemini to store the context window. We checked it with Claude. We fired it through Make or N8N or whatever, any of these tools. And on the outside, I have a spreadsheet full of every bit of my content calendar that took one single phone call to start, right? And I didn't have to do like the messy part about— and this is why I do think AI is going to take over. The hardest part about business is people. Systems are easy. Like systems don't call in sick, systems don't, you know, have a— I was leading a team through COVID and in America was a very politically charged climate, not unlike right now. And I saw my team in Slack split half for Trump and half for Biden and argued with each other, right? So I'm like, my team is quite literally ripping themselves apart from the inside over politics. And you know what doesn't do that? AI. So like, if you're not mature enough to not have that discussion in my Slack channels, then you're going to lose your job. Right. And so you want to be human, but humans are so difficult to deal with. So what I think is going to happen is those that are augmented by AI are going to be significantly higher paid. And those that can't differentiate themselves are going to be either lower paid or lose their jobs entirely. So the best executives are going to be doing over a million a year. They got the EQ, but they also have the technical chops to run LLMs and run the systems and build all this out. I think the contract labor is going to pick up significantly in a lot of ways because tax avoidance, like you're only needing 10-hour projects here and there. Like you can cut them at any time. So there's no legal problems. Like it's become so efficient. That you won't need full-time W-2 employees in the same realm. And then I also think our governments are going to have a hard time taxing people because of the different ways that they're getting paid. It's a constant being chased down. I think that might also be why the IRS is so threatened here in the United States and why Trump's rise through the external revenue service or whatever is creating such a global, you know, calamity, I guess.

I think what I was thinking about is that there's such a duality of different things happening at the same time, right? So in one way, try and make yourself dispensable. In another way, realize that you are very dispensable no matter who you are and what you've delivered for a company. At the same time, you've got to think about the fact that AI is going to replace or could replace lots of different jobs. So what do you think people should be focusing on right now to prepare for the future that's coming? Because AI is the worst it's ever going to be. From this stage, it just gets better and better and better.

Yeah, I've thought a lot about that. I've thought a lot about that too. Well, the first answer is to acknowledge that it's happening and to not bury your head in the sand, because there's still quite a bit of head-buried-in-the-sand stuff. And as I'm talking to executive leaders, one of their challenges right now isn't how to use AI or the process, like they're very, say, innovative in how they're thinking about it. And I'd say bullish and enthusiastic. One of their challenges is the people aspect of their people not wanting to do it. And so they don't want to adopt it because they know it's their demise too. Right. So I think there's some resistance. There's a lot of resistance. And that's going to force the hand of the executives in charge to eliminate the talent that's resistant to it and hire the talent that is not.

Right.

And I'm seeing this, like, I've got examples from like San Francisco. I know there's a global audience, so I want to be clear. So like San Francisco is a tier 1 tech city, right? Sacramento is a couple of miles, it's a couple hundred miles outside of San Francisco. Let's say it's like a tier 2. And then there's like Reno, Nevada, as we go up the corridor is like tier 3. And what I've noticed is innovation starts in San Francisco and then Sacramento is like 2 to 5 years behind and then Reno is like 5 to 10 years behind. That's kind of how it works. So they would probably be equivalent to like London being the hub. And then as you start to go out, like Milton Keynes is probably not the hub, right? That's really the only place in the UK I know, like is Milton Keynes. I spent too much time there. And then maybe like Norwich or something like completely out there, right? Like, so it takes time for things to get through that system, right? So like I'm specifically talking about a company in Sacramento. So let's say a company in Milton Keynes-like area, right, trying to take off and they're trying to attract London talent. Yeah, right. But their talent's very resistant to the change, right? Well, that talent's going to migrate up to them and they're going to hire those that are more willing to accept AI. And I felt like I was very resistant to this at first as well, mostly because I was frustrated that there are all these folks that could just suck my content down, like all my content down, and then pretend they're me. And come after my business, which is frustrating. Though if I'm one of the coaches embracing it, I can at least be on the cutting edge or pushing ahead. And I know that AI will be more affordable or more efficient or more of these other things, but if I haven't felt the pain through its growth, I won't understand why those things are valuable. And so I would rather be pushing on the cutting edge and failing and breaking things and running beta tests and being treating this very entrepreneurially, like jump off the cliff and just figure out how to fly on the way down kind of thing. And even if you fail, you're still failing forward because you have these experiences that can be marketed later. And so my advice would be to really push yourself on it and just try things and try to like practice with prompting, trying even basic stuff, right? Then you'll start to see who's using it because they don't do very much. You can start to see the trends and who's making mistakes. And then you'll start to question the audience that you're seeing and say like, oh, this was probably AI. I don't know if that person's actually that smart or not. And then what'll happen is we come full circle and I talk quite a bit about this, but I'm more bullish on YouTube now. Tolu, thank you for pushing me. Not great at it yet, but I want people to see me as a person and see that this is me speaking. These are my mannerisms. This is at least what you're going to get working with me. Because that's one of our last bastions of hope. Where if I'm on LinkedIn just writing text, you don't know if that text was AI or not, right? Now, in a couple months, all of my YouTube videos could be done by AI who's perfected my mannerisms and all that, in which then I can write perfect scripts and get that out there, I guess. Um, and then there—

AI can, AI can never quite replicate all your experiences. Well, not never, because they'll probably be able to scan our brain soon enough and then access all of our experiences. But like, AI can't replicate every negotiation that you've ever been through. It can't negotiate every conversation. It can't replicate every conversation you've ever had because you talking is a combination of all of those things.

Well, and that's why it's important not to gaslight yourself in your experience, right? And to not just blindly listen to AI, but AI can augment your experience quite exactly.

Exactly.

And what I found is there are some things that I've done that I didn't know were connections to things that have been done in history. So I didn't realize that my particular approach to psychology is more of an Adlerian approach to psychology and not a Freudian approach to psychology. And most of the country, at least the United States, has adopted a Freudian mindset when it comes to psychology, whereas Adlerian is more like you can choose and you have, you know, autonomy and control. Whereas Freudian is like you're set from your trauma from childhood and that kind of defines who you are. I'm more of the opposite, which actually makes sense of why I come across as more contrarian. Yeah, because that's the psychology of— now, I'd never studied Adlerian psychology. I didn't go to college. I didn't know these things. Maybe that would have been a benefit of going to, as you two put it, uni, right? That would have been a benefit to me. But as I've shared like AI reviewed my content and said, hey, this is a very Adlerian approach. Now I have the threads to go study more of that. Oh, tell me more about Adlerian psychology. Tell me about why it's effective. And Perplexity is very good at this. And I've also found things like my sales practice, like how I actually went across sales, follows Alex Hormozi's closer framework very well. And I had never heard of Alex Hormozi before, but he shared his closer framework and I went, Son of a bitch. That's exactly how I've always run my sales processes. And I didn't know that there was a technique to this. And AI helped me find that, right? And helped me make those connections, which helps me help my clients more because I can give them something memorable. I'm not like taking credit for it or claiming that it's mine necessarily, but this is, this is a framework that I've seen work. Here's some more information on it. And I can actually provide more learning opportunities because of that. And that was sped up through AI. And so I would almost rather work with AI than read business books. Now, I'm already pretty anti-business book as it is. I prefer to create more content than I consume, which I think is a problem we also need to address. And this might be a takeaway. If you find yourself consuming 80% of the time and creating 20%, that number needs to be flipped around. You should be creating more and showing more and creating some some sustainability for yourself just to even stay top of mind. That's something that needs to flip. And then I've realized that most business books are totally bullshit and they're kind of bad business cards, right? And there are only a few that I recommend anyway. So I would rather ask pointed questions to perplexity and say, hey, scan academic resources for me. You know, take a look at Robert Cialdini's Influence Framework and all of the work that he's done in behavioral psychology and find the common threads for me. Or take a look at this, this Stanford department or this Wharton department and the work that they've done there. Look at Adam Grant or so on. Look at Kim Scott. Look at these types of influential figureheads and like, show me what some of their lessons and research is, and then we can work together and combine that. And ultimately, the person who wins the most from that is my client. Like, I'm trying to be the vessel of information to share with my client, to give them ideas to succeed. So I found that to be exceptionally helpful.

It's also interesting, right? It's never going to be easier for someone to write a book. Well, sorry, it will only get easier for someone to write a book. So everyone will have a book soon. And so when you started to Google around or sorry, you know, ask AI around certain things that you were doing and it was telling you, oh, that's like this person's framework. If you can get those frameworks into AI, so when people are starting to analyze it, it's going, oh, that's Jacob Warwick's framework.

I know. That's why I'm not investing in SEO. Anymore. Not that I was— I was never really good at SEO, which is a big blemish on a content marketer's background, by the way. I just hated it. I hate trying to figure it out. Like, I worked for an SEO company for a while, and we were getting very good at predictive SEO and all that. Now I can see that I just want— I want ChatGPT to say, you should talk to Jacob Warwick Warwick. Wouldn't that be nice, right? To have all those millions of users going to your content there. So Uh, I admittedly need to look more into that, but I would, I would be more interested in— would it be LLM optimization? Do we need LLM? L-L-M-O? Is this a new acronym we create? You know, I would, I'd be interested, or maybe it's AIO, artificial intelligence optimization, right? Um, I'd be interested in being involved in that in some capacity. That's going to be a growing space for sure.

It's like, you know, like, when's the last time you Googled yourself? Where everyone talks about Googling the company and seeing what comes up, Googling yourself, what comes up?

See, some perplexity yourself is interesting. I've had people do that to me. Well, I— what's interesting is I can actually control the perception on perplexity easier than I can on Google, because like Google's finding stuff that's like 10 years old and still surfacing that. So even YouTube, like you look up my name on YouTube, there's this video of me, I got super long hair, and I'm like in my mom's house like doing it, uh YouTube Live or something from like 2012. And I can't even stand to watch it because I don't know what stupid stuff is going to pour out of my mouth then. But that's something that they put front and center. It's like, look, this is Jacob. And I'm like, you know, 10 years younger and, you know, a little wet behind the ears. And then I look at Perplexity and it's pulling stuff from my website and LinkedIn and he's saying like, this guy's a master and he's like really good at this. And what I like to do after that is to go, how much money would you expect to pay someone like this? And then when I do that with like ChatGPT and others, they're like, he could be $20,000 a month on retainer. And I'm like, hell yeah, I would take that. That sounds great. Right? But like, his experience is so rare and it's so this and like, we, we don't see that experience anywhere else. It can also be validating for you to see what signals you're putting out into the world. So I actually have used AI in some capacity to say like, which messaging better resonates with my affluent audience, right? Or which, which comes across here? And like, I, I struggle all the time with what I actually call myself. Am I an advisor, or am I a coach? Am I a consultant? Right now I have— right now I have consigliere, which is ridiculous, but it's, it's a little obnoxious because I want someone to go like, what the hell does that mean? Not that I actually expect them to know what it means. And then someone the other day said, you know, Have either of you ever watched Aladdin? Like the Disney movie? So this gal, she was telling me, she's like, you know, you're the, you're the Sultan's advisor. What's his name? I'm like, Jafar? Like the bad guy? Yeah. She's like, whatever his title is, that's what your title should be.

We just start off with villain, to be fair.

Yeah, you did start off with villain. No, like they, and to be fair, I do teach behavioral psychology tricks that I do hope are used for good and not evil.. But I can also see that you can— like, I study a lot of rhetoric from the presidents, and you can see how it can be used to swing nations and all kinds of stuff. But yeah, so I had to look up what's that title, and it was like Grand Vizier of the Sultan. So yeah, I thought that was funny.

So let's meet people where they're at, Jacob Warwick. So some people who'll be watching this will just be in that bucket of being incredibly frustrated. Maybe they have been riffed 3 or 4 times in the last 3 years. They're worried about their tenure. They know the data is that, like, you know, a CRO stays in role for 17 months. They're starting to lose faith, they're starting to lose confidence. They are leaders, and I know that you've got some takes on this which I'd love to hear, but they're, they're starting to feel out of control in their ability to go and find an opportunity that's going to give them all of the joy and fulfillment and opportunity and impact that they're looking for. What do you see with the people who are coming to you full of frustration? And then how are you thinking differently about their mindset in a way that helps them?

Yeah, I'm glad you use the word mindset because that's the first thing we need to get right. We can't— whether it's true or not, we can't put ourselves in a victim mindset at all, right? So, oh, this happened to me, this happened to me, this happened to me. My first question that pisses people off is typically, how much of this is your fault?

Right?

Because what we need to do is take an extreme ownership position over all of this. And it could be that I rushed into this job because I didn't have the leverage that I needed and I needed to pay the bills. Great. Understood. So no surprise that it didn't work out then. You didn't spend the time to do the due diligence or the alignment because you were underleveraged financially or for whatever reason. Or how much of this was your fault choosing to go to early-stage startups and choosing that path for yourself instead of a more consistent path, right? How much of that? So we want to first find what we can take ownership of. And there's an important lesson here. It's that I need to get people to a growth mindset, not a victim mindset, as soon as possible, because they need to feel that there's hope. Because if you feel there's no hope, there won't be. And if you enter the market bruised, and frustrated and annoyed and being feeling like this is a victim and you have no choice, naturally you're not going to get hired, especially in leadership roles, because you are not showing the character traits consistent with leadership. And so that's why I want you to take ownership of it, even if, even if something was completely outside your fault. Oh, I felt the signs, but I didn't do anything about it. That's something I can work on next time, mostly so that even as we're changing the narrative, as if I'm going to talk to someone like you, Rich, and explain what happened to my last 4 hiccups in my job, I want to be able to say, you know, Rich, I made a mistake going to this company. It's a little too early for me. There wasn't alignment here. And then this one, they just moved all the operations overseas for cost cuttings and kind of caught myself up in that. I should have seen that coming, right? Honestly, I'm excited to talk to you because it sounds like this role that you're talking about is aligned with what I'm looking for. And to be honest, I don't know if my career can handle any more short tenures, so I really want to spend some time learning from you on why this is a great fit and what excites you about me in this role.

Right.

So I've just acknowledged all this pain and suffering, like 4 12-month tenures or a year and a half. Like there was COVID in there, there was economic changes, there were startup stuff. Like you could have been fired because you were an asshole. I don't know the reason. Right. But I'm saying like, look, I've had a relatively rough track record, taking ownership of it. Here's what I've learned. Growth mindset. As I'm looking with you and having that emotional control to have that conversation with you, I'm saying, look, I'm curious what excites you about my background, like what interests you here? What's most important to me moving forward is alignment, because I don't want to have any short tenures anymore. I'd like to stay at a place 4 to 6 years. And then now we can have a more honest conversation from there. But instead, most people try to— I like to say, like, turn shit into gold. Like, they try to weave it into something that it's not. Like, yeah, I was only there for 3 months, but we had the best results of all time. Isn't that weird? I don't know what happened, right? Like, they're not taking ownership. They're deflecting, or they're saying, hey, the team did this or that. Like, what we need to see— and you can correct me if I'm wrong on this, Rich, because you come from the other angle here. Isn't it much more compelling to talk to a leader who's taking ownership of problems versus trying to duck them? And a lot of people think you want to see someone leading. Yeah, I mean, it— and so you have to lead from the front. You have to lead with what you can control. You have to take ownership of this. And the other argument is, if you're a CRO and you're talking about how the company didn't meet growth goals, a lot of that's going to be your fault right now. It might be that you inherited a team that wasn't ready yet. You didn't have product market fit, whatever, but it's still your fault because one, you accepted that job. Two, you were the one in charge of revenue and growth. Three, if it didn't happen, it's either because maybe the CEO was dominant and the board was dominant and they wanted to go a different direction and you wanted a PLG model and they wanted a sales model or whatever, but you didn't have the persuasive or influential ability to steer the ship to where it needed to go with your experience. So you failed there. So you could argue, oh, the CEO didn't want to go that way. That's your failure. You were not persuasive enough, right? That's on you. And I'm not suggesting you're going to win all the time. I'm just suggesting you failed to influence the direction of that business. Now, why is it that you're going to go to another leadership position? And why would I expect you to be different? Like, you have to tell me why you'd be different. You have to say like, look, I failed to influence the board. Here's what I learned. Right. And thus we stayed on a sales-led motion instead of a product-led motion. And I think over time that's not going to work out for them. Right. But that's why I'm on the market again. Like, you have to have this self-awareness to know, like, when my clients don't get jobs, that's a failure on me, not them.

Right.

I accepted them as a client because I thought I could represent them well. When they fail, that's on me, not them. Right. Because I'm not doing my job well enough. And that's more leadership mentality. And so I'm glad you brought mindset. I don't care if you feel like you've been kicked down. What are you going to do about it if you're competing for leadership positions like £100,000 a year or more? I'm working on my UK terms, right? Let's say £250,000. I mean, I have, I have clients that will call me in tears that make £1.5 million a year. So whether you make £20,000 a year or £1.5 million a year, The psychological warfare that happens internally is relatively similar. And so they'll still be in tears and crying. And for those that are in leadership roles, I'm like, look, what do you expect? You are, first of all, already in the top 1% of the top 1% of wealth earners on the planet. Let's be honest, right? That's going to be highly competitive. Now, are you telling me that you're going to shirk that responsibility or are you going to feel grateful for the opportunity to push forward? Now, from a psychological perspective, the more we approach this with gratitude versus anxiety, the more that anxiety goes away. So gratitude and anxiety occupy the same part of the brain. So the more grateful you are, you can't actually feel anxious at the same time. So instead of I have to figure out how to find a job in this shitshow climate, you get to have an opportunity to make a couple hundred thousand dollars a year. That's a big difference in mindset. You get this opportunity. So what are you going to do to not squander it? Are you going to complain that they sent you with a take-home assignment? You're going to say, oh no, they're giving— they want all this free consulting, you know, and people start bitching about, oh, they have this take-home, they want me to do a go-to-market, you know, wrap-up. Let me go find a template and like fake it and like try to hurry it because I'm not getting paid yet. Well, I tell you what, you can bitch about that and you can copy and paste something from a deck somewhere. You can have AI do it for you. But you're going to lose to the person who does it more authentically. You're going to lose to the person who actually goes out there and asks the right questions and pushes that interview forward and gets the intel that they need. So you can bitch about it and you'll keep coming up in second or third or fourth, right? But it's an opportunity. What would you do to win this opportunity?

Right.

And in this market, unfortunately, it's shifted. It's completely opposite of what it was 5 years ago when things came easy to you. Right. So now that it's harder, you're either going to put up or you're going to shut up.

Right.

And so this is a little tough love, right? But if you're saying you're a leader, then lead. Leadership is defined in chaos, right? And your character traits are revealed when times are hard. So if you're revealing yourself as a victim, don't expect to be a leader in this, this age right now. Right. 100%.

It's the things that go viral on LinkedIn, right? It's like, you know, all this stuff like, oh, we should be paid to go and do the assignments. And it's like these leaders—

Of course it's going to go viral.

They're using their platform, right, to go, right, I've got, you know, maybe they might have 15,000 followers and they're going, they've got a post, their number one post when I'm looking at like their history is the post where they talk to like, you know, basically shit about someone for making them go and do some additional effort because how unfair the market is. I'm like, that's, that's what you want to put out in the world? Like, how much of that are you seeing?

A ton. I mean, because that's the stuff being, first of all, being highly contrarian is rewarded. In an algorithmic society. Now, this is where I don't want people to gaslight themselves. Don't gaslight yourself. Like, your audience tends to be the top 1%, right? Which by definition means 99% of shit that's put out there is not for you. 99% of what you see is noise, right? Even when you look at— this is why I don't want to call myself a coach, because most career coaches put out shit content. That's weak and it's not as— let's just say maybe I shouldn't be so harsh, right? Let's just say it serves a different audience that I'm not trying to attract, right? It serves a different stage. It serves a different expectation. That's not who I am. That's why I'm playing with words like consigliere or something until I eventually go on, you know, Diary of a CEO and can make my name with whatever I want later, like until there's enough media demand to change that perception. But most content that you see is not for you. Most recruiters that talk to you are not for you. So if you're constantly— you've like, I say like 9 times out of 10, the recruiter that reaches out to you is too junior to know what you do, to understand how to best show up for you. And it's one of the reasons they lead with, all right, I just want to make sure that you're not going to make too much money for this role. You're not going to ask for a lot like that. Shows that you're dealing with a more immature recruiter, whereas a very talented recruiter that's only moving big-time deals spends time to get to know you. They spend time to understand the alignment, your future, where you're headed, and they want to make a good fit here because if you don't stay in that role, they're going to lose sometimes $100,000 in their retainer fee, right? So they spend more time to do it right. And so the problem is you're inundated with something that's beneath you, beneath you, beneath you. You're in the wrong room, right? And so the other thing— this, I don't want this to come across as arrogant, but it does sound arrogant. A lion doesn't concern himself with the opinions of sheep.

Right.

And this isn't to call everyone a sheep. It's just to have an understanding. If you are the top 1% of the 1%, think about it that way. Surround yourself with other people that have either done it or they're doing something that you want to do. Those are the people you take advice from. No one else. And you'll notice that that 1% gets smaller and smaller and smaller. It's the same principle as surround yourself with the people in the room that you want to be like. You become a culmination of those people. The problem with LinkedIn and Instagram and Facebook and all this is you're inundated with just noise, right? So just choose not to listen to it. Tune it out.

The other thing that I found that really helps people is a slight reframe, but people just often miss it when they're in a funk and they can't see the possibilities and they can't see the hope, which is think about the company. So you're speaking to a company about a senior role. Very significant investment for them, critical hire. Probably someone failed in that role, maybe a couple of people, maybe you're replacing someone. How many of those positions are truly growth, and how many of them are the company needing to achieve a business outcome and having to have parted ways with someone? And so I think there's a mindset piece here around really when you're positioning this all, it's about I need to deeply empathize and understand the person's needs and wants that I'm talking to. Because I'm the product and I'm the solution. And I'd just love to hear your take on how people can think much more closely aligned to the people.

Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of times we use the word empathy and not actually know what it means. It's like putting yourself in their shoes. And one of the ways that I help clients overcome that interview process is, one, instead of trying to be impressive, we're looking for alignment. I'm not going to impress you with a bunch of stuff that I've done in the past. I'm looking to see if our futures are aligned, which means that I need to have a conversation about the future, not about what I did 5 years ago. So I naturally need to break the mold of how most interviews go, right? I need to shift that dynamic right away. So I've also found that when you shift that dynamic, most of my clients tend to do better because they're on the front foot. It's what I call they're on the front foot. They're driving the conversation forward. They're talking about the future. They're solving problems. They're more consistent. Like, that is an easier brainstorming type conversation to have versus what did I do 5 years ago? They want an example from this. They want that. That's what I call being on the back foot. When you're on the back foot, you don't come across as assertive. Your leadership traits are not coming through as effective. So I ask my clients to set an agenda up front and say, hey, look, let's use the Closer Framework. Rich, you know, I'm excited that you reached out to me. Can you give me, you know, give me a couple of things that have you looking forward to today's conversation with me? I want to hear from you first. You might say, hey, Jacob, I see that you've got coaching experience, you've got a little marketing experience. I'd love to talk a little bit more about that.

Great.

Then we move on to label. Hey, it sounds like you're interested in some marketing growth here. Can you tell me a little bit about what you've done before? That's the overview. What's— what have you done before? Who are the leaders that you had in this position before? What worked? What didn't work? What excited you? You know what? Tell me about some of the other candidates. What are some of the things that other candidates have shown you that have gotten you excited? What is something that I should have brought up that I didn't? Right. As we get into overview and then we move into selling the vacation after that, which is, okay, so, Rich, fast forward 6 months from now, you and I work together and we align the go-to-market strategy. What are we looking at next? Like, what are some of the challenges we need to solve next? Right. So this is kind of that first part of that framework. But the mindset here, the hack, if someone's going to take a sticky note, it's when you go into an interview, don't treat it like an interview. For salespeople, treat it like a discovery call. Right. For others, pretend you already have the job and you're a consultant. So you need to consult on the best solution. But you're removed from it, right? You're removed from the solution. So my job is to say and ask questions, Rich, what's, what's stopping you from hiring someone or promoting someone internally? Why have you thought about hiring maybe one or two cheaper candidates instead of a more expensive hire? Right? Because now I'm consulting with you on and I'm putting my arm around you like, hey, let's solve this problem together. And naturally you're giving me all the information I need to know to be able to close you because you'll say, look, I don't want to hire someone junior because I need someone to be autonomous and lead with authority and do this. And I get to say, well, it makes sense why you're talking to me. It actually reminds me of this transformation we did a couple of years ago at Oracle. And, you know, long story short, this is what I learned, right? So I suspect we're going to have plenty to unpack. But let me ask you a couple more questions instead. Right. So I don't have to go into this monologue for 3 minutes on what I've done in the past. I'm saying, that reminds me of something I've done prior. You and I are probably gonna have to talk about that at a later date. I'm insinuating I have more value to give. Let me ask you a couple more questions. And I drive that interview forward. So when you pretend you're a consultant, and you already have the job, you just don't know what to do, you're going to ask more questions to figure out what the hell am I supposed to do?

Yeah.

Right. So that That in itself is a better mindset to be in versus trying to prove your value. The other thing that happens is some folks haven't had to interview in earnest for quite some time, and we default back to how we interviewed earlier in our career when we were more tactical and more junior. And so we were defaulting on that, waiting for you to lead the conversation, not showing our leadership skills, and we start to fail because of that. We're interviewing like we did 10 years ago when we weren't a leader, so we're not showing those skills. So rather, I like to— and this is probably another sticky note— I'd rather say something like, we're in the first couple minutes, you and I have exchanged pleasantries, Rich, and I might say something like, look, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, or if you have a different idea for this, let me know. But as I look back at all of the senior hires that I've made, almost all of the interview processes felt more like consultations and brainstorming sessions and less like an interview. Are you open to have a conversation like that instead? Now, the very first thing out of my mouth was, this isn't an interview, this is a consult, and you agreed to it. So I just set the agenda that we're going to consult and we're going to brainstorm. And what this does is instead of me spending half an hour trying to prove that I'm worthy, I get to spend half an hour solving problems and being valuable. And I'm immediately distancing myself from all the other candidates. So instead, Rich and I are talking about, okay, so tell me about this hiring manager. Tell me about Tolu. What are some of the things that Tolu cares about? Now, I imagine you're going to have a handful of candidates to share with Tolu. What are some things we absolutely can't send his way? Right? How do I make sure that at the end of this call, you're actually confident and excited about moving me forward rather than having any reservations? Like, I'm going to ask better questions to do that if we're collaborating and we put ourselves in that consult-type mindset. Tolu is looking like he's surprised. He's like, wow, this is good stuff, man.

This is brilliant.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because even just the thing that you said about we go back to that last version of interviewing that we've done, it's so true. But you don't even think about it because you often spend so long between interviews. So like, for example, I worked at the same company for like 12 years. Right? So most of my things were promotions. So I, how often have I interviewed in my life is not that often.

So that's a good thing. That's a good thing. Here's a hack. Here's another hack for someone who hasn't interviewed in a while. You have to say, you know, Rich, you're gonna have to bear with me. I haven't had to interview in years. Right? So you're giving your, you're getting the monkey off your back. You're no longer intimidated by it. You'll have to bear with me. Like, I haven't had to interview in years. Everything's always come my way.

Well, right. I am surprised. Like, yeah, because this is just like, this is amazing.

Yeah. I mean, that's a big reframe. It's a reframe instead of saying like, I suck because I haven't interviewed. Like, look, I don't want somebody that's good at interviewing. I want somebody that's good at working.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Wow. I don't need a great interviewer who's going to sell me a bunch of shit. I need somebody who's going to be honest and authentic and solve problems with me. And so you can even release that stress as one of the first things, you know, Yeah, I just haven't had an interview in quite some time, so thank you for bearing with me. The other language that's important there is I'm saying thank you rather than I'm sorry.

Sorry.

Yeah. Yeah. So whenever you feel like you need to say I'm sorry, you have to say thank you instead. Thank you for bearing with me or thank you for understanding or, you know, thank you for asking that question. To be honest, I don't have a snappy answer for that yet, and I suspect you're going to want to go deep. So let me ask you a handful of follow-up questions.

"Right?

We can loop back to this at the end of the call or I'll take some notes. I imagine I'm going to need to talk to Tolu and Karen next. Let me put together a real plan for you, I'd say probably by the end of next week as I get some more intel here. I'll put together a plan for you. Are you open to talking next Friday?" So I didn't answer your question, but I said, "I take your question seriously and I'm going to get the information necessary and I'm going to put a plan together for you because I suspect—" I suspect that you're not going to make a strong hire or confident hire unless you see a couple of plans that make sense for your business.

Yeah, you just invented a step in the process that no other candidates thought of, and therefore, like, you've just created a new—

I don't want you to lead the process. I want to lead the process because I can't control— I can't control how good you are at the process. I can't control how busy you are. But what if I can control the process? I can eliminate burden off your shoulders, right? So I'm not saying like, you don't— I don't want you to think about who I need to talk to. I'm going to say, look, I need to talk to the CMO. Yeah, you talk to someone. So I need to talk to Tolu. Yeah, right. I suspect I'm going to need to talk to finance and a couple other things. You know, this is probably what the flow should look like. I'm available at this time and this time. Does that work for you? I've eliminated so much administrative burden from you in just a couple of seconds that I'm more likely to push that process forward. And then I'm never stuck wondering, and I'm sure there's people on this, this listening to this podcast that go like, oh, I keep getting ghosted, or I never heard back, or I'm sending emails like, what's the next step in the process? If you're sending those emails, you're losing. If you're sending thank you emails that are rehashing your, oh, I would be a great fit for this role because of XYZ, and because I did that, you're losing. That's not how you write a thank, thank you email. You don't ask for follow-ups. You only reach out, and I do recommend you reach out and you send thank yous, but you have to provide value in that correspondence or you will lose, or somebody will roll their eyes. 'Cause I guarantee Rich has seen a bunch of bullshit emails where you're like, oh, here's the credentials thing. I already knew this about you. I didn't need to be reminded of that. No, a good thank you email is, Rich, thank you for taking the time. I'm gonna talk to Tolu next and I'll loop back with you with a plan. Chat soon. That's it. Thank you. I'm acknowledging that you took time with me. I'm gonna go to work for you, promise of value in the future. That's it. I don't need to say, well, I think I'm a good fit because I was a CRO once and I grew revenue once and I did the $100 million and all that stuff traps you. Yeah. Sorry, I got fired up.

No, it's amazing. It's this rhetoric, isn't it? It's like, you know, when people come to me, often the first thing they've done, and maybe by the time they come to me to talk about the fact that they're thinking about changing a role, you know, is that they go, yeah, I've already spoken to someone and like I've updated my resume. And I'm like, man, that's like a middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel asset. Why the hell have you done that first? Plus it's a shit way of communicating your value. In the same way, for companies, producing a job advert is a shit way of communicating your value. So, so we know that the gap is often that they're just not having enough of the right conversations. So they go right, maybe even professional resume writer, invest in this rubbish thing and expect that it's going to go and fix it, but it's not. And I'm just wondering if we know that, like you talked about in the very first podcast you did, the KPI isn't applications, it's conversations. Yes. Rather than updating a resume first, if you were thinking about architecting your next move as a revenue leader, for example, I know exactly where we would have I would—

I know, I know who to call, and I would actually probably start— you'd be top of that list, both of you, if I was interested in revenue positions, because you have been advocates for me. And even by me vocalizing that you're advocates, you're more likely to be advocates too, right? So you just got Jacob. Yeah, you got Jacob, I guess. Um, but, uh, you know, I, I found that this is why we created a free LinkedIn profile review that actually takes information off your LinkedIn, not add information, because it actually gives you more flexibility to have a stronger narrative. I've noticed that a lot of executives spin their wheels on resume and LinkedIn rewrites, and there's a lucrative market out there to take advantage of people when they're reeling. That's why I push back on career coaches, because I think a lot of them are charlatans that take advantage of a situation that is dire and emotionally charged. So remember we talked about leaning into things you did in the past? One of the first things we hear is, uh, like going right back to childhood is dress for the job you want, not the one that you have, right? And then the same thing, first thing you do is tweak your resume, then do your LinkedIn. Like we are defaulting to what worked in the past, not what's working now or in the future. And I also found that, and this happens in the business world too, and maybe you've probably seen this with revenue leaders, when you're under an immense amount of pressure, you lean back to what worked before. Yeah, so CRO, so CRO that's in an immense amount of pressure looks back at a framework that worked before, or a playbook, and they try to run that, not seeing the signs of where the future is going. Or they'll look at another company who's done it, but by the time you look at another company— like, companies change their websites every 6 months— so by the time you copy their strategy, you're not just 6 months behind, you're a year behind, and you're really getting your tail kicked in. So we're defaulting. The problem is, like, when we feel when we feel that discomfort, you have to run towards it, not away from it. So the more uncomfortable you are, the more you need to run towards new solutions and learning and growth, not what happened before. So this job search is uncomfortable. I guess my resume is just not good enough. That's the wrong way to do it. What is it that you're avoiding? It's probably calling people. Oh, it's probably telling your story. It's probably getting your pitch to be natural or whatever. Like, that's what you need to do more of, right?

Jacob, thank you so much. I know that we're at time, so we are going to have to do a part 2, I think, for, for this one. But thank you so much for joining us today, and look out for part 2, everyone.