Sell Effectively to Your PCP Through Emotional Connection and Quantifiable Outcomes - Ryan Staley - Revenue Today - Episode # 061

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Sales, marketing, and RevOps. It's sink or swim out there, and yesterday's strategies and tactics won't help you today. This is Revenue Today, and I'm your host, Jared Robin. Join me as we interview revenue leaders in our community to learn what steps we could take right now to help you scale yourself and your company. Revenue Today is sponsored by Rev Genius, and we're on a mission to bring inspiration and creativity to all revenue professionals in the world. Want to shout out our sponsor Demandbase. Demandbase is smarter GTM for B2B brands. They help marketing and sales teams spot the juiciest opportunities earlier and progress them faster by injecting account intelligence into every step of the buyer journey and orchestrating every action. For more information about Demandbase, visit demandbase.com. Hey everybody, really excited about today's guest. This is somebody that I've known, uh, for quite some time, since the early days of Rev Genius. He has 20+ years in sales and sales leadership. He scaled a business group from $0 to $30 million ARR with 4 salespeople in 5 years without any marketing or demand gen. He has a podcast called The Scale Up Show where he's interviewed over 100 SaaS CEOs this year alone, and he's taught his proprietary system that he used to scale from $0 to $30 million to over 800 CROs and VPs of sales. Welcome, uh, to the current founder and CEO of Whale Boss. Hey, Ryan.

What's up, Jared? How's it going, man? Happy to be on the show. It's really weird being on the other side of the mic, but, uh, I'm excited, man. It's been a while since I've, I've, uh, done the other side of it, so happy to be on.

Yeah. And, and you know, this, not only is this cool to interview you after knowing you for a couple of years and, and how you've put all of the successes that, um, you achieved into creating actionable systems for others, I think that's gonna be cooler hearing, you know, your takeaways there. But it's been awesome reconnecting with you.

Yeah, you as well, man. It's, uh, Like, uh, to go back in the Wayback Machine, uh, Jared was, I think, interview number 8 on my podcast when I started. I think it was 8, man. And now I'm at like 228 or 230 by the time this is launched. So, wow, um, interesting. 220 episodes later to reconnect, uh, in this kind of format. I'm gonna have you on my show as well, so it's gonna be lots of fun, man.

Yeah, and we've both been, um, discovering our niche. Me with community, you with, uh, you know, the product that you've launched, and it's gonna be great to dive in now. But with that said, let's dive in. Ryan, debunk a myth about generating revenue today.

Yeah, man, I would say the myth is that SaaS companies know their customers, right? So, which is gonna sound like insane at its core, but like, so I've talked to, like I said, Probably 120+ SaaS CEOs this year, just on my show alone. I've masterminded with another 50. I've consulted multiple SaaS CEOs and CROs. And I see the same pattern that's existing regardless of kind of who I'm talking to. So I'm like, this is why I gotta put this out here, right? And so to break it down like a step further, there's like 3 things that I mean by that. And then the first one, which I think is like, Crazy, right? Because this this allowed us and enabled us to double our deal size every year. This one thing. So if you if you basically stop listening after the next thirty seconds, implement this one thing and it's going to change everything for you. So they don't intimately know who their best buyers are of their of their PCP, which is I call their perfect customer profile. So it'd be basically like if Pareto's principle had a baby with your ICP. And what that means is it's not just best customer, but it's like best customer in terms of like the biggest deal size, the fastest deals to close, and then on top of it, the largest and most profitable deals as well, which is crazy. I'll see companies that are spending, or I should say about anywhere from 20 to 80% of their revenue, 20% of their clients create 80%, sometimes it's 30/70, but there's like a sub, ICP within there that creates amazing insights. We can talk about that later. Number 2 is emotionally, they're working so hard on the product experience as they should, is 'cause they're a tech company, right? However, what I'm seeing is there's an emotional experience that's being ignored, and that's where the juice is. If you look at like how people buy, 50% of decisions are made on emotion, 38% are on logic, and 20% are just based on like scarcity and urgency, right? And then number 3 is the quantifiable outcomes. I was working with one company, they're about $30 million in ARR, not gonna say who they are, but talked to everybody in the organisation and the only person that could identify the quantifiable outcomes that they deliver for their customers was the CEO. And I had to bug the shit out of them to get to that point, right? So it's just telling you like, that's a massive gap. And change that if you actually know that at a financial level, at a speed level, and efficiency level, and could quantify that, you're going to be different versus probably 98% of the market.

Boom. That, you know, you talked about so much there. Like, how can folks implement, one, your perfect ICP, two, you know, understanding the quantification? And then, yeah, man.

So, um, and I like, I've seen this personally too. And, and so, um, here, here's where, here's how, how the evolution of this process happened. So it's, it's come from what I found to be successful for me as an individual, as a revenue leader, and then as a business owner, and then with other companies' businesses. So it's not like I'm just pulling this shit outta thin air, right? And so really, like, if you take a look at it, there's so many solutions out there. And I'm primarily, just so you know, I focus on B2B SaaS, right? Right? That's, that's the— just for context purposes, I have a background in managed services as well. So B2B, large ACV deals, right? A lot of spend. And so if you look at it, like, what happens is, um, a lot of solutions today work across 6, 7, sometimes even 12 different verticals, right? However, if you look at that sweet spot, you'll find that a lot of times that— and I— an example, like, actual example, I was working with a client, $30 million in revenue. They were about 4 clients, I should say 4 verticals comprised of 83% of their revenue. And it was like 87% of their LTV over a 3-year period or lifetime value. And they were focusing on 12 verticals the same, right? So imagine what would happen if you just redirected your team's focus or your enterprise focus Not just from the product, not just with marketing, but the demos, the sales, the conversations, the trade shows, whatever you're involved in through those top 4, what that would do for your business. It's gonna make it explode, right? Because instead it'd be like with Rev Genius, like if Rev Genius was just a community for business people, right? That's okay when it first came out and there was no communities around, but if that was how you're operating now, like you're putting yourself at a massive disadvantage And so like, that's kind of like, I think a good comparison, if that makes sense.

Yeah. And I think, you know, there's something else that I've heard other people do. So yeah, you know how well your product, um, how quickly you can make, you know, move deals and all of that, but also aligning your reps with what they close the best. Right. Isn't that part of it too?

Yeah. Yeah. That's why we look at, and this is a, you know, what's interesting. So I did like going back to it and giving you like tangibles, cuz I'm all about like real world experience, not just like methodologies, right, that are made in a vacuum. And so, like, as a rep, just by doing that, I, I cut off 20 hours a week in wasted time. And instead of being 100% of quota, I was at 130% of quota, right? So did that as a rep. That shows the value at the rep level. At the leadership level, you do that, and it basically enabled my team to double their deal size every year. Because they were just targeting and focusing on the right people. So there wasn't like crappy, crappy opportunities that we were working. It was only the cream of the crop, right? And then the same thing with, with other companies, like the insights are amazing because people are drowning in data, but they're starving for insights right now. And so it really brings that to the surface. And there's multiple levels deeper, like ownership structure, you know, are they PE, VC backed? Are they bootstrapped, right? And then, you know, there's other factors that you go into besides just the vertical. That's the one I wanted to pick on because it's pretty easy for people to identify.

Yeah, I love going the extra level. You know, the P— I mean, because there's different goals, right? Like, you have to hit profitability fast. But then there's also some nuances in real time. What hiring, funding rounds, all of that that you could layer in to really hit that. That's That's spectacular. Now, you know, it seems like $30 million is the, your sweet spot. You gave a couple anecdotes right at that ARR. You've seen it from more than that one example of the CEO being the only person knowing?

Yeah, being able to like identify, and I don't just work with $30 million companies. I mean, like, I have clients that are at the $2 million ARR range. I have clients that are $100 million plus.

Sure.

So it all depends on the problem, but it is B2B SaaS regardless, I guess, is kind of what I would say. So that's like my sub-niche, if you will.

How can people enable their organization to like know about this? Is it just enabling or what are you seeing as the solution?

Yeah, so I think like this needs to happen at a strategic level. So, you know, something highly valuable and that I recommend And it's perfect time of year. We're recording this at the end of the year. Who knows when you're gonna listen to it, right? Or when it's released. But like, if you're looking at, look at the last 12 months of data that you have with your 5 biggest wins, your 5 fastest wins, and your 5 biggest losses, right? And then put it through that lens of like, okay, what's the vertical? What's the revenue size? What's the ownership structure on top of it too? What's the outcome you created? And then, you know, last but not least, and there's, Like I said, there's probably way more variables to go through than what we're talking about, but the actual tangible people you're working with, because like, to your point, you were just asking me, okay, how many people don't understand the outcomes? And I've seen it all up and down the board, even at really big, really big companies, $100 million plus companies, where they're getting deals won because their solution provides value, but they haven't actually like gotten the feedback from the customer on what that tangible value is after the fact. Right? And so that's where I think is like, it's super easy to do. You could do it in like a CS review, like a customer success review or post-implementation, right? But like, you just have to ask the 3rd, 4th, and 5th level questions and then you'll get there.

Yeah. And it's funny too, because theoretically, you know, coming from sales, both of us, you know why somebody bought or you should. You should know why somebody bought. A lot of deals are being closed where you don't, and then comparing that versus the value later is interesting because it could be an aha. Like I bought because I needed a CRM, and I heard, but I realized you know all of this. It's it's super fascinating. And do you do you recommend? Do you see a lot of changes in the value of the product to the customers? year in and year out? Like, what kind of cadence do they need to reassess?

I think, like, it depends on which stage you are and how much, how many deals you have coming through. But, like, even at my stage, I'm below $1 million right now. I still look at it a couple times a year and put it through that lens, right? So it's like, it's like an adaptive market engine to, like, how, how hyper-responsive the market is and where the heat maps are. And so I would say biannually at least if you're getting a lot of deals flowing through. I should say revenue-wise, it depends on how many deals, but if you're above maybe $10 million, you could do it quarterly, right? It's that valuable because if you look at it, you'll truly understand. Like now's the perfect time too, especially with the market completely changing because your ICP at the beginning of this year of 2022, Could be completely different now, your perfect customer profile. Oh yeah, because of the market that's responsive in a down market versus an up market, right? So it could be completely flipped on its head.

What are some of the aha moments like after helping a client? Like, there's some of the obvious ones, but I'm sure that there's some aha like after doing this with some of your clients. I'm curious.

Uh, well, what I would say is like Like people just, it's easier to look at the generalities of everything. Whereas if you look at like what's weird, like, and drive a wedge through that, that could, that could just open up the floodgates of revenue. And so people like, I'll give you an example. Um, one client I'm working with, they're like, yeah, we work really well with tech companies that are, uh, they're VC backed or PE backed. I'm like, okay, that's awesome. Like they were, we work in these verticals. I'm like, okay, that's cool. And I'm like, all right, well, what stage? Like, what stage of VC backing, right? Because a Series A, Series B, Series C, they all operate different, have different priorities at each stage, right? And so, like, just simple things like that where they're not hyper in tune with it. You know, another thing that I've noticed, I've given a lot of thought to over the last week or so is just how different in the markets. I mean, it's blowing this wide open right now, how different VC-backed companies and bootstrap companies operate in the SaaS space. It's like mind-blowing.

Bootstrap companies are like PEs, kind of like you need to be profitable.

It's like all this shit's going on right now. Like you see like TechCrunch, like, oh, the world's falling, like funding's drying up. I mean, we're hiring.

It's basically the best time to hire.

Yeah. I mean, there's people, there's a lot of people that are hiring, but the bootstrap people are just like, all right, that's cool. We'll just make a couple adjustments and we're fine.

Yeah.

Whereas like some of these VC-backed companies, their investors are like, have a gun to their head 'cause they were trying to grow so fast. So they're firing off like 10, 20% of their staff. And I have people that I'm talking to at a confidential level that are like, what's the rest of the market like? Is everything okay? Right? Because they're coming from that VC-backed world where it's like doom and gloom, right? Whereas like bootstrappers are just like, hey, we're still highly profitable. And so it's just been really eye-opening. And like, especially over the last few weeks, Of all the conversations I've had.

I couldn't agree more. I, you know, with the whole aha, like where my head's going is understanding the problem that you're solving probably helps with product direction, right? Like you could be like, I could sell more shit that helps even more if I do this, knowing this.

Oh yeah. No, you're dead on, Jared. And that's it. Like I actually talked to that about one of my clients earlier about, I don't know, $9 million. And one of the things is like, this exercise changed the strategic direction of our company because product now has a better understanding of what to focus on, right? And so, which leads into like better demos, which leads into easier sales conversions. Like it's just like a flywheel of revenue growth.

It's awesome. This is why product and growth are so intertwined is, And everything goes with your central thesis that you're debunking, like understanding who you're selling to will help you sell more, like literally without doing anything outside of alignment, but will help you scale in the direction of your whole company, right? Like that everyone who's listening, isn't that why you're in business today? To And if you say to make money, that's that's kind of snarky. But like that's to to help customers.

Yeah, right. Yeah, and that kind of leads to the next part is it's not just like to help them. Like I don't think that's good enough. And maybe it's like because I came from a background where like our products sucked and our support sucked, so we had to be really emotionally connected to the customer. Like yeah, I know your background and you're you're smiling and nodding. If if if you're not watching this live, so I know Jared went through this too.

We I remember us hiring DHL reps who Literally had the worst product in the space. Same thing.

Yeah, and so so that's the other thing I would say, Matt. Like the interesting thing is now that I'm a CEO, I've I have acquired and paid for a lot of different SaaS products, right? And like nine and a half times out of ten, even for the more expensive ones, the onboarding, the experience. Of like the human-to-human experience, it sucks. It's terrible. Like, it's just like, hey, we make a good product, throw it at you and you're good to go, right? And then we'll talk to you later, right? Like, it's insane. Now granted, I'm not spending $1 million a year on SaaS, right? So I'm sure there's gonna be a different level of experience, but there's just like core components that you could do that are super simple, even if your solution's like, Whatever, like $50 a month or $99 a month, right?

Yeah. So if your solutions are $1,000 plus a month, like, come on, step up.

Yeah, exactly. And it's, it's not hard. Like, automations make it easy. Like, a simple example, and this is, this, I've seen this applied in different cases and, and, and I'm building this out for anything that I'm talking about. I'm, I'm either building out or I've built out for my business, right? So like, I'll give you an example. Like, One of the things that I do whenever I have a podcast guest on, and I've found a way to automate this, is send them a thank you with a gift. Like, it could be— doesn't need to be expensive, but just thank you, you know, appreciate you being on the show. Here's a gift. And it's a book, right? Like, this book meant a lot to me. It changed my perspective and I wanted to share it with you. And people love it, man. And it's like, you know, $15 or $20 or whatever, right? Like just saying thank you. Like even if you onboard someone, it could be an automated letter email from the CEO with a video just saying like, really appreciate you being part of our family or part of our company. We appreciate you as a customer. Thank you. You know, let me know if there's anything you need, you know, kind of one of those things, right?

So I, I, I agree with you, but going back to your original point, knowing the problems you solve, like I think this intertwines with success. Success is cliché, putting it in a title without doing it. But if you take apart what success means, you're buying this product, spending $50 a month or $5,000 a month or more to have success with it, to fix a problem that you had or a bottleneck that was holding you back from achieving something. And if that experience from go doesn't help you get on your damn way as fast as effing possible towards that to hit value, you're going to churn and you're not going to be there. And that's a whole other conversation. But knowing the problem you solve, going back to your point, confirming if that's the problem everybody's having, right? So maybe 70 or 80% that is, maybe 20 or 30 to the numbers aren't. Cool. And just doubling down on that will help your whole experience throughout. And then, by the way, we're launching this other product. I get it. We take you to the 1-yard line, which is 99 yards past where the last person took you. Understood. But this new product will take you right in. Here you go. Because you understand exactly what it is, or take you into the next level, I should say. But going back, just like Like, what are they today?

Yeah. So we're talking about like the quantifiable outcomes. Is that what we're going down that route?

Yeah, exactly.

So yeah, so what I would say is like, if you look at it, like, let's just, let's talk to the financial one because that's, that's super simple. And I think the larger the deal size, the more critical that is because people need that tangible, tangible, tangible metric of like, okay, I'm getting paid this much. Logical proof when you have 11, 15, 20 people looking at something, right? And they're not emotionally invested like some others. So what— where I think it breaks down is most of the time they're not at the highest level or they're not at the executive level because it's really hard to get to an executive level of a $10 billion, $15 billion company and be in the C-suite. It's freaking tough, man. Even like, even if you're selling like a million-dollar deal Right, like so what I would say is a lot of times there are a couple levels below that, and the people that they're working with—let's say it's a director level—doesn't really have the the accountability that the executive has where they need to quantify it, right? That might be one example, but like how to do it—I'll give you a real quick example. So let's say let's talk about HR tech because that's pretty interesting. It's been hot. Because of all the hiring and the reallocation now, people are looking at talent management. Used to be talent acquisition, now it's talent management, better managing what you have, right? Let's say it's an HR platform. So we're looking to try and identify like what's a quantifiable outcome. A lot of times people would be like, well, my solution doesn't have a quantifiable outcome, right? And I'm like, if you're at more than $1 million in ARR, $2 million in ARR, your solution has a quantifiable outcome, otherwise you wouldn't be in business. Right? You just don't know it yet, and it revolves around either increasing revenue, decreasing costs, increasing productivity, or offloading people's time. Like those are really the core elements, and then probably the fourth is just speed to outcome, right? So an example with the HR tech solution is they're like, well, it just helps people hire faster. And I'm like, okay, that's cool. I'm like, well. What did you use to hire before? Oh, we used a slew of recruiters. Okay, well, how much did that cost you? Well, it was $30,000 per recruiter. I'm like, okay, times how many hires? Times 5,000 hires. Okay, $30,000 times 5,000, right? And I'm making up some of these numbers, but you get the core concept, right? That's a really big number, right? Whereas the tech solution just there alone was maybe 30% of the cost versus all that manual work. Not to mention that the time to get the job filled went from like 3 weeks to 3 days, not 3 days, maybe a week, right? So it was a 300% improvement. And at the same time, the quality of the candidate was significantly better. And, you know, basically turnover was dropped 15%, right? Those are all ways to quantify an outcome of something simple that most people don't think in a quantifiable manner.

Yeah, you know, I always had, you know, one of my sticking points was turning time into money. Because you had to take some liberties with that. Um, you'd be like, hey, if this— any suggestions in regards to doing that part?

Yeah, I think, um, so

like you say, if you look at hours and all of this and it's like, yeah, but I multitask or whatever, like it always felt like the numbers you put up were probably more than you actually saved.

Well, yeah, and there's an art to it. But but what I would say is its core element: if you just throw shit up there and say this is our calculator, this is how you do it, then it's not gonna work, right? If you have the customer co-author it with you, and you have blank checkboxes, and you ask them the question, they tell you the number, and they see it in front of their eyes, then it becomes much more real, right? So, and then you know there'll be times where you could just tell. By the look on their face, like, well, yeah, you know, and they're like, okay, well, why don't we take that out, right? If if you don't believe it's real, we'll put it as a soft cost, right? But it's still value there, right? It's a quantifiable value. Would you agree with that? Yes, right. So there's ways sometimes you're gonna move it around. But what I would say is time is a factor. Like, is there a certain situation and we could break it down, man, like that you had in mind?

No, but you know, it was always like I saved this many hours of. Labor from like a rep, like, uh, we're, we're a quicker tool to enter notes in Salesforce. We, we could all, we all have one in mind, right? Like we all have our own that we use. Saves X number of hours of rep's time a week, right? Mm-hmm. How is that quantified? Right? Because, yeah.

Well, I mean, you can quantify that by, um, the baseline of time that they spend now.

Yep.

Versus how many meetings a week they have versus the time saved, right? You just turn it into a math equation and like, that's kind of going down more of the route of like a vitamin versus a painkiller though. You know what I mean? Like,

right.

Um,

because I'm gonna, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say if admin time at the end of the day, which is outside my calling hours, Already, like, how, how does it still say, like, I have all this on autopilot. It was just making me work an extra hour. And from the company standpoint, I don't care because they're still just as productive from the— so that, that's, that's the devil's advocacy.

Yeah. I mean, that's one way. I mean, you could always do it a little bit different angle.

Yeah.

Um, to get into what's in it for me for the executive team is just like, instead of having a blank CRM, you're gonna actually have usable data in there that's gonna drive value For outcomes and results. Like, maybe take that approach.

I think that is spectacular. And I'm seeing like that approach not taken enough in that space, like saving the time versus having data that you could demand gen much better on and increase your numbers. I'm shocked, right? Like, that's, that's crazy. Now, um, and, and that was a great example. And, and thank you for that. You know, challenges, Ryan? Like, what's keeping you up at night right now? Is, is it the market?

No, not really. I mean, like, I don't— I've been through, like, I don't know, I've been through a lot of downturns. So like, it's a good chance to kind of reset and relook at like what you're doing, like interrogate your ICP.

Yep.

Um, I think that's a good— it's a good time to like reset and relook. But like, for me, I think this is personally, right? I'm a I have a lot of contractors I work with right now. I'm a solopreneur technically. Actually, it's not true. I have someone on my team, but very small, right? And so for me, my biggest challenge at this stage is like I'm trying to do marketing, sales, rev ops, operations, finance. Be a dad, have a life. And so all those things is like for me is really say no to the right things and be exclusively focused on what I need to focus on now. Not not really like what's going to help me scale that I need to focus on twelve months from now. And I think that that's one of the biggest mistakes I made is I was like oh well how is this shit gonna scale? I'm like, dude, you got to take care of what's in front of you first, right? Like, that's— that was one of the biggest mistakes I made early on was that, um, I, I think I was trying to do 15 different things. I went a mile wide and an inch deep versus, um, you know, a mile deep and an inch wide, right?

Now, others that are dealing with this right now, right, because we, we're in the midst— we've only— we put a label to solopreneurship. It's been here for since the beginning of our time, but But what suggestions would you give them, people that are in your position?

Yeah, so I think like, here's what I would say. It was so funny, and I remember this like when I was looking at like my marketing strategy, and I'm like, I'm just gonna put all this on the board. Like, first of all, put everything, write everything out, not type it out, write it out or draw it out on a board. I had like, and I'm exaggerating here, but I had like 15 different things on there. That I was trying to do, right? Wait, was it 5-0

or 1-5?

1-5, but like, it's still a lot of shit for a piece of one person to do, right? So I broke it down like, so it was so ridiculously simple from an execution perspective. Like, do this equal like A plus B equals C, repeat, right? Optimize. So what I would say is like, you know, break it down to hyper simple on like where you need to go from A to B versus like A to D. And so, and I'll give you another example. I see it with founders all the time. They're worried about how they're gonna scale where they haven't even hired one rep to do the selling for them in conjunction with them and prove that it works beyond themselves. And they're, instead of they're trying to hire a team of people where they haven't taken that intermediary step, if that makes sense.

Yeah. How do you figure out what to prioritize though? Right? Like this is the age-old question. I hear it. I'm all in on your suggestion. What first?

Well, here's what I would say, man. Um, and I want to just say it depends because that answer kind of sucks, right? So I would say—

That's true. It could depend.

But it does depend. So I would say it matters on like, do you need money? Do you need money in the door right away? Or do you have reserves built up that you could play a little bit more of a long game, right? So like, for example, and I'll tell you this, man, I haven't talked to anybody about this. So this is like a world premiere on the Revenue Today Show. When I first started, like, I was so worried about— and like, here's the thing, man, like, I don't live paycheck to paycheck. Grew up in the Midwest, conservative upbringing with a, you know, a teacher and a policeman as parents, like lower middle income, right? So however, I was always taught to be, you know, safe, like play it safe, right? Which is why it took me so damn long to start my own company, which I totally regret. That's a whole different side story. Anyways, so what I would say is initially, I was so worried about having that continuing income come in month in and month out. I was building my business around short-term decisions. I wasn't looking at it from a vision perspective of like, okay, even if I don't make any money over the next 3 months, but it builds me better for year 2, 3, and 4. Then that's the way I was like, okay, I got to make this much money. I got to go this fast, right? And so what it did is it had me massively tilt my focus and perspective on sales and marketing and not as much on the customer experience and the product, right? Which is what I'm talking about now. Now that I made that shift, it's it's more balanced, and I'm willing to sacrifice some short-term revenue because I know it's going to create an exponential gain on the back end. And so. That's one of the things that I think is really, really critical and important not to get too— and I'm a high D, I'm a type A, so I wanna make shit happen, I wanna make it happen fast, right? Not to be your own worst enemy within that and realise and enjoy the progress and the build along the way versus just trying to get the destination as fast as you can, right?

I empathise with that. You know, it's funny because building Rev Genius, I needed the money fast. But it was also there was this negatively serendipitous moment in the sense that things were so bad. Like if I ever took a gamble for not, you know, having money in fast, it was like that time, right? Like things were so bad. And I said, you know, there were some obvious business models that I eventually pursued, but I didn't know what I had, right? Like, and I'm like, if I put a business model in, I will know what I, you know, tell the market what I have. And so we held off, ended up putting in the same model I was thinking about, but it was super interesting. Going that extra time, enlightening. And the nuances once you put it in are crazy. But like, I empathize with you.

Yeah, I mean, it's— and here's the thing. And I've learned this too, just from talking. I told you all the people that I've talked to and have been involved in, like, here's the thing, like, Nobody has all the shit figured out from day one, right? No matter like all the cool LinkedIn posts of like, I went from— and you know, I know mine sounds like that too— like, I went from $0 to $30 million in 5 and a half years, right? But like, most people are like, you know, this company went from $0 to $100 million in 5 years, and it's like, why aren't I doing that shit, right? But then you find out they, they built something for 9 years prior that didn't work, but they just didn't really mention that in the clippings, right? You know, so there's a lot of stuff like that too where we're conditioned with like Fast results, big big dollars, big money, big results, and you get kind of conditioned, especially with all the funding announcements on like TechCrunch, that that's the way that your business should be, even though that's not the reality of 99% of businesses that make it. Not even 99% of businesses a whole. 99% of businesses that make it do not do that. 99.5% of businesses that make it don't do that. You know,

hurry up and wait.

Yeah, exactly.

Oh my gosh, truer words, uh, have never been said. But Ryan, what excites you about the future?

Yeah, so, um, there's a lot of things, man. Like, I'm happy about who I'm becoming as a part of this process. I'm happy about, like, the progress that my kids and my family are making just in their different parts of their life. So I would say, like, that's cool. Um, like, At its core, like that means a lot to me, right? At the same time, when it comes to the business world, like so funny. I mean, I sat in before before I started my own company. I sat in boardrooms with some of the smartest people I think in the world, right? And had exposure to a lot and was able to accomplish a lot along the way. However, like the level of growth that I've had over the last. 2 years of doing this in like one of the weirdest times in history of man, um, just like gives me the wide foundation that I need to build something amazing that's going to impact people at, at scale. And I'm like super excited about that because I think I could link the outcomes for their business with like the emotional kind of care that I talked about. And I think it's, it's going to be a game changer and could positively affect a lot of people's lives. So, I'm really excited about that.

You're doing it for all the right reasons, my friend, and it's awesome watching you. And so, we spent up until now learning from you, and you had some awesome insights. I want to take the rest of the time to learn about you. All right, Ryan, who are you? Yeah.

It's a loaded question. I mean, it's a good question that if I went back in a time machine, single Ryan back in his 18, 19-year-olds, that's a good question to ask a member of the opposite sex or whoever you're pursuing at the time, depending on your preference, right? So I guess for me, man, I would say if you look at it, I've been really blessed with— I've grown up in a stable environment. I wouldn't say it was easy the way I grew up. I mean, my parents love me, my family loved me. I always had that like foundation. And so there's like, that's priceless, right? However, you know, like, you know this, man, there's tons of ups and downs along the way. You know, I got turned down to sales and like revenue because of my desire to get compensated for the results I delivered, right? And that took me through a wild journey And there's some really cool things that I've done and amazing people that I've met. But here's what I would say, like looking back, 'cause I think about this a lot, right? Like, am I becoming the person that I wanna be? Am I becoming the next best version of myself? And so like, that's really linked to a couple core things is like, am I like basically like a good dad, a good husband, a great dad, a great husband, right? Am I making an impact on the people that, that I love on their lives in a positive fashion? So when I'm gone, they remember me. And then at the same time in the business world, am I creating something that does the same thing for those that I serve? Right. And so like, I mean, dude, like we've— I think when I first started my company, what pushed the baby bird out of the nest is like I got fired right at the peak of COVID Like uncertainty two weeks into it because of the fact that I started working on my own thing and the CEO didn't like it, even though I told him about it. I guess he had amnesia, drank a lot. You know, maybe that was the reason. I don't know. But but long story short, like I mean like that was really hard for me at the time because I remember like looking at my bank account, looking at my investments, everything dropped forty percent a couple weeks. I had a talk with my parents and they're like, do you need help? And they gave me a check for money that I put up in our coffee cabinet. And so every day when I got coffee, I looked at it and I never had to use that check because I found a way to make it work. Right. And so I think like, I mean, there's been other times in my career where I've gotten fired or shit hasn't worked out and it sucks at the time, but some of those are the most like life-changing events. So I think like, To answer your question, in summary, I wanna make a positive impact on the world. I wanna make money along the way so I could continue to expand that in other ways. But more importantly than everything, I wanna enjoy the feelings I have on a day-to-day basis and make and be a really big part of my family's life and my kids' life. So I think that's pretty much it, man.

Damn, that's powerful. Having the check still in there. I remember going through mental health stuff. I had a prescription to anti-anxiety medicine that I got filled, and it was the first time in my life that I'd done that or needed that. And I put it in my medicine cabinet and it was like, okay, this is a wake-up call that I have to go inward.

That's great.

And the journey that happened, and I'm like, Well, I cried every night, like, and all of that. And, uh, but having that symbol, whether it's a check from the parent— and, and I got money from my dad once, and I did take it. Um, you know, we all, you know, and, and had I needed the medicine, I would have taken it. Um, you know, I, I don't want to say that, you know, turning that away is, uh, it is the good thing. Like, everybody's at a different spot, but it's cool to have that motivation Ryan, how can everybody get in touch with you and find you on the World Wide Web to understand and reach out?

Yeah, so 2 super simple ways. Check out the Scale Up Show, my podcast. Like, I interview SaaS founders and they share their biggest challenges, opportunities for growing companies, everything they learned, their journeys, right? So that's one. And then so listen, check that out. And then 2 is, you know, connect to me on LinkedIn, mention that you heard me on the show with Jared and you just send me a connection request. Like I'm redoing my website right now, but I think that's probably the best version to reach me on those 2 mediums.

Yeah. And you're gonna hear me on Ryan's podcast soon as well. And this has been awesome. Thank you again. Ryan, for joining us today.

Yeah, man, it's been a lot of fun. It's awesome reconnecting. Excited to do the same thing with you, flip it around. But it's been a lot of fun, man. And I'm excited about what you're building and the direction you're taking things.

Thanks so much, man. And to everyone listening, thank you for listening to Revenue Today. This is another awesome episode. We're here with Ryan Staley, and we'll catch you next week. Whoa, another great episode of Revenue Today. For show notes, links, and mentions, visit revenuetoday. For all my friends in the Rev Genius community, thank you. It's been awesome to spend this time with you. Please DM me any feedback and ideas in our Slack channel or on LinkedIn. If you're not in Rev Genius, join us at revgenius.com. It's free and it only takes like 2 seconds, and you'll be joining a group of 27,000 revenue professionals strong. We've got it all. Looking forward to I'll be seeing you there. Catch you on the flip side.

Thank you.