Protect Yourself From the Unexpected, Even in Tech with Sahil Mansuri

Every company has breakdowns in their revenue process. Sure thing. Deals slip into next quarter, competitors creep in and swipe deals away at the last minute, and deals getting single threaded that don't get to power. These are just a few examples of revenue leak, but there are a ton more and they're preventing your team from reaching their sales targets. That's why I'm such a big fan of Clary's Revenue platform is the only tool that actually helps leaders take control of their revenue and thrive through any market conditions, especially when things get tough. You can't afford to miss a single detail, but you also can't be leading by gut. Clary combines the science and the art of sales and sales leadership. So go to clary.com if you want to answer the most important question in your business. Are you going to meet, beat or Miss on revenue? Welcome to the live Better Sell Better podcast with your host Kevin Dorsey of Inside Sales Excellence, the number one Patreon group and YouTube channel for tech sellers and tech sales leaders, where we dive in deep for tactical advice on how to book more meetings, close more deals faster, and lead sales teams to success. But we don't stop there. We also focus on the person in salesperson. We talk about mindset goals, time management, and so much more. So thank you for listening and if you're interested, head on over to patreon.com InsideSalesExcellence now with that, grab a notepad, get ready, and let's dive into the good stuff. What up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the live Better Sell Better podcast. This is your host Kevin Dorsey, AKA kd. And to quote one of my favorite songs by Marvin Gaye, what is going on? What is going on right now? If you look at the tech and SaaS software space just 90 days ago, we're flying high. Everyone's hiring, comps are two times higher than they've ever been before. And then seemingly overnight, everything's changed. We're seeing layoffs, we're seeing hiring freezes, we're seeing offers being rescinded. And it's really catching a lot of people off guard. And that is why I'm so excited to have Sahil Mansouri with me today, the CEO of Bravado, who one mission is to change this to support salespeople, but but also to give us insight on what's happening. Why do companies make decisions like this? What causes it? What are the macro and micro things occurring and then more importantly, what to do about it? Because this can also be an opportunity to rise up through the ashes In a better position you were before. Sahil, my man, welcome to the show. I'm pumped for this today, man.

Yeah, thanks for having me, man. Good to chat. Been a while.

It's been a minute. We need to fix that anyway. But let's bring it back to this point here. As we were talking off, you know, off recording a little bit on, like, what to talk about what is going on, man? Like, what's happening out there right now that seems to be triggering all of these layoffs and all the freezes.

Yeah, I mean, look, so I think it was March 14th. So I guess this was three months and six days ago. I posted on LinkedIn that I thought there were going to be mass layoffs in sales and that we were going to see tech companies lay off anywhere from 20 to 40% of their workers. And when I posted that, I got a ton of people responding back really, really pissed and annoyed. Like, not just annoyed or in like the oh, Sahel, you're really dumb sort of way, but annoyed in like, you know, how dare you? Like, you know, the world is great. Like, do you not know what's going on? Like, my company is hiring like crazy. Like, we just broke all time records. My company just raised 150 million on a $5 billion valuation. Like, like, you're an idiot. You know, like, you don't know what it's not. It's not just that you don't know what you're talking about. It's that it's like laughable how, how stupid this comment and this post is. And I got flamed on LinkedIn. I got DMs, I got on bravado. Like, I saw it everywhere. And I'll tell you, that was the moment that I knew that we were fucked. That was the moment that I knew that we were screwed. Because I was like, oh, no, no, no. It's not just that people don't know what's going on. It's that even when they see obvious signs of what's going on, they're going to ignore them because they're scared to face the reality of what's about to come. And now you fast forward literally 95 days from that post and you see companies shutting down left and right. You see hiring freezes across basically every tech company. I don't know, you know, across thousands of tech companies. I would be willing to bet that over 90% are no longer hiring for sales or really any position. Today you mentioned offers being publicly rescinded. You know, folks who had offers that some of the Best companies in the world. The apples, the Amazons, the Netflixes, the coinbases of the world come crashing down. Crypto is crashing left and right like we're seeing lows that we haven't even seen in 2018 come out into the crypto space. And yeah, budget cuts everywhere. Budget cuts everywhere. And whether that's layoffs with people or with software and purchases, inflation is higher than it's been in 40 years. And unfortunately it was all too predictable. It was not surprising in any way, shape or form to people who were in the boardroom having conversations with VCs who had, you know, maybe studied history once or twice and maybe had the advantage of understanding how quickly economic tides can shift. And so I guess I'll answer your question directly of like what's going on? But before that I want to start by saying I think it's caught a lot of people off guard. I think you're right. I think there is a lot of sales leaders that I've spoken to who have said, who told me literally three months ago that they were trying to hire 20 reps a quarter for the next three quarters, who just came back to me today and told me they laid off 20% of their sales team and that they're no longer hiring anybody for the rest of the year. I have sales reps who got a new job in April, brand new job, where they jumped from 1:1 increase in comp to an even better increase in comp, who just got laid off less than 60 days in their new role. We have reps who were breaking all time records and who couldn't stop selling their software. Basically sitting around, nobody answering calls, nobody signing contracts, pipeline drying up, et cetera. So yeah, the world has shifted really quickly in the last 90 days, there's no doubt about that, Katie. And I think I want to spend a little bit of time going into the why, like both why I knew this was going to happen and not just me, but many others, just to be clear. And then at the same time why salespeople and sales leaders didn't know it was going to happen. I think that's a really important point is like why didn't sales reps see this coming? Why didn't sales leaders see this coming? And then the last piece being alright, so now that this is here, what can we do about it in order to come out better on the other side?

And that's where I wanted to take it next.

Right?

It's like what were some of those signals? Like what were some of the things something I believe truly separates some of the best leaders from everyone else is pattern recognition. You know, to pick up on patterns and like, especially the ones that no one seems to be paying attention to. But like, I love books like super forecasting and all these different things around prediction. Like, what were some of the signals that kind of like started to ring the bell a little bit to you a lot earlier than most? What were you picking up on? Because this will then also lead people of like what they should have been looking for, salespeople and sales leaders included. Like, what were some of those early signals?

Yeah, well, so I think the first thing is as a salesperson, your job is to be an optimist. Like salespeople, you know, you 99% of deals you work on are not going to close. So by odds, every deal you work on is not going to close. Yet you have to believe every deal you work on is going to close. Every call is going to convert, every email is going to get a response, every demo is going to go well, even though you know by stats that that's not true. So as salespeople, we learn to delude ourselves a little bit. And that is a necessary component to being a great salesperson. You've got to be able to shut the noise out and focus on the task at hand. But great salespeople, as you well know, Katie, are also really good at being skeptical of themselves. Right. They also, like, while they can be really optimistic in front of the customer, when the phone, when the phone is put down and then they recap the conversation, they're like, well, what are all the reasons a person won't buy? And you know that most salespeople don't do that, right? Most salespeople don't spend the time thinking why won't they buy? They'll spend all their time convincing themselves and their manager that the person is going to buy. And I think you see the same thing happen in the economy with sales leaders and salespeople where you know, there's some really obvious signs. If you actually, you know, took a moment to pause. But let's just go through the most obvious one, which is the stock market. So if you were looking at high growth tech, high growth tech stocks, which the way the economy works just for everyone, very like economics 101, if you work at a startup, if you work at a seed or a series a company, you get a valuation. So when every time you raise money, let's say at bravado, we've talked publicly about our fundraising history, so I'll Just use us as a example when we go went to go raise our Series A. People are like, okay, well this is in 2019. Okay, well what companies have looked like Bravado previously that have gone on to be really successful and how much of those companies been born? So people are like, okay, well LinkedIn. LinkedIn got sold for $26 billion. It had this many users. So you know, their average revenue per user was X. You know, Bravado is targeting salespeople. It's got this many potential users. If they get those users, the average revenue per user would be Y. And so they'll do some math and they'll say, okay, well if LinkedIn was worth $26 billion, and then Bravado might be worth $10 billion or something like that, right? They basically compare you to public market companies. And so the more successful that public market companies are, the more interest there is in funding startups. Because the comp works out really well where you can say, okay, well you know, if Twilio is at 50x revenue or Snowflake is trading at 100x revenue, then maybe Snowflake only does $10 million a year in revenue, but it's trading at $10 billion in valuation. Then this tiny little company which only does a million dollars in revenue, you might be able to value at a billion dollars in revenue, right? Because you use the same revenue multiple that you're using for the publicly traded company. But then what happens when Snowflake, you know, still doing 10 million a year in revenue, instead of doing 10 billion in revenue being worth $10 billion now, it's only worth a billion dollars because that's what happened in the stock market. In the stock market, high growth tech company revenue multiple came crashing down. And this was happening in December, January, February, well before layoffs, well before anything was happening in our world, before offers rescinded, et cetera. You saw revenue multiples coming down. When revenue multiples start coming down, what that means is that the company that you know for, if you're making 100 million in revenue and you're getting valued at $10 billion, but now you're making 100 million in revenue AND you're only being valued at a billion dollars, that 10x drop in valuation trickles down. It just takes time. It doesn't happen overnight. It's not like, oh, it happens. And then like immediately you reprice all of the startups. That's not how it goes down. But over time, as the public market comps come down, you start to have to, you know, mark down all of your investments on the private side, it was just a three to six month lag. And this was the thing that was very obvious. So as you're seeing the Twilios and the snowflakes and the squares of the world start to dip in their price and you start to see that the public market is saying, no, these valuations are out of control. Like, we are not going to pay this much for this asset. The asset is worth 60% less, 70% less, 80% less than what it was worth worth. I knew it was only a matter of time before it hit the startup world. It was only going to take a few months, which is why back in March I was like, okay, we're going to, we're going to have layoffs. And the reason you have layoffs, which I think is also really important to know, is that, okay, so you're, you know, let's say you raised your Little startup raised $50 million at a $500 million valuation. Let's just say that that's true. Why does your company do layoffs two months later or three months later? You still have the $50 million. Not like the money's gone, right? So the wire companies doing layoffs right away, like hiring people three months ago. No, you're not. The reason for that is because. Let's do some math really quickly. Let's say that you raised $50 million at a 500 million dollar valuation. That's the type of round that was happening six months ago. So six months ago, if you were raising 50 million for a series B, odds were really good that you raised in a 500 million dollar valuation. People were valuing, people were basically selling 10% of their company in order to get these types of, these types of rounds done. So your company's worth $500 million. How much revenue is that company doing to be worth $500 million? Well, in many cases, this was the thing that was scary. In many cases, these companies were doing between, let's say 3 to 5 million in revenue. So they were getting 100x markups on their revenue. Let's just say 5. Let's just do easy math. Let's just say 5 million. Your company has 5 million in revenue and it gets a $500 million valuation. Okay, cool. So it's worth 100x. Now all of a sudden investors decide your company's not worth 500 million, it's only worth 50 million. Right. That same 10x markup that I was talking about. Here's how this works. If you want to raise again at 500 million, which is what you just raised at three months ago. If you want to raise again at 500 billion, you're going to now need to do $50 million in revenue. And your company, look around left and right, sales rep, sales leaders, your company ain't going from 5 million to 50 million in revenue anytime soon. It's not happening. It's not happening next year, not happening the year after that. I bet it's not even happening the year after that. And so now you all of a sudden just got told you're never going to raise again. You just got told until you hit 50 billion in revenue, you will never get to fundraise again. And every sales leader, every cfo, every CEO just sat in the room and went, okay, so we just did 5 billion this year. We'll do 50 million in five years. But we only have three years worth of money left. How are we going to make up the two years? That's why there's layoffs, that's why there's budget freezes. That's why companies start rescinding offers. It's because they can't get to 50 million with the amount of money that they have in the bank. Right? You're basically asking someone to take $50 million in VC money and turn it into $50 million in revenue, where before you were asked to take $50 million in VC Money and turn it into $5 million in revenue revenue. And so you can't spend on Google, you can't spend on Facebook. You have to increase, you have to increase your retention, you have to lower your turn. You have to be more efficient on your sale. Like, everything that you need to do in order to, like, get that math to work, you got to work on. And companies cannot do it. And because they cannot do it and they know they cannot do it, they have to cut and they have to cut and cut and cut and cut so that they have enough time to one day get to 50 million in revenue without additional funding. That's the reason why you're seeing layoffs and cuts today. And this was obvious. This was obvious to anybody who was a CEO, a cfo, a publicly traded company, but nobody talks about it. The difference between me and many other CEOs is that I'm willing to share what's actually happening. A lot of people go on LinkedIn and post bullshit. I don't. And sometimes that comes with negative feedback. Sometimes that comes with being the, you know, the asshole who's telling everyone that the good times are over and that I'm being a big rain cloud on everyone's parade. And. But the reality is, if your company raised a really big round of funding, if you, in the last 12 months, 12 to 18 months, if your company raised between 50 and 100 million, 100 and 150 million, $200 million, which a lot of your companies did, you are screwed right now. You are completely screwed because you will not touch the revenue multiple that you need in order to live up to that valuation for years and years and years. The only hope you have is to cut and cut and cut so that you have enough time to get there. And that's why your companies are cutting. That's why offers are being rescinded, and that's where you're seeing the panic in the market that you're seeing today.

And it's. I love how you're breaking this down for people, because these are things to look at and to pay attention to and not be in our bubble, right? Like the. Everyone knows the analogy, right? Of like, you know, if you throw a frog into hot water, it jumps out or, you know, you heat it up around and it stays, which I've actually disproven. But everyone understands the story. But that's how I always think about sales. The water is heating up around us in so many places, but we just sit in it and we're not willing to admit that maybe something's changing or maybe we need to change or the market needs to change right around these things because otherwise it just keeps happening, right? So if you go to the next level of this of like, okay, well, now what then? Okay, so because there's two parts of this. There's either one, you're at a company just went through this and like, you are still there. But does that mean what's happened to my equity now? If I have equity, where does that go?

We don't have equity anymore, right? I mean, your equity is worthless. So again, let's, let's use the same math. So let's say you just took a new job as a VP of sales or as a sales rep at a company in the last 12 to 18 months, you got your equity off of the last valuation. So again, let's say the last valuation of your company is 50 on 500 million. You got, you know, of that. In that 500 million, you were given some percentage of that company. If you're likely a very small percentage. If you're a leader, maybe like a little bit more, but probably still not a ton, because salespeople get screwed when it comes to equity, all the time, regardless. So. But now your company isn't worth 500 million. It's only worth 50 million. So your equity just became worthless. It's not even that it's like worth nine. It's thought that it's worth 90% less. It's. It's literally worth zero. And it will be worth zero until your company's worth 500 million again, at which point it will be worth flat. It'll be worth nothing. Right. For it to be worth something at the value, you got to ask me. 500 million. Well, 95% of companies are never going to get to 500 million again. Most companies are just going to die or get aqua hired or have to make massive cuts so that you won't be there. So not for 95% of people who are working at a company, your equity is worthless and it will never be worth anything at the company you're at. Which is why many companies are issuing additional equity grants to their companies, right? Like, so their employees. You're seeing this happen really proactively and it's going to happen reactively. In other cases, they're going to give you more equity at today's prices in order to make sure that you have some equity that could potentially be worth something. I'll promise you that. A lot of companies won't do this because they know that their reps and their leaders don't know it. So that's why I'm telling you. I'm telling you your equity is worthless. Not to be a dick. I'm telling you your equity is worthless because you need to go talk to your CEO and your CFO and say, I know my equity is worth nothing today. I know that we're not going to touch this valuation for years. And so I'm basically working for nothing right now. I'm just working for my salary. My equity is literally worthless right now. So I need equity at today's valuation if you want me to stay. That's the sort of conversation you should be having now. You might be thinking, well, whoa, you know, the economy is really bad and, like, you know, we're in trouble. And so, like, I don't want to roc the boat, right? I don't want to be the person who's demanding things at a time at which things are not going well. Good call. I think that's a really smart piece of feedback. If you're not doing well at your world, if you're not hitting quota, if you're not performing well, if you know that you're kind of on the fence. No, I wouldn't go out and make this request today. But if you're doing well, if you're one of the top 10, 20% at your company, which hopefully many of you who are listening to this are, because the people who tend to do well are the types of people that listen to podcasts like this. If you're one of those people, then guess what? Go ask for it right now. Because the last thing your company wants to do is lose you too, right? They're in trouble. Every company is in trouble right now. Nobody wants to lose their best talent. And CEOs and CFOs will overpay today to keep you, if you're educated, informed of what's happening in the market. So my purpose in telling you this is not to be a dick or to scare you or to be negative. It's to give you the information and power that you need in order to set yourselves up for success. Because as I said before, salespeople and sales leaders get screwed all the time during stuff like this. It wasn't your fault that your CEO raised at a hundred times revenue. Wasn't your fault that your company decided to take on all of this ridiculous funding without having their CAC and their growth economics and their ARPU and their retention and their, and all of their stat and their channels all optimized to be able to support this growth. That was not your fault, but your company decided to do it and now you're here. This is your opportunity to take care of yourself because ain't no one else going to take care of you.

No. And like, I love the way you're breaking this down for people, man, because I've spoken with quite a few VPs too, where, like, I've asked them that question, like, do you even know what your last raise was at? Like, do you know? And there's like, oh, no. Okay, so, my man, if you don't know what your last raise was at, you don't know. Like, everyone treats these raises like that's a win. Like it's a finish line. Like, everyone seems to forget that if someone gives you a hundred million dollars, how much do they want back to you?

Yeah, well, if they give you $100 million, they're expecting a billion dollars back.

They want TEDx billion dollars back. And you got to run that math of like, well, if they gave us a hundred at 10 million, we gotta.

Get to a billion in revenue to.

Like, or 100 million in revenue to get there. And people don't put all those things together. And it's just, it's just crazy to me, like how we get to this situation every single time of just throwing money into it. Now let's flip it to the other side though. So say I'm a rep that's been impacted. I did, I lost my job. I was at a company, right? Lost my job, got chopped. What can I be doing in two places, right? Like one, what should I be looking at for another company because that's important so I don't make the same mistake? Then two, what could I be doing personally to like level up or stand out so I can land that next job?

So a lot of the questions that. So let's start with how do you evaluate an employer in a down market? It all comes down to profitability. It comes down to whether your company is turning a profit or not. Any company that's turning a profit is completely fine. I mean, completely fine. It's maybe too glib, but you're, you're still fine. You control your own destiny. If you make more money than you, than you spend, your company's going to be fine. For 99% of startups, that's not true. You spend more than you, than you make. So then it becomes how much more are you spending than what you're making, right? So in some cases, I know companies, famous examples were Fast and Bolt and you saw some of these high profile ones that were out there. And you're going to see a lot more of this. I know a lot of companies, I know a lot of friends of mine who are CEOs who've raised really large rounds of funding on the backs of very, very, very small dollars of revenue and then started spending way more money while the revenue didn't actually increase in conjunction. So it's simple math. How much do you spend every month? How much money do you make every month? What is the delta between those two things? And then how much money do you have in the bank? That's all you need to know. Those are three numbers. Look at, get those three numbers. How much do you spend per month? How much do you make per month and how much money is in the bank? So again, easy math. Let's say company spends a million dollars a month and they make $500,000 in revenue. So they burned 500k a month in spend. How much money do you have? Company has $50 million in the bank. Great. Go work for that company. That company's great. Company's got $10 million in the bank. Do not work for that company because that company is screwed. And by the way, Most companies have 10, not 50 in that example. But that's why you need to be choosy around who you work for. And so that's the first thing. And in the future, don't forget this lesson. I think that's the other thing. Everybody spent a lot of energy being like, well, what percentage of reps at quota? And, you know, recruiter pings you and says, we hit 375% of quota and we're hiring like crazy, and you're gonna make 500k OTE. And then like a bunch of lemmings, we just like, jump after those jobs without actually thinking, well, is that sustainable? How many reps did you do that with? Are you gonna do that at scale? How, how is my territory gonna change over time? What is the tam of the business? These are hard questions to answer. I'm not expecting everyone to be a VC or a, or a, or a, or an investment bank or manager to be able to understand this. This is why we at Bravado do it for you. We have our own jobs product where, you know, myself and our finance team actually vets every single company, and we only let employers in that have sustainable, scalable business models with high product, market fit and whatnot. You know, kind of a new age, like reverse agency, you know, where instead of vetting candidates, we vet companies. And so we, we kind of solve for this problem. But, but you can solve for it yourself. You don't need us. You can do it yourself. Just figure out those three numbers. How much do they spend? How much do they make, how much money they got in the bank, and you'll at least get a good sense of where they're at. Now let's come to the other example, the main question you asked, which is, what do I do right now if I don't have a job? Let me just be super real with you. The number of companies that are actively hiring for sales roles right now has shrank in a way that most people don't understand. There's a lot of companies I know that have open sales roles on LinkedIn or on job boards and stuff that are privately telling me that they're not hiring, but they're still. This is this thing that pisses me off, and I'm sure it'll piss you off. They're still having conversations, they're still interviewing people. Why are they doing that? Because they're like, well, look, you know, if things turn around, we want to have the option to hire quickly. But. But. So we're going to string people along. We're going to just say, no, not right now. You know, bunch of bullshit. You know, you start to see that there's a lot of bad actors in this space. And then, you know, I think. I think there's another really important question to ask, which is, you know, what would be my start date? First conversation first, you know, are you actually hiring right now or is this just a preemptive conversation? No, you are hiring right now. Great. Let's say that the process goes well and in two or three weeks, you give me an offer. What would my start date look like? You know, ask specific questions. It's hard. Some people lie to you, some people say bullshit. But. But a lot of people won't be able to keep lying to you with very specific answers. So if you get really specific on things like that, you'll get some of the people like, oh, well, you know, it might be August or September. And then. And then you, you know that they're just waiting because most people are waiting till September. I think that's a good proxy. Like, this summer is a bloodbath. Like, if you lost your job this summer, trying to find a new job right now is going to be really hard. So what should you do instead? Not bitter, but better. As my man KD likes to say, what you do right here, right now is where you level up. This is where you work on yourself. Now, some people don't have that luxury. Right? I want to be really clear. I know there's people who do not have two to three months worth of cushion that they can afford to just not do a job search for two to three months and focus on trading and stuff. And I get that. And I'm not here to, you know, sit in my, you know, oh, let them eat cake kind of. Right. I get that. I get that there's like some realities. You and I have talked about this before. We both came from hard places at times and didn't come from a lot. And like, you and I both know the realities of that. But let's talk about. For those of us who are luxurious enough to have been in sales for a while and maybe did a little bit of a decent job of saving so that we do have three months of cushion. I wouldn't waste my time trying to find a job right now. Here's what I would do instead. I would spend my time building my network with the types of companies that I'd want to work for in three months with the Types of leaders I want to sell for. In three months, I would work on figuring out, you know, what I was really not that, you know, I was good at selling, but I didn't really understand the technology at my last job, you know, I wasn't really, like, I. Like I was good at bullshitting it, but I didn't really get it. But maybe I should really learn it. You know, if you sell Google AdWords, you know, maybe I should get AdWords certified. Maybe you sell some sort of a security software.

You know what?

Maybe I should, like, take a security course. Like, now is a great time to invest in yourself such so that. Because the market will turn just as sure as it's frozen today, it will be back up to being hot tomorrow. That's the way the world works. Got to grow. Either you grow or you die, right? So right now, everyone's in pause for a couple months. That shit's gonna end. People are gonna start growing. As soon as they do. You want to stand out in the crowd. You want to get certified, you want to do training, you want to. You want to build your network. You want to start having conversations. You want to get yourself ready. Because as soon as things thaw, you want to be the first call. You want to be on top of that list so that you're the first one off the pile and back onto the team. That's what I would do.

And something you called out there that a lot of people I think go the opposite direction on is how important the network is when something like this happens. Because oftentimes when you get, you know, let go or laid off, we tend to cave in. Right? Because for every post that you see on LinkedIn, where that one person posts that, you know, they got let go and, you know, thousand people comment and, like, you know, find the job, there's other 90 people that didn't do anything. Yep. They are. They're afraid to share, they're afraid to post. They're afraid to let people know that they're going through this. And so I really love the call out there of, like, how important it is to have a community you can lean on and connect with and talk through people that have gone through something like this. So I just. I want to call that out, because getting laid off, getting let go sucks, y'.

All.

It sucks. But you don't have to do it alone. You don't have to go through it alone. And that's also where it can become its own spiral in a way. And so think about, like, certifications, right? I Someone brought this up to me, this was a couple weeks ago of like, you know, if you got let go, you know, you should just offer to be commission only. You just offer to be commission only either to the company that lets you go or to a company you want to go work for. What are your thoughts on that?

That's really, that's really interesting you bring that up. It's something that I've been looking at really closely internally at Bravado, which is this idea of, you know, kind of building a stepping stone into getting a full time job again, how we can help employers that want to hire people but can't because their CFO won't let them, and reps that want to work for a company that can't get a job because of that gate. How can we do a commission only sort of move around that? And it's something that we're like very closely looking at. My short term answer to this is when times are tough, you gotta get scrappy. You just gotta hustle your way through it. I mean, like there's. I wish I had a great answer of like philosophically, I don't know that I agree with commission only, sales roles or whatever, like all that shit goes down the drain. Like we like, you know, when times are tough, you gotta find a way to break through. And I think, you know, whether it's something as simple as you make a post on LinkedIn and then you get a bunch of people that comment, right? There's people that do that. Here's the real question. How many people responded to all those comments? How many people actually got on the phone and scheduled 15 or 30 minutes with the people that commented saying, I'm still hiring. How many people actually saw the people that said, hey, we're not hiring right now, but good luck to you, and said, hey, thanks so much for reaching out. It's awesome that you did that. I know you're not hiring right now, but at some point in the future I'm sure you'll be hiring. Could we catch up so that when that time comes, you at least know who I am, what I'm about and if we could have operated like, people don't do those things, right? They don't. It's kind of like, you know, the best salespeople do this as well, where like, you know, the window opens just a crack and they take the fucking crowbar and they cram open that thing and are in through the door before you know it. And then, you know, other salespeople that see it like you know, a partially open door and they kind of look at it and they're like, yeah, there's probably one that's a little bit more open, you know, like. And so when times get tough, you gotta have that crowbar mentality. You gotta have that like, how do I get in? No matter what little crack I can find. And if so, if there's a sales leader out there who says, you know what, I'm willing to take a shot on you as a commission only rep for a couple months while we try to figure things out and you really like this company and you believe in this leader. I would go for that in a heartbeat. In a heartbeat. And if you're a sales leader, by the way, who's listening to this and you're interested in potentially testing a commission only model, hit me up directly. I'm just Saheel Mansouria Bravado co. You find the name or whatever. We're actually working with some lawyers right now in order to put together a little package that can help sales leaders basically onboard folks for a short period of time for commission only, just while this like economy settles down so that they can basically draft you into the full time team. Kind of similar to what we do in sports, you know, you got, you got your D league or you got your bench or whatever and then those people kind of climb up. Yeah, that's exactly right.

I was excited to ask you that. That one because I was like, you know, he has thoughts on this around, like I think there's places it could work. Right. And again, this assumes like, you know, that you can go commission only that the sales cycle is short enough that it makes an impact. You know, like I can't go and go sell enterprise, you know, level software for a year of like wait for the commission at the end. If I got bills now, but like I feel like there might be a place for it.

Well, especially, especially if you're not. Let's take that example because I think that's the, that's the one that, that people usually bring up as a counter to this idea. They're like, well, okay, well you got 12 to 18 month sales cycles and I don't have the, I don't have, you know, if I, if I was to do a commission only job, I can't wait for 18, 18 months to get a paycheck.

Right.

Well, I don't think that that's the option. Right. I think the option is you're using this time to build your network with that team because that team's gonna start hiring in a few months. It's not like they're not gonna hire for 18 months. Right. They may not hire for a month or two months or three months, but they're gonna start hiring at some point soon and obviously have that conversation on a case by case basis with each company and with each leader. But as soon as you do, then that's your opportunity, right? You say, look, basically I've got a three month nest egg and I'm going to use at least, you know, 75% of my time in order to build my network and get trained up and do this. But what If I committed 25% of my time to 10 hours a week in order to get trained on your product, in order to listen to some of your calls, in order to help out with some salesforce hygiene shit here and there to keep the trains on the track. Maybe if you had a. Maybe if you need something in terms of like, you know, customer gifting or whatever, I can help you send a few boxes out or help you draft a few emails or whatever. I'll just kind of help out around, be an extra pair of hands for a couple months. And then in the meantime, you know, you send me all your decks, you send me your trading materials and stuff and I'll kind of get myself leveled up so that when you're looking to hire someone, I can be a faster ramp, a better head just to quickly pull. Like, I think that kind of creativity is the sort of stuff that I think is interesting.

Yeah. And it, that's like. And you were, you were kind of hinting at this, talking through. It's like it's doing the things other people are not willing to do when things get hard. Like it. It's just that little bit of extra that you're gonna stand out. And I hope y' all are paying attention too. He came full circle on this, y'. All. This isn't forever.

Yes.

Might suck right now, but it's not forever. And if you're treating it like forever, you're gonna make different decisions versus, you know what, what would set me up 90 days from now? What could I do for 90 days? Maybe, maybe I am driving an Uber and delivering some pizzas so I can make these 90 days for while building the network with a new company and being known to them as someone who would hustle. You're going to be better on the other side, right? Back to this idea of better versus bitter. Or you can sit back and throw your hands up and complain and do whatever else, but like doing the little things that other people are not willing to do is how you stand out as things start to turn throughout all this. And so I got one last question for you, dude, before we start to wrap here. Right, which is, you know, it takes a completely different turn, but the name of the podcast is Live Better Sell Better. Because I also have this weird idea that if we took better care of ourselves, right, as a person, that the sales would also improve, especially when things get tough is when we start to maybe not take care of ourselves as well. What would your live better advice be to people listening right now in terms of, like, how to better take care of yourself during tough times?

Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up, Katie, because I think that's. It's funny. You and I definitely need to catch up. This is a big part of what we're focused on right now as a company and as a community is the fact that when times are tough, we start to make worse and worse decisions about ourselves. We start drinking a little bit more, maybe smoking a little bit more, maybe finding ourselves through some stronger substances and not exercising. And then that cascades into eating poorly, which of course then cascades into not working out, which then cascades into us having a worse temperament around stuff, which then cascades into health problems and, you know, depression and suicide. I mean, you know, there's. It's a. It's a self fulfilling prophecy on both ends. Here's something I'd throw at you the other way, which is you look at what happens when a football team or a basketball team, because we compare sports and sales a lot and sometimes unfairly and sometimes too much. But in this example, I think it's really relevant. You look at a sports team or athlete and, you know, they go, oh, and 16 for the year. Or they are, they. They just, they just, you know, they get blown out in the playoffs in a really ugly way and they just like get shamed off the court. What do they do? You know, do they go and they sit there and they drink all off season and do a bunch of drugs and eat, you know, a bunch of junk food and then show up to try to win next year? No. You know what they do? Yeah. They take. They take a week to blow some steam off. We all got to blow some steam off. I. And then they start putting in the work in the gym twice as hard, right? They start eating better, they start working out more, they start training harder. They put in the work in the off season and there's this whole idea that Championships are made in the. In the training room. You know, they're not made on the field or on the court. Like champions are made in the locker room, because that's where the work is, in the film room. And so, you know, I think that when it comes to ourselves as salespeople, we don't view ourselves in the same way that athletes do, though we should, because this is all you got right here. This is it. This is you, right? This is your entire person as a salesperson. And how you show up every single day in front of the customer, in front of the team, in front of the prospect, etcetera, Is going to determine success. And so it is incumbent upon us to do everything we can in our power to give ourselves the best shot. Some things are outside our control, right? Economy goes to. Putin decides to fuck shit up in the world. You know, the economic policy goes poorly, your CEO is an idiot and decides to raise too much money. I mean, there's things that are outside of your control. You can't control those things. And spending your time being bitter over that and being upset over it at the expense of doing all the things right that you can control is not an excuse. That is not a way to live life and get ahead. If you want to live life and get ahead, you got to do everything right that you can and then wait for a couple breaks to fall your way, which right now, breaks ain't falling your way. They ain't falling any of our way. So guess what? Even more incentive, less excuse for you not to invest in yourself. You know, it's. If you want. If you have a sales job right now. But times are tough, you know, finding. Finding and investing in some mental health, investing in some therapy, investing in some performance coaching. You know, I. There's a show I love Katie. You ever see the show Billions?

I've heard of it. I've never watched it.

I'm sure some of the people listening to this have. There's a. It's a. It's a. It's a show about a hedge fund. And anytime a trader makes a bad trade or something goes really wrong in the hedge fund, they go see this woman named Wendy Rose. And Wendy is basically like a therapist, like, motivational coach, whatever, who kind of gets into your head, gets you fired up and cleaned up and ready to go the other side. We all need a Wendy Rhodes in our life. We all need a person, a man, a woman, in my case, often my little. My daughter who's up there, who's, like, getting me ready for the next day. We all need that thing that keeps us clean, keeps us on the straight and narrow. So, Katie, I'm so happy you asked me that question because I think it's, it's a great point to end on, which is, yeah, there's things that you can do on the economy, there's things you can do to hustle, there's things you can do for jobs and stuff. None of it's going to matter if you don't bring your best self to work every day. And you are not going to bring your best self to work if you don't eat right, sleep right, take care of yourself, invest in your mentals, invest in your emotions most invest in your physical well being. And it is so easy to make excuses, so easy to be like, well, I got laid off so I'm not going to spend my energy and my time, you know, on, on, on myself. I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna play golf every day. And sure, you go play golf for a few days and get some steam off. But then like put in the work because someone else is putting in the work and when things turn around, that person's gonna get the job, not you. And then you're gonna be stuck on.

The sideline and then it all repeats. Man, we do, we need to catch up on a lot of stuff, man. Because every time we talk, I'm always like, man, we're always so aligned on so much shit and like, you know, we gotta connect. My man, where can people get more of you? Where can they learn more about Bravado and what you're doing? Where. And we'll obviously put some things in the show notes, but where can people get more of what you're putting out right now?

Simple, just go to Bravado Co. We got a community of 250,000 B2B salespeople. We're the, you know, we just passed being the largest sales community in the world past Reddit's R sales, which has about 150,000. So we're really proud to see that we've kind of grown to be the largest community for sales in the world. Really does focus on SaaS tech sales, although we're starting to get some other folks as well. Just go to Bravado Co. We got the war room where you can find a community of peers who are supporting you. And yes, there are still companies that are hiring. Not as many as there were, but there are still jobs that are out there that we have access to, some of which are publicly available and many of which are just privately held. If you sign up for Bravado co jobs, you'll get an opportunity to see what's out there and we'll match you to some great employers. But honestly, whether it's through Bravado or through whatever else you find, that's fine. There's one thing I'd leave you with. It's. It's the thing that you said, which I love, which is you gotta live better if you want to sell better. I think that is absolutely right. And as salespeople, we do a really bad job of that. I'm guilty of that, obviously, a lot as well. And. And so you know that that's a real point of emphasis when the selling better part isn't going so well.

Yeah. Well, my dude, thank you so much for this, for the insights, for the transparency, for the authenticity, which is something I've always really respected about you. So we'll be chatting again very soon, my man, but I appreciate you. Thank you so much.

Thank you, sir. Take care. Cheers. Sat.