#111 - Morgan J Ingram - Founding and CEO At Ascension Media Productions - Narrative-led Growth is the Future

Sales, marketing, RevOps, and customer success. 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 top revenue leaders in our community to learn what steps we could take right now to help you scale more effectively. Revenue Today is sponsored by RevGenius and RevRoom, and we're on a mission to build trusted spaces for curious revenue professionals who are collaborating on the future of B2B GTM. All right, dear friends, welcome to another episode of Revenue Today. Uh, my guest this week is a person that was actually a mentor of mine before I started RevGenius. Ironically, trying to get a different job, came into the scene as the founder creator for SDR Chronicles, worked for Jay Barros for almost five years as the director of sales execution and evolution, created the One Up Podcast talking to founders, founders, hustlers, creators about their personal one up formulas, and now his full focus is on Ascension Media Production, which he founded earlier this year. Welcome, Morgan J. Ingram.

What's going on, man? It's good seeing you, dude.

It's, it's, it's really great. You know, it's not talked about by me. Like, dude, you helped me try to find a job for, for weeks.

Yeah, you were on the hunt, man.

It's funny how things evolve.

And now Ascension Media Productions, like, What I'm most curious about with this, and when, when Morgan Ingram takes weeks before rolling something out, I know you're thinking deeply, right?

Like, this is—

you interviewed— I can only imagine. So first off, was, was the OneUp Formula podcast, did that help lead to the Ascension Media Productions? Like you hearing what was on founders' minds?

Yeah, that's actually a good question. No one's asked that. Subconsciously, yes. I don't think it was conscious. Yeah, subconscious. Subconscious for sure. It was just because you're talking to, you know, I talked to a couple notable people like, so Claude, which is the chief heart officer at VaynerMedia. Mm-hmm. I interviewed her. Like, that was, that was incredible. I learned a lot from her. So that was good perspective. I interviewed someone and this gives you this perspective on it. I interviewed someone who was a felon Okay, got— he got arrested. It's crazy. He got arrested for, um, like drug dealing, trafficking, stuff like that. Ended up being a felon, was in jail for a couple years, came out. Now he owns, um, a fitness, like, entrepreneurship business, cleaned out all those different things. So I'm just— and I interviewed like a VC. So I'm saying all this is like, I just interviewed people who are just like all over the place, but there was like a central theme with all of them is that like something happened and they went more towards what their North Star was and what they call core function and their strengths were like they just tripled or doubled down on it and they're like, this is what I'm going to do. So I felt like just subconsciously during those conversations, I realized I just needed to do the same thing. And that's why I went in this direction instead of doing sales training.

I absolutely love that because like the obvious move in my head, Jay Barrows, like, like you built your personal brand from 0 to like 100,000 plus. Yeah, relatively quickly, quicker than others for sure. It seems like the logical thing is to double down on the brand. You know, why Ascension Media? Like, like what, what in your head was like the broad, like the impactfulness of this above what you were already doing?

Okay, well, let's, let's, let me clarify so everyone understands what you mean by that question. And so I can answer it when you say, no, the one before it. So you said, why not double down on the brand? What exactly do you mean by that? That's a great question.

That's a great question. So your brand has evolved over time, right? Like, like once upon a time it was an extension of SDR Chronicles, help— helping SDRs SDR better. Then you went to Jay Barros and you're going to have to correct me on this because like it seemed like there was that a bit, but then you evolved, right, to much more than that. So when I say double down on the brand, In my head, I'm thinking an extension of training, working with people to help them do their jobs better. Salespeople.

Yeah. So I was— I think the thing with that is I realized that if I were to go down the path and double down on the brand, success would have came faster. Right. And, you know, I know how to do it right now to train, how to sell it. I could have been like, let's go. I mean, our quota at JV Sales was $1 million off a $20K ACV. So y'all can do the math at how many trainings I had to do and how much I was selling. So just let you know, year in, year out, that's what I was doing, right? So what I'm saying is that like, if you look at it, that's the path, right? But I looked at it from a different perspective. I look at things in decades versus 2 or 3 years. So I knew, okay, if I go do the sales training path and double down on the brand in that sense, That'll give me about 2 to 3, maybe 5 years of this, but then I got to pivot again.

Yeah.

But I just thought about more so like, what's the next decade? Like, what could I hyperfocus on and it become the thing that I do? Different conversation you're now having. Plus also as well, it's something that I didn't have 100% fulfillment in doing. I'm not saying that I didn't love doing it. It's just I wasn't like, this is it, right? It was— I just realized it just wasn't— that wasn't it for me. And so that was the huge moment that I realized that I needed to just go in the direction that felt more right, but also as well, like something I was truly committed to doing.

I love that. Now, you did a lot of research in this because I'm not sure how in-depth—

and break down for everybody like what Ascension Media Productions does so that we could go in.

Yeah, essentially. So the way that we work with clients is I act as an executive producer and I help the client produce shows. We like to call those edutainment, and we do that through employee advocacy. So for example, if a show would be constituted as like a webinar or a podcast, we call them shows and make it easier because that's how we produce them. So if you're looking to do like a podcast, but I'm like, hey, we're gonna make a video podcast, we're gonna add these elements, we're gonna target certain brands so that they can get on this podcast. So then you can not only grow your customer base, but you also can grow your community. And then we, instead of just having a random person doing it, we pick someone who's an employee that wants to create more content and we repurpose that content so they can grow their brand. and they can build company brand. So this is really more community-driven marketing. I like to call it narrative-led growth because if you have the right narratives around your shows, more people will be emotionally attached to your brand, which then leads into more pipeline conversions, increased brand awareness, etc. So everything that we do is a function around some type of show and building content around that for people.

Damn. Why is this more powerful than sales? You had the easier path. Sales has been done for how many years?

Because, because this is where it's where we're going. I have focused on the future. So in 2016, I was a sales rep creating content. People like that doesn't make any sense. Why would you do that? Now everyone in the world wants to do this. Everyone wants to create a brand. Everybody wants to create content. But I mean, look, I'm not gonna. I'm not. I'm not gonna call you out. But I'm just telling y'all, like in 2016, the people that some of the people y'all look up to were like, "I don't like personal brand. I don't want to do this." I have the messages. You know, I have these messages. Like I'm not gonna. I'm not going to leak anything. I'm just telling you, like, there are people that you follow that you probably have bought stuff from that sold you something on personal branding that said in 2016, 2017, this is garbage. Don't do this. I'm just letting you all know. So the thing

is, my boss probably said it at that time and said, you cannot do this.

So I was probably scared of my life. It's just this— just that's just what it was. People were saying that. So my thing is like, I have to bet on who I am and what I know. I know in 2016 After conversations with certain people, I had the conversation with Gary Vee, Ralph Barsi, shout out to him as a mentor and a friend. They're like, yo, this is what you need to do. Boom, I did it. I didn't think about it. I was just like, this is it. But that was— that was— I was ahead like 2, 3, 4 years before people really got it. And so this is the— I have the same exact feeling about this that I did in 2016. So what I believe is that in our bodies we have certain subconscious and conscious feelings about certain things like, ah, this is happening again. Now you can either ignore it, which is terrible, or you could be like, this is it. So like for me it was like, oh, this is the same thing. This is literally the same thing again. I have to take action. I can't neglect it. So that's what I've been doing and that's been the path. And the easy path again would have been successful for my own ego. But this is— this has outstressed myself to a whole different degree. But it's been good. I'm connected with people that I would never connect with if I didn't take this path.

Dude, I mean, you're preaching to the choir. I never built community before 3 years ago. And now— Yeah, you were just like, oh, here we are.

But like, when you— Feels like there's a gap. Yeah. Yeah. When we had the call, it's like, when you know, you know. Now, are other people going to get it originally? No. And that doesn't really matter as long as you know and you can see it, then you got to go with it. And so that's again, 2016 when I was like, this is it. That was it. I mean, it built the foundation of my entire career. And so that's the reason why I did it. I think that sales training is just, it's just not going to go as far as people think that it is. Like you can see the writing on the wall, what's happening.

So that opens up a bigger conversation because I agree. She's, you know, are SDRs going to be around in 5 years, in 10 years? Or like, what's the role? Like, how does the sales— I mean, because there's reasons behind reasons why trading might not be there. Okay. I want you to unpack your thoughts there. Okay. This— okay.

A lot of people listening in, I always— this is cautionary tape. This is kind of the warning sign. Okay, so some of y'all are just going to— yeah, when some— when I say this number, some of y'all are going to freak out. I said, like, thing is, like, I'm not afraid to say this because I literally said this at AISIP. I had someone from Meta there and from IBM, and I said this. So like, I— this is just my truth. Like, I can't shy away from what's actually gonna happen. Yeah. So they— some people didn't like it in the crowd, but I was like, this is where we're going. And also, I mean, depending on how it affect the way you build community, but I actually don't I actually think it might even be a benefit for you in the long term. But I'm curious to hear your comments on what I was about to say. Yeah. So here's the thing, y'all, like 60% of sales reps are going to get replaced. Now, how did I come to this number? Right? Because you're like, that seems random. It's actually when you think about it, it's not.

That's AEs, it's SDRs, it's the whole org.

The whole thing.

Okay.

Whole thing. And so here's the thing. 2 caveat points to this. One is that I want you to think about this one. 20% of the reps bring in 80% of the revenue.

But isn't that just Pareto's Law? Doesn't that always happen? Even

if— No, that's just like— just, I mean, yeah, but also statistically that's the case. If you go get ours, 20% of the reps bring in 80% of the revenue. Okay. That's not— what are the— what are the other— what are the other 80% doing? Right. So there's that. So then that leaves, right, 20% of them. So there's that, there's a gap where, okay, there's probably going to be another 20%. That's kind of what I'm putting in there. There's a 20% of those reps that will be marginal. They'll be there. So again, that's why I said 40%. That's why I'm saying 40%. So again, 40% minus 100%, 60%. So 60% will get replaced. That's how I'm coming to that math. Now, when you think of the second point is a lot of leaders have been talking about this on LinkedIn. And it's hard for me to say because like, again, I started off as SDR, like, you know, like soothsayer, like, you know, it's like I was out here like, SDR, SDR.

You were in the top 1% of the people that people followed in the SDR world.

Right? So it's like, this is hard for me to say all this stuff. Full sales cycle will come back.

Yeah.

Because AI is going to allow people to do outbound in an efficient way once people can do the third part I'm going to talk about, which is prompting. So a lot of the SDRs as of today, When I say replace, no, I didn't say that they're going to get eliminated. I said replace. It's a key wording that I said there. I didn't say they're going to get eliminated because some of you are like, well, I'm going to lose my job. Like, no, no, no, you'll just be replaced. If you go back and study— and this is important— you have to go back and study history. Some people are like, oh, I don't want to study history. Well, that's how you get cooked because you got to study it. So if you look at the— if you look at the Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and the Computer Revolution, those are the past 3 revolutions we've had. If you look at the history of them, the same thing is happening right now. It's just scaring more people because it's going to potentially take more jobs and it might take your job. The agricultural revolution nobody cares about because if you're not a farmer, nobody cared, right? Industrial revolution, if you didn't work in a factory, you didn't care. Computer revolution, that kind of shook a couple of people because now grocery stores, but you still don't care. AI can actually take you out if you're not careful, right? So now that's why people are really afraid. It's not— there's really not a lot of reasons because it's because like It could actually take you out. All those other revolutions couldn't take you out unless you were a certain job type. So if you look at, for example, the— if we go back to the agricultural revolution, like basically it was like farmers got replaced, but they just did other functions. So maybe instead of working the field, they work something else, right? So it just replaces a function of something and then someone comes into play. So if you look at an SDR, they might not be making as many cold calls or emails as they used to, but If you learn, if you're an SDR and you learn how to prompt, you still have an SDR job. You can still prompt and write solid emails. Mm-hmm. I think though, SDRs will still be there as well for like enterprise accounts and more strategic accounts, or maybe focusing on a certain vertical. But I think having massive SDR teams is a thing of the past. I don't see that continuously happening. I just, I don't, I don't envision that at all, to be transparent with you. So again, yeah, my take is a little bit different. Um, I would say though as well, AI's gonna replace a lot of the manual tasks. So you're gonna increase active selling time, which again leads to my point of full sales cycle rep. It's like 27% of people have active selling time. So AI could probably do 2, 3x that to get to like 60, 70%. Okay, cool. So I don't need some— now I don't need some reps. I can get rid of them because my sellers are actually selling more. Again, there's a lot of things here, but that's like the way I think about it.

So I couldn't agree more, but I agree even without AI, people are going to be replaced. I mean, you mentioned the 20% are hitting 80% of the number, like the whole efficient growth. You could just Boom, right there.

It's just going to move a lot quicker.

Add in narrative-led growth or community-led growth or whatever to generate pipeline and a day. So like that could be your 60% and then the AI could be something on top.

Yeah.

What do you think about that?

No, I agree. And that's just— I mean, that's just where we're at, right? I mean, you have narrative-led growth, collaboration-led growth. I mean, you have Partner Hacker. I know they just teamed up, you know, they have Nearbound. Partnerships. That's all coming into the play.

We're going to go back. We're going to table that because I want to go into all of that because we both have good seeds planted from, from what we've experienced. But all right, we're in 2023. Debunk a myth about like GTM today. Like, what are people thinking? Or going to market like and what, what could they be doing better?

Hmm. Okay. This answer is going to be rooted on like obviously what I believe, right? So I mean, it's kind of a tee-up for me a little bit, but, but this is, this is objectively, this is what's happening. So you see a lot of products that are coming out right now and they're just really leaning on, hey, we have AI or hey, we have this function that this other person doesn't have. I just think we're going to a world that doesn't, that doesn't really matter anymore. Like, if you come out with a new feature and function, you're like, oh, this product doesn't have it. They're going to figure it out and they're going to build it like in the next like 3 to 4 months. It's just the product. The product development is very quick now. It used to not be, but now it's fast. Like, it's insane, right? So I think the biggest myth is that like, oh, We'll build this great product and they will come. They probably won't. And they won't come. You got to create some noise. And so again, that goes around what I've been saying, which is how are you doing employee advocacy? You know, a lot of people in this space are talking about people-led growth, creator-led growth. Great. I think at the end of the day, you need a narrative around those things. So it encompasses all those things. That's why I say narrative-led growth, which is the cornerstone here. However, you're going to need that component. The myth is that you're just going to build a product and people are just going to like it. There are some companies that have done that really well. I just think that now, because there's so much more noise, there's so much going on, you got to have that content that puts it out there and then brings them in. So that's at least my take.

When you're employing like narrative-led growth and creating this, you know, positive ruckus, so to speak, like, like what KPIs help manage like Like show success on that? Like what are you looking at?

So there's tangibles and intangibles. So tangible is anyone that is getting touched would be a longer-term value for the customer. So when I say touch, I'm going to come up with an example because again, this is a little bit of intangible, but it's more tangible. So in your form fill with the clients, I'm saying, okay, we're going to put our shows in the form fill. So whatever show we produce, we're going to put it in there and say they heard us from the show. We're going to put those different social channels. And we're going to put the person, so the employee that's posting. That way it gives us attribution to be like, where is it coming from? Now, if we find in the next 6 months that, okay, wow, it's all come from— not all of it, but majority is coming from this show that we're doing. Are we actually seeing longer-term value from that customer because they came from the show rather than just a regular cold outbound or an email or whatever? That's interesting. So 2 is, are you seeing an increase in inbound flow? So because you're putting out more content, are more people coming in? Again, all of these things are hard to track, right? Yeah. But that's a, that's something that you can obviously look at. And another one that you can look at is, okay, and again, harder, but it's still measurable. Are we getting more outbound conversions because we built our content out and we have a brand out there? Because more people that know us, they're more willing to take those meetings, right? So that's like a tangible one. Intangibles are the ones that like, you know, things that you feel but you can't see. So that's like increase in brand awareness. Like, okay, we feel that we are out there more, right? And other people can feel it. Harder to track. There is— I don't know, let's, let's— you already know about something. There is no like company— there's not like a LinkedIn company page like level up system, right? It's not like, hey, we went from level 2 to level 5. Like, you just know that like, hey, we're, we're just have a bigger brand awareness, right? Or, you know, people are talking about us more on the calls or like, you know, people, you know, are knowing who we are when we see them in person. Like those are the intangibles. It's just how you feel about the brand as well. Last thing that I forgot to add on the tangibles is an increase in social lift. So we can see if the profile increased. We can't see if the followers have increased. But, you know, that's a small little metric that I like to point out there.

Yeah. I mean, how do you create the right narrative? Like, how do you develop a narrative? Right. And walk me through the difference between narrative-led growth and just like content-led growth.

So the thing is, content is nothing without context. So when people think about content-led growth, it's mentally not putting you in the right spot. Because if you're just like, I need to create content, you're not— your outcome is different. Because if I need to go create content as a company, okay, I'll just hire someone to chop up my stuff. I'll hire someone to create a content calendar and I'll hire someone to repurpose. Okay.

That was content 10 years ago.

Right. But no, people still— no, people still do that though.

In B2B especially.

Yeah. So it's still happening. It's not like these things are still happening. So the thing is, like, if you said content-led growth, you just think we need to put out content. Well, that doesn't really do anything for you. You have to have context. So the difference here is what is the consistent narrative that we're hammering to the market so they know what we're about with the content, which is different. Content-led growth. Can be that, but most of the time it is not. If you look at brands, they're just putting out content to put out content because they know they need to, and then they're asking their employees to reshare what the blog post from marketing is. That's not really what you should be doing. It's still content though, but it's not the content you want, which is the problem. So the way I look at it is on the narrative side is how do you build a narrative? That is a lot harder because the company narrative and the content narrative are 2 different things. So the company narrative, like, that's a lot of work there. And that is, that is not my expertise of lane. I could talk about it, but where I'm really helping people is like, how do we take a company narrative and make it to a content narrative, which is more— it's a completely different conversation. It's more compact. It's like, what topics do we need to be talking about? Because a narrative of a company could be like, we stand for this, this is what we're about. But you got to think about that. That's marketing language. I'm taking the marketing broad language and making it into sales language in the content. Completely different way of thinking about it because most people are just like, oh, this is just content. No, it's— we got to make the content like sell as we're posting it so people are bought into what's going on. Yeah, it's marketing too, but it's also selling as an agent. And if you don't have a good narrative in that content telling a story, people aren't going to drive in.

Do you agree like with Isaac? CMO of Partner Hacker and Reveal, he said, have a radical point of view.

That's essentially it, right? Because, okay, like something, something—

what he said was provocative in a way that like an outsider would be like turned off by it, but somebody really close to the problem will be felt, heard.

Exactly. I'm trying to think of like a good I'm trying to think of a company that does this. I can't think right now, but that's 100% correct. Because if you have someone who's like, this is it, this is what it is, I'm gonna pay attention, right? Because they're coming in really strong. Like, okay, so if I have a really strong opinion on something right now that like I think a lot of people don't agree with, and I've said it before on Twitter, people are like, I don't agree with this. And I was like, okay, whatever. I'm just telling you what my viewpoint is.

Yeah, and, and, and I'm developing this ourself because, um, I think that in community a lot of people are conflating it now with audience and all of this. And, and I'm coming up with something hot to go in with and, yeah, and dotting my i's and crossing my t's because it is a big topic.

Right.

And you know what's funny? I, I just read your post and, um, And dude, I think that this is actually going on with community, like the me disease. Tell me about what's going on here. Like people want to become YouTubers instead of anything else at a young age.

So here's the thing. I get it. Everyone's like, oh, this is sad. And it's like, no, not, not really. If you really think about what's going on, it's not really, it's not really sad. It's just, it's sad because that's not how you grew up. That's the first thing we got to talk about. A lot of people are like, oh, that's sad. It's like, because that's not not how you grew up. So yeah, it makes sense why it's sad.

Yeah. I'm curious, like, how this me disease trickles in to SaaS and like go-to-market and like the culture in the space, like what you've seen.

Yeah. So the me disease. So everybody has context.

Yeah.

Yeah. So everybody has context. I was reading a book, shout out to Chris Luckett and the Category Pirates. This category design tool, the category Marketing Design Toolkit, and in it it talks about the me disease. And so the between the ages of six to I think eighteen, I think it said seventy eight percent of people want to become YouTubers, and it was like eighty seven percent of people want to become influencers. And a lot of people like oh like when you saw the comments, I was like yo what? Some people were like that's not my kids, like that's never gonna happen. This is ridiculous. I'm sad, and I'm like okay. This is the problem with the world. Sometimes you can't look at things in your own environment. You are the outlier. You are the minority. You have to look at things in the majority because MrBeast has, what, 20, 30, 50 million subscribers, something like that?

Number 1 on YouTube.

Right. Okay. 80% of those people are kids. And so, okay, if my kid is watching someone make a video and he's making millions of dollars, Why the heck would I not want to do that? I don't have to go to an office. I don't have to commute. And this— I'm just getting really deep inside this. People, some people are here. You may not like this, but it doesn't really matter. But the thing is, you got to, you got to think about this. Okay? COVID happened. Before COVID you got to, you got to think about what you would be priming kids. Kids probably saw their parents miserable going to work, commuting, and just looking terrible. Right? They hated their life. They hated their job, and they complained about it, probably to their spouse, and the kids heard it. But nobody thinks about these things. Kids pick up on things, right? They're hypersensitive. That's why actually kids can learn a language faster earlier on than later because they're just hypersensitive. They're more absorbent, right? And so the thing is, is that like, okay, they probably saw their parents being miserable. Their kids, their kids, their friends' dad and mom was miserable at going to work and being just like, oh, I don't like my job. Da da da. Okay, so why would I want to go do a job when I could go be a YouTuber? And I see this YouTuber like on planes, they're having fun, they're with their friends. It looks like they're having a good life. Why would I want to do that? I make 2 videos a week and that's my life and I make thousands of millions of dollars. So you're just like, like everyone has a different perspective of why that's happening. So that's first and foremost. Now, Is it detrimental? It is detrimental because as of right now, you can go look this up. Gen Z treats a digital relationship as the same as an in-person relationship connection, which is scary when you think about it. Right. So, so that means that face-to-face

right now is

like— This is— yeah, I would treat this right now as a face-to-face conversation. It's

not IRL, but it is face-to-face.

Exactly. So the thing is, that's scary because then that loses the human connection, which is what we don't want. Right. And that's what they're headed towards because of all the technology. Yeah. Also as well, I think it expedites people's barometer of what success is like, especially in B2B SaaS. Like a lot of people have become content creators and they're like, this is what I want to write out. And I don't think that's the right path because being a content creator is not easy. It's a mentally draining and exhausting thing to do every single day and post and reply to people in the DMs. Your dopamine hit for the first 6 to 8 months will be great. But I've been doing this for 7 years. After a while it becomes exhausting. I'm not saying I'm quitting. I'm just saying it's an exhausting thing to do and you have to be built for it to want to keep creating and deal with that. But most people don't know what that is. They only see the output of this person is successful. They don't see the work and the diligence of creating the content to be successful and put themselves out there. And that's the key.

I see a lot of content creators creating content to benefit what they're pushing.

Versus like the audience and like what they actually need and figure it out.

Is that something that you see as well?

And is that contributing to the watering down of what's out

there? Yeah. I mean, also, so you got to think about it because a lot of people right now, they're just like, they're like, okay, like I want to drop a course, so I need to push this, right? Or I want to grow this thing. And I'm not, I'm not hating. I'm not, I'm just not literally not hating on anyone. It's, it's whatever you want to do. I'm just saying that that's what's just the environment we're in. People are growing a base for X amount of months, and then they want to sell a course. I don't think that's the right strategy immediately. But, you know, that's everyone has different ways of looking at it.

Is it sustainable? Do you think like with everybody, like if we just keep coming out with more people?

No, it's not. It's not sustainable. The B2C lens is different, but the B2B, I don't think is sustainable for, for that long. I could be proven wrong, but it's not sustainable to drop the course. Now, if you do other things, it's different. I think there'll be a lot of sponsorship money. I think there'll be a lot of subject matter expert money. I think there'll be things that you can do to leverage that brand. But in terms of dropping courses, I'm not saying that the run— the well will run dry. I'm just saying I think there's better ways of going about it in the B2B space. Ignore me about the B2C space. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the B2B space.

Sure. What's the most impactful, whether guest on your 1UP Podcast, book you've read or what have you of late? Like, I'm curious because you've spoken— you mentioned Gary Vee, you mentioned some other folks. What— where's your head at? Like, what's impacted you the most?

This is recency bias because I just finished the book and it's been on my mind and it's— and it's been— this is so— it's— it's— I literally finished it like 2 days ago. So it's recency bias. However, it is the most impactful thing that I've read so far because it made me think about things a lot differently. So So if you look at work as a whole, a lot of people want to get out of their 9 to 5 to go off on their own and they want to be their own boss. Great. Congratulations. Now, once you've done that, what happens is sometimes it happens to majority of people, their new company becomes their actual job. It just happens that they just work on it more. They might be getting paid more, but they actually just created themselves a full-time job. They're not actually building a company, right? Unless you want to do that. Unless you're like, I want to be a solopreneur. But most people, like, they don't want that, but that's what it becomes, right?

So what's the difference between— Yeah, what's the difference between full-time job and building a company if you started something?

Exactly. You ask that as a question or are you just saying that as a—

What's the difference? Like, how do you—

I mean, the thing is, so the thing is like you literally are just basically, yeah, you have your own company, but you just become a ploy of your company. You're basically just running tasks and you're running at the same speed. You're doing as much work as you would be on the other company and you haven't built any operations or systems to get out of it. And you're just, you're just running a full-time job within your company. You're not actually building a company as like a CEO. You're not like outsourcing, hiring, delegating, scaling, whatever it is. Now, again, if you don't want to scale, that's a different conversation. I'm just saying that like most people, they start something to have freedom, but then you— it becomes a full-time job and you have no freedom and you're making money, but you have no freedom. So you actually just create another job for yourself. Yeah, you're the boss, but like you just created another full-time job. That's what

I mean by that. Hmm. Yeah. And what book were you referring to?

So which will go into what and what, what I've been learning. So it's called Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell.

Okay.

I love this. I love this dude. And he's in SaaS too. He's actually— he knows a good amount of people in SaaS. He ran like something called the SaaS Academy. So like, he's actually like— no, he actually has done some stuff in our space. So yeah, I mean, Twitter is actually where I've spent the majority of my time and we started connecting. We've had a couple of conversations. I bought his book and like, I was like, this thing is crazy. So why is it important? Because The thing that he talks about is the different quadrants. So there's like, there's like a replacement quadrant, there's a production quadrant, and I'm butchering it because I literally just finished this book. So I'm remembering it. But production quadrant, the replacement quadrant, I forgot the exact name of it. But it's a, it's a, it's a quadrant that basically is like a draining quadrant. And those are like, there's another one, I think it's called the I think it's called the Delegation Quadrant, I think. But, but basically what it talks about is the first quadrant you have is the draining quadrant. You want to figure out what is draining your energy that's not allowing you to be high producing. The goal of the book, and I've already started working on the basketball days, the goal of the book is like you should spend 90 to 95% of your time in the production quadrant and high leverage activities. Now, if you look at your time today, that's probably not what's happening, right? Because you left your job because you weren't in the production quadrant. But now, you know what I'm saying? Like, now you literally created your company, but now you're literally in a quadrant where all your energy is drained doing things you don't want to do. So I was reading this and I was like, oh my gosh. Like, yeah, there's a lot of things I do that I don't want to do.

A lot of empathy going here.

Yeah. And I was like, oh my gosh, like, what the heck? So, I mean, yeah, it's inevitable you have to do things you don't want to do. That's what I'm saying. I'm not saying that you're going to go take a vacation. I'm just saying, how do you buy back your time and find areas that To get you in the production quadrant. I should only be doing like 3 to 10 things that are highly producing that I love to do. That takes time, but it's possible. So literally I've been spending hours in step-by-step process. Okay. From beginning to end, how do we service clients? Who owns this role? How long does it take? What should they be doing? Do we have a process for it? If we don't have a process for it, we need to build it. We need to figure this out. And then basically mitigating everything on my calendar that does not bring energy and I'm just doing it because. And it's like, okay, that's cool, but we're not going to do that anymore. Or like, that's cool, but that doesn't lead to what we're focused on right now. So he just talks about how, how can you get to this 90 to 95% quadrant in the production and how do you become people like an Oprah? So he literally had in the book, he's got this breakdown of Oprah's schedule and he's like, yo, look, like everything is taken care of for her and her empire and she only spends an hour doing like Her actual production quadrant. Everything else is sort of like working out, hanging out. And again, she's a billionaire, so it's different. But basically she's saying, how do you build to that point where like 90% to 95% of the day is stuff that you do when you're high energy? That's a— it's just a different outcome of conversation versus I'm going to start a company because I want freedom. But how could you get to freedom without knowing how to operationally resize yourself to get there? And so, yeah, this book has blown the gates out of my thinking. And now literally all I'm doing is how do I buy back my time? How do I get in the production quadrant at the highest degree? How do I— and we talked about this offline.

Wow.

This conversation, how do I— category design before? So it was like, how do you dream bigger, right? How do you create your own category? So this is crazy that this book is just all clicking.

The fact that this book is even bigger than the book before. And I thought— I didn't realize you read a book in a week. Doesn't surprise me.

Yeah. So I'm doing There's a new routine. I read 50 pages a day. So after I go to the gym, I go to the park for an hour and I read. But again, that's because I've been getting time back. So as I've been getting time back, I just sit there and some people may not do this. So don't be like, oh, Morgan, like, I'm single, I don't have kids, so I'm taking advantage of time. So it's like I can do these things. You may

not be the first thing in the morning or last thing at

night. First thing in the morning. First thing. So really after the gym, boom, I go to the park, read, or come back home and read and I can knock out, knock out 50 pages in a book. I'll read like a personal and professional book. But anyways, so I went through it very quickly because I was like, this is what I need. Like, this is it. And so in finishing that book, it just talks about that dreaming big, how to do a vision that's actually practical that you can speak to. How do you buy back your time? How do you actually hire the right person? I literally have a thing set up for my VA. How do you set up your VA appropriately? How do you get rid of your— how do you not be in your inbox all day? How do you set up your— like, it's just things that like you don't really think about and you have to get rid of your ego in order to execute them. It's hard.

That's life. I'm thinking, how do I get out of my inbox? I don't check my inbox until 4 or 5 PM. Because

I know he gives you literally a system on how your VA can check your inbox and give you labels. It's wild. So we started implementing it yesterday. So boom, everything's labeled. Everything just— we're getting to a point where I'm not even gonna look at the main inbox. That's the goal, as he said. So I'm like, I'm just gonna follow it. Like, clearly makes sense to me. Like, I'm not trying to be stressed out all the time. So yeah, it's cool.

It Is this better for solopreneurs or also for everyone?

Because every, every, everyone, because every single person, this is the conclusion that I made because I used to be like, I want to handle everything myself and no one could do it better than me. I think a lot of people listening probably the same thing. Like, I, I'm going to do this better than everybody. And he said something in the book. I was like, dang, he's right. He's like, don't aim for 100%. Aim for 80, 80, just 80% there. He's like, there's no way everyone's going to do it like you. But he's like, if you're doing everything though, that's not going to help you either. So he's like, at least get it to 80% done. I was like, all right, well, I mean, basically 80%, like of what you would like, basically not 80% done. It's going to get done. But like at the 80% of what you would say, like this is 100%, right? So yeah, once I thought about that, I was like, oh, all right, I can look at this differently now. I don't have to be like, this has to be like, you can let people do what they need to do, but it's applicable for everyone because you should be. It teaches you how to do like give feedback. It shows you how to coach leadership. If you're a solopreneur, you should have a VA. If you don't have a VA, you should get on it. Like it's just little things like that.

I think I just bought it.

No, I'm telling you, you're going to get it. Like, like you're going to read it and you're going to, you're going to read the first chapter And then you're like, wait, and then you're going to finish it and be like, whoa, bro, like what? Like, I'm like blown away. I was like, this thing is crazy.

Insane. I mean, you have so much going on and you talk about, you know, an eye for the future, you creating Ascension to do the new, new thing. And that's like super admirable. And I do think your finger's on the pulse with that. What excites you the most about the future, though?

Okay, question back to you to answer this appropriately. Yeah, my my future or the future?

The future period. Take it any direction that you want.

Um, I'm really deep into AI. I'm pretty deep in. I know there's always gonna be people who are deeper than me, but I'm. I know enough. And so what I'm the most excited about is using the knowledge that I've learned and other people's knowledge and creating prompts and systems and making our lives a lot easier. AI, as much as people are afraid about it, it actually can make your life easy too. There's a lot of things that I think in the next 3 to 5 years will be super easy to get done. All the manual grueling things that you don't want to do. I wouldn't be surprised if they have an AI like billing and invoicing where literally the AIs just talk to each other and just figure it out. I don't have to deal with it. Like, figure out the taxes, figure out the accounting, like, think about that. It would save us a lot of time. Everybody just like figure it out. Now, for people that are in accounting, finance are going to be mad, but it is what it is. But the thing is like, that's something that can happen. So my thing is that like, I'm just excited about the future of AI and how it will save a lot of people time. So it allows us to be in more of a creative space. But again, that's also biased for me because I am a creative. So I want to be in my creative zone as much as possible. I don't want to do— I don't want to do all the manual things that I have to do because it takes me away from that. That's my natural state. But my thing is, I'm personally excited about the future because like there are things that are happening that will allow me to be like in optimal creation state always. I can come up with new ideas, I can come up with new concepts because that's where at least where I thrive best. But everyone's different on how they would perceive this. But that's just me.

Can you manage And let me, let me, let me switch this around. Not just manage. Can you create an AI-driven product for Ascension to, to help do what you're doing better?

100%. Yeah, it would be able to create— I think it'd be able to create concepts and foundational shows better. Like, I don't think creative— I don't think creatively it will, but foundationally, yes. Which is the difference. I think the creativity is very, very hard to replicate, but the foundations are easy, easier to replicate.

Pick the right employees that that could potentially be a hit. Like that that part's pretty straightforward, right?

Like right exactly foundationally yeah for sure.

Well like well what what you know you you spoke about you know being excited about AI like strongman the other side like why why should we be afraid of AI?

Hmm. I mean, you should be afraid because you won't, you won't know you're talking to AI. So think about it.

Yeah.

So I brought this up at the conference. Everyone was like, oh, I wouldn't know. It's like, you guys just don't get it. Okay. Let's give it 5 years. I think it might be sooner, but let's say 5. You go to an event. SaaS event, sellers there, sales rep at X company. I guarantee you that sales rep, that's the best sales rep on your team on the floor, do all this stuff at the event. AI, you won't even know. It'll sound like a regular person. They'll have regular inputs and actions and it'll be normal. And this is even, this is even deeper. Y'all aren't ready for this one. Companies are going to be like, I don't want to spend money on travel. I don't want to spend money on hotels. So what if I just have an AI bot that literally sounds like my top rep? Same exact cadence, same exact tone. You don't even know it's AI. Looks spot on. And they just run the event. They meet with the clients, they do their thing, and then you just send them to like some factory and they shut down. You don't have to pay for a flight. You don't have to pay for a hotel. And they're closing deals and they're going to log everything in the CRM because they do it as soon as the conversation is over. So you don't have to worry about— I'm just telling you, like, yo, this is why you should be afraid, because you're not gonna know.

Now, are we gonna have like a governing body that's gonna require that AI bot to introduce themselves as like, hey, I'm Morgan's AI?

I don't— I, I— you won't know. That's what I'm trying to tell you.

Well, what I'm saying is, I, I get that, but like, is there gonna be a governing body saying it's illegal?

I don't know.

I'm not in— you don't know.

No, because, because like right now, government— I can't say that.

Elon Musk was talking about that.

But Morgan, I'm just telling— that, that's why you should be afraid, because you're not gonna know, and it's gonna, it's gonna, it's gonna beat you in a sales target, and you're gonna be like, yo, what the heck? It's like, yeah, because they were already there. They had to pay for the travel and the hotel.

Here's the craziest thing. The craziest part about it is it's not gonna beat you in the beginning. Like, like the whole chess AI.

Yeah.

But then as soon as it— and you're gonna be like, yeah, this AI is like, eh, give it like a month and you're never going to beat it

again. Yeah, you're not. She's gonna kill you. So that's it. That's the thing. I'm more— but I'm more scared about the personal than the professional about AI. I'm more scared about the personal. The personal is, is very terrifying.

This has been an incredible conversation.

I don't want to go there, but the personal one is this actually Scariest one. That's where y'all should be the most terrified. It's not even professionally. You're looking at it wrong if you think that. It's the personal side that is the most terrifying by far.

What's uh, what's the meaning of life?

Is that where we're going with this? Are you? Is that a serious question?

Yeah. Yeah. You have AI. You have you know this world morphing to where. Kids now want to be YouTubers. That's just like, like, from your point of view, like, what is life like?

Okay, so this is, this is a deep one. So I've actually thought about this recently. I was talking with a friend. I was like, we're both in social media. I was like, how long? How long for you? Like, how long? How long are you going to be on social posting content? Like, is there an end? Will you stop? And they're like, I think I'll just keep going. And I was like, I don't know if I will. Hard, right? I've been doing it for LinkedIn 7 years. I've been doing it for a decade. I've been posting for like 10 years, right? Some people.

Yep.

You know, they've been doing it for 3, 4, or 2, so they're like kind of still in it. My take is like, I just want to be able to truly experience what life is. It's not through a digital thing. It's through literally walking in the grass, seeing the ocean, and feeling the air and embracing culture. So like, life for me is an evolution of growing yourself to the highest potential and evolving with what the world offers you and experiencing it to the highest level. I don't— I just don't think anything else is like that. If you think about it, you know, everything that we're just trying to find ourselves in life and our purpose and who we are, but we're also trying to find Those moments of fulfillment and happiness, which is why people are chasing money. They chase they chase all these different things. But in order for you to really see that, right, you have to chase yourself and figure out who you are. Best way to do that is to evolve yourself to the highest degree. Only eight to ten percent of people research your potential. So that should give you some motivation to be like, I'm trying to get to hundred percent. That's the only thing I think about, right? And if I do that, guess what? Other people are gonna come along and see your energy, and they're gonna gonna have good people. So it's not like a it's not a work, like hustle porn toxic thing. I'm just talking about evolving yourself to 100%. If you commit to that, how are you not going to have a good life? How are you not going to be fulfilled? How are you not going to have the right friends around you? How are you not going to have a successful life if that's the only thing you're focused on? It's the only thing I care about. Because if I do that, all my other aspects of life will focus on my relationship with my friends will be better. My relationships with my family are better. My whoever it is, significant other at the time will be better. My relationship with God would be better. Everything's going to be better because I decided to evolve. But if you decide not to, then yeah, everything's going to be not as good as you thought. And then if you evolve, that means you have to see the world and experience it. So that's what I think the meaning of life is. People have different answers, but that's my perspective.

I love that. I can't wait to get word of mouth because you're not on social anymore about you hanging out at like a Tibetan spot.

It'd be like, how did you get here? Like, oh yeah, it's not going to literally leave one day. I'm just gonna leave. I already know it. I don't know when it's gonna be, but at some point I'm just gonna be like, yo, I've given everything to this. Like, I feel that. I'm out for— maybe it's a year, maybe it's forever. I don't know. But you have to experience that. I mean, one of the biggest flexes in the world, Kendrick Lamar, when he posted on Instagram, he's like, yeah, I haven't had— I haven't looked at my phone for 8 months. Imagine not looking at your phone for 8 months. Everything was fine when he came back to it. Apparently, he was still doing his thing. But that's crazy to me. Eight months and he didn't look at his phone. Yo, but imagine different life.

But imagine what came out. Like he's optimizing probably for creativity amongst other things, and and he probably optimized really well for that.

Yeah. So is that something— yeah, I don't want to do that because it's just there's creativity that's untapped that is being disrupted by the day-to-day. And yeah, I would take 8 months to go do that for sure and not have my phone. I would tell certain people that where I'm going, so, you know, it's not weird.

You're not worried.

I would do that 100%. So yeah.

It's actually what I dream about, um, after Rev Genius is to take like 3 months and just go to like a desert area. I'm picturing like, like Arizona, New Mexico, maybe Mexico.

Solo, no electronics, and just like meditate.

Yeah.

And figure it out. Be separated. Dude, I love, I love that answer. And I'm so happy that you were here today. Morgan, how could everybody get in touch with you, find out more about Ascension, etc.?

Yeah. So website is coming out soon, so I'll probably make a post about this thing soon. But if you want to find me, LinkedIn, Morgan J. Ingram. YouTube's the same, Morgan J. Ingram. And then I have a newsletter called Commish and it's at morganjingram.com.

Thank you, Morgan. This has been another episode of Revenue Today. Thank you all for listening. If you liked it, share it with somebody else and we'll see you next week. Thank you, friends, for joining me. That was another great episode of Revenue Today. If you're looking to listen to more episodes or for the show notes, go to revgenius.com. For all my friends in the Rev Genius community, it was awesome to spend this time with you. Please DM me any feedback or ideas for future podcasts in our Slack channel or on LinkedIn. If you're not in Rev Genius, join us. It's revgenius.com. It's free and it's fast to join and really for all levels of revenue professionals. For senior leaders, we just launched a private community just for you called Rev Room. We know it gets lonely out there and we We've built a tight-knit group of senior leaders collaborating on the future of B2B go-to-market. Looking forward to seeing you all there.