tapeworm companies are eating your margins
In this episode Peter Lohmann and co‑host John Matzner discuss two main themes. First, they critique "tapeworm" SaaS companies—vendors that become essential to a business but raise prices faster than inflation. They cite Dropbox, Adobe eSign, Jotform, Airtable, and others, describing how added feature bloat and per‑seat pricing create painful lock‑in for small‑to‑mid‑size firms. They argue that switching costs have collapsed thanks to open‑source alternatives, Google Workspace, custom front‑ends built with Cloud Code/Replit, and API‑driven integrations, and they walk through a BAT‑NA style cost comparison (e.g., Dropbox per‑seat $100 vs self‑hosted solution $8,000). They also mention practical steps like consolidating tools (Google Drive, e‑sign, Calendly, Loom) and using APIs to replace closed platforms. The second half shifts to sales advice for engineers and founders. Drawing on Oren Klaff's "Pitch Anything," they explain the concept of "frames"—power frames, detail frames, and how small acts of defiance can shift dominance. They illustrate proper framing (arriving on time, asserting limited availability) versus passive framing, and discuss how founders can leverage their expertise, confidence, and mindset to control conversations, even when using unconventional tactics (e.g., skipping follow‑ups, setting own next‑step terms). They also touch on coaching, scripts, cadence, and the importance of reading original sources to build knowledge advantage. Throughout, the conversation is informal, anecdotal, and peppered with humor.
Chapters
Peter Lohmann. I'm joined by my co-host, John Matzner. How are you, John?
Good. If I do the intro, I'm gonna say the number one small business operations podcast in the multiverse, cuz I wanna cover all of our bases. You know, there might be other sequences of time and space events where I, where AI bots are living and competing on online games. We're still number one, baby. We're still number one, even in the multiverse.
So did you see the, did you see the Open, uh, Claw, like Massive MMORPG or whatever. Yes, it's like the EVE Online clone where they're all fighting each other. Great.
What are we, uh, what are we talking about? I think we're talking about maybe two things today, maybe one, maybe two, based on time.
Well, it's gonna take everything out of both of us to not talk about OpenClaw for the next hours, but we're not going to. So if you don't already know about that, you should go look into it. In the meantime, we're going to talk about Tapeworm Companies, which is Companies that insert themselves into your business, they become core to your operations. They're sort of irreplaceable in some way, but they raise their prices faster than inflation. This is a phrase popularized in our circles by Moses Kagan originally. I think it's a Warren Buffett thing, but I'm fighting this right now in my business. I don't know about you, John. And I'm just like reaching my boiling point with a couple of these SaaS companies and vendors that are really important part of what we do, but their pricing is just getting ridiculous. Um, and then what's— oh, we're also gonna talk about at the end of the show, we're gonna talk about sales tips for just if we wanted to. Yeah.
You know, I was just talking about it this morning, so that was another one based on time.
Yeah. So let's get into it.
I can give you my perspective from two different things, the heart and the head, right? I can give you the head answer to tapeworms and I can give you the heart answer. Which one do you want, or should we talk about both? Which one do you wanna start with?
Let me give a couple specific examples so people know what we're talking about.
Sure.
Yeah. So the two that just come to mind right off the top of my head are Dropbox and Adobe eSign. For a property management company, these are core tools or their equivalents. Dropbox is basically our shared server. It's where all of our client files live, all of our photos, all of our inspection reports, all of our signed contracts. Everything is in Dropbox. Goes back 10+ years of history in there. And then Adobe eSign is how we get all of our leases and all of our management agreements signed. I mean, we're sending out 2 or 3 documents a day for e-signature, lease renewals, everything.
And I saw, I saw your team's calendar. I thought you do all lease signing in person because there's a bunch of scheduled events. Is that not the case?
No.
You guys do—
I can't believe you remember that.
That is a deep pull.
Yeah, that is.
That is an old podcast episode.
Local constraint, uh, conversation that we were having.
No, I was just— I just wanted to insert a very referential, uh, line there. So sorry, continue.
So, you know, Dropbox when it started was great. The premise was it's a shared folder that syncs, and it did, and it is— it was great. And in the last 5, 8 years, they've added all this other bullshit that no one wants or cares at all about. All this other, like, all of these apps, Slack, they're all trying to become everything. They're all trying to have like a whiteboard. They're trying to have a workflow. They're having a Kanban. They're trying to have shared notes, Slack, automations, AI, everything. I just need a shared folder that syncs, bro. That's all I need. And Dropbox pricing has gotten ridiculous. Even as the price of storage has come down unbelievably in the last 10 years, their pricing somehow seems like it's going up. Their per user for their business account, ridiculous pricing. On, on the Adobe side, also ridiculous pricing. Whether you're looking at Adobe or, um, there's a few of these really popular e-sign platforms. Again, they add a bazillion features that we don't know, care about, or need, and their pricing goes up every year. And I'm like, this is software, shouldn't the price be coming down every year? Isn't this getting easier and more competitive? What is happening? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Jotform, another great example. Try and get multiple users added to Jotform. So I don't know, I'm just like really ramped up about this stuff right now because the work it would take to rip these things out and replace them is just nowhere near the best use of my time. And no one else at my company is really motivated enough to do this, or would— like, they could figure it out, but like, it would take me a tenth of the time because I'm the one that put these tools in in the first place. So I'm just like on the warpath about these tapeworm businesses recently, and I don't really know what to do. Do you ever look at these credit card receipts? You know, you ever read through your Sagan's credit card statement?
Not unless I want to waste my day.
You should.
And that's why— but that's why I do heart, not heart. That's why I said, do you want the hard answer or the head answer? The hard answer is you're totally right. Number 2, they're relying on you not wanting to do this. The entire premise of venture-backed SaaS is people would miss their rent before they'd miss their SaaS bill, which is why they get 20 times forward-looking earnings when they try to sell or they try to raise money. Used to, right?
20 times gross revenue is what they used to get.
Correct. The other thing that they're, that, that they're, that is important to know is for a venture-backed software company, they don't care about you. They don't care about you. They do not wanna build for you, right? They want to say that, that they have an ever-expanding TAM and now Trello is becoming the system of record so that they can raise their next round and they can whatever, because that is the business they're in. They have zero interest in building a simple Kanban tool that they charge you $39 a month for.
All right, Jason Freed.
Okay. Leaving it the F alone. No, he's right. We're all, we're on fizzy now.
$37 a month.
We're on fizzy because I'm like, they're going to leave it alone.
Right.
And so I think it's, you know, you're, it's like the scorpion on the back of the frog crossing the river. It's like, it's, it's nature. You like that reference?
Yeah.
Right. It's like, it's its nature, right? It can't help but do it. The entire premise is that they have pricing power. That's the entire premise. So that is my hard answer. My brain answer is there's good news coming because the switching costs have collapsed. They've collapsed.
Switching costs have collapsed.
Both the switching costs as well as the ability to even consider switching. So you can go, uh, 5 years ago, if I said, Peter, there's an open source equivalent of Dropbox that just plugs right into AWS servers, which is basically what Dropbox is built on too. They don't manage their own servers and you can just raw dog servers from AWS with this GitHub plugin and have shared cert, you know, shared, whatever. You'd be like, dude, if I was to put a price on the amount of brain damage to implement that in our team, it would be $100,000. And Dropbox is only charging me $100 per seat. If you put that into Claude code right now and said, here's a GitHub repo for an open source equivalent, I want you to build me a front end, make sure it has this feature set. I want nothing else. And here's the link to my instance on AWS. The cost of that is not zero, but let's say it's $8,000. So it's not zero. And you're like, okay, so Dropbox, don't effing push me. So they have to walk a very, very thin tightrope about what their upward price, the pricing, or the— it's really the demand elasticity.
Yeah. But I just feel like they haven't gotten that memo yet. And so they're still acting as if. None of this is happening. Good times are still here. They're raising prices.
They're going to say you have to vote with your feet.
Yeah, I know. I want a bunch of other people to vote with their feet and then I want to benefit from it.
Even with LeadSimple, where you're—
No, not LeadSimple, man. No, not LeadSimple.
Okay. But you know, it's like, you know what I'm saying though, right? Media, you vote with your feet. Now, one of the best ways—
LeadSimple's not raising prices though. Okay.
But, but, you know, it's— I think about this all the time as, as we position against some of our more expensive competitors, right? If I charge you, if I charge you $10,000 per hire, Peter, you have huge incentives to try to figure out how to bring this in-house or use another provider or whatever. I charge you 10 grand. If I charge you $600 a month, you have way different incentives about trying to build this capability in-house. Do you agree?
Yeah.
And so in order to maintain pricing strength, you have to be a different type of offer. And so if you're trying to get a huge number, you have to look very differently than if you're Fizzy, which is trying to charge $49 a month and they're just like, we're never going to touch it. We're not raising venture. We just want to have a nice, boring, profitable Trello replacement that is not trying to move upmarket.
That's where unlimited—
that's the truth. You can actually host it locally. I think we might have actually just hosted ours locally.
Yeah, but it's $49— it's not $49 a month per user though, is it?
No, I think it's actually less than that. Yeah, and I think that's for everybody. I think it's a joke, whatever it is. Yeah, or you can just clone the GitHub repo and give it to Cloud Code and say host this and give it to like a Vercel link or something.
Right.
So point, point being though is I think it's still too early to really see the implications on Dropbox's pricing, but it's going to be death by a thousand cuts. There's not going to be a Dropbox replacement that's free. It's going to, they're going to lose the lower end part of the market and then they're going to lose the whatever. And they're just going to get, it's like Craigslist for some reason.
I just, so the way I think about what you're describing, it's like a BATNA thing. It's like, what's my best alternative to my negotiated agreement with Dropbox?
Economics. It's replacement.
100%. Yeah. What— I forgot my train of thought. I just— oh, my train of thought is, why can't there be— and this is like old man yelling at cloud, but why can't there just be straightforward SaaS or service providers that charge a reasonable price and just forever. Like, for example, my— the security company, the, uh, the office security company that we use here, it's called The Security Network. Um, they are— we're connected to their phone lines in case someone breaks into the office after hours. They handle all the door sensors and window sensors and all that. They've charged us $40.88 per month for 10 years. It's never gone up. And in fact, we recently got an email from them and they said, I'm so sorry, we need to raise your price. Franklin County increased their sales tax, and so we've increased the sales tax on your invoice. Your price remains the same. I'm like, this is amazing. This is unbelievable. Why can't Adobe be like that? Why can't Dropbox be like that? Just let me give you money. Let me give you money instead of making me look for alternatives. I don't want to look for alternatives. You don't want me to churn. Let's make a deal.
I've never been more certain that you were an owner of a property management company than when I heard you complain for 15 minutes about a $79 charge. And now I finally see you as you truly are, which is which is at your core, you are a property management owner, which to me comes through so quickly, which is until that moment I never knew. And now seeing you in your full regalia complaining about a $79 charge because it's up from $39 and $79 is unfair. I never saw you as you truly were. I feel like I'm meeting you for the first time, Peter.
When you have 35 people and these companies are charging you per seat, it adds up, dude.
Now I will tell you something that we're gonna do. I, I was bugging Kevon about this this weekend. Um, uh, I was bugging Kevon about this this weekend, specifically around Dropbox— uh, sorry, Airtable— which is we were about to get clipped for like a $40K increase on Enterprise.
Dang.
Uh, because we use so much Airtable, Airtable, and they want us to click up to Airtable. And I was like, wait, we don't need all these people in Airtable directly with seats. I'm gonna gut our Airtable and bring it down to 7 seats and then just build a custom front end in Claude code. And I'm like, this could actually be a Sagan service offering, which is I could target small businesses that use Airtable and I could say, look, uh, you're a Sagan member and I will basically clip your air— and because I can build those, because I actually know how to do it now, it's, it's a little tricky, but using the API of Airtable, I'm like, Seguin membership pays for itself just with your Airtable per seat savings because their pricing models are effed. And I'm going to go around and say, are you— I'm going to build— okay, sorry for any sponsors who might be listening to this. Appfolio, you guys have a big API. I'm not— and you guys do per seat pricing?
They don't do per seat pricing, it's per unit.
Yeah, but anybody, anybody who does per seat, yeah, per seat pricing is exposed to this.
Jotform.
It's exposed to it. What'd you say?
Jotform doesn't allow you to have multiple users.
Yep. So I can basically have a tunnel in, use your entire architecture off my one seat, and then, you know, freaking parse an email and put that into my system with like 2 seconds of cloud code. So I actually think there's a whole business model there where you just charge a percentage of savings.
So are you off of Replit onto cloud code now? Is that, is that the same thing?
Depends on the use. Uh, the best example, Zach, my, one of my long-term partners in crime, was the one who, um, was the one who said this: Replit is like, uh, Apple iOS and Cloud Code is like Android. So any serious professional is like, oh, you have so— it's better pricing and whatever. It's like, that's Android. It's like, it's so much more flexible. You don't have to apply to the App Store, but it's way higher ceiling, but Replit makes some of the design choices for you, which means you're not like trying to figure out what type of database architecture you need. You're just like, yo, Replit, build me a database. Now, if you're building a SaaS, I wouldn't be effing around with Replit, but most of the people listening are not building SaaSes. Okay. They're better off in a more kind of boxed environment. So I'd use both. Depends on what I'm building.
The one other dimension I'll add to this conversation before we move on is a bunch of these, because these companies are all trying to cannibalize each other. They have all started duplicating their offerings. So for example, Dropbox now has an e-sign thing. Did you know that?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Google recently added an e-sign thing. Um, Google Drive is kind of comparable to what Dropbox now offers. I don't know if you knew that either. I didn't until recently, but like you can run Google Drive kind of like Dropbox now. And it's like all these different services and platforms are trying to cut like Google now has like a Calendly equivalent. So actually a lot of the stuff Google has, like halfway decent. So what I'm thinking now is like, can we replace Loom, Calendly, Dropbox, and Adobe all with like just one upgrade on our Google account, which ends up being half the price overall?
Which we do that same thing. We got rid of our Zoom account.
Yeah, Zoom account.
We got rid of our Calendly stuff. We got rid of all that. Uh, even Gemini. Like, I got rid of all of our ChatGPT reimbursements. I'm like, guys, with the way you guys use it, use Gemini.
Yeah, so that's kind of my latest thinking too, is I need to do an analysis on all that and see how much we'd actually save per month, because there is this rip and replace cost of actually getting everyone switched over and canceling the—
so the, the brain answer is, Peter, you got better things to do. The hard answer is, if it pisses you off to see it every day, fix what bugs you. Go spend a day, drink 2 Red Bulls, go to a coworking space, and by the end of the day, you'll have installed a GitHub replacement. And now you get to put my favorite Peter Lohmann phrase of all time in Dropbox in big letters. This storage has been deprecated, which is my favorite Peter Lohmann quote of all time. Dropbox is deprecated. Please use our new storage, our new file storage solution.
It's exactly right. Here's the link on Notion of how to do it.
Correct. And even again, Notion, can you, I mean, we gutted our Notion. We basically just had one like admin user and everybody else is view only because of our ability to API into it.
Yeah.
So letting an API into your software, they have a very, I would hate to run a SaaS right now with those kinds of things because you have two choices. You run a closed ecosystem and it's gonna piss everybody off and they're gonna churn cuz it's closed. Or you run an open one and you let a fox in the henhouse. Because now I can API into ClickUp. What the hell? So I'm paying for a front end now, right? I'm paying for a front end.
What about all the, like, the user authentication stuff and like the multi-user permission levels and all that? Like, there is value in that, dude.
You know how easy that is to replace now? It's stunningly easy to do. You just have 3 different— you can get a skill when you finally get your Claude bot back up. You can get a skill off GitHub that says, give me an open source architecture that I want you to remember forever that has admins, super users, and whatever users. And you use that block for all we do.
Wow.
Yep, we do. We built, we're building them like crazy, man. We'll talk about it offline, but like, it's just the switching costs have collapsed for, again, if it's, I'm not gonna replace my CRM. Oh, I might replace my CRM.
Replace my—
that's a— I'm speaking out of turn there. I'm going to replace my CRM because it pisses me off. But like, now I'm not a Fortune 1000 company. Um, I have a huge team that can do this. I'm pretty good at this kind of stuff, right? If you're making a million dollars a year, you should not be ripping and replacing your CRM to save $100 a month, right?
Right.
So I think what's the main thing? I mean, there's a— there's some considerations here, but if it breaks, you fix it, man. It's your— I said this the other day, one of my coaching guys said, hey, I really want to do this thing. I want to start like a landscaping company. It had nothing to do with what he did. And I was like, I know that the right answer here is to focus on the thing where you're making a ton of money, but you're the business owner. Part of what that means is you get to do whatever the fuck you want. So if you want to start a landscaping company, start a landscaping company. And Peter, if you want to rip and replace Dropbox, guess what? You're a freaking company. Do it. Do it just to prove a point so you can look at yourself in the mirror. So I have no problem with that. But then don't come to me and say, I don't have any time to like grow sales. I'm like, yeah, dude, because you're replacing Dropbox like an idiot. But Well, your call.
There's also a content angle, right? It's like, is this gonna make for good content? Right? Content brain.
I mean, that's why Claude, that's why, you know, it's one of the reasons I got the Claude bot. I was like, I have to have an opinion about it. And I do very much so. And you're working on yours right now. I mean, you're pretty, I, if people haven't noticed too, by the way, it's like 65 here and I'm not wearing shoes, so I'm in a good mood. And Peter, it's 11 degrees and he literally has a heated keyboard.
It's on right now.
Grumpy mood.
I am grumpy. I woke up grumpy this morning, although we are, we're, we have a record heat wave right now. It's actually 49 degrees out right now.
I'm like, she— oh my God.
I went for a walk without my coat on outside. It was great. Sun's out.
This is triggering. Um, it is literally never that cold here ever. Um, okay. Uh, more on this?
No, I think we've I think we've reached the end of that. Um, to talk about sales real quick. Yeah. Sales tips for engineers. Help me.
Yeah. So I think people, because when I first started writing on the internet, it's, it's a little, I mean, I'm trying to think of an analogy here. I don't know if you have an equivalent here. Um, because I first entered the like little small corner of the internet we are while I was running a very operationally intensive home improvement company, I became known. As like a systems guy or SOPs or even global talent is essentially an operational affair.
Do you think it was the Matrix-esque multiple computers with terminals open and Techno Plane in the background that did it?
Could be, could be. I, but I do not identify as a systems builder. I am a systems builder because I have to be, not because I like it.
You're fluent in like Terminal or whatever the hell.
That's not flu— that's a tool. But I am not as— I mean, I am. I can fake my way through it. But I am a sales— I love to— if I could do nothing but sell all day.
10 minutes ago, John was like, you need to have direct access to your command line interface on your phone.
You do. You do.
Through your Mac Mini, through your network. Let me tell you about this tunneling app that you can get that connects to this other app so you can access your command line at any time, day or night, from from your phone. This was John 10 minutes ago.
Are you done? I mean, you do need that so that you can restart your, your Claude bot remotely.
I mean, that is a factual statement, but sales guys are always telling me I need to be able to tunnel into my home PC and use the command line interface at any time.
So see, there you go. Maybe you just need better sales guys. But I am ultimately a sales guy. That is what I like doing. And I know Peter at times does not like that. And so I thought it would be good to just, I just taught a class this morning at Sagan University called Founder-Led Sales. Um, and we're talking about kind of like a few concepts that, um, you know, I thought you might like that I find myself using like every day. There's maybe one, and if people like this, like drop me an email or, you know, drop me a DM cuz there's a lot more we can do with this. But there's one concept I'm not gonna, I mean, I could talk forever. There's literally one concept that I think we should talk about today that I think is really, really powerful that I use every day, but that most people don't. Is that cool?
Yeah, let's do it.
Did you read, you've read, I know I've recommended it, Oren Klaff.
Oh, I read it, baby.
It's like a 15-year-old book.
Love that book. Control the Frame.
So what I wanna talk about, correct. So what I wanna talk about today is frames, right? It is something that is a daily user somebody who's operating at a high level. You don't need to do this when you're selling, you know, $29 lipstick on Amazon. But if you're doing B2B, if you're doing high-level B2C, you have to understand frames and know what they are. So maybe as somebody who knows what they are, do you want to start and then I can kind of fill in the details? Or how do you want to talk about frames?
I'll just start by giving the example that stands out to me from the book. So sure, pretend you're a professional salesperson, you're traveling around, and you're either raising money or you're selling really expensive SaaS software, enterprise SaaS or something like that. Big deals, enough that the company's paying to fly you around the country. So you show up to the boardroom to make your presentation in front of all the execs for some Fortune 1000 company. There's two ways you can enter this, right? There's two different frames. The first frame is you show up early, right? You're all neatly polished. You have your little notebooks. You're, you're 100% ready. And you're just like, oh, I'm so sorry. If I can, we can start now. Or if you guys want to wait, like, we can start later. Like, whatever you guys want. Like, I just wanna make this really easy and quick. Oh, you guys have to go early? Oh, that's okay. I'll go faster. Like, no problem. And I'll follow up with an email. Right? You're very, like, passive. You're very, um, deferential to the powers because, hey, they have the power, they have the money. You want to win their account. Maybe if I'm nice to them, they'll give me the money. They'll give me the account, right? I don't want to offend them. I don't want to bother them. I wanna be as, you know, as little obtrusive as I can. So that is, I forget what he calls that, but that's the wrong frame. The right frame is you show up right on time, not a minute early, and you let them know, hey guys, just so you know, I have an appointment right after this. We're closing a big deal, so I'm gonna be really quick. I'm gonna respect your time, but I'm not gonna be able to hang around and answer any questions. So like, if you have anything, just let me know and let's just jump right into it. We're gonna get started. Anyone who's not here yet, we'll just catch 'em up whenever they're here. I'm gonna get started right now. Like, you take control of that situation, and with everything that you're wearing, everything you're saying, everything that's unsaid, you are communicating to the other people at this table, I'm important, my time is valuable, I don't really give a shit whether you buy this or not because I've got 10 other people who are interested, they're calling me, and I'm gonna get on the plane and go to the next one. And like, that frame gets people's attention, gets them interested, and communicates that you're serious, you're doing deals, people are interested and it gets them to pay attention to what you have to say. That's what I took away from the book.
I don't know if that's what he wrote, but yeah, I think that's a really, yeah. I mean, we do training like internally on frames and being like sommelier and stuff like that. So I'll try to, I'll take a crack at defining it and then I'll talk about some specific examples that I think are very common. So a frame is an instrument of power and control in a social interaction. It's the lens through which you and the other person interpret what's happening. 'Cause oftentimes what happens can be interpreted in multiple ways, right? Who has the authority? What matters? What the interaction's really about? When frames collide, right? The stronger frame absorbs the weaker one. One always wins. The reason why that's important is because, for example, selling, when you are operating in the other person's frame, is basically impossible. Hey, Peter. Hey, I know you have some property management thing. I'm super busy. I just got to be on this call. Just can you tell me the price? Yeah, I know we booked 30 minutes. I've only got a few. Can you— what do you guys charge? Oh yeah, that's too expensive. I don't know if it's good. No, no, but keep going. Yeah, no, I'm just with this fucking sales guy. Yeah. Oh yeah. No, he's not going to win, right? What are the chances of you closing that business? Basically zero, right? Versus Peter, thank you so much. I'm so glad that we were able to sit down. No. What's the right frame? We're equals. We're professionals. Good morning, Peter. I'm glad we were both able to find the time. I've got a pretty full day today, so we're going to jump right into it. Sound good?
Yeah. Yeah.
What does that communicate? Not thank you. Oh my gosh. And just by the way, before we get started, I just want to say, what does that say? That says their time is more valuable than yours, right?
Right?
Now, it has to be true. You're not bullshitting. Right? So the most common frame, especially, you know, oftentimes I'm training are what are oftentimes women around the age of 30 talking to 55-year-old white guys who are bullies. Right? That is very common at Sagan because they're business owners and they're all gas, no brakes. And they're talking to somebody who comes from a high-context culture like Argentina. And if they don't understand frames, they are going to get steamrolled, right? They're going to get steamrolled. And so we teach them, right? I teach them the biggest frame that they run into. There's a couple of different types of frames is the power frame, right? This other person, it's like, I don't want to say, God bless our president, the office of the president, the individual I have mixed feelings about, but he is the classic example.
I don't have a guy.
The individual. The office, I respect, of course. The other person is trying to assert dominance, making you wait, playing with their phone, big-dogging you, right?
Yep.
How do you deal with that, right? You have to be prepared to deal with that. I learned how to do it in the Middle East because those guys do it like crazy. Taking phone calls in the middle of meetings, freaking bored, playing with their phone in the middle of the biggest pitch of your life, right? They just It is a part of the culture that they big dog you. There is one and only one way to beat a power frame.
You have to be more, you have to, I mean, what I, I, I should remember this from the book, but what I would do in that situation is say, oh, let me stop. I'll go ahead. I'll wait until you're ready. I'm going to run out and grab a coffee. Cause it looks like you got some other stuff to take care of. So just let me know when you guys are ready.
Yeah. The only missing piece. For that, in my example, would be small acts of defiance is the way you do it. That's, that's how you beat a power frame, small acts of defiance when you don't play in their game.
Right?
So they say, hey, I've only got 5 minutes. You're like, that's so great. I only have 4 minutes and 50 seconds. Right? And you do it with a big smile on your face. Right?
Love that.
What are you showing? You're showing you're a pro. You're showing you're a pro.
You're not gonna be ruffled.
You're not. Hey, man, right? So you have the book, you're looking on the—
yeah, I want to get the book so people can see what it looks like.
So the way that I typically do it is usually I think of it as just breaking balls with a big smile on my face, right? So if he's talking on the phone, I pull my phone out and start talking and saying, yeah, I'm just with this customer. No, I don't think he's really listening to what I'm saying right now. And I just have a big grin on my face, and then we both set our phones down and we have a real conversation as peers. There's the book, Pitch Anything.
Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff, really, really fun read.
And so I am— oh, I think about it as flirting with dudes. I flirt with them, right? A small act of defiance, you know, he's tracing his fingers. I, you know, Klaff talks about this, he's tracing his fingers on your pitch deck. You take it from him and you say, I'm actually a better artist than you. Let me put some feathers on this thing. Because what are you communicating? I'm not the little— pardon my French— I'm not the little bitch sales guy. Yeah. Right? Who's begging you for business. So that's the one you'll most commonly run into is the power frame. And if you let them basically own that frame, you're done.
Yeah, totally.
You're done. There are a couple others that you'll run into. You'll probably, in like your engineering world, there's one the basically the detail frame, which is they're like, so Peter, this is really interesting, but I was looking at your contract and line 37, it says that we're jointly responsible for pet accidents. And you're like, what the hell is going on? I don't even know if I want to do business with you. And you're asking me about line 17, the language we chose in our pet part. And if you let somebody drag you into that, it totally can nuke you. Because it cools everything down. And so there's ways you beat an analyst frame. Right. So what I would say is becoming aware of frames in a sales context in particular is one of the single most impactful things you can do to just be treated as an equal. Now it can't be bullshit, right? You don't just say, oh, I've got a full day of pitch decks, pitch meetings when it's bullshit.
Right.
You don't lie. It has to be true.
Yeah. And that starts with like a self-belief. About the value of your time, the value of what's on offer. And you may not have a day full of meetings, but you sure do have like important things that are valuable to you that you could be doing rather than talking to somebody who's wasting your time.
When I train our team, I take Amimo, who is Kenya-based, who is incredible. She's made probably 150 hires from us in a year, right? She's incredible, right? She's Kenyan. If you met her, you'd think she's just kind of like whatever, but she is a shit kicker. And I say, Amimo, if you get on a role kickoff call with Barack Obama and Barack Obama says to you, former president of the US, Barack Obama, hey, Amimo, I'm really thinking we should have 4 rounds of interviews for this executive assistant and we're going to do top grading and all this stuff. You know what I want you to say, Amimo? Mr. President, I think you're a wonderful guy, but you are totally wrong. How many times have you hired an executive assistant? I do it every day. Can we work together to come up with a hiring process that works? And if you don't believe that, that you can tell Obama that he's wrong about hiring, you don't have enough confidence in, you're not good enough yet at your job. Now, the minute you walk out of that context, you're like, oh yeah, whatever you say, Obama. But if it's hiring a remote executive assistant from South America and you've done it 150 times and he's never done it before, you say, I know exactly why you said that, Mr. Obama. I think that's going to take us in a direction that's not going to be successful. Do you mind if I comment on this hiring process?
Process.
And it's true.
I might fight you on the top grading thing though. I like, you know, you know I like top grading.
I know I shouldn't have said that because I know that's just going to trigger you, you know, that's going to trigger you down that path. But that is an example to me of where you have a belief in your expertise as a property management consultant or real estate agent, and just because the person has a couple bucks in their bank does not mean they're right.
Yep.
They don't do this as much as you do. I do this all day, every day. You do this once a year. And if you don't have the belief and act like that, you're not a trusted advisor, right? You're not, you're, you're just going to get nuked. You're going to be an admin.
Yeah. So sales, you know, what you, what you articulated here is like what I would call kind of mindset.
Yeah.
Coaching mindset, you know, understanding like how do you enter into a discussion with somebody else? How do you recognize the mindset that they're in? How do you recognize the mindset that you're in? What happens when these frames collide? It's like really fun psychological analysis type stuff. There's this whole other side of sales, which Hermosi is always sending emails about and always talking about scripts, ding Hermosi, scripts, you know, cadences, follow-up sequences, the more technical aspect of things, coaching sales teams, you know, making sure you're role-playing. Practicing 30 minutes every day. That's the side— the thing you talked about is the stuff I always like reading about and enjoy.
But none of Hormozy's stuff matters if you mess this up.
Agreed.
That's why I started with this.
You have to control the frame.
Yeah, no matter what you say, and they say, I've only got 5 minutes, and you're like, okay, I'm just gonna do Hormozy's technique but faster. It's not gonna work. Yeah, you have to— everything— if you have a strong dominant frame, the words— how many times have you heard the phrase What you say isn't as important as how you say it. Yeah. So it doesn't matter when you hear somebody read. Have you ever been pitched with somebody who's obviously going off a script?
Yeah.
Because their frame isn't congruent. They're not actually an expert, right? So that stuff to me is downstream of getting your inner game right. Because even at that point, I break every sales rule in the book. I talk 80% of the time. I cut the prospect off. I tell them they're wrong, but I have such a powerful frame because of my expertise. It, Works.
Yeah. Right.
And so that's why it's like, oh, well, you didn't ask for the order and set next steps. I intentionally do stuff. I'm like, hey, I know I'm supposed to set up next steps right now, but you're a busy business owner. So let's just say you email me in the next few days, and if you do, we'll move forward. And if not, I'm not going to follow up, dude. I'm busy. And it's true. Right. And it works. That's like breaks every rule you're ever supposed to have in sales.
And this really does work well for, for founders. You mentioned founder-led sales and That sentence coming from an entry-level salesperson who's brand new and 23 years old is just not going to hit as hard as a 40-year-old dude with a $5 million business who's just talking to one random other customer who's interested.
Correct.
Correct.
So that is exactly right. So, but, but I think just having on its surface, even as an entry-level salesperson, I sold people 30 years older than me all the time. And even saying, yeah, man, I know you're a billionaire, but I'm representing the US government. And so all of your wealth in the world is about one pinky because I can email the fricking White House. So how about you say we talk, bro?
Yeah.
Right.
Who turned you on to this book?
Uh, an instructor in a previous career.
Okay, cool. Yeah. Yeah. He's written a couple of books. I think I haven't read his other stuff.
Yeah. The other ones, they're okay. He started to go down some weird paths and stuff.
Stuff.
The basics of just like frame control and some of the mechanics are good. There's actually a guy on Twitter who I constantly accuse him of just being an Oren Klaff tribute account. I think it's called like Bowtie Sales or something. I'm like, bro, you're just regurgitating Klaff. But he actually builds upon some of the Klaff stuff that Klaff has kind of moved away from where I'm like, if you just read tweets about, you know, what, how to actually start a sales call versus asking about the weather.
Yeah.
Like, and he's like actually kind of like operationalizing frame control. Like, yeah, dude, that's good. Just, you need to say like, inspo hat tip class, which you're not doing, which upsets me. So that's, you know, man. All right. Tool, technique, quote, anything.
So I started reading— I'll endorse a prior recommendation of yours, which is that book Small Pleasures, or what's it called? Yeah.
By Alain de Botton.
Yeah.
Yeah. Book of Small Pleasures.
Yeah. It's really good. We just started reading it. It's a nice little green book with this gold lettering. It's very well done. Um, short little chapters you can read once a day or a couple of every day. Um, really been enjoying that. Nice change of pace from a lot of the business stuff.
Uh, you read it with, uh, Gem?
I try to read to her, but she's doing her own thing around bedtime. So we haven't—
that could be a good sauna book.
Yeah, definitely.
Okay, I'm gonna do two here. One a little businessy and one a little non-businessy. Okay, one is no company needs more than three goals. Facebook ran on just three goals for five years while growing 10x: growth, engagement, and revenue. One goal must always win in a fight to create true clarity. At Facebook, engagement trumped all. Goals should be simple enough that an intern who started Monday should understand them, and they should hurt. If your prioritization process isn't painful, you're not making real trade-offs. That's one. And I was just like, oh, that's really good. Okay. The second one is a little more interpersonally, which is my stuff. Like, you know, a little hippie dippy stuff by Richard Foster. And you have to read it slow to understand it, but it's very short. Give encouragement as often as possible. Advice once in a while. Reproof only when absolutely necessary. And judgment, never.
Hmm.
When talking about employees. So I'll read it again just because I think it's so stinking good. Give encouragement as often as possible, advice once in a while, reproof only when absolutely necessary, and judgment, never. I was like, that is a hell of a quote.
You said that's designed for employees, like to do.
I think I, when I read that, I don't know what the context of the original quote is, but I think of that when I'm talking about my team.
I think of that as just dealing with everybody and anybody in your life.
Yeah, maybe. Yeah, that could be. Yeah, that could be beyond just, but I think of it most particularly as when I'm thinking about training our leaders.
Someone, I read somewhere one time, or someone told me this. I have, I have my list of quotes pulled up here and I try to always attribute them when I can. This one, I have no attribution, and it's— I've read— I live— I've lived by this for like 25 years now. It just says read original sources.
Yeah, go to the metal.
If at all possible, get back. And sometimes you end up clicking through 3 or 4 different links to get back to some HUD memo or some EPA report. I just spent the— a couple weekends ago, I spent 2 hours reading through a NERC 2025 update on the status of our nation's utility grid. National Energy Regulatory Commission. Fascinating stuff. You'd be surprised a lot of these things when you get back to the original sources, you'd be surprised how well a lot of these are written and how very readable they actually are. Another infamous one is the like whenever a plane crashes, the NTSB does an investigation and they issue this report. You do not need to be a pilot. You don't need to know anything about planes to read these. They're very readable, very interesting. And you learn so much more about not necessarily what causes planes to crash, but like human psychology and systems thinking. Like there's tons of good stuff in these original sources.
My version of that is I remember reading— this was very early and I took it seriously and it worked so stinking well. And it's a slight variation on what you just said, which was I remember Mark Cuban talking about his early career where he would read the software manuals before making a sales call and he'd know more about the software than the customer who worked at the company. And then he said, most people are too lazy to gain a knowledge advantage. And I always took that to heart, which was just like, bro, I'm gonna go talk to this guy and I'm gonna know more than he does. And just putting in the work and not freaking using an AI summary, not Googling it 2 minutes before the meeting, but actually having an opinion and doing the reading. That changed the way that I started interacting with the world, which was like, I'm gonna go actually read the reports because the secondhand ones are never as good.
Yeah, totally agree. Good stuff, man. Another, another good episode in the books.
