In episode 10 we sit down with Will Allred to talk about hiring sellers, the future of selling, and the role of AI in sales.
0:00
All right, guys.
0:02
Let's huddle up.
0:03
All right, guys.
0:04
Very excited to--
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well, I would say introduce, but technically,
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Will, you're like the mastermind behind this podcast.
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So--
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Oh, this is yours.
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Right.
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So if you don't know, Will.
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Will, Allred, co-founder, CEO of Lavender.
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[MUSIC PLAYING]
0:22
Hey, hey.
0:23
I appreciate the promotion.
0:24
I, uh, you know, now it's just technically the CEO.
0:28
Yeah.
0:28
I think after I said CEO, I was thinking about him like,
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wait, actually, he's not CEO, but he's founder.
0:34
All right.
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I'm one of them.
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Wait, can we explain the difference, then,
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between, like, being a founder and a CEO?
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Because I kind of correlate the two.
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Yeah.
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I'm happy to.
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I think that's a question that a lot of people have asked.
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So it's pretty simple.
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I focus primarily on go-to-market.
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Balance is focused across go-to-market,
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but more so on product.
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So if you think about how we divvy up the roles
1:02
across the three founders, it's really
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around like a specialty of focus.
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So when you look at my role on go-to-market,
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it's evolved pretty much constantly
1:13
from the early days being demand generation slash,
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like, marketing, because it was just the three of us,
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where I just post on LinkedIn, create demos,
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and then we'll go give ed demos and then go close them.
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So you were like in the SDR?
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Yeah.
1:30
I was effectively in the SDR.
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This sent a lot of cold emails for sure.
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The fun thing about being a founder
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is there's no one role that you get pigeoned into.
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It's more of you look across the org,
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you look to see where there's gaps within the organization,
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and then you go in and fill them.
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And then you do the role until you kind of figure out
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document, systematize what it is that needs to be done
2:00
within this area.
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And then you find somebody to bring into that specific function.
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Or maybe you find it's not that effective,
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and then you stop doing it.
2:08
You handle more operate, like your COO, right?
2:11
Yeah.
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But even the COO role, we brought out
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a guy on the back end, Elliot, to handle more
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of the back end operations of the company.
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It's my dad's name.
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My dad's actually moving away from some of that stuff as well.
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If you guys don't know, everyone who founded this company
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is named Will pretty much.
2:27
So they're going to go buy their last names.
2:30
Lyla and I go buy Will one, Will two.
2:33
Yeah.
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Yeah, if you didn't know, Will, you're one.
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Balance is two.
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The third, we'll get into that.
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I don't even--
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I don't think there is--
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I actually don't think there is.
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I don't think there is.
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The third anymore.
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We do have a third.
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Will, Akken?
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Will Howard, he's an account executive.
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No, that's four.
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I'm talking about founder-wise.
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Oh, founder-wise now.
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So Casey is our third founder.
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Right, right, right.
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So maybe Will number one.
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Just kidding.
3:00
Will balance.
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You can also be number one.
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I feel like when we say Will number one and Will number two,
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it's like--
3:05
Well, just because we met this one first, this one.
3:07
That's fair.
3:09
Well, maybe you can talk about-- because I
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think the story behind how you guys founded Lavender
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is really cute.
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It's like you guys were in your basement.
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I don't know.
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But maybe you can just share your story.
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And the name.
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The name they were in the shower.
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And the name.
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And the Y behind it.
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I met Balance at Hackathon in Atlanta back in 2018.
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I-- time was working consulting.
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He was working on an edtech startup.
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And he pitched this idea for a MarTech product that
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would take B2C customer list.
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So if you're an e-commerce store,
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take the customer list, organize it by personality traits.
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Let's say, extra version versus introversion.
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And then the idea was that we would deliver advertisements,
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customer communications, even web experiences, long term,
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to meet the needs of those psychological traits.
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Because if you think about how segmentation's done today,
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it's OK, you've got middle 30s woman in--
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I live in Brooklyn, so I live in Brooklyn--
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who is interested in the following things
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and has bought things in the past.
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It's very demographic and behavior focused.
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And so adding that extra lens, what we were finding
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was you could be about 40% more effective,
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particularly in advertising.
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So we had some customers like Yamaha, Gravity Blankets,
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COVID forced us to pivot that business.
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Classic.
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It worked out, though.
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I think we found much stronger product market fit post
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pivot.
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Well, me and Casey were up in New York City early 2020.
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Oh, that's like prime nasty COVID in the city.
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Oh, yeah.
4:53
Oh, yeah.
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Prime nasty COVID in the city.
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How does dirt and COVID is what that is?
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I was playing with moving up.
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My wife Lara came up with me.
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At the time, she was still my girlfriend.
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I proposed to her while we were up here looking
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for apartments together.
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Of course, she then caught COVID.
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[LAUGHTER]
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So--
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That's when it was like taboo, though.
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Like people were like taping the door shut.
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Our friends didn't like hang out with us
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for like a solid three and a half months.
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It was-- it was tossed.
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She had OG COVID.
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I can't even imagine what the--
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The OG.
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I remember I had-- because, you know,
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we're trapped in this like 700 square foot apartment
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that Lana Lara was trying to like get through work calls
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and would have to like catch her breath.
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It was-- it was OG.
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Oh, gosh.
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Four years later, here I am in New York, so.
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You made it.
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I realize I didn't even like finish the transition story.
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Yeah, I was going to say, wait, wait.
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We were dealing with Yamaha as your customer.
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Then COVID hit.
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The thing that we kept running into is--
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yeah, Delilah, if I give you a list of introverts
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versus extroverts, do you know how to design an advertisement
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to meet the needs of those individuals?
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No, probably not.
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I got to think-- well, I mean, one I'd make more bubbly
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than the other.
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I don't know.
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Yeah, but when you start to get into traits like conscientiousness,
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openness, and like, neuroticism, it just
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starts to like, fall off.
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So I would give these lists.
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They'd be like, I don't really know what to do with them.
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So we gave like, one sheet of what to do with it.
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And then still people are like, no.
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So they were like, can you just build tools that tell me,
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like, content tools, content analytics tools?
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And that is effectively the core root of what McCain Lavender
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was we were building this content machine that would like,
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help you craft to these personality traits.
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We had a customer that was like, personality's cool.
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Can you just take all these content tools
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and attach it back to return on ad spend?
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Because that's what I get measured on,
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and that's what I care about.
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And so we looked at that and we're like, give us like a weekend,
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and let's see what we can do.
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I'm like, hacked together.
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Report based off of some pretty rudimentary data science.
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And I will say it was not my CTO that it was me.
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And so the math was very wrong.
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As I'm like, clapping.
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Yeah, I was about to say, he's not only CEO, COO,
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he's now CTO.
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But the math is very wrong because I came back
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to the report and I was like, OK,
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it looks like you can boost return on ad spend by about 20%.
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You're wasting about one and every $5.
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So they say, cool.
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Design the ads.
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So it was like, OK, give me a few more days.
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We did.
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And then we ended up five-exing the return on ad spend.
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And so we were like, oh, we got something.
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Didn't COVID happened.
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And then we were getting call after call.
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We had a pretty interesting customer base
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in the co-working space, which, as you can imagine,
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co-working at COVID was nonexistent.
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It was basically all of our revenue was leaving.
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Any pipeline was calling us as well
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and being like, hey, we're putting this on the hold.
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And so it was a, what do we do?
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And balance, I swear, he is the most serendipitous human
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of all time.
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And he goes, hey, check out this article.
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LinkedIn Sales Navigator had shut down support for Gmail users.
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And so he's like, we could build that, launch it on product
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time, and probably build enough cash off of that to stay alive.
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Damn.
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And that was the basis of what became Lavender,
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was a little side panel that would tell you who you're emailing
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and give you information on them.
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And then we were like, well, let's
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strap the content analytics tools in the back end of that
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to tell you if it's a good email or not.
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At the time, we thought it would be a fun marketing trick
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to bring people back to the marketing product.
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And then we quickly realized, oh, wait,
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this is a much better product, and people really like it.
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How would you say the product has evolved since you started?
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Are you drinking straight up black coffee with no ice?
9:28
Yeah.
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It's straight out of the fridge, so it's not--
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OK, so it's cold.
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I'm still nothing but kind.
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And I was like, no straw, nothing just straight.
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No straw, no cream.
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I mean, I've had black coffee, whatever.
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As you can see, our 80D is off the roof today.
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How would you say that-- and by hour, I'm in line.
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I won't throw you under the bust of Lila.
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No, I'm right there.
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OK.
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How would you say that the product has evolved
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since you guys started?
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And until now, because I know you guys just
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released new features as well.
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We had a lot of features road mapped out
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that we've been releasing.
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And so the vision for the product
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is more or less coming to life, as we've imagined it over time.
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We've obviously responded to what the market has asked for
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and what we see within the competitive landscape.
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Less interested in being a me too product
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and more interested in diverting away from anything
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we really see become norm.
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What I mean by that is a lot of AI for email workflow
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tools are effectively a giant CMS platform where
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content management system, where you've
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got a list of persona and a list of triggers,
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and you can go in and manage what the prompts are
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on the back end and centralize control.
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What we find interesting about that
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is it doesn't actually get at the root of the problem.
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It's just another way to create a new sales engagement
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platform, which is if I wanted to create templates
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and different sequences, I would just
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do that within a sequencing platform
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versus what I think our goal and our envision
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should be to be a place of deeper understanding for why
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email works as a whole.
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So everybody's treating email as an action layer
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and not as an insight layer.
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So I look at a company like Gong as a huge inspiration
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for where we go, not in the sense
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that we're going down the same exact path,
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but the path that they took was extremely different
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in that they looked at phone calls.
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And I have to be careful on how I see this,
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because obviously Gong does email now, right?
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But they do email in an action-oriented way.
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Our focus in this is similar to how
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they approached phone calls in the early days of saying,
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OK, you have got this information layer of phone calls
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to happen, and it's a black box.
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Email effectively is a black box.
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And it's only gotten to be more of a black box,
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especially as rise of personalization
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has become mainstream again, because it used to be the norm.
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And then we figured, oh, we can blast all these templates.
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And then everybody did it, so now it doesn't work anymore.
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And so now it's like, OK, we have to go back to personalizing.
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The problem with personalization is
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templates all of a sudden become meaningless,
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because Victoria, Delilah, you could both
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send the same template, but you could get different results.
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I think the bigger problem is not trying
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to centralize control against that I can have a feeling of confidence
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that I know what's going out the door every time.
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It's more of how do I give the black box that is email
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a clear system of understanding and insight?
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Well, we've talked about this.
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People saying email is dead, or call calling is dead,
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or outbound is dead.
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What's your take on that?
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Nothing's dead.
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It's just a tire take.
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Social media hates nuance.
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And so everybody tends to jump on the most extreme position
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in order to gain visibility and traction.
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That's the way social's always been.
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Doesn't like middle of the road.
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It likes black or white, not gray.
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And so it's not that something is dead.
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It's that a particular format style approach is overplayed
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and thusly out of favor when it comes to driving results.
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So example of this would be back in 2020, 2021.
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Kyle Coleman was positioning this concept of how
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to run personalization, look for a personal hobby.
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So it'd be like, I don't fly fishing.
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Victoria, let's say in the most strange turn of events,
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you are the most avid fly fisher woman of all time.
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Sure.
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You didn't know?
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Honestly, I just went fly fishing the other week.
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What do you mean?
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Caught my own fish too.
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Just brought it home.
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For dinner.
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Right back to the Upper East.
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I love it.
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Now people know where I live.
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Straight out of the Hudson.
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So let's say in a wild turn of events, it's a Mason Junior.
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Victoria, saw your bag in the fly fishing
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as your fly fishing and trying to present the fly.
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It's no different than sending cold email.
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And then you go into this diatribe about what you do.
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It was really effective back then because no one was doing it.
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And then everyone started doing it.
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So what happened was it became like, oh, I know what's happening.
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It's this, right?
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It's like if somebody sends me an email and the CTA is,
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would you be opposed to whatever it is?
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I know I'm being crisp-bossed.
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As soon as something becomes mainstream,
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it becomes ineffective.
14:57
That's so true.
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And that line I like.
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Like as soon as something becomes mainstream,
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it's ineffective because it's no longer creative in a sense.
15:05
Right.
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This is one of my bigger fears with all of these AI
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personalization tools that people aren't necessarily seeing is,
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it's no different than, hey, I see that you are a senior leader
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of sales development at LivePerson.
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That used to be magical.
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And now it's like, that's so not effective.
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You don't need to tell me my job title is I'm well aware that
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you can see our own fields into an email.
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You start to run into people's ability to pattern match.
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So the concept is you've got like a mental spam filter.
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If you think about how people go through their inbox,
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they're going to spend about nine seconds on average
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reading the email.
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And most of them are going to get deleted
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within the first three seconds.
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That three second, nine second window, the amount of words
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that you're reading in that time span, it's about 37.5.
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Most emails are not 37.5 words.
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And so what's the disconnect is people don't read email.
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They skim it.
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They are categorizing.
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They're not reading to understand.
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They're reading to say, what is this thing?
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So that I can decide whether or not it's worth my time.
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You look at the formatting.
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You look at overall use of language.
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You look at patterns.
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And human beings have evolved for millions of years
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to identify patterns.
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Whether it's those stripes and the grass
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look like a tiger that's going to murder me.
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Or this really, really bad sales email
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is a waste of my time.
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So what is your go-to framework for personalization?
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Because we touched on obviously not just looking
16:46
at their title on LinkedIn.
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Not even going deep into finding a hobby
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because that's become mainstream.
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So how do you go about personalizing
16:54
that's not super common?
16:56
- There's a few things I'm doing now more than ever.
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Which is if I only have one called observation,
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trigger point, it's probably not enough.
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I'm thinking about what I'm pulling in during my research.
17:13
Let me back up a bit to understand
17:14
the process that I'm going through.
17:16
Yeah, I was just going to ask what the process is.
17:18
- Let's say I'm going to reach out to Victoria, right?
17:21
What I'm going to do is I'm going to go through
17:26
a series of information sources
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and try to build a point of view on Victoria.
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Victoria's role, Victoria's company
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and the market that Victoria operates with them.
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And I can do that pretty fast today.
17:40
I use our own product to do it, right?
17:42
I can see LinkedIn posts.
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I can see past job history.
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I can dig into news and events around the company.
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I can pull in the financials.
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I can quickly gather what industry analysis of said.
17:58
Like financials are.
18:01
I can look at job openings across the company.
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Personality traits of Victoria in this case.
18:09
I can also go straight to a chat GPT modal
18:15
and then ask questions about the industry
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that live person's in, who's the competitive landscape?
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What are future features in that space
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that are really important?
18:25
And then I think about it through the lens
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of what we sell and what we do
18:29
and how it comes to life in their life.
18:32
I think a good example of this was
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the coaching session I did with the live person team, right?
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I think the sequence you all sent over
18:40
was to IT leaders, right?
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And the question is like,
18:43
if you're reaching out to a technical persona,
18:46
effectively new persona for you,
18:48
there's a new field that needs to be brought in,
18:52
which is, well, what are they building?
18:54
What are they trying to put into place?
18:57
And then, yeah, I like my Delta example, right?
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'Cause it's my favorite way to conceptualize
19:05
what live person does because.
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- Isn't it amazing?
19:07
- Yeah.
19:08
- It's the best experience out there.
19:09
And thank you, live person for me.
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- You heard it from him first.
19:12
- Oh, hell yeah.
19:14
- We'll just clip this and then run it all over LinkedIn.
19:17
- That's right.
19:18
You think about that experience
19:19
and you think about reaching out to an IT
19:22
or an engineer at someone at United,
19:27
who they also got an app,
19:29
but do they have the same experience on the backend?
19:33
Do they want to provide that experience?
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That's where it becomes concrete within the user's mind
19:41
of like, oh, okay, that's where that plays in.
19:43
That's what that gets me to.
19:45
We don't just like, buy tech because it's cool.
19:47
We buy tech to help us accomplish something.
19:50
I think it's become pretty common
19:51
to sort of refer to 2020 to like 2021 as like a zerba era
19:55
where like we almost like forgot that like engineers
19:58
can like build a bare bones version
20:01
of something that we've built.
20:02
And so it's like, yeah, you could do something in house, right?
20:07
You could try to build a lavender in house.
20:10
It's not the most effective use of time.
20:12
That's why we buy software like CRM.
20:14
We don't build our own CRM
20:16
because the amount of time will take to maintain it.
20:18
But like bringing in what live person does
20:23
into that developer stack, right?
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It's like, all of a sudden they're like, okay,
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here's what I'm trying to achieve.
20:30
Here's where that comes in.
20:32
Here's what that helps me accomplish.
20:33
Okay, I can concretely understand
20:35
where this comes into play.
20:37
The job within the email is to weave in
20:42
all of these different like observations
20:45
and to create like a clear perspective or point of view
20:48
and just start a conversation around those initiatives
20:51
that they're trying to go after.
20:53
The Victoria is not just a secret.
20:54
Like we use live person for our writing assessment
20:58
when we are trying to ascertain whether or not
21:01
if somebody's gonna be a good SDR or AE here.
21:05
And so when somebody goes to write an email,
21:07
we basically say live person's account.
21:09
Who would you target?
21:11
Why would you target them?
21:12
Why are you even reaching out to live person in the first place?
21:15
There's like a secret answer,
21:17
which is they're already a customer.
21:19
Why would I reach out to them?
21:20
And like, I don't know why no one has figured that one out.
21:24
- If you're interviewing at Lavender,
21:29
didn't you do this before we even became a customer?
21:32
- Right before.
21:33
- So, and the reason we did it was because we had a clear,
21:37
like your account executive has their metric scorecard
21:40
filled out.
21:41
Like we had like all the pieces of information
21:43
so we'd be very objective about what they were pulling in.
21:46
So yes, like the secret answer was not the secret answer
21:51
before but now it is the like very obvious answer
21:53
because I always laugh when somebody's like,
21:55
Victoria is on a podcast with Delilah called Huddled Up
21:58
and I'm like,
22:01
where do you watch said that?
22:03
- There's a podcast.
22:04
- Fascinating.
22:05
- Wait, did it actually not realize?
22:07
Like, I don't know.
22:09
It'll be funny now that I'm on the podcast.
22:12
So it'll be a--
22:13
- It's literally on Lavender land.
22:16
- Like literally.
22:17
- That's why we're more on.
22:20
- You don't say down the line though,
22:23
we have to go through these emails.
22:26
- That would be a fun follow-up episode for sure.
22:28
- For sure, we will.
22:30
Effectively set up now a follow-up step in the process
22:33
where I'm like, talk me through your thinking here
22:36
because what I wanna see is how they connect the dots
22:40
as they did their research
22:41
to really understand do they understand it?
22:44
And obviously I don't expect everyone
22:47
like no Lavender's world and like how we operate.
22:51
Yeah, I think the biggest branding lesson
22:54
we've learned out of this is people know our extension
22:56
but they don't know that we have like a whole team's product.
23:00
- Right.
23:01
- Interesting and a lot of friends.
23:02
But the thing that I'm looking for them to do
23:03
is to weave in aspects of what's happening at the company
23:08
with like where your past experience might have lied
23:13
Victoria, like, oh, being in an SDRC,
23:18
having like both of you all having like risen up
23:21
within the organization quickly
23:23
but also at the same time taking the realities
23:25
of like what's happening within the company.
23:28
And marrying the two to create a perspective.
23:32
Yeah, Victoria, clearly into coaching,
23:35
having been in the trenches in the SDRC,
23:38
you're always thinking of ways that you can level up
23:41
and enable your reps to rise to the ranks just like you did.
23:44
I'm doing some of the fly so.
23:47
- No, I could tell but it's good.
23:49
- As why you do what you do.
23:51
- Right.
23:52
- That's why you're the expert.
23:53
- You work at the live person tech stack
23:55
and think about the pipeline goals set out in front of you
23:59
by Josh.
24:01
So obviously pulling in other individuals
24:04
within the account to work a full perspective.
24:07
If you don't know who I'm referencing,
24:08
Josh Dixon is the VP of sales development.
24:11
Is that correct?
24:12
- Yep.
24:13
- So as you seek out to, yeah,
24:15
accomplish the pipeline goals set up by Josh,
24:17
do you feel like your SDRC tech stack
24:21
is setting you up for success within that?
24:25
We've built a tool that can help with email
24:27
but wanna make sure that's a focus and set.
24:31
- Boom, it's a good one.
24:33
Make drop.
24:34
Something I was thinking about is when people,
24:38
like some people, they know to get the 10Ks,
24:40
they know to look up the interviews,
24:42
they know how to look at the financials
24:44
but they don't know what to do with it.
24:45
And they don't know, like they know the process,
24:47
obviously you can like Google like a 10K report
24:49
but then once you look through the 10,
24:51
it's like 150 page doc, what are you actually looking for?
24:54
So maybe you can like give some tips on like,
24:58
when you pull all these resources in,
25:00
they can get super overwhelming.
25:01
So how do you pull out the gold stuff?
25:04
- I imagine there's like 101, 201 and like 301, right?
25:09
And like 301 is you're looking at like the financial lines
25:13
and you're like, marketing spend has, you know,
25:15
actually gone down yet at the same time
25:18
you're still seeing revenue grow,
25:19
where's that coming from?
25:20
But the reality is like, most people you reach out to,
25:23
that's not gonna be something that they like hear you talk about
25:26
and be like, oh, that's a brilliant email.
25:29
This guy's really in the weeds, right?
25:31
How do you look through and try to identify
25:34
what the initiatives across the company are
25:36
that they're typically telegraphing these things, right?
25:39
Like if you look at the live person, like financials,
25:43
all about going up market and like building that like
25:47
enterprise go to market machine.
25:49
I can't imagine there's any initiative internally
25:52
other than let's go start conversations
25:55
with the largest companies on the planet
25:57
so that they can implement live person
25:59
into how they communicate with customers.
26:01
- I think our go to for that is like
26:05
kind of what you were saying speaking to their role
26:08
and what they're trying to solve for.
26:10
So to navigate a huge doc like their financial statements,
26:15
we command F what they would be interested in
26:18
and what live person could solve for
26:19
to help us like navigate it,
26:21
find our good content that way.
26:24
And then me personally, I put all my thoughts on to a doc
26:28
or email and then lavender it up, send it out.
26:33
Lavender, so they didn't even know that we say that
26:35
'cause I said it the other day with them
26:37
and I was like, let's lavender it up.
26:38
And then I think it was Ashley who was like,
26:40
oh my God, I love that.
26:42
I'm gonna take that and use that with my customers.
26:44
I'm like, hell yeah, whatever gets you up else.
26:46
We're literally about to go through
26:48
all of our sequences again.
26:49
And we always say like we gotta lavender it up.
26:51
We gotta put it through lavender.
26:53
- As a founder, have you ever heard the trope of like,
26:56
you've made it when you become a verb?
26:57
- No, but I wanna become a verb.
26:59
- Oh yeah, that's funny.
27:00
(both laughing)
27:01
- Like you don't like, oh, let me make sure I call an Uber.
27:04
Right, it's like, oh, Uber there.
27:06
- Oh.
27:08
- That's like a whole lavender.
27:12
That's one of the, you could argue it's a fault of the word
27:17
'cause it is a word, it's hard to like verb it.
27:21
In the sense of like, I'm gonna lavender this email.
27:25
- It's just quite fun.
27:26
- Yeah, wait, is that also like where you think of products
27:30
as the brand name?
27:31
So like some people will be like,
27:33
can you pass me a Kleenex and they just mean a tissue?
27:35
Or like do you have a clue tip?
27:37
Like they don't say a cotton swab,
27:39
like they're saying you tip.
27:40
- Yeah, you don't say I'm gonna lift there.
27:42
Right, you say I'm gonna Uber there.
27:44
- Yeah.
27:44
- Oh my God, that's marketing.
27:46
Okay, well, we like to go through some rapid fire questions.
27:51
- Let them read.
27:53
- All of these have been in prep view and beforehand,
27:55
but looking forward to your answers,
27:56
considering you can make up anything on the fly.
27:59
If, and I mean that in a good way.
28:01
If you could make a law that everyone had to follow,
28:04
what would it be?
28:05
- That's tough 'cause like,
28:07
I'm sure whatever law I'd talk with
28:09
would be hypocritical in some way, shape or form.
28:11
So the, yeah, I'm like,
28:14
- Okay, I'm like,
28:15
- No one has to know.
28:16
Drink your coffee black.
28:18
- Drink your coffee black.
28:19
- That would be criminal.
28:20
No, everyone be running to the bathroom.
28:22
(laughing)
28:25
- No, I'd probably lean on something like,
28:28
something cheesy, like listen before you speak kind of thing.
28:32
- Oh, I like that.
28:33
Good one.
28:35
I think cheesy ones are the best.
28:37
Tiffany Haddish's law is everyone has to give someone a hug
28:40
every day.
28:41
- Oh, that's a good one.
28:42
- I'm still debating how I feel about that one.
28:44
- That's a lie, look, don't you feel better
28:46
when you like hug someone?
28:47
- All right, you know what my law is?
28:49
If you think of something to do,
28:52
or if somebody asks you to do something
28:54
and you recognize that it will take less than two minutes,
28:58
you have to do it than it now.
28:59
- Oh, I actually really like that.
29:01
- Interesting.
29:02
- 'Cause otherwise it's gonna eat more
29:04
bit like mental bandwidth than it actually is worth.
29:07
And you should just get it done then.
29:09
- Love.
29:10
- I like both.
29:11
I think listen before you speak is really big.
29:13
- That one's huge.
29:14
- My other one would be respecting people's calendar blocks.
29:17
(laughing)
29:19
- Now you're just creating a lot of laws here.
29:21
- Now we're making the 10 commandments here.
29:23
- That's right, that's right.
29:24
You gave me too much time.
29:25
I was like, wait a minute.
29:26
- Let's jump into the next one
29:27
before we have a declaration of an independent gun.
29:30
This one's probably really hard to think of on the fly,
29:33
so if you want to skip, you can use a skip.
29:35
- Yeah, I think we could do it.
29:36
(laughing)
29:37
- What's your favorite quote or mantra you live by?
29:40
- Just pick one.
29:41
- You act like there's a million.
29:43
I don't even know one right now.
29:46
- I know, it's like, if I had come in thinking about this,
29:48
I would probably have one.
29:50
- I know yours.
29:52
- What is it?
29:53
- This two shall pass.
29:54
- Yeah, I do love that one.
29:55
- It's more, but I do have another one
29:58
that my mom always says that I love, but anyways, what?
30:00
- Mine's more of a personal mantra,
30:01
which is figure it out.
30:03
- Love that.
30:04
- Particularly thinking about right now,
30:07
everybody is looking for AI
30:11
to kind of outsource their brain in a lot of ways.
30:14
And there's a positive in the friction, right?
30:19
The act of figuring it out,
30:23
the act of going through the hard part
30:26
in order to get better at something
30:28
is not a bug, it's a feature.
30:33
And so it's okay if it takes you a little bit
30:37
of time the first time, it doesn't mean that you need to,
30:39
oh, we should have an AID that.
30:42
It's like, no, no, no, there's actual good things
30:44
that come out of that.
30:46
So particularly in looking at email
30:51
or I look at a lot of STRs right now
30:54
in the world of technology
30:55
where there's so many silver bolts in front of them,
30:59
I see wraps do this all the time,
31:01
but they'll waste countless hours not doing the work
31:05
and trying to figure out ways to outsmart the work.
31:08
And the ones that do the work consistently,
31:11
they're the ones that excel, exceed quota
31:15
and build the skills for the long haul
31:18
that lead to their ultimate success.
31:20
- I love that.
31:22
Challenge has always lead to opportunities.
31:24
I would honestly say that that's definitely
31:26
one of my favorite mantras is figuring it out
31:28
'cause my dad would all,
31:29
like anytime I would ask something,
31:30
be like, figure it out, figure it out.
31:32
- That's what, we all have to figure it out.
31:34
I figured it out. (laughs)
31:36
- They do the hardship.
31:38
- What's the legacy you hope to leave behind?
31:41
- Cool.
31:42
- Aren't these great?
31:43
- Yeah, these are tough questions 'cause--
31:45
- The next one's easy, don't worry.
31:47
- It was like damn, it was like,
31:49
I feel like--
31:50
- What's your deepest, darkest year okay?
31:52
Keep playing. (laughs)
31:54
- Legacy, I mean, like I would hope to have a great family
31:58
that I spend time with and that loves me back, right?
32:01
But the work related one,
32:03
I think that's probably what people are more interested in,
32:05
is the whatever you want.
32:08
- Fairly.
32:10
- Well, I mean, both can be true.
32:11
- Yeah.
32:12
- The work legacy that I'm gonna leave behind is,
32:15
and I don't think it'll be obvious in the short term,
32:18
but the long term is that like,
32:21
FIO that, you know, figure it out of--
32:24
- FIO.
32:26
- There's power in figuring things out yourself
32:29
and like AI can be an assistive tool and can help you,
32:33
but the full replacement,
32:36
the new like concept that we're gonna automate out the SDR role,
32:40
I hate that concept.
32:42
- Same.
32:43
- Stupid.
32:44
- I view the,
32:46
'cause I view the SDR role as,
32:52
on a lot of ways like the modern American like dreams,
32:55
where if you don't need a college education
32:58
to go be a sales development rep somewhere, right?
33:01
- Real.
33:02
- Sure.
33:03
- I got some of my like,
33:05
I would go hire this guy today.
33:07
There was at the time it was bad timing.
33:09
He's now going and building something,
33:11
but he was literally--
33:12
- I'm just gonna say send him over.
33:13
- Yeah.
33:14
- He's two weeks out of high school,
33:15
and he cold emailed me to go get an SDR role,
33:18
and like, he put together the best writing assessment,
33:21
was one of the best interviewers I ever like,
33:23
put through, in the timing was just off.
33:26
I set him up for like several interviews,
33:28
and he was like, I wanna work with y'all,
33:30
and I was like, damn thing.
33:32
But like, you know, the kind of person where like Victoria,
33:35
if you were like, I wanna talk to him,
33:37
I'd be like, I'd connect y'all,
33:38
and the first thing he would do is pick up the phone call you.
33:40
I was like, this guy was built for sales.
33:43
- Oh, I love that.
33:44
- What's he doing now?
33:45
- He took the next two weeks,
33:48
decided he wanted to go become an engineer,
33:51
and then like, is building his own thing.
33:53
His like, his parents were both entrepreneurial.
33:56
I still think that's guy.
33:57
'Cause I'm just like, you think about,
33:59
you put in the hardware,
34:01
like, you can make a lot of money really fast.
34:04
Like, you can do that being an electrician,
34:06
but there's obviously like a cap in where that goes.
34:09
But I think in this world where everybody views,
34:12
like the American dream is like dying or anything,
34:14
I don't think that's true.
34:15
I think it's just shifting the goalposts
34:18
of where you can find that role and enter into,
34:23
and create that path for yourself.
34:25
Because sales is cool like that.
34:27
That's one of the, yeah, I spent too much time
34:30
working with marketers.
34:31
I found pivoting over to sales.
34:34
Pivoted the company.
34:36
It's really fun.
34:37
- This has become so wholesome, I love it.
34:39
Okay, easy one.
34:42
What's your favorite way to unwind and relax?
34:45
- Ooh, let's see.
34:48
My like, number one thing,
34:52
it's a non-negotiable that I find every time
34:55
I get away from it, like, my life is worse.
34:58
It's just like going and running.
35:00
And it's just like the best way for me to clear my head
35:05
and mind.
35:07
- I wish I could be a runner.
35:09
- Then I would say like right there
35:11
and that list would be like going for a walk
35:13
with my wife and the dog.
35:14
And then, yeah, let's be like top.
35:17
- Great, great ways.
35:19
Much better than mine.
35:21
Why what's yours?
35:22
TikTok.
35:23
Oh, I knew you were gonna say that.
35:24
(laughing)
35:25
- Right.
35:26
- I'm just gonna be baking sourdough.
35:29
Baking sourdough.
35:30
Delilah moved to the south and is now like a southern bell.
35:35
- Yes.
35:36
- Baking sourdough.
35:37
(laughing)
35:38
Wait, do you have a favorite sourdough starter?
35:41
Is there?
35:42
- I have a starter.
35:43
I named her, she's in the fridge.
35:45
We'll talk offline.
35:46
- It's like, well, why?
35:47
Tell the folks like me.
35:49
- What's the starters name?
35:50
- The starters name.
35:51
The starters name is Lev.
35:53
Long story.
35:53
- Why?
35:55
- Okay.
35:55
(laughing)
35:57
So my friend had a baby named her Lev
36:02
and she gave me some of her starter when she gave birth
36:06
'cause she was like, okay, like,
36:08
let's do something every Sunday where we bake together
36:10
and whatever I'll give her something to do
36:12
is like a new mom on the weekend and kind of get away.
36:16
And so I named my sourdough starter Lev
36:19
'cause she was feeding her baby.
36:20
I was feeding mine.
36:22
- Yep.
36:23
- So now I feed her, grow her, maintain her,
36:26
make bread every week.
36:27
- It's a whole thing.
36:28
- Wait, I thought you named her Lev
36:30
because her, I'm calling your starter her.
36:32
- It's a her.
36:33
- Okay.
36:34
I thought you named her Lev because of Lev and Bread.
36:39
- Yeah.
36:40
- No, that's what my brother made a joke about.
36:43
- Mm, right.
36:44
- So, Delilah, making bread,
36:47
have you found yourself making more friends as a byproduct
36:50
because you have like a bunch of extra bread
36:52
that you have to get rid of?
36:53
- With the maintenance people,
36:55
you--
36:55
- I was just about to say she needs her maintenance people.
36:58
- Ronald brings my bread home to his wife all the time
37:02
and they love it and it's like the greatest reward ever.
37:05
I give them bagels, bread, all this stuff.
37:08
Real friends, no, I'd have to like leave the house more.
37:10
But yeah.
37:11
(laughing)
37:12
- I like begged her 'cause she came to New York a few weeks ago
37:15
and I'm like, can you please bring some bread?
37:17
It goes, it's gonna get all soggy.
37:19
I'm like very hard to transport,
37:21
like a loaf of bread.
37:22
- Yeah, I was-- - Not a loaf,
37:23
but just like a piece.
37:25
- I'm just texturing like a backpack filled with bread,
37:27
but then like you just squish it.
37:30
- What's something that people often get wrong about you?
37:33
Like what's people's biggest misconception about you?
37:35
- I don't, maybe this is a lack of self-awareness.
37:41
I don't know what people's conception of me is.
37:43
(laughing)
37:46
- Okay.
37:46
- That's an interesting question.
37:48
- Yeah, I try to be pretty authentic in my interactions.
37:52
Like to don't sugarcoat or like leave things out.
37:55
So my goal is particularly in like being a public persona
38:00
and like writing on the internet every day,
38:02
which you think about like,
38:03
I post a LinkedIn every day since like 2020.
38:06
It's literally just me, I sit on the couch over there.
38:09
I'm like, have a cup of coffee
38:11
and we'll just write something out, right?
38:15
So like my goal is to not have misconceptions.
38:19
- Okay.
38:20
Comment below what you think the misconception is.
38:23
- No, why do you guys think of Will
38:25
and then now that you watch this?
38:27
- Let me find out where I've gone very wrong.
38:29
(laughing)
38:31
- Cool, well Will, it has been an absolute pleasure
38:34
having you on.
38:35
You know, we love to hear from you all the time
38:38
and your advice and our team has definitely learned a lot
38:41
from you, your product, everything.
38:43
So appreciate you, appreciate you coming on.
38:46
- Yeah, thank you.
38:47
And Delilah, I hope that somewhere out of this episode
38:50
an AI tries to write an email that compares sourdough starter
38:55
to like the core ingredient of their product.
38:58
- Listen, if the NSDR is watching this and has lavender,
39:02
I don't know how you wouldn't get an interview here
39:04
'cause you got the sourdough information
39:06
and the best writing tool ever, so.
39:09
- Victoria Donner, are y'all hiring right now?
39:11
- We're starting to have conversations.
39:13
So, I mean, we're technically like always having conversations
39:17
with SDRs because like, you know, we do promotions,
39:21
someone we, like it's just the nature of the game.
39:24
So if you're watching this and if you made it this far,
39:28
reach out to Delilah and send her some bread.
39:30
Reference this part of the podcast.
39:32
- Yeah, this is the secret ticket.
39:34
(laughing)
39:35
- Exactly.
39:36
(laughing)
39:37
- But then you did your research.
39:38
- Well, thank you Will, it was such a pleasure.
39:41
- Always, always. - Thank you.
39:43
- Bye. - Bye.
39:44
- Bye.
39:44
(upbeat music)
39:47
(upbeat music)
39:50
(upbeat music)