Go To Lavender
Victoria Loewenstern & Delilah Singer 39 min

Lavender Pioneers


0:00

All right, guys.

0:02

Let's huddle up.

0:03

All right, guys.

0:04

Very excited to--

0:06

well, I would say introduce, but technically,

0:09

Will, you're like the mastermind behind this podcast.

0:12

So--

0:13

Oh, this is yours.

0:13

Right.

0:14

So if you don't know, Will.

0:15

Will, Allred, co-founder, CEO of Lavender.

0:21

[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,

0:31

wait, actually, he's not CEO, but he's founder.

0:34

All right.

0:34

I'm one of them.

0:35

Wait, can we explain the difference, then,

0:37

between, like, being a founder and a CEO?

0:40

Because I kind of correlate the two.

0:41

Yeah.

0:42

I'm happy to.

0:43

I think that's a question that a lot of people have asked.

0:47

So it's pretty simple.

0:49

I focus primarily on go-to-market.

0:53

Balance is focused across go-to-market,

0:55

but more so on product.

0:58

So if you think about how we divvy up the roles

1:02

across the three founders, it's really

1:03

around like a specialty of focus.

1:05

So when you look at my role on go-to-market,

1:09

it's evolved pretty much constantly

1:13

from the early days being demand generation slash,

1:17

like, marketing, because it was just the three of us,

1:21

where I just post on LinkedIn, create demos,

1:23

and then we'll go give ed demos and then go close them.

1:28

So you were like in the SDR?

1:30

Yeah.

1:30

I was effectively in the SDR.

1:32

This sent a lot of cold emails for sure.

1:35

The fun thing about being a founder

1:37

is there's no one role that you get pigeoned into.

1:41

It's more of you look across the org,

1:45

you look to see where there's gaps within the organization,

1:48

and then you go in and fill them.

1:52

And then you do the role until you kind of figure out

1:55

document, systematize what it is that needs to be done

2:00

within this area.

2:01

And then you find somebody to bring into that specific function.

2:04

Or maybe you find it's not that effective,

2:07

and then you stop doing it.

2:08

You handle more operate, like your COO, right?

2:11

Yeah.

2:12

But even the COO role, we brought out

2:15

a guy on the back end, Elliot, to handle more

2:17

of the back end operations of the company.

2:19

It's my dad's name.

2:20

My dad's actually moving away from some of that stuff as well.

2:23

If you guys don't know, everyone who founded this company

2:25

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.

2:33

Yeah, if you didn't know, Will, you're one.

2:36

Balance is two.

2:37

The third, we'll get into that.

2:39

I don't even--

2:40

I don't think there is--

2:41

I actually don't think there is.

2:42

I don't think there is.

2:42

The third anymore.

2:43

We do have a third.

2:45

Will, Akken?

2:46

Will Howard, he's an account executive.

2:48

No, that's four.

2:50

I'm talking about founder-wise.

2:52

Oh, founder-wise now.

2:53

So Casey is our third founder.

2:55

Right, right, right.

2:57

So maybe Will number one.

2:59

Just kidding.

3:00

Will balance.

3:00

You can also be number one.

3:02

I feel like when we say Will number one and Will number two,

3:04

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

3:11

think the story behind how you guys founded Lavender

3:14

is really cute.

3:15

It's like you guys were in your basement.

3:17

I don't know.

3:17

But maybe you can just share your story.

3:19

And the name.

3:20

The name they were in the shower.

3:21

And the name.

3:22

And the Y behind it.

3:25

I met Balance at Hackathon in Atlanta back in 2018.

3:31

I-- time was working consulting.

3:34

He was working on an edtech startup.

3:36

And he pitched this idea for a MarTech product that

3:41

would take B2C customer list.

3:44

So if you're an e-commerce store,

3:46

take the customer list, organize it by personality traits.

3:49

Let's say, extra version versus introversion.

3:52

And then the idea was that we would deliver advertisements,

3:56

customer communications, even web experiences, long term,

3:59

to meet the needs of those psychological traits.

4:04

Because if you think about how segmentation's done today,

4:06

it's OK, you've got middle 30s woman in--

4:12

I live in Brooklyn, so I live in Brooklyn--

4:14

who is interested in the following things

4:16

and has bought things in the past.

4:20

It's very demographic and behavior focused.

4:22

And so adding that extra lens, what we were finding

4:25

was you could be about 40% more effective,

4:28

particularly in advertising.

4:31

So we had some customers like Yamaha, Gravity Blankets,

4:36

COVID forced us to pivot that business.

4:39

Classic.

4:40

It worked out, though.

4:41

I think we found much stronger product market fit post

4:44

pivot.

4:45

Well, me and Casey were up in New York City early 2020.

4:49

Oh, that's like prime nasty COVID in the city.

4:52

Oh, yeah.

4:53

Oh, yeah.

4:54

Prime nasty COVID in the city.

4:55

How does dirt and COVID is what that is?

5:00

I was playing with moving up.

5:02

My wife Lara came up with me.

5:04

At the time, she was still my girlfriend.

5:06

I proposed to her while we were up here looking

5:08

for apartments together.

5:10

Of course, she then caught COVID.

5:11

[LAUGHTER]

5:14

So--

5:15

That's when it was like taboo, though.

5:17

Like people were like taping the door shut.

5:19

Our friends didn't like hang out with us

5:21

for like a solid three and a half months.

5:23

It was-- it was tossed.

5:25

She had OG COVID.

5:27

I can't even imagine what the--

5:28

The OG.

5:29

I remember I had-- because, you know,

5:30

we're trapped in this like 700 square foot apartment

5:33

that Lana Lara was trying to like get through work calls

5:38

and would have to like catch her breath.

5:39

It was-- it was OG.

5:41

Oh, gosh.

5:42

Four years later, here I am in New York, so.

5:46

You made it.

5:47

I realize I didn't even like finish the transition story.

5:49

Yeah, I was going to say, wait, wait.

5:50

We were dealing with Yamaha as your customer.

5:53

Then COVID hit.

5:54

The thing that we kept running into is--

5:57

yeah, Delilah, if I give you a list of introverts

6:00

versus extroverts, do you know how to design an advertisement

6:03

to meet the needs of those individuals?

6:05

No, probably not.

6:06

I got to think-- well, I mean, one I'd make more bubbly

6:09

than the other.

6:10

I don't know.

6:12

Yeah, but when you start to get into traits like conscientiousness,

6:15

openness, and like, neuroticism, it just

6:17

starts to like, fall off.

6:20

So I would give these lists.

6:21

They'd be like, I don't really know what to do with them.

6:23

So we gave like, one sheet of what to do with it.

6:26

And then still people are like, no.

6:30

So they were like, can you just build tools that tell me,

6:34

like, content tools, content analytics tools?

6:36

And that is effectively the core root of what McCain Lavender

6:41

was we were building this content machine that would like,

6:47

help you craft to these personality traits.

6:50

We had a customer that was like, personality's cool.

6:54

Can you just take all these content tools

6:56

and attach it back to return on ad spend?

7:00

Because that's what I get measured on,

7:02

and that's what I care about.

7:03

And so we looked at that and we're like, give us like a weekend,

7:07

and let's see what we can do.

7:09

I'm like, hacked together.

7:12

Report based off of some pretty rudimentary data science.

7:16

And I will say it was not my CTO that it was me.

7:21

And so the math was very wrong.

7:24

As I'm like, clapping.

7:25

Yeah, I was about to say, he's not only CEO, COO,

7:29

he's now CTO.

7:31

But the math is very wrong because I came back

7:34

to the report and I was like, OK,

7:36

it looks like you can boost return on ad spend by about 20%.

7:40

You're wasting about one and every $5.

7:44

So they say, cool.

7:45

Design the ads.

7:46

So it was like, OK, give me a few more days.

7:50

We did.

7:50

And then we ended up five-exing the return on ad spend.

7:55

And so we were like, oh, we got something.

7:58

Didn't COVID happened.

7:59

And then we were getting call after call.

8:03

We had a pretty interesting customer base

8:05

in the co-working space, which, as you can imagine,

8:09

co-working at COVID was nonexistent.

8:14

It was basically all of our revenue was leaving.

8:18

Any pipeline was calling us as well

8:20

and being like, hey, we're putting this on the hold.

8:22

And so it was a, what do we do?

8:25

And balance, I swear, he is the most serendipitous human

8:30

of all time.

8:31

And he goes, hey, check out this article.

8:34

LinkedIn Sales Navigator had shut down support for Gmail users.

8:39

And so he's like, we could build that, launch it on product

8:43

time, and probably build enough cash off of that to stay alive.

8:51

Damn.

8:51

And that was the basis of what became Lavender,

8:56

was a little side panel that would tell you who you're emailing

9:01

and give you information on them.

9:03

And then we were like, well, let's

9:04

strap the content analytics tools in the back end of that

9:07

to tell you if it's a good email or not.

9:09

At the time, we thought it would be a fun marketing trick

9:12

to bring people back to the marketing product.

9:15

And then we quickly realized, oh, wait,

9:17

this is a much better product, and people really like it.

9:20

How would you say the product has evolved since you started?

9:24

Are you drinking straight up black coffee with no ice?

9:28

Yeah.

9:29

It's straight out of the fridge, so it's not--

9:31

OK, so it's cold.

9:32

I'm still nothing but kind.

9:34

And I was like, no straw, nothing just straight.

9:37

No straw, no cream.

9:40

I mean, I've had black coffee, whatever.

9:42

As you can see, our 80D is off the roof today.

9:45

How would you say that-- and by hour, I'm in line.

9:49

I won't throw you under the bust of Lila.

9:50

No, I'm right there.

9:51

OK.

9:51

How would you say that the product has evolved

9:54

since you guys started?

9:56

And until now, because I know you guys just

9:57

released new features as well.

9:59

We had a lot of features road mapped out

10:04

that we've been releasing.

10:06

And so the vision for the product

10:08

is more or less coming to life, as we've imagined it over time.

10:13

We've obviously responded to what the market has asked for

10:16

and what we see within the competitive landscape.

10:19

Less interested in being a me too product

10:22

and more interested in diverting away from anything

10:25

we really see become norm.

10:27

What I mean by that is a lot of AI for email workflow

10:32

tools are effectively a giant CMS platform where

10:36

content management system, where you've

10:38

got a list of persona and a list of triggers,

10:41

and you can go in and manage what the prompts are

10:45

on the back end and centralize control.

10:47

What we find interesting about that

10:49

is it doesn't actually get at the root of the problem.

10:53

It's just another way to create a new sales engagement

10:57

platform, which is if I wanted to create templates

11:01

and different sequences, I would just

11:04

do that within a sequencing platform

11:07

versus what I think our goal and our envision

11:12

should be to be a place of deeper understanding for why

11:16

email works as a whole.

11:18

So everybody's treating email as an action layer

11:23

and not as an insight layer.

11:26

So I look at a company like Gong as a huge inspiration

11:29

for where we go, not in the sense

11:32

that we're going down the same exact path,

11:34

but the path that they took was extremely different

11:40

in that they looked at phone calls.

11:44

And I have to be careful on how I see this,

11:47

because obviously Gong does email now, right?

11:50

But they do email in an action-oriented way.

11:53

Our focus in this is similar to how

11:55

they approached phone calls in the early days of saying,

11:58

OK, you have got this information layer of phone calls

12:01

to happen, and it's a black box.

12:03

Email effectively is a black box.

12:05

And it's only gotten to be more of a black box,

12:08

especially as rise of personalization

12:11

has become mainstream again, because it used to be the norm.

12:14

And then we figured, oh, we can blast all these templates.

12:17

And then everybody did it, so now it doesn't work anymore.

12:20

And so now it's like, OK, we have to go back to personalizing.

12:24

The problem with personalization is

12:26

templates all of a sudden become meaningless,

12:29

because Victoria, Delilah, you could both

12:31

send the same template, but you could get different results.

12:35

I think the bigger problem is not trying

12:38

to centralize control against that I can have a feeling of confidence

12:43

that I know what's going out the door every time.

12:45

It's more of how do I give the black box that is email

12:50

a clear system of understanding and insight?

12:53

Well, we've talked about this.

12:55

People saying email is dead, or call calling is dead,

12:58

or outbound is dead.

13:00

What's your take on that?

13:02

Nothing's dead.

13:03

It's just a tire take.

13:05

Social media hates nuance.

13:07

And so everybody tends to jump on the most extreme position

13:11

in order to gain visibility and traction.

13:15

That's the way social's always been.

13:17

Doesn't like middle of the road.

13:19

It likes black or white, not gray.

13:22

And so it's not that something is dead.

13:24

It's that a particular format style approach is overplayed

13:31

and thusly out of favor when it comes to driving results.

13:34

So example of this would be back in 2020, 2021.

13:40

Kyle Coleman was positioning this concept of how

13:43

to run personalization, look for a personal hobby.

13:46

So it'd be like, I don't fly fishing.

13:49

Victoria, let's say in the most strange turn of events,

13:52

you are the most avid fly fisher woman of all time.

13:56

Sure.

13:57

You didn't know?

13:59

Honestly, I just went fly fishing the other week.

14:02

What do you mean?

14:04

Caught my own fish too.

14:07

Just brought it home.

14:09

For dinner.

14:10

Right back to the Upper East.

14:11

I love it.

14:14

Now people know where I live.

14:15

Straight out of the Hudson.

14:16

So let's say in a wild turn of events, it's a Mason Junior.

14:23

Victoria, saw your bag in the fly fishing

14:25

as your fly fishing and trying to present the fly.

14:31

It's no different than sending cold email.

14:34

And then you go into this diatribe about what you do.

14:37

It was really effective back then because no one was doing it.

14:39

And then everyone started doing it.

14:41

So what happened was it became like, oh, I know what's happening.

14:44

It's this, right?

14:46

It's like if somebody sends me an email and the CTA is,

14:49

would you be opposed to whatever it is?

14:53

I know I'm being crisp-bossed.

14:54

As soon as something becomes mainstream,

14:56

it becomes ineffective.

14:57

That's so true.

14:58

And that line I like.

15:00

Like as soon as something becomes mainstream,

15:01

it's ineffective because it's no longer creative in a sense.

15:05

Right.

15:05

This is one of my bigger fears with all of these AI

15:09

personalization tools that people aren't necessarily seeing is,

15:12

it's no different than, hey, I see that you are a senior leader

15:16

of sales development at LivePerson.

15:19

That used to be magical.

15:20

And now it's like, that's so not effective.

15:25

You don't need to tell me my job title is I'm well aware that

15:28

you can see our own fields into an email.

15:30

You start to run into people's ability to pattern match.

15:35

So the concept is you've got like a mental spam filter.

15:41

If you think about how people go through their inbox,

15:43

they're going to spend about nine seconds on average

15:46

reading the email.

15:47

And most of them are going to get deleted

15:48

within the first three seconds.

15:50

That three second, nine second window, the amount of words

15:53

that you're reading in that time span, it's about 37.5.

15:57

Most emails are not 37.5 words.

15:59

And so what's the disconnect is people don't read email.

16:03

They skim it.

16:03

They are categorizing.

16:05

They're not reading to understand.

16:06

They're reading to say, what is this thing?

16:08

So that I can decide whether or not it's worth my time.

16:11

You look at the formatting.

16:13

You look at overall use of language.

16:16

You look at patterns.

16:18

And human beings have evolved for millions of years

16:23

to identify patterns.

16:27

Whether it's those stripes and the grass

16:30

look like a tiger that's going to murder me.

16:32

Or this really, really bad sales email

16:36

is a waste of my time.

16:38

So what is your go-to framework for personalization?

16:43

Because we touched on obviously not just looking

16:46

at their title on LinkedIn.

16:48

Not even going deep into finding a hobby

16:50

because that's become mainstream.

16:52

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.

17:00

Which is if I only have one called observation,

17:05

trigger point, it's probably not enough.

17:07

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

17:28

and try to build a point of view on Victoria.

17:33

Victoria's role, Victoria's company

17:35

and the market that Victoria operates with them.

17:38

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.

17:44

I can see past job history.

17:46

I can dig into news and events around the company.

17:49

I can pull in the financials.

17:53

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.

18:04

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

18:17

that live person's in, who's the competitive landscape?

18:20

What are future features in that space

18:24

that are really important?

18:25

And then I think about it through the lens

18:27

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

18:34

the coaching session I did with the live person team, right?

18:37

I think the sequence you all sent over

18:40

was to IT leaders, right?

18:41

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?

19:01

'Cause it's my favorite way to conceptualize

19:05

what live person does because.

19:06

- 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.

19:11

- 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?

19:36

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?

20:25

It's like, all of a sudden they're like, okay,

20:28

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)