Sales Management Podcast
Cory Bray, 8x author and co-founder of CoachCRM, digs into hot sales management topics.
Sales Management Podcast
81. Podcasting as a B2B Lead Gen Funnel with Charles Cormier
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I don't use guest invitations as a lead gen funnel for my business, but Charles has a great perspective here that we dig into during this fun and engaging episode.
Sales Management Podcast
Speaker 1Welcome to the Sales Management Podcast , your source for actionable sales management strategies and tactics . I'm your host , coach , crm co-founder , corey Gray . No long intros , no long ads , let's go . I'm here with Charles Cormier , ceo of Top Leads , and it's in his name we're going to talk about leads today . These are the things that fuel your sales pipeline and , look , for some of us , they've dried up . They're not what they used to be , they're harder to come by , but they're as valuable as ever . Charles , how are you ?
Speaker 2I'm good my friend . I heard about Corey from his books . I really liked his books back then and I interviewed Corey on my pod about a year ago and I followed him ever since on LinkedIn .
Speaker 1This is called a good guest .
Speaker 2He comes on and just starts plugging me that's the way , uh , it's always be of value to people . I guess that's the first lesson in outreach , isn't it ? It's always come with something in your hands don't come up to your guest house .
Speaker 1I I thought it was 600 activities a day .
Speaker 2Yeah , that could be it as well . But yeah , always come with a gift in your hands . When you come to your guest or your friend's house and you're empty-headed handed and empty-headed because you came empty-handed , that's not a good start . Usually you come with a box of chocolate or a good mezcal right and then you get the party going .
Speaker 1Yeah , I love it . Good , mezcal Charles is in Mexico today . He's in the mezcal capital of the world , all right . So what's going on ? It's 2024 . We're more than halfway through as this is coming out . What's changed in the landscape of B2B leads ?
Speaker 2halfway through . As this is coming out , what's changed in the landscape of B2B leads ? Oof lots . Let's start with what we were talking about , which is that less and less people are accepting basic offers like let's book a demo call .
Speaker 2I think the podcast funnel is genius . A lot of people disregard it . It's clearly underrated . On my side and my client's side , it got us 100 meetings per week , 10% of which we could close into clients . You know , and it's just a numbers game If you have 10 sales calls a week and you're closing 30% , which is higher , you'll get three clients . With that system , you can close 10 . So , yes , it's more work , but in the end , it's more output .
Speaker 2So what I do ? I use tools such as Apollo . I connect it with SendGrid , I come up with a very simple email targeting my ICP . Of course . In my case it's serial tech entrepreneurs , hybrid investors in the US , growing companies , funded companies , and I asked them to come on a podcast . That's my first intro . Then I asked them a bunch of questions . They get to understand that I'm a good question asker , that I ask the right stuff at the right time , and we proceed to do business together because I follow up with them afterwards .
Speaker 2Podcasting is a great way to grow brain cells . It's a great way to connect with amazing people like you . That's how we got in touch and that shit works right now because now you're interviewing me and it's value-based , right . Everyone loves to be interviewed . It's like a massage , you know , for the brain , because most humans don't give a shit about you most of the time , and it's a time to reflect , to take a break and have fun . So , yeah , podcast is a lead gen funnel , uh , that definitely have uh entered a lot of people's world . Hormosy was the first guy to do it , um , in 2019 , uh , but no one has ever scaled it , for whatever reason .
Speaker 1Interesting . Okay , let's talk about . I know there's lots of other places leads are coming from . I want to focus on this podcast piece because , A you're an expert . B I think it's interesting . I've also got this thing that's probably coming to everybody's mind out there that wait a second , the people I've hired to do Legion can't run podcasts Whoops , and so in that world you've got somebody that can do work , manual work , on top of the tech stack , and then you've got the other people inside of the organization the executives , probably for the most part , that are ones that you would want in the podcast . Does that work ? How's that work if you're not a one-man band ? How do you play team ball there and generate ?
Speaker 2leads . Yeah , I once got fired from a podcast rooms for saying this . But uh , your aes , they can run the pod . You know , ideally it seals . They want to talk with uh , other ceos . Founders want to talk with founders their own breed . But if you've got kick-ass AEs that have mad conversational skills which most have , by the way they're very curious , they're very people-oriented , they have great questions , they're always interested about the other and adding value to them , they can run the podcasts . And how many AEs do organizations have ? Some of them 10 , some of them 100 . They can do five pods a week at least . Right , that's not too demanding and their calendar is empty otherwise , you know . So they have like a 30% downtime , at least on a weekly basis . So why not fill that with podcasts ?
Speaker 1Wow , you're bringing me back . Okay , I want to dig into this . This is great . I was at a conference in 2015 and there was a panel and there were four people on the panel . There were three founders and one salesperson and one of the founders had said to me I can't believe they put their salesperson up on that panel . And I was thinking at the time okay , I mean , I'm open-minded , I understand your perspective , I understand why he's up there , knows what he's talking about and has been in the industry for a long time . But what you just said really struck me , because if your salespeople cannot run a 30-minute interview with a buyer in your market , what are you doing ? Why do they work there ?
Speaker 2Exactly . And two other arguments . One it will have your AEs stay at your organization . It's like a perk , right ? Hey , you have your own podcast now , congrats . Add it to your CV and then marketing will like these AEs and sales . Marketing and sales will get along for once , because sales will provide content for marketing to post and to cut into snippets like YouTube shorts with an app called Opus . So it seems to me that it's win , win , win , win all over the place . It seems that no one is doing that . That's why it can be an unfair advantage to you .
Speaker 1That's really interesting , because you're not taking the snippets out of your discovery meetings , you're not taking the snippets out of any sales meeting and publicly publishing them , because that's unethical at best and maybe even worse . Well , now you're creating an environment for those powerful conversations to just be captured lightning in a bottle style .
Speaker 2Right and think about what you can do with these pods . You can start them on your LinkedIn , you can put them on your website , you can put them in your email signature . It's just pure authority to see someone's face and someone's brain . Then you gain authority , you become , uh , yeah , a thought leader , like they say on linkedin . So I mean , it just seems like a win-win all over .
Speaker 2The place where people fail is to not follow up after these podcasts . They do the pod and it's okay . Bye , oh well , we never speak again . You need to follow up with these folks . You need to add them to your newsletter , you need to send them remarketing . You need to add them to your cold outreach campaign so that , yes , it is a first touch , it's a door open , a door that most sales rep will never open because they're not smart enough to go the podcast route . But you need to follow up with these people so that eventually you can close them into clients , and usually the rate that I have , at least , is 10% close rate . It is low , but once you stack up the quantity and you become good at asking questions which is , in my opinion , one of the top skills to have in 2024 , then , yeah , it becomes immensely profitable once you stack everything together .
Speaker 1Well , it's a low cloque . So 10% , that's fine . 10% from initial conversation to close . That's probably better than a lot of people are doing out there , especially I'm assuming these are outbound . There's not people coming to you and saying , hey , I want to do this , so that's , that's one piece of it . You touched on marketing , so you're generating leads . I think you said people could have their own podcast . You could run it that way , or they could just be host on a show . Like any cable news network . You've got the different hosts for the different shows and people might prefer different hosts . They might have different topics . Oh , this is the business minded host , or this is the fun host , or hopefully not the political host . But if that's what y'all want to do with your businesses , that's fine , I guess .
Speaker 2You like politics , though You're answering my polls on LinkedIn Whenever I post about politics . Corey's there . Oh , I don't .
Speaker 1I don't talk about politics . You're the only one that can see my responses .
Speaker 2I don't talk about politics in public , nobody cares what I think benefit from whatever's happening right now . But with the podcast route , you're
Sales Enablement Through Conversational Podcasting
Speaker 2right . There can be , like , various concepts , right . So there can be the classic oh , we talk about your background , we can dive in deep into a topic . There can be the debates concept . I have a whole bunch of crazy concepts for my pod , like the founder's crib , you know , like MTV cribs . I have this concept . I have the pip , my business . I have all kinds of weird concepts . I have firesides in which I invite like a couple of people to talk about the topic and in which we share screens .
Speaker 2Talk about their AI stacks Not all of them is lead gen oriented , by the way . Lots is uh learning too . Like if I can get my hands on the best ai sell software , then that's huge value for my company . So , and yeah , companies can use all the colors of the rainbow to bring value . Uh , I'm just not sure , to be honest , like why people are not using that nowadays . Just , is it because they're distracted there ? There's so many other options ? Is it because they're struggling ? Is it because oh , I won't put this AE that we're paying 100K a year on silly podcasts ?
Speaker 1I think that's got to do with it . I'll tell you one thing I have a lot of conversations with folks that start with well , we can't roll this training out with our team because they're busy . Or they might be talking about an internal project that they're doing and they might say something like well , we've got these competitive battle cards are in the works , but we can't show them to anybody for six weeks because we're still working on them . Or the same thing about personas or target market or whatever it is , and I just say y'all are ostriches , because what are they doing right now ? You're telling me that little Timmy's not on a call right now , using worse competitive messaging than what's in your draft , probably talking to somebody that's outside of the target market in your draft , doesn't understand the persona that's in your draft , but you're sitting here trying to create perfection out of this draft that you've got for some big launch event , while the world's out there operating behind your back .
Speaker 2Right , a hundred percent . And arguably little Timmy . The way he'll learn is by talking to five to 10 ICPs per day . Right , and I only know about one way of little Timmy to do that , and it's podcasting . I mean , he can listen to his ICPs on a pod , but becomes real once you have that person in front of you , that big buyer , that person that might make you rich as an 18 . And yeah , I would argue that podcasting is the way to go , because no one will say no to a podcast .
Speaker 1And having the conversation is so much more valuable than listening to a conversation . You can listen to a conversation Plus . I mean , let's be honest , little Timmy didn't get a PhD in nuclear physics and understand how to learn and retain information at the highest level out there . Little Timmy not disparaging the royal little Timmy out there but he's not probably the kind of guy that could listen to a show on biology for two hours and get a five on the ap biology exam there you go , but he's a great conversationalist great conversation how to chug a beer and , uh , have a nice convo with any human being that he's right and listen and learn that way and that's the way , that's the fascinating thing , that's their learning modality .
Speaker 1A lot of people that go into sales are folks that learn by talking things through right , they're extroverted most of them and they flourish of having conversations .
Speaker 2And that's probably the most fascinating aspect to the podcast system that I've created For me . It's market research . So I listen to my prospects and obviously I have AI recording softwares but my brain takes mental notes of the words that they use , the keywords , and then I'm going to use these keywords in my headlines of cold email . So it's a forever fueling system . I may be testing headlines and next thing I know I'm writing this email called um , pmf , uh , secret weapon , and that email is getting me an open rate of 85 with , uh , the four percent positive reply . So I'm like , holy shit , how did I learn that ? Well , I listened to someone say that on a call and I it doesn't come from me , right , it comes from my market , and I'm extremely scientific in the campaigns that I deploy and I double down on what's working . So , yeah , it's a beautiful machine . I'm really proud of what I've built there .
Speaker 1Well , and this takes me to the next question , which is around the idea of sales enablement , sales enablement being how we help sellers get up to speed , perform at a higher level , new hires , existing employees , people getting internally promoted and then helping them shape them as the market changes , as the company changes , as new products launch , and all those types of things . Well , gee whiz , what you just described to me is something that sales enablement continuously is working on or hasn't gotten to yet or doesn't have enough time to do , because you're taking language from the customers and you're getting it to the salespeople in a packaged way that allows them to act on it , right , yeah , and you're getting it to the salespeople in a packaged way that allows them to act on it , right ?
Speaker 2yeah , I mean , while listening to you , why not throw your intern at podcasting ? That'd be fun . But yeah , just getting them up to speed . Low stakes , right , low stakes if they're on a podcast call , if they fuck up like yeah , there's , there's still a plan b or another chance . You know , um , and yeah , like to help them train their little brains and and learn and then discuss with others .
Speaker 2Imagine , like there's three or five uh aes or sdrs that just entered uh the company and they could learn off that and it could be fun also , because starting at the job and making 200 freaking phone calls a day , like I did back in my days , that's hard man . It builds you a shell , but it also traumatizes you of what sales are about . And I think the real essence of sales , as we discussed , is really a conversation and see if you can add value to them . Discuss is really a conversation and see if you can add value to them , and I'm pretty sure that there would be an ROI to any junior level doing that . I mean , if you pay them 50 , 60k a year , don't you think they can bring at least three buy ticket deals to the table in a year , interviewing 20 , 30 , 50 , 100 people per week ? I think so .
Speaker 1Yeah , or five people a week , whatever it is , or two , one , 50 , 100 people per week . I think so yeah , or five people a week , whatever it is , or two , one , whatever . I think that's really interesting because if they can't do it , if somebody says , look , I'm not going to be able to do this , I can't host a show , I can't talk to somebody , for I usually I do these , for mine are usually 40 to 60 minutes . I've done a couple that were almost two hours , which I enjoyed a lot . I'd like to do a three-hour one one time , but you know , actually I'd like to do a lincoln douglas debate with somebody at some point . That would be really fun .
Speaker 2We will get there like um lex style , right , or joe rogan style , but you need to go in various directions for for D yeah .
Speaker 1Cause I can do a conversation where we just we just talk and talk , and talk , but I think I think having something . I was listening to one like again , I don't talk about politics , but I was listening to two political figures the other day have a debate on a show that lasted about an hour and a half .
Speaker 2Yeah , debates are fun to me . Debates is one of the best way nowadays to grow brain cells . That's why I go spicy on linkedin also in my the polls that I'm doing . Uh , because else my brain doesn't have fun , because it's just like , oh , we all agree on that thing , right , if we have a debate , you can take one side , even that .
Speaker 2If that's not what you believe , and I can take another and explore what you just said and intentfully listen to you , because nowadays debates and what they teach on tv and political races is that I need to diss you , I need to be stronger than you , I need to win over you . Well , the real fun in a debate is really intentfully listening to what you're saying and explore that . You know it's like a different brain pathway . So , yeah , I'm bullish on the debate format , just that there's not a lot of people that will accept that .
Speaker 1Well , why don't , why don't we just on the fly ? Let's , let's initiate
Controversial Views on Sales Strategy
Speaker 1a debate . What's a topic that you have a controversial take on ? Let's , let's rip one for five minutes and see what happens .
Speaker 2Well , that that one was a controversial , but I have a bunch . For example , I'm a huge believer in quantity vs quality . That's a big one in sales . So whatever side you want to take on that one . But yeah , I'm a huge believer in quantity and scale and science . Don't believe that if I send 36 highly customized 1v1 emails I can get a scientific result off if something works or doesn't . Plus , it will have taken me time that I don't have . So what's your take on the quality side of things ?
Speaker 1My take on the quality side is that you want to optimize for quantity above an acceptable level of quality , and I think that's something we're probably pretty aligned on that . You got to have quality at a certain level and then you want to optimize for quantity . The challenge I've always run into people with on that one is that people are scared to define what an acceptable level of quality is because it's not perfect , it's less than perfect .
Speaker 2Right , okay , what do you think about the justin michael style of writing emails lowercase and very short and just like if you've written them on a mobile ?
Speaker 1justin michael's a friend of mine . I think he's a smart guy and what you just said I agree with okay .
Speaker 2So I mean , it's hard to have a debate when you you're on the same side , cause Justin's my mentor , you know , amazing guy missing brain , but she's you see , like everybody , everybody should go check out Justin Michael's new book on Amazon .
Speaker 1I forget what it's called , but it's a . I did read it . I just forget the title of it .
Speaker 2It's amazing . It's about , yeah , it's like a meditation and all that kinds of shit and specific Hertz music , which is amazing . Yeah , that guy is a genius . Yeah , it's hard to have a debate when you're on the same side , but let's try another one . Firing all your SDR team and running purely on AI softwares , like I do , that will replace the full SDR team . And running purely on AI softwares , like I do , that will replace the full SDR team .
Speaker 1I think that's a bad idea . You're on the other side of it .
Speaker 2Yeah , I can take the other side on that one . Tell me All right .
Speaker 1You don't want to fire your entire sales , development or prospecting team and replace them with technology , because technology is not good enough yet to work without human calibration .
Speaker 1And if human calibration doesn't happen on a I'm not going to say on a continuous basis , but on a frequent basis , then the technology can start to drift off in a direction where either sure , the obvious one is that it produces poor results , sure but the other one is that it's not tuned frequently enough to produce better results , if those better results are available . And when it comes to prospecting or any type of marketing because I consider outbound prospecting marketing when it comes to anything like this , the hardest question to answer is where should I put my next dollar and why ? And you can't answer that question unless you've got a really good , accurate read on what's going on . So I think that putting all of your chips in an AI world without human oversight and calibration is like putting a plane in the clouds and letting the instruments fly it and not looking at the dials until you land right and yeah , again , I agree with that .
Speaker 2Let's say that I take the other side and I'm like okay , the ai ages upon us . Um , ai agents are about to come in and I need to prepare for that . Uh , hence why I will hire this agency , that I'll set up a fully clay automated email sequence at scale . I'll pay this agency instead of paying SDRs . Would that work Horse ?
Speaker 1race it . I'm an Argentine , I have the same answer ?
Speaker 2Maybe test , you know you can't . You can't switch from one thing goes from zero to one before having the clear scientific proof that a system works . Yeah , I , I think I sort of suck at debating well , I mean , with people .
Speaker 1I agree with um I mean , I have a whole bunch of you and I you know I've put so much thought into this stuff that we've explored the corners and the nuances , because if you pulled somebody off the street who has been focused on what they learned 10 years ago , they might've read this book about what Aaron Ross did at Salesforce in 2004 and wrote about in 2011 . And that's the thing that they go back to . That's one thing . That is a low calibrated person .
Speaker 2I agree , yeah , and I , I think that that was I . I don't even remember what his book was about , but I think it got me excited back then . What was aaron's uh thesis again ?
Speaker 1there were a bunch of things in there , but it was around tactics for prospecting and how you structure a team and things like structure a pod , have the people do this type of activity .
Speaker 1Here's some very tactical things that you can do . Sure , fine , but people the only I'm not knocking the book . What I'm what I'm pointing out is that it was written about something that happened between , I think , 2004 and 2007 . That's all I'm saying . So reading something published 13 years ago today about something that happened years before , that is probably not the best way to build your prospecting engine , which is awesome to have people like Charles come on and talk about other things , because what you're telling me just about this podcast example , about either people starting their own or companies having one where different salespeople can host their own episodes man , that's an innovative idea .
Speaker 2Yeah , I'm not sure why people are not onto it or even hate on it . I have two more that are sort of controversial , that are related to what you just said .
Speaker 1Let's see if Cory and Charles can get in a fight or if we're just going to virtually hug each other here .
Speaker 2Yeah , dude my content . Most of it is spicy . But being contrarian , you need to have the majority on your side still , but have at least a 20 to 30% people disagree with you .
Speaker 1And that is my audience .
Speaker 2They're CEOs and they're founders , so they're smart people . Gino Wickman's Traction book and the e-myth book these books are all about outsourcing to other humans . I tried that I hired over a thousand employees and nowadays it's just me and my AI , and I think that will scale with time . First , I'm not the best manager with time . First , I'm not the best manager . And second , I think that it's being lazy to hire people when you can actually invest three hours of your time to automate that shit on Zapier . What is your take on that ?
Speaker 1I think that having human employees solves a couple of challenges . One it creates a talent pipeline for the future . You can bring them into a role today , help them learn the business , learn your company . You get to learn how you work with them . They get to learn how they work with you and see if it's something that you might want to mutually commit to in a bigger role . So , for example , bringing somebody in as a prospect or moving them into sales or moving them to management , whatever it is , it's a good training ground for your future talent and you end up paying them what's , in the grand scheme of things , a nominal amount based on what they return to your business . I mean , it's obvious , a salesperson with a $200,000 on target earnings has a quote of $800,000 or a million dollars . By definition , they're profitable if they do a good job . That's one piece , the talent pipeline . The other one is you can get rapid output without having to build , because what's in that person's brain , what's in their skillset , exists today .
Speaker 1In your example you talked about something that takes three hours to build . That's not necessarily what I'm talking about . I'm talking about something that would take three months or three quarters to put together that somebody might be able to come in and execute on . Today , let's talk about partnership strategy . For example , if you've got a company that wants to start selling through the channel and they haven't done that at all yet , a person is much better suited than technology to take on that type of thing . Now , if you have six people doing cold calling and you need to get better at list management or make more dials or anything like that , yeah , buy technology to make more dials in a day , have those people operate it and then augment account research and contact research with tech . I'm a hundred percent behind that . So I think that the scope of the problem combined with is this person . Future talent for other roles in the company is the first . Those are the first two things I'd look at in terms of person versus tech love it , dude .
Speaker 2Yeah , I'm learning lots from you .
Affiliate Model and Poker Strategy
Speaker 2Um , what about if the best sales people in the world are affiliates ? Nowadays , I take the best companies in the world the best companies , uh , in my field being AI related Delphi , apollo . I have these guys sponsoring my pod and I am pitching them on a daily basis , making nice cash flow . But the thesis is that I find the best companies in the world . I'm quite good at sales . I'm going to them . They're like yes , please sell for us . What do you think about the affiliate model ? Do you think that most salespeople will operate that way in the future ?
Speaker 1I think the affiliate's great . If both sides of the market click , you've got to have a brand that's ready for prime time . So affiliates won't work for startups because it's not . The startup doesn't have a strong enough brand product trust , whatever right they've got to accept if it's a yc startup because they produce hella products we've got lots of stuff I would argue I .
Speaker 1I think yc does a great job of finding high potential founders . I think that . Think that when you look at the percentage of folks that pivot from one idea after they've already said that that idea is the thing that's absolutely going to work , then data becomes interesting . That's my take on it . But they do get a lot of money , so they have time and energy to do that , whereas people that don't have that money are under a little more pressure or at least a resource constraint , because great founders never quit , regardless how much cash in the bank yeah , that's true uh these kids from yc , though I mean they're such an uh another level .
Speaker 2I have a company that's fully dedicated to getting them funding clients and it's fully affiliate and yeah , stripe came from there , airbnb came from there , send grid came from there , apollo came from there . All the best and biggest and baddest companies that are eating the world come from there . So , yeah , I'm still ab testing that one . But yeah , associating myself with them and even asking shares in their company is what one of my companies , ycvascom , is doing nowadays and quite exciting . It's slow to scale and it's slow to have an ROI off it , but yeah , it's quite fun that one .
Speaker 1Well , I think affiliate , yeah . So going back to your question about affiliates , if you've got , and then at the other extreme of the market , let's say Walmart for example , Well , Walmart's not going to pay you any money to send people to Walmart because they've already got complete brand capture .
Speaker 2They've got an affiliate plan , though , that I'm using my fucking water fountain there , like everything that I'm consuming as a B2B influencer . It's in there and people buy from it .
Speaker 1Interesting See I learned something . Yeah , yeah , I was thinking more of they don't need someone else to help them discover , but maybe at a brand level . They don't need someone else to help them discover , but maybe at a brand level they do . I was talking about the box level of Walmart or Amazon , at the brand level within those stores . Then that makes sense . Yeah , okay .
Speaker 2And this is somewhat new . Like in me , I call it micro revenue because I'm a high ticket guy and the thing with high ticket I'm not sure if you've seen that this year on your side , but I've seen sell cycles stretched . So I was like , okay , till I wait for my 10k um payments , monthly payment , I'm gonna have micro sales , you know , and that's where I launched this affiliate thing and so far so good . Um , they're paying for being sponsors on my pod . They're paying affiliates . I'm being paid by YouTube also on the podcasting side . And yeah , I think one of the main goal as a founder is to hack the human brain and have it generate serotonin pretty much every day . So knowing that you make money while you sleep is fun . Seeing these little checks here and there pass by is pretty motivating and use that traction to be more productive and generate more shit . So I found that pretty fun .
Speaker 1You know what my micro funding is . I found my honeypot . So Friday and Saturday nights in Texas probably exists other places , but specifically in Texas probably exists other places , if it's specifically in Texas , because people are wild . There are so many people that go to the poker room there's card rooms all over the place because it's legal , it's a membership club , it's not a casino . You go in there and there are so many people who are cash business owners or who are trying to just take a break from being around their family for a little bit and they're throwing money at luck .
Speaker 1And poker is not a game of luck , it's a game of skill and the hand is luck . The game over the course of hours is skill . I'm on a 13 night winning streak right now Whoa and Saturday nights only . So I know , yeah , you lose , I lose . I've lost a lot playing every other night of the week , but when you play friday and saturday night , people are drinking , people are partying , people are not paying taxes on that money and so it means something different than what your direct deposit if you're listening to this means to you and it's , it's wild . So , anyways , that's . It's always fun for me because I've got Online or physically ?
Speaker 2Oh , physically , but dude , you're in Argentina , so how do you travel you ?
Speaker 1travel to Texas . Well , I live everywhere . I'm just on vacation right now . I'm here for a short period of time . I'll be in Houston . I'm going to be playing cards in Houston on Saturday night this week .
Speaker 2And you make a couple of grand of these nights .
Speaker 1You make lower end I'll make a couple hundred bucks .
Speaker 2Good night I'll make two grand , but you're having fun and you're probably meeting people and prospects .
Speaker 1Having great conversations with people . It's fun , it's better . I don't enjoy nightclubs and stuff like that . If if I never heard another rap song in my life , I'd be happy .
Speaker 2I love poker I love uh edm uh events , though , and like artists like tin licker um . I can't stand it it's pretty fun and I'm about to go to Nadeze it's called in Mexico City pretty soon and it's a full immersive screen around you with like cyberpunk graphics and great music . But I tried to start this VC poker thing last year and VCs weren't biting man . I feel like VCs are broke A bunch of them . They even replied with I don't play poker . But , dude , you're a VC , how can you not play poker ?
Speaker 1I would never let someone invest as a board member , definitely that doesn't play poker . Business is poker yeah .
Speaker 2I love poker .
Speaker 1It's the greatest . What's your favorite hand ?
Speaker 2My favorite hand is bluffing with pocket two Bluffing with pocket two . I'm not a good liar , but I can bluff the shit out of someone . I can manipulate someone into thinking I have something . Yeah , I don't like lying , but if it's a sport , if it's competitive , if there's money on the table and we all agree to the rules , then yeah , what is yours ?
Speaker 1Well . So I play lower stakes because I don't enjoy losing a substantial amount of money . So the high stakes games are just not fun . Because you get in there you're like , oh , I won or I lost . And there's always someone who's got way more money than you that cares way less about it . And when you watch these high stakes games on TV you're like , okay , that dude's family has 2000 acres in West Texas and he makes $100,000 a day from oil royalties , so he doesn't care about that money . I worked for mine , so I'm just not going to play poker with that guy . So I like playing lower stakes , no limit games .
Speaker 1I love hands like Jack 10 suited . I love hands like pocket sixes , because when you're playing higher stakes games , people are three betting and four betting and they're trying to get you off your hands and they're messing with you . They're check raising bluffs . Lower stakes , people don't do that . There's like I'll see a flop . Everybody sees a flop and all of a sudden you got something nice . You walk into a straight , you walk into a flush , you walk into something better than that .
Speaker 2That's what I like doing and the vc poker idea came about from the all-in podcast . Do you listen to that one every week ? Yeah , the boys are quite great , you know , and I analyzed all of these spots , from joe rogan to lex to the all in pod , the all in pod . What's magnificent is that you reunite four powerhouses in in one room , you know . Plus , they , they're not afraid to tell what they think . A bunch of people in the sales industry , they're way too tied up , you know , they should loosen up , they should tell their opinions , they should swear . Uh , they should go for truth , they should go for trust . Uh , that's , that's my advice to people because that podcast . Right there , you reunite four power players , you give them the stage . No scripts , no , nothing , just like jay cal sending , like the agenda prior to the call . That's a hit right there . And they , they created probably a multi-million dollar brand even in their first week yeah , no , it's a great show .
Speaker 1They do a really good job of touching on a bunch of different topics and digging into them , and you're right , I mean , they talk about things a lot of people don't talk about , because most people avoid controversy in public , because there's always that one person out there that just wants to ruin your life and I don't care about that person , I don't want anything to do with them , but why put yourself on their radar ?
Speaker 2Right . No , that's true , I haven't attracted that much of that on my side . I think I'm going for truth , I'm going for honesty and people respect that . Obviously , there's the 1% crazy laws , like Tim Ferriss says you're always going to have , like that psycho , like sending you that threats . But I'm actually talking with the guy that builds their TikTokiktok shorts and the actual all-in conference in a week from now , um , and that's just the testimony to how podcasts can bring you closer to people you you really respect . You know , like , theoretically , I'm just two degrees away from zuck or el Elon .
Speaker 2Yeah , I'm planning to interview them in less than two two years , not two weeks , but that's law , doesn't lie . And I mean in sales . When you're growing your network and all these mutual connections you see on LinkedIn , guess what ? That's an intro to your dream prospect that hasn't accepted your LinkedIn connection . So you connect with people to have them on their pod and then , guess what ? You use that as an intro . Hey , I interviewed David on my podcast . I thought I'd interview as well . A good one . That I like doing as well is reaching out to a VC , interview them as part of my VC wisdom pod and then reach out to the founder and say like hey , I talked with your VC , now will you hire me for your GTM as a service ? You know that's a great intro right there .
Speaker 1Yeah , agreed , I love it . Well , I I will say something about politics now . I said I wasn't going to .
The Power of Long Form Podcasts
Speaker 1After this presidential election , every future presidential candidate will be subject to long form interviews on podcasts , and I think that's a tremendous thing . And they've all done it , except for Trump and Biden haven't been on all in . I think they're going to be , or Trump's going to be . Biden may or may not be . They should do it because it'd be great to hear those guys talk for an hour and a half two hours long form instead of just prepared statements .
Speaker 1And the problem with politics , and politicians in the US specifically , is there's no accountability once they're elected . They get elected on promises and then they're not really held accountable . Yeah , sure , the media takes cheap shots at them and they're a little soundbites , whatever , but there's no comparison of I said these things and then I did these things and then a consequence occurred . It just doesn't happen unless certain people take potshots at you over time . But imagine a world where everyone that ever runs for office has tens or hundreds of hours of long form content that really helps develop their thoughts , that eliminates a lot of this gotcha type journalism that is dying , thankfully , from the corporate media and puts the power in the hands of people that can get two , three hour interviews out of folks . That's what we really want to understand . That's my take .
Speaker 2Here's what you think Amen to that . I don't like investigative journalism . Listening to a book right now about crypto and whatever you say about crypto , like what's even worse than crypto , is journalists that don't understand crypto , and it's just so bad , you know , and it's sad that we have to . One thing I'll say for sure it's sad that we have to listen to these books to try to understand us entrepreneurs , about these entrepreneurs reality . They should be on pods . You know like this information shouldn't be kept . Transparency is growing as privacy is disappearing .
Speaker 2Yes , trump hasn't been on the All In podcast . He's been on the Full Send podcast , which is more boy boy Z , ghetto , less educated type of podcast . And there is interest also to going on podcasts that will challenge you and that have disagreed with things that you said before . The debate format right , because it shows intellectual defense . And , yeah , people should go on these long form podcasts and let go of the filters and let the people decide of what they think . And I think podcast is one of the most accessible medium out there . Everyone has a phone , everyone has youtube or spotify or apple pod , so yeah , uh , very much in agreement with that and spotify is not censoring yeah , uh , who is you youtube ?
Speaker 2I don't think they are .
Speaker 2I think Trump was kicked out justifiably . I'm listening to the Twitter , the second Twitter book about the Twitter saga , with Jack Dorsey kicking out Trump of Twitter . I think Trump was quite outrageous with all the things that he said . It was quite incendiary , um , you know , like almost on the terrorists type level . I think that's why he got kicked out , because he just like he was fucking way too much with people's psyche . This , this guy , is so good at marketing , you know , um , but yeah , that brings another important issue should we censor ? I ? I don't think we should censor people . I think people should have a choice , you know , uh , to to listen to what he has to say . I think the algorithm is promoting incendiary shit which is the problem 100 .
Speaker 1Well , the organizations are too , because you censor the president united states and then you let the taliban have an account yeah you spend two trillion trillion killing them and then we say , oh , you're okay to be on Twitter .
Speaker 2Yeah , I think they got banned as well . Yeah , jack Dorsak or Dick Costolo , the ex-CEO of Twitter , banned the Talibans and he got death threats . That's why he stopped being the CEO of Twitter . But yeah , it's a very tough question , man , because terrorism is like it's sort of game over . Very tough question , man , because terrorism is like it's sort of game over . You're talking about people like attempting for someone's life , which is inexcusable .
Speaker 1Right , but it's a very tough question . Who decides the definition of terrorism ? That's the question .
Speaker 2Yeah , terrorism is like when you you use horrific acts to scare others and to limit them mentally . But what is fear Ultimately , you are prevent , you are the one responsible for creating that fear in your brain . But there's no auto defense course . Mentally right .
Speaker 1We don't teach in schools to people how to not feel fear , how to meditate , how to breathe , how to ignore this in your life , because what you're saying becomes a real slippery slope between the definition of terrorism and gang violence in Chicago .
Speaker 2Right , oh , 100% dude .
Speaker 1Because the minute we start calling people in Chicago neighborhoods that are committing gang violence every day , the minute we start calling them terrorists , then everybody's a terrorist .
Speaker 2Yeah , yeah , fully agree with that . Um , I think there should be some better community leaders , uh , that are that can guide people to , uh , the more righteous path , instead of killing one another . Because wars , it's , you know , like when testosterone is running high , it's there's only one ending , you know , and uh , that's I , I kill you , then your cousin wants to kill me , and then it never ends , you know . That's why we sort of need laws or people that can control that , um , the terrorist thing . Yet , after 9-11 , which was completely brutal , uh , I guess , yet , like , people have tagged that word with , like , talibans and so forth , and a lot of people have abused the word right and media , specifically media , they thrive of creating fear . Words like covid , words like terrorism , words like , uh , trump , you know , trump is an emotion sparking keyword , so , and yet , like I , I'm against that . Uh , time for good information . I'm disinformation . That's one of my fights .
Speaker 1Yeah , well , I mean , that's the slippery slope too . What is disinformation ? Because a lot of things that were labeled as disinformation over the course of history have been now found out to be true . And there's , I read this guy in college with I don't , I don't , I don't remember where he got this from , but he had a tattoo on his wrist and it said who will guard the guards ? And that was one of the things that stuck with me . He said who's going to guard the guards when you , when you let people make these rules about what is right or what is wrong , then who ultimately becomes responsible for that ? Because the things that were getting taken off of YouTube and Spotify , when COVID Many of those things from what was the guy's name at Stanford , the professor of Stanford , was being censored because a professor at Stanford . And they said oh , you can't say what you think . You can only say what you think if it falls in line with what some other people say .
Speaker 2I forgot his name also , but I know who you're talking about . Yeah , the COVID stuff was completely out of bounds . You know , I'm from Canada , so and I had to come back to check on well , not check on my parents , but , you know , spend time with them while the COVID thing was on and we couldn't visit friends from another city . We couldn't go out after nine walk your fucking dog , you know . Um , and yeah , we had to provide all kinds of papers .
Speaker 2We had to be vaccinated twice , you know , and the vaccine is not so healthy , um , so , yeah , like I study conspiracy , uh , theories a lot , you know , and the border is really fine between creativity , slash insanity and objectivity and science , I'll tell you that . So it's always hard indeed to define , uh , if something is , is this or that , if it's right or wrong , um , but yeah , maybe testing again , maintaining an open mind , right , definitely not be too much on the conservative side , but also , like , listen to others , right , Open up your brain and have different sources of data . That's why podcasting again is a great mechanism to hear other opinions .
Speaker 2You don't need to agree with them , but you get the information , you digest it over the course of weeks , months and sometimes with new data , you eventually make a conclusion and I think , right there , that's also the game of business . That's how you win in business . If you check Warren Buffett , for example , it's really calculated decisions and it's being right 94% of the time and making big bets .
Speaker 1It goes back to poker . It's just a poker game . The guy's name is Jay Bhattacharya , the Stanford professor that was censored for saying what then became true information . And here's the last thing I want to say on this . I know we got to go . People talk about the fear of violence and the fear of war . Well , you can extrapolate this to or maybe it's interpolate to your own personal life . De-escalations happen rapidly when people talk to each other Conversations .
Speaker 1I remember I worked with these two people and they worked in different offices and they hated each other over email . They liked each other in person . What do you know ? You bring them together in person . They like each other . They hate each other over email and I think that , in a world where people think that their problems can be solved with emails and slacks and all of these types of things , look somebody in the eye , have a conversation with them , work your stuff out . We're not nearly as far apart as the media wants us to believe . If we all hate each other , guess who wins ? Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow . Those people win . They get rich because we hate each other . Now , whatever you think of Sean Hannity , whatever you think of Rachel Maddow , I'm sure that you think more of your coworkers , your friends and your family .
Speaker 2So I would say see , charles got me to talk about something I was . I wasn't going to talk to just have a conversation with folks and everything's gonna be fine , or get in a cage with them . No , for real , like you , look at ufc fighters , they will hug it , hug it out at the end . They respect each other . They respected each other's strengths . We tend to always judge on the others right as alphas . Oh , I'm way stronger than this guy , I'm way smarter than him , I'm way more successful . All humans are surviving machines there and all humans have their magic , you know , uh , and once you you feel their strength , you get to respect them but you know what I bet I don't play video games online anymore .
Speaker 1I've given away three Xboxes in my life . That's how bad I was . I would go down these rabbit holes and it would be tomorrow before I stopped playing video games . I bet you people that play video games against each other don't respect each other or hug it out at the end . I bet they hate each other . Oh , Charles0732 . I hate that guy .
Speaker 2Yeah , but if they get in a cage with one because there's it's really low stakes , you know call of duty , you die and then you relive again .
Speaker 2It's not like real life you get in a cage with someone that is trying to choke you out , or you , you get stunned on the nose , on the temple , a couple of times . Then you you get to respect the other person . Or , like myself , you swim and you have a competitor in your lane . You know someone that's chasing your ass and yesterday I can tell you I was fucking struggling . Uh , that guy was just chasing me down and he passed me and my ego had to die so that I could accept that and keep on swimming . Because when you swim you're kind of drowning you . You know like it's one , two , three , then you breathe . So it's all that mental work . Or go sign up for a goddamn marathon and understand pain . You know , I think all the trolls , all the haters nowadays online , they just don't have any consequences . It's so easy to diss someone , it's fun , you get that serotonin high . I think people need to deepen the relationship with pain and that that will make them more respectful .
Speaker 1I love it . Thanks , Charles . How can people reach out to you ?
Speaker 2Podbuyercom Charles Cormier on Google or LinkedIn .
Speaker 1All right . Thank you so much . Great conversation today . Everybody else Sales Management Podcast . We'll see you next time .