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
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.
Welcome 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 2:I'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 1:This is called a good guest.
Speaker 2:He 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 1:I I thought it was 600 activities a day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 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 1:Yeah, 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 2:halfway 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 2:I 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 2:So 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 2:Podcasting 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 1:Interesting. 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 2:leads. 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 1:Wow, 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 2:Exactly. 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 1:That'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 2:Right 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 2:The 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 1:Well, 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 2:You like politics, though You're answering my polls on LinkedIn Whenever I post about politics. Corey's there. Oh, I don't.
Speaker 1:I don't talk about politics. You're the only one that can see my responses.
Speaker 2:I 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 right. 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 2:Talk 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 1:I 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 2:Right, 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 1:And 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 1:A 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 2:And 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 1:Well, 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 2:yeah, 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 2:Imagine, 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 1:Yeah, 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 2:We 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 1:Cause 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 2:Yeah, 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 2:If 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 1:Well, why don't, why don't we just on the fly? Let's, let's initiate a 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 2:Well, 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 1:My 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 2:Right, 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 1:justin michael's a friend of mine. I think he's a smart guy and what you just said I agree with okay.
Speaker 2:So 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 1:I forget what it's called, but it's a. I did read it. I just forget the title of it.
Speaker 2:It'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 1:I think that's a bad idea. You're on the other side of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can take the other side on that one. Tell me All right.
Speaker 1:You 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 1:And 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 2:Let'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 1:race it. I'm an Argentine, I have the same answer?
Speaker 2:Maybe 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 1:I 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 2:I 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 1:there 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 1:Here'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 2:Yeah, 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 1:Let's see if Cory and Charles can get in a fight or if we're just going to virtually hug each other here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 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 1:And that is my audience.
Speaker 2:They'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 1:I 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 1:In 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 2:Yeah, I'm learning lots from you. Um, 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 1:I 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 1:I 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 2:I 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 1:Well, 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 2:They'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 1:Interesting 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 2:And 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 1:You 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 1:And 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 2:Oh, physically, but dude, you're in Argentina, so how do you travel you?
Speaker 1:travel 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 2:And you make a couple of grand of these nights.
Speaker 1:You make lower end I'll make a couple hundred bucks.
Speaker 2:Good night I'll make two grand, but you're having fun and you're probably meeting people and prospects.
Speaker 1:Having 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 2:I 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 1:I would never let someone invest as a board member, definitely that doesn't play poker. Business is poker yeah.
Speaker 2:I love poker.
Speaker 1:It's the greatest. What's your favorite hand?
Speaker 2:My 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 1:Well. 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 1:I 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 2:That'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 1:They 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 2:Right. 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 2:Yeah, 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 1:Yeah, agreed, I love it. Well, I I will say something about politics now. I said I wasn't going to. After 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 1:And 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 2:Here'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 2:Yes, 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 2:I don't think they are.
Speaker 2:I 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 1:Well, 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 2:Yeah, 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 1:Right, but it's a very tough question. Who decides the definition of terrorism? That's the question.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 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 1:We 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 2:Right, oh, 100% dude.
Speaker 1:Because 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 2:Yeah, 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 1:Yeah, 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 2:I 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 2:We 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 2:You 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 1:It 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 1:I 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 2:So 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 1:I'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 2:Yeah, 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 2:It'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 1:I love it. Thanks, Charles. How can people reach out to you?
Speaker 2:Podbuyercom Charles Cormier on Google or LinkedIn.
Speaker 1:All right. Thank you so much. Great conversation today. Everybody else Sales Management Podcast. We'll see you next time.