The Hiring Edge

Stop Cold Outreach. Salesforce Insider Reveals What Works.

• Josh Matthews • Season 3 • Episode 81

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Cold calls, cold emails, cold everything — they’re dead.
 In this episode, Josh Matthews sits down with Drew Sechrist, one of the earliest Salesforce builders and now the founder of Connect The Dots, to break down how authentic relationships drive sales, recruiting, and growth in 2025.

They unpack:

  • The story behind Salesforce’s first culture of connection — and how it changed everything
  • How to find warm paths into any account or candidate using relationship intelligence
  • Why transparency and alignment (Mark Benioff’s V2MOM model) still win decades later
  • The role of AI in building trust, not replacing it
  • And how small dinners and meaningful introductions beat mass outreach every time

If you lead sales, recruiting, or you’re a founder trying to stand out in a noisy world — this one’s for you.

Drew Sechrist:

This all goes back to one simple principle. It's a very noisy world right now. It is very hard to break into some the consciousness of somebody. There's too much stuff going on, and AI is just making it worse. And the thing that cuts through all of the noise fast is somebody you know reaches out to you. You know that person well, and then all of a sudden you pay attention to it because that's somebody you know well. And you read it and you reply to it, and you pick up the phone and whatever you do, because you know you know that person. That's it.

Josh Matthews:

100%, man. This is the hiring edge. In an era where AI is rewriting the rules, learn how to hire with precision. Lead with purpose and build a culture that we need. He cold emailed Mark Benioff back in 1999, and that one message changed his life. Today, I'm talking with Drew Seacrist, Salesforce's 36th employee, early sales leader, and now CEO of Connect the Dots, an AI platform that maps real human relationships, not just LinkedIn connections. We talk about culture, connection, and how your network is still your greatest unfair advantage. This is the hiring edge. Let's get into it. Drew Seacrist, welcome to the show. It's so wonderful to have you here. Let's go ahead and just jump right in. I'm really curious, uh, what was going through your mind when you cold emailed Mark Benioff back in 1999? Like, how did how did you build up the confidence to do that? Or where did that even come from?

Drew Sechrist:

Uh well, number one, he wasn't that scary at that point. Now he's kind of a scary guy because he's really he's really uh you know uh built a massive company and he's you know, I don't know, uh worth $10 billion and uh hob knobs with uh you know global leaders. So he's a much scarier, harder guy to get in front of now. Back then, he was uh senior vice president at Oracle who was leaving to go start his own company. Um and and I was actually pinging him because I'd read in the Wall Street Journal that Mark's a really good PR guy. He gets great PR. So back then it was no different. You know, he's better at it now, but he was really good at it back then. He um he got a mention in a Wall Street Journal article when he was leaving Oracle to start Salesforce, and he explained what um you know uh what Salesforce was going to do, which is basically rewrite Salesforce automation software from the ground up to run on the internet, which was a novel idea back then. Now it's not novel at all, it's what everybody would do. Um like free SAS, really. Like he was the you know first one to really do this. And um so my company I was working for on the East Coast in North Carolina resold and implemented Salesforce automation tools at that point. And so I was reaching out with an offer to Mark, which was when you bring this to market, we'd love to resell and implement it. And um, so that's what was running through my mind was hey, let's this looks like a really cool new product idea. I get it. Uh I was I was scratching my head a little bit, like what happens? There's not going to be any CD ROM to install. Right. There's not going to be any software to you know to deal with. So I don't like how do I actually how do I actually do this? And uh and I realized like there's a lot the world has shown what you need to do. When you implement Salesforce now, there's a lot of services involved to get that thing set up and running. Um, even though that even though there's no CD ROM to install.

Josh Matthews:

Yeah, you could say that. I think last check was about 3,500 SI partners, right? I mean, it's it's a lot of people. It's a lot, yeah. A lot of people, a lot of process. Yeah. And so so you joined, you were employee number 36 at Salesforce. So you were working there when I was using the product, I think. I think we talked, and it was like right around that same time, and it was a totally different beast with the same intention. And since then, you have gone on, you were there till 2010. Is that about right? About 15 years ago you left. And and you've had some other companies, but your current company, Connect the Dots, it's a SaaS product. Why don't you talk a little bit about what it does briefly, but then like what like what was the driving force to get you to even recognize, hey, look, there's a real need here. So what is Connect the Dots?

Drew Sechrist:

Sure. So Connect the Dots is it's actually a term that we used internally at Salesforce during that first decade to mean um, would say, did you connect the dots into that account? Did you figure out our relationships that can get us in front of the, you know, the right executive to make a you know, to make our pitch? Sure. And and so we actually, you know, codified that into our sales process. Every sales manager in uh Salesforce probably still to this day says, Did you connect the dots in or how did you connect the dots into this account? And um, so it was very successful for us, uh, just that motion, figuring out who in our collective relationships we could leverage to get a meeting. And sometimes it worked so well that it felt like cheating. You know, we would get a meeting with the CEO of the company just because Mark knew that person, or one of our other executives knew that person, or one of our board members, or a customer who really liked us knew that person. And so we just got really good at sniffing around to find out where we could leverage those relationships. That was the real that was probably the beginning of this whole idea. Um, and then over the years and what turned into decades, I just kept thinking, what is it'd be great if there was some easier way to do this, to find more of these relationships. And LinkedIn obviously exists, right? And LinkedIn is how we try to do this today. The challenge with LinkedIn is that um it's kind of a sea, it's an ocean of relationships that are um that are kind of uh they're all just binary. You know, if you and I are connected and Mark Benny and you are connected, and you know, somebody else and somebody else are connected, they all look the same. You can't differentiate and see, you know, those two people really know each other, they have a strong relationship, or those two people really don't know each other, they have a weak relationship, or they don't know each other at all. They're just connected on LinkedIn, binary, yes or no. And so that makes it really hard when you start to just leverage your own network to figure out how I can find the right relationships that I can leverage to get into an account. Um, but then it makes it it makes it basically impossible when you're trying to do that at scale for a large company. Sure. Because it that it's mostly noise. You know, well, you're the problem is it's mostly noise and you're trying to find the signal. And we figured out that there's a way to do that by analyzing a different set of data that hadn't been analyzed before, which was historical communication data, historical email specifically, where we can analyze to see that you know Josh and Drew have emailed a little bit, and so they have a they have a weak relationship, but Josh, uh but uh you know, Drew and Mark have emailed a lot, and so they have a strong relationship. And you can analyze the entire relationship graph for any human and do that at scale for any company, and it gives you this heat map of how you get to the people you want to get to. So um that's what we that was our innovation, that's where it came from. And um it works like a charm, it's great. And anybody who's leveraged this successfully now uh you know feels like why I would never want to go back to doing it the you know caveman way previously trying to break into account. I just want to I want those you know heat map direct laser guided introductions every time I can get them.

Josh Matthews:

You know, it reminds me a lot. Well, it doesn't remind me a lot, it's got my kind of brain juices flowing here, thinking about learning more deeply about six degrees of separation from one of Gladwell's books, right? And how you have the connectors, right? How everyone could be whatever it was, like you sent you send a a thousand letters from all over the country, and they're all trying to get to this one one or one person in Boston. And this discovery that look, there are these people who are natural connectors. I I'm a connector, but I'm not a natural connector, like as an example, right? I've got a lot of connections, but it doesn't mean I'm like, oh, you know, everyone all the time, um knowing exactly where to go. But you know, your software, and you're you're utilizing AI for this, correct? Yeah. So your your software is basically trying to get that six degrees down down to one degree, down to two degrees, just by getting to that person that everyone knows in Boston first, is kind of what it sounds like.

Drew Sechrist:

Yeah, definitely, I think uh over time we are we haven't done a study on this. There have been some other studies done uh on how many degrees is it really to get to any person on the planet. And it looks like it's smaller than it was believed to be before. Sure. Certainly within industries, because you you don't like if you're a uh, I don't know, let's say that you're a software SaaS vendor that sells you know some sort of uh finance package, you don't you're not trying to get to you know uh a Bushman in you know the Outback in Sub-Saharan Africa. It doesn't matter, you don't need to get this that six degree of separation, right? You're you're trying to get to the office of the CFO in maybe 5,000 companies that are your targets. And so that world becomes much smaller than six degrees. You know, in instead of a couple of degrees, you basically can get to everybody. And uh Connect the Dots can definitely help you do that. That's uh you know, when you have a tightly defined ICP and the personas that you want to get to, then you're sitting pretty. Then you just need to figure out how to build your network, and you probably already have a great network that can get you to most of those people.

Josh Matthews:

I'm I'm well, it makes sense to me. I'm really curious though, like most founders at some point have a bit of an aha moment. So here you are. You you spent um 11 years, I think, right around 11 years, 12 years at Salesforce, connecting the dots. Sorry?

Drew Sechrist:

About about 10, a little over 10.

Josh Matthews:

A little over 10 years, right? And then you went and started a different company, but then you had a moment. There must have been a moment. You woke up or whatever, someone said something. It spurred your um, it spurred your creative thinking process and came up with this idea um to build CTD. Like, what was that moment? Like what happened? Do you recall?

Drew Sechrist:

Well, I mean, there are a lot of things that happened over over time. You know, early on, as I apparently somebody told me this from our time at Salesforce. They they were like, Do you remember when you taught us taught us all how to connect the dots? And I don't I didn't even remember that. I but I taught the entire sales team, you know, I gave them examples of here's how you leverage the network to get into directly to executives. And and so I, you know, when we would do our you know quarterly off-site trainings and things like that, we would some of us would be at things that we did particularly well, we would be asked to go explain that to everybody. So that the idea has been there for a long time for me. I also you know was a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point. And sure. I self-identified as a connector and and also really like to find connectors because they're super amazing. Like when you find a super connector, they can really make your life a lot better. Yeah, they do. And uh so you know the idea probably originated there, but then there were all kinds of other things that happened along the way. Like LinkedIn was almost acquired by Salesforce. I don't know if you remember that. I don't. Uh so when when Microsoft acquired them, Salesforce was in the running. Okay. And and I remember thinking, wow, is Salesforce really I'd been out of the company a little while at that point. I was like, is Salesforce really big enough that it could pull that off? And it could have. Um, but Microsoft they came to better terms with Microsoft, and Microsoft uh acquired them. And I remember seeing that and thinking, wow, it'd be really amazing if you had like a an automatically updating CRM system. Because LinkedIn's kind of an automatically updating set of contacts and companies, right? So, you know, that was a piece of where I realized like uh you could you could start building a graph of relationships by analyzing historical communication data, and that could turn into and at that point, honestly, this is going a little bit on flight on a tangent, but I was like, we could build a CRM system that would be an automatic CRM system. And uh so this is a super tangent, and this is not many people know this. The original name of the company was automatic CRM. Okay. And then about a year later, we changed we were like, well, we don't really want to build an automatic CRM system that would populate the contacts and companies automatically and keep them up to date based on who you're communicating with. We didn't really want to bite that off. We didn't want to build all that functionality. We decided we wanted to focus on just one narrow thing, which is who knows who. We could analyze the same set of data, and what we could do with that is just tell you here are all the people that you know in your network, and here are all the people you can get to in your network based on the strength, the strongest relationships. So that was a you know piece. You're if you're asking, like, how did this idea come to be? There's not any one thing that happened. There are all these like little pieces that it's like uh as Steve Jobs, as Steve Jobs says, you can't, or said, you can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards. Uh I don't know if you remember that quote. Um, but that's kind of true here. It's like the all these little things led to uh realizing that, huh, we could build this technology that could analyze all of this fossil data about relationships. Like if you and I send an email 15 years ago, that what we don't really do much with that, just sitting there on a server somewhere, just kind of you know not doing anything. We can put that data to work. You know, we can analyze that and then conclude that Josh and Drew had a relationship going back 15 years. And um, but it requires, you know, requires a bunch of uh data science and some technology that didn't really exist if you went back, you know, 10 years. So there's some things that happened that and started to enable this to be a possible thing to build. And all those things led to a point where I I was like, I had conviction that this could be built, but I didn't quite know how it would be built. I just it was clear to me there were enough of the parts of the technological puzzle that were solvable that we could do it. And so we set out and did it right on, man.

Josh Matthews:

Yeah, and it works. I'm really curious about you know, what might have been one of the largest technical hurdles, you know, to getting this to actually function. Everybody knows, not everybody knows. I wish everybody knew that the 10x principle isn't that you know you're gonna scale 10 times with limited effort. It's whatever you're trying to do is gonna take 10 times more effort than you probably think it's going to take. I would imagine you must have faced some of those challenges in the process, particularly in the early stages. But with that in mind, what was the biggest technical hurdle that you and the team had to overcome to get this to actually function?

Drew Sechrist:

Yeah, the data, getting the data right is the biggest hurdle. So what we what we do is we take in all this semi-structured or unstructured data about people. And you know, there I don't know how many Josh Matthews there are on the planet, but I'm guessing you're not the only one. There's enough. Um yeah. There's enough, right? And we have to be really good at figuring out which Josh Matthew is which Josh Matthew, yeah, Matthews. Uh and so that was really hard. Um, and it was extremely hard. And uh the when we first started, you know, we our first version of the product was probably about 30% right, which meant 70% wrong. And it was so bad. We'd get all the Josh Matthews screwed up and not we'd take the data in and we would have these kind of Frankenstein contact profiles. We call them human profiles, because we we really want to know the right human. Sure. As opposed to like in a Salesforce, you know, in your CRM system, there might be five contact records for Josh Matthews, and they're all correct. It was like Josh Matthews at one company, and but it's you, and it's Josh Matthews at some other company, and it was you.

Josh Matthews:

And it's kind of I've got boy meet an actor from Boy Meets World, a WWF wrestler, some skater guy up in Portland, Oregon, some doctor, professor, and then there's me. And it's like, well, where where do you show up? This is just on Google. Much less trying to actually accurately pinpoint someone that you really humanly need the connection with, right?

Drew Sechrist:

Yes. So we we we figure that out. So it took us, it took us years to do this. I mean, it was like it's you know, that you know, a thousand little cuts to figure out, okay, what's why are we still not getting Josh Matthews right? What are the issues? And just tweaking, tweaking, tweaking. We have this brilliant data scientist who runs that effort for us uh from the very beginning, and she's just you know maniacally focused on getting this right. So she's she's if you've ever seen Jiro Dreams of Sushi, yeah, you know, it's a great, great little documentary.

Josh Matthews:

Yeah. Yes.

Drew Sechrist:

You know, for those of any of your listeners who haven't seen it, it's somebody who obsesses over just making the sushi perfect. Every day he's gonna make it a little bit better. Um, and that that's how our you know, our head of data science has has you know functioned. Just every day of obsessing about the details to make sure that we really get Josh Matthews right. That was the biggest technological challenge. There are a lot of other things too. There's just a there's a lot that we had to build, but that was the one thing that we were like we we think this is possible, and we're just gonna take the leap of faith off this cliff and hope that we land on the other side. And we did, but that took about three years until we landed it on the other side.

Josh Matthews:

That's uh so that's holding your breath for a very long time. Yes, it's a good analogy. Yeah. I'm kind of curious. So you 10 plus years at Salesforce, especially in the early days, and you and I talked a little while ago, you know, I like back in the day, it was so different, man. I mean, it was so different in '99 than it was in 2009. And you would have been there to take it from, you know, wherever it was to what, around its first billion dollars of revenue, somewhere around there. Okay. And so you came out of that. If there's like this single most powerful lesson, and it doesn't have to be like, hey, thanks, Mark, for teaching me this. It can just be like my experience, your experience there with the team and the tech and the PR and everything. I'm really curious, like, what's the number one thing that you took out of that that was that gave you, say, a little bit of an enhanced superpower to actually go out and build Connect the Dots?

Drew Sechrist:

Yeah. Well, first the knowledge of Connect the Dots, that it worked, you know, that motion that I would say that's that's number one. Um, because I and Mark led the way on this, you know, he this I'll I'll go upstream from that a little bit. Culture is really important at a company, extremely important. I mean, maybe the most important thing there is. You set the right culture, you're gonna attract the right people and motivate the right people, and the right people are gonna do the right things and you're gonna get the right outcomes. And you know, Mark did a lot of things right. He um he was extremely mission-driven, evangelical about what we were doing. Like we were, it was kind of crazy in retrospect. It's almost like we're part of a cult, but we all knew it and we loved it, and you know, we and uh we really wanted to transform the world and get the world off of enterprise software and onto SaaS. We just thought it was better for the the entire world, all the people who are using it, for the economy, uh, you know, for the the average you know, daily life of the people who are the users of the tools. We really believed it. And and we were right. You know, the cool thing is like we were believing it and we're making it happen. So I think getting the culture right is extremely important. And Mark has this great tool to align everyone behind and get the culture right. And I you're probably familiar with the V2 MOM. Yeah, so for uh for your listeners who've not heard of this, it's an acronym. It's V V M O M, and it stands for vision, values, methods, obstacles, and metrics. And it's a great way of aligning the company behind what are we here to accomplish, how are we going to do it, what are the things that could potentially stop us, and how do we mitigate those things to make sure that they don't stop us? And then what are the things that we're really focused on, the metrics that let us know that we've accomplished what we set out to do. And that conversation, I've gone through so many of these conversations now where with your my executive team and with larger teams, where you uh you know, you you sit down and you look honestly at your what you're here to do and what your assets are and how you're gonna get there. And then you have it surf it gets everything on the table, you have a great conversation about it, and by the time you're done, if you do a good job, you're all clearly aligned, and then you can go running in the right direction together. And uh so I would say that's one of the superpower tools that Mark taught us to use. And Salesforce used it at the very beginning, you know, right when I got there, they already had a V2 mom in place, and uh and I'm sure they're still using it today. Uh I know they still use it today because I I'm still friends with the people who put it together every year. That's awesome. And so it's uh it's it's still how they guide their, I don't even know how many billions they are in revenue now, but um, it's how they guide guide their think it's 70.

Josh Matthews:

I'm not sure. I think it's around 70, but I could be completely off base. I have no idea. Insert insert number right here. There we go. Yeah. Well, I can help us with this. And you know, when you bring up when you bring up the v2 mom, I mean, one of the critical pieces of that tool is transparency. And I'm aware that transparency is absolutely essential to you. You know, that's something that you've spoken about in the past on other shows or just in general communications. So I'm kind of curious, this is just sort of a fun question. We all know that transparency can feel uncomfortable at times, right? It comes with a certain amount of risk because we are either making ourselves vulnerable or we're making someone else vulnerable with the transparency. In other words, as you know, Jordan Peterson would put it, uh, yeah, we risk offending someone in order to have a real dialogue, a real open conversation. What was a time when you there was a necessity for you to be transparent and it was very high risk, but the payoff was well worth it.

Drew Sechrist:

Um well, I think you know, throughout the course of our um our company's history, we've uh you know, we're we're startup and you know you go through your ups and downs with your funding cycles. And there are times when um you know uh you you need to we've had to right size the size of the company, and that's very painful. Uh and I think the you know the thing that I want everybody to understand is exactly where we are. You know, what are the things that we need to accomplish in order to, you know, to be able to uh run in a fiscally responsible way, and what are the things that we're gonna have to do if we don't hit those metrics? And uh you know, sometimes sometimes you we've had to do layoffs and you know Salesforce had to do layoffs too when I was there. And I think that's um it's tough, but it's also the best thing when you are upfront with everybody about what your status is so that they you know they understand what do we need to do to succeed and what are the ramifications going to be if we don't. Uh so I think that's that's one thing that I you know I've leaned into. And um and it's you know, those are high stakes and and uh because you're also you don't want to lose people, you know, like if you're it you don't you don't want to scare your team, uh but you also want to be honest with them about where you're at. And uh so I think that's you know, that's a that's a really that's a really important one. Um yeah, that's probably the best thing I would say.

Josh Matthews:

I think it's very fair. Directness is so appreciated and and yet so undervalued, and it just really depends on who you're delivering the message to and how you're delivering the message, right? I mean, everybody's got that person that you can see the forest and they can't. And you try and give them a hand, even if they ask for it and they they can't hear it, right? And other people who are like, hey, just do this, just do this one little thing. And what you told them to do is not a little thing, it's a big thing, it's a hard thing. They go off and do it and achieve some wild success. If we can kind of gear our conversation a little bit more towards hiring and um connecting with people, connecting with managers and leaders and companies to become employed. But again, our focus of the show is on hiring.

Drew Sechrist:

Yeah.

Josh Matthews:

You were sharing the other day how you know the difference between sales, which is really what Connect the Dots was built for, is only a short putt away from being a recruiter, being a headhunter, running a talent acquisition team at a large organization. And I'd like to understand if if it's all right with you, I'd like to understand how Connected Dots can help service someone who's in my role, for instance, who's either trying to acquire more clients so they can serve more people, or trying to identify, you know, those really hard, very difficult to find badass people who are absolute game changers for companies. Yeah.

Drew Sechrist:

For sure. So there are two different things here. One one is you want to do business development for your own, uh, you know, selling your services, your recruiting services to companies.

Josh Matthews:

Sure. Or and look, a lot of SI leaders listen to this show, right? They might just want to be able to market beyond their AEN AVP connections, you know what I mean? So there's that. But then look, these hiring managers, they don't hire well, they're screwed. Everyone knows that. If Mark hadn't hired you and 35 other great people at the start, it probably wouldn't, like, I wouldn't be calling myself the Salesforce recruiter. You know what I mean? So that hiring is so critical. So, how how can someone, anyone, identify better candidates or have recruiters identify better candidates using your product?

Drew Sechrist:

Yeah. I mean, one of the one of the things that people use us for every day, and a lot of VCs are this is one of their primary use cases. VCs will recruit for their portfolio companies. And um, they want to get to the right candidates. So the the right candidates are hard to get, right? If you don't know that person and you reach out cold on LinkedIn or send an email or whatever, they're probably busy doing whatever they're doing and they're not going to respond. And uh so it's hard to get in front of them and have them pay attention. So the best way to get in front of them is have somebody reach out to them on your behalf and broker that introduction. Yeah. Uh somebody that they know and they trust. So if I if I reach out to somebody who worked for me at Salesforce and we you know spent five years together and and uh they trusted me, and I said, hey, you should talk to Josh Matthews. He's recruiting for this role right now, um, and I think it would be a really good fit for you. The probability that they reply and that you actually get a meeting with that person's really high, right? So that's number one. Number one is you know, if you're looking for talent, figure out how to get to that talent via somebody that can introduce you to them. The other thing is um, is that person any good? Um and so back channeling was really that's a big thing that our venture firm customers use Connect the Dots for. Is uh you know, they're looking for uh whatever VP of product or VP of marketing or whatever the role is for one of their portfolio companies. And uh you can leverage your Connect the Dots network to see, ah, okay, I can see the people, the eight people that I know well that have the strongest relationship with that person. And then you ping them and say, hey, what was it like working with Drew or whoever? And uh then you like, okay, well, here's the real scoop, you know, this is what Drew's like. And uh so you have a much more um you know informed perspective on who that person is. Um so that's on the you know, looking for talent side and then back channeling talent to make sure that a person's actually somebody good that you want. And the uh and then as far as you know the business development side of your business, just you know, finding new people, new companies uh for recruiting services, that's kind of right down the middle what we do. You know, we you know if you know a if you know the target accounts, the companies that you really want to sell to, that you that you that your ICPs, the ones that should be leveraging you for recruiting, then you just you put that list into connect the dots and makes it a piece of cake to see, okay, these are the strongest relationships that you've got to get directly to the hiring managers or the person in HR who's responsible for recruiting. And then the the this all goes back to one simple principle. It's a very noisy world right now. It is very hard to break into the consciousness of somebody. There's too much stuff going on, and AI is just making it worse. And the thing that cuts through all of the noise fast is somebody you know reaches out to you. You know that person well, and then all of a sudden you pay attention to it because that's somebody you know well. And you read it and you reply to it, and you pick up the phone and whatever you do, because you know you know that person.

Josh Matthews:

That's it. 100%, man. 100%. I'll tell you, I probably get about, I don't know, maybe somewhere in the range of 15 to 20, sometimes 30 requests a week for conversations and meetings. And I don't take almost any of them. I mean, if it's a higher, these are candidates, right? If it's a hiring manager, yeah, like of course, for first and foremost, but we're too busy. Like we're just too busy. I'm too busy. You talked about my production team, you're looking at it, right? So, you know, there's a lot of hours that go into this stuff, but about three times a week, I get a LinkedIn message from someone, hey, I'm introducing you to so and so, or I get a phone call, hey, my buddy's calling. I might never be able to place that person, I might never be able to place someone with that person. It doesn't matter. These are my friends, and their friends are my friends, and I'm gonna help them. And I don't think I'm at all, like not even remotely, an oddball in this. I think everyone is like that. So your technical SaaS AI company is so so human, so behaviorally focused. I'm really kind of curious. Have did you or or your team have to really go into beyond data science for this and really dive into human behavioral science to really get the like just squeeze this thing, get it to freaking work, you know? Yeah. What did you do that?

Drew Sechrist:

I mean, I would say we're in the thick of it. Like, you know, the uh the incentive aligned, like in why do people do things? You know, Charlie Munger would say, Well, look at the incentive and I'll show you the outcome, right? Yeah, I'll show you the behavior. And so there's a there's so many, it's like we could we could have a many, many hour conversation on this topic alone. Uh yeah, let's just keep going. Let's go. Yeah, let's go. Let's go. Um, you know, and to some degree, like uh Malcolm Bladwell in the tipping point, he covers a lot of this stuff. Yeah. Uh but there are you know, there are extrinsic and there are intrinsic uh motivations for people or incentives. And um, and I, you know, I experience both. You I'm sure you experience both. Every human does, yeah. Yeah. Uh so you get paid for certain things, and you know, like, okay, that's that's a pretty good motivator, right? Um, when I was at Salesforce, I sold a lot of SaaS, not just because I believed in my heart that it was the right thing to do, but also because I had a pretty generous compensation plan that Mark made for me, so that I, you know, the more I sold, the more money I made. Sure. And um, so the yes, you're hitting the nail on the head. There is uh there's there's a big technical problem that we needed to solve, and we've solved the technical problem. I would say there's still the uh the human behavioral problem that we are we've like partially solved it. And um, and I I'll explore some of the the intricacies of it. We have a we have a number of board members, um, and we also have some board observers, and I know a lot of board members of a lot of different companies. I just know a whole ton of them, uh, just because I'm a Silicon Valley CEO and you know I've been in you know dealt with VC firms for a long time. I know a lot of these people, and they are not all the same, they're very different. Shocking. They're very different. Yeah, yeah. And I I do this all the time. My team's probably sick of the city.

Josh Matthews:

And on purpose, too, right? I mean, for sure. If every board member looked the same, every company would look exactly the same. It's it'd be weird.

Drew Sechrist:

Yes, it would be weird. So they I do this a lot. My team's probably sick, sick of me doing a bell curve. I'm like, there's a bell curve in the world of, and then fill in the blank, you know, board members or apples or you know, toenails. Like there's a bell curve distribution on a lot of lot of different things. And you will have like some board members that you know are super gregarious connector types. Sure. And then you will have some that are super spooky, they don't want you to know who they know, and they like they're very they jealously guard their networks, and uh, you know, you gotta have a really good reason for them to you know want to make an introduction for you. And then there's everybody in between, right? So there's like number one thing is there are just a lot of people are just different. They they're they have their their different points of view on things. Um that's one thing. Another thing is you're there are some things that are logical about uh incentives, alignment of incentives, or lack of alignment of incentives. So for example, if you know your number one competitor said, Hey Josh, I see you have a good relationship with this you know prospect that I'd like to sell my services to, could you make an introduction for me? Well, your incentives are not aligned. You might be like, you know, you're my number one competitor. No, right. I'm not gonna do that. But if it's uh you know, if it's your brother-in-law and you, you know, you your brother-in-law is putting your nieces and nephews through college embraces and and you want you make sure that your nieces and nephews have a good life, then you're gonna, you know, probably introduce your brother-in-law to that person to help your brother-in-law, you know, sell whatever your brother-in-law sells. Um, so you know, those are different incentives. You know, like are your incentives aligned or are they not aligned? Um, there are you know, extrinsic and intrinsic. So like if somebody's getting paid, if you get paid to make introductions or if you have equity in a company, let's say you're a board member or an investor in a company, then you're highly motivated to see that company succeed. So, you know, there you you want to help them with an introduction. But you know, also you don't necessarily want to be paid to make introductions. It's you know, it might feel dirty to you depending on who you are in life. Like if if you're a reseller of a company and it's above board and everybody knows it, you're like, oh, we are a reseller of XYZ's product, and then you introduce yourself as such and you run a sales cycle, that's one thing.

Josh Matthews:

But if you're just a person who's getting paid to make introductions to their friends, it's disingenuous, it's disingenuous, and people can sniff that out so fast. They it's just we're the way we can sniff out bad AI, good I good AI is very difficult to sniff out. You can still kind of sniff it out, but it's it's hard to sniff out. But every anyone nowadays who's awake and at a computer four or more hours a day can sniff out bad AI, I would think. Yeah. Right. And it's the same thing. And you know, I've been I've been deep diving into this heavy, heavy um behavioral analysis stuff lately. I love it. And my listeners will tell you, oh yeah, this guy won't shut the hell up about it. And a lot of it was just like, you know, early days of just like MBTI, MBTI, like just generally Myers-Briggs stuff, like generally understanding how does someone see the world, how do they make decisions, um, you know, what information are they actually taking in? You know, how do they charge the battery? Like that kind of stuff. Do they have conversations with themselves that are actually effective, or do they have to be like me and talk before the ideas even come out? All that, all that, yeah, right. Extroverts, right? Even if you're barely an extrovert, you're still gonna be that way. And now it's like, okay, let's look at other things like people's real core motivations. This person wants significance. This person wants to be known as odd and weird and not part of the crew, you know, and and these people want um, you know, they're gonna make decisions based on longevity and investment and 100% practicality. Other people, like I interviewed this gal the other day, and lovely lady, she's just got a second interview. She loves to go off-roading. She's got 24 ladies that are all probably over 50 or whatever, wide range, and they go off-roading together. That is a hundred percent, that's an acceptance, acceptance, nothing wrong with it. All of them, every everyone's got probably two main ones. That's her big one, right? Is acceptance. And you'll even hear it in how they talk we this, we that, right? The team, team, team. And it's being able to figure out what someone is so that you can at least talk their language. And it can get really weird, Drew, because you don't want to be um, what's the word, creepy or manipulative? And when we really study human behavior, and I'm sure you and the team already know this. Like, are we manipulating or or are we facilitating? And it's sometimes kind of a murky line. I'm kind of curious, have you guys run into any of that stuff yet?

Drew Sechrist:

I mean, in my career, absolutely. Yeah. You know, when you're when you're doing enterprise sales, like you you ask yourself that uh all the time. Like, what because they're all types of things that you do in the sales in the sales profession to drive the outcome. Your your goal is to get the outcome, right? Um, and um so I would say the number one thing is is this really in the best interest of the person that you are you know that you are talking to? And if it's not, then you probably fall in the category of manipulation. And if it is, if you really believe it, then then it falls in the category of I don't know, uh assistance or honest effort.

Josh Matthews:

Yeah.

Drew Sechrist:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So um and in our yeah, so I I I do think about this a lot for our customers because our customers could if one of the big challenges that our customers have is for the people that are have clear incentive alignment, great. Yeah. For the people for the people out there that don't have clear incentive alignment that they they know, but they don't have clear incentive alignment, how can they unlock those introductions, those relationships that could happen? Um, and throwing money at it may not be the right thing. Uh, you know, because that might be the disingenuous thing. That might be the you know the thing that just doesn't feel good to people. Yeah. So um so the answer is yes, Josh. I think about this all the time. And uh and I don't I don't have a solid answer on this. Again, there's a lot of nuance. In some situations, it's totally fine to be kind of a reseller type person or somebody gets a referral fee. In other situations, it's not. And you know, like I I know some CFOs out there that have been brought on board as advisors to companies and they they will make introductions as part of their advisory services, and they introduce themselves as an advisor to that company, and it's totally totally above board. Now, when you know you think about an advisor in Silicon in Silicon Valley speak, advisor typically means, oh, they gave me some equity in the company, and I give them some advice and I open up some doors for them. That's my impression. Is that kind of your impression? Yeah, that's my impression. What if we what if we substituted uh equity for cash? I'm an advisor, and I uh and so I I give them advice in return for some cash and I open up some doors for them in return for for cash. Feels a little different.

Josh Matthews:

You know what it feels like? It feels like the abortion debate. At what day? I mean, it's just like, well, equity is gonna be cash, hopefully, if everybody did the right thing. One's a gamble, right? It just it's like, well, what about the day before that? What about two days before birth? Not to get totally off track here, but it's not that dissimilar, is it? I mean, a murky thing with a vague gray timeline.

Drew Sechrist:

Yes. And but there's a feel to it as well. There's uh an emotional feel. It's like, you know, there's something I don't know, there's something that's more noble about you know equity and less noble about cash, but and that's western, by the way, right?

Josh Matthews:

Like it might be very different in India, it might be very different in Africa. You know, these things can feel um, you know, we have to, I'm just wanting to acknowledge it's uh often a Western culture thing. Yes. Because I don't know about the other cultures, don't live there. Yeah. Yeah.

Drew Sechrist:

Um so there you go. Yes. Think about this a lot, Josh. So if they if you wake up in the middle of the night with some really interesting insights and solutions to the uh you know the human dynamic, the behavioral dynamic, then please ping me.

Josh Matthews:

Well, look, I know it's getting late. You've been an awesome guest. Let me ask you just one or two more questions. And yeah, this has been a really fun conversation for me, just so you know. So um I'm kind of interested in you know, what's next? Like, what's the next big innovation for CTD? Like you you're I know you're a forward-thinking guy. Sometimes it's like, okay, forward thinking, now let's build it. Now let's build it. Are we there? Test, iterate, move on. But like what's what's going on in your head and in leadership's head like right now? AI's going ape shit, you know. Yeah. What are you guys thinking?

Drew Sechrist:

Uh we're so I'll tell you the thing right now, and then I'll tell you the maybe the thing that's a little bit farther out because we're playing with it right now. The thing right now is just like uh make it so that you can have a conversation with your network about your network. So whatever you're looking for, you just type in your desire, and then we give you the data about it. So that could be like I'm flying, I'm flying to New York next week. I want to meet with um, you know, I want to meet with senior executives at any of the target accounts that we're selling to uh where I can have a strong relationship path in and I can get an introduction to them. And then boom, voila, we'll give you that like magic list so that by when you land in New York, you've got you know twenty twenty meetings that you can have lined up uh with really relevant people. And um, so that's we want to make it just so it's so easy you just talk to it and you get exactly the magic results about your network.

Josh Matthews:

Wish I had that for going to Dreamforce next week.

Drew Sechrist:

Yeah, we all do. And uh so so uh our customers have a version of that right now, but um the uh it's it's it's getting better by leaps and bounds, you know, every day. So uh that's the thing that's kind of immediately coming out. Very cool. The thing that's a little bit longer is um I got the first Meta Ray band glasses uh and and played with them, and uh, we're getting another another set of smart glasses. What I there there's a universal problem that we I don't know, pretty universal, I think, unless you unless you're Bill Clinton and you've got his memory. I see people all the time. If I bumped into you on the street in two months in San Francisco, I might remember your face, and but I probably wouldn't be able to put it all together. You know, just a different context at San Francisco on the street, you know. We we did a podcast together. I chased the stash, maybe, you know. Maybe you save the stash, had all my teeth knocked out, you know. Yep, yep. Where you curled the stash with some you know, mustache mustache glasses, there you go. I think I think you should do that. Do you um I don't know? I've tried I've done it, yeah. Uh but I uh what I really wish is I had a pair of magic glasses that would say, that's Josh Matthews. Last time you interacted with him was two months ago. He did a podcast. Oh wow. And uh and so we're not far from that. Like we're not far like the glass, like the glasses facial recognition technology exists. The thing that doesn't really exist is the the tool. Well, the the tool that tells you who you know and how and gives you all the context about how you know the person. It kind of does exist though. And so we we are not uh like those two things, like chocolate and peanut butter, could go really well together here, where those glasses could just whisper in my ear and tell me exactly who you are with the right context. Because the c it's all about context, just just knowing you know your name and your company or whatever may not actually be very useful because I don't know, I've got 8,000 LinkedIn contacts, and if I heard a person's name, company might mean nothing to me. Yeah, but what would mean something to me is last time you talked to that person, you know, you guys communicated 48 times over the course of a period of four years from 2010 to 2014 while you were at XYZ company and he was at you know ABC Company, and this is what you discussed, and maybe like have you know, like you know, this is his wife's name, and uh this is it, you know, he's got these kids and like that, like this for all of your my 44. I've got 44,000 contacts in Connect the Dots that have been found from all my communications with them 44,000. So that would be straight up superpower, dude.

Josh Matthews:

For real. I want them and I want them for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday in downtown San Francisco. Of course, yeah. I'm I'm lucky, I'll go to these, you know, I'll go to a party, I'll go to the concert, whatever. Someone is always like, hey Josh Matthews, you know, love your show, like whatever. Like so it's nice to be this honestly, it's like going to a hometown for a few days for me. I really love going to Dreamforce because I know way more people there than I do here in Jupiter, Florida. Um, but it's one of those things like more people remember me than I can remember because I talked to so many people. And there's another application. I mean, I know that you guys have a minimum license, right? Like minimum seats. This is enterprise software.

Drew Sechrist:

We we yeah, we so you can get it, you can set up a free account. And so the free minimum is one, and that's free. Okay. To use our business edition uh account. There's no technically no minimum on that, but we just we don't we we don't target small companies because it's there's not a lot of money there. So we focus on companies that have you know over a hundred or two hundred employees, generally speaking. But you know, smaller companies and even individuals can get a ton of value out of it.

Josh Matthews:

I'm signing up, man. You might have another application too for people who have facial blindness. You know what that is? You've heard of that?

Drew Sechrist:

I can guess what it is. Yeah, I mean somebody you don't yeah, you don't know who the person is that you're looking at.

Josh Matthews:

Yeah, you could like I met someone who has that just uh maybe two, three weeks ago, right? And it's it's more common than you think, and there's grades of it, right? So there's the there's the that experience of like, I know I've seen that person, I have no idea who their name is. I'm terrible with names, by the way. Yeah, other people can't even recognize the face, even if they met them that morning, right? Yeah, like it's it's severe, like they just can't do it. There's a real application for that, just like medically, socially medically.

Drew Sechrist:

Yeah, agree, agreed. I and I I don't I don't have I'm sure I'm not clinically at facial blindness, but there are definitely faces that I can't place the name to infrequently, and um so probably not you know, not I wouldn't be diagnosable for it, but I would definitely pay money for the glasses that would make that problem go away. Absolutely, so would I. So would I. Wonderful. Well, that's that's the that's the labs thing. So the the first thing I told you about that's coming soon. Yeah. The glasses thing is a little bit more in the you know RD phase right now, but we're working on that's exciting, man.

Josh Matthews:

That's so exciting. Um, one last question. So, for founders, sales leaders right now, what do you think is other than signing up, getting connected dots, what do you think is one under-leveraged strategy in in their network that they're likely to be ignoring and at their own peril? Kind of a weird question, I know.

Drew Sechrist:

Yeah, you might have to edit out the long pause for me to think about it, but the under-leveraged strategy.

Josh Matthews:

Um, this is good, this is good television right now. People like to watch people think it's good. Yeah. How about I do this? How about I ask it in a different way? Sure. Because it's kind of a shitty question.

Drew Sechrist:

I don't know. That's a good question. I'd like I'd like to know for myself, and then I want to go implement it. Um, I'm just trying to think what it is.

Josh Matthews:

Well, okay, so taking away you got it? I got it.

Drew Sechrist:

Okay. All right. Small dinners. I think uh I think a small dinner with uh six to eight people, yeah um, and combination of like uh people who wanna sell into the same companies or you know have relationships that can be helpful for each other, yeah. Prospects, your customers, yeah uh your you know partners. I think uh you gotta eat you gotta eat dinner, right? And uh everybody has to eat food. And if you if you keep it small enough, I like six to eight people total around the table because then you know one conversation, everybody can hear each other. Yeah, I think magic happens then. Really, I think it's like uh you can you the conversation can go anywhere, you can find you know lots of different potential introductions, you can convert a prospect into a customer, you can have a customer sell to several of your prospects. Um, I think that's a a great tool. And if you particularly if you live in an area where like San Francisco is great for that, or you know, major metros are great for that. Sure. Um, because you can you can kind of always gin up a good dinner with um with people who will uh will help each other. And so I I would say that's that's one thing I I like.

Josh Matthews:

I love it, man. I was actually thinking for when I was looking at boats, I was thinking, just get a boat, take it down the intercoastal, right? And stop in West Palm, six, seven, eight people on there, hang out for a couple hours, crash at a hotel, take it down to Fort Lauderdale, do the same thing two one or two times the next day, go down to Miami, spend two days in Miami, do it there, and bet that boat would pay for itself, and I'd make a lot of great acquaintances, and I'd be able to solve a lot of problems and help people to connect with the right people so that they can solve their problems together without me.

Drew Sechrist:

Sign me up. My two spots for my wife and me. We'll pick us up in South Beach. I love it, man.

Josh Matthews:

I love it. Well, I might just do that. I I am in a boat club, so we could just go do that anyway. But I'd love to get some really good people together and get a slightly nicer boat than, you know, just like a good, decent boat, and let's go hang out. Yeah. Yeah. All right, bud.

Drew Sechrist:

I'll be your beta test.

Josh Matthews:

I love it. I love it. This has been such a lovely conversation, Drew. Thank you so much. Can you share where can people find more information about you? Let's add to that 8,000 uh contacts that you've got on LinkedIn and help them find this software so that they can grow their uh well, not it's not really, I gotta edit this shit now, so that they can so they can leverage their network better.

Drew Sechrist:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, um, you can find me uh so you can email me. I'm an email guy, Drew at ctd.ai. Our website is obviously ctd.ai, like connecttheds.ai. Uh and then I'm on I'm on LinkedIn. It's uh, you know, LinkedIn slash Drew Secrist. So pretty easy to find. Hit me up, any of those places, and I'd love to hear from you. And you can, by the way, go to our website, ctd.ai, and as Josh and I were discussing, you can set up your own free ConnectThe Dots account for life.

Josh Matthews:

Well, I'm gonna be signing up right after this, and I'm stoked, and I'll give a little update in uh in a month or two about how all of that is going. If you've been listening to this on the podcast, be sure to check out the video. The video is gonna be available on the Josh Force channel. It's YouTube.com, something or other, Josh Force, one word. And if you're watching this on Josh Force, well, you can go to the hiringedge.ai. And you can also find us on Spotify, Apple, like 30 other platforms, whatever your favorite um platform is for podcasts, go ahead and check it out. Thanks again, Drew. You guys have a wonderful, wonderful uh season coming up. I hope that you achieve all of these fantastic goals. It's been wonderful to catch up. Thanks for having me, Josh. You got it, buddy.

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Josh Matthews

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Vanessa Grant

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