You Can't Lose!

We're back from holiday break and digging into mistaking happiness as an achievement, what's misunderstood about hard work, following the way the buttons on your shirt pull you towards where you need to be, producing over consuming, some truly harrowing wisdom from Charles De Gaulle who to be fair, was around for some harrowing things, and embracing the clean sheet of paper a new year provides without getting sucked up into self improvement porn, we dive right the hell back in.

Recipes are for baking. Businesses run on equations, variables, and probabilities. In this episode we discuss the illusion of sales and leadership recipes and how they fail to adapt and reflect context. Instead let us make the case that formulas full of people, variables, and uncertainty are the responsible way to manage teams, lead organizations, sell services, and generally exist in a universe with other people. It's a whole of hooting and hollering.

Richard and I both attempted to connect our networks. One of us was successful, the other was me. In this ep we get into the wonky details of how to collect & connect your tribes. I'll post what worked separately. The theme we keep coming back to are the invisible forces and triggers that generate valuable outcomes. How focusing on what's measurable in sales incentivizes the wrong fabricated behavior. How you need to increase your surface area for opportunity and luck. How unexpected connections result in our most powerful business outcomes. And most importantly how to not be haunted by your inability to manufacture those outcomes programmatically and instead work on the things that increase the likelihood of serendipity and luck. Work on your story and narrative. Good work is the best business development. Connect with people who excite you, not just those that fit a buying persona, ugh. Create space, pour handpicked people into it, add some value when you can, unclench. All this and why "Bad news is for Mondays" you monsters!

Human connections and networks and brands and group events are all better when powered by authentic chemistry and vibes. In a work travel fueled rant Joe tries to invent SXSW and other events that already exist in the hopes of kindling valuable network interactions while Richard channels post-vacation vibes to adjust the volume and surface insights about quality of connections over quantity, "Circles of Competence," and vibes/culture/brands.

Growing teams is hard. This we know. Communicating with growing teams, managing operations and process among growing teams, hiring and evolving sales within growing teams, and maintaining an identity within a growing team are all topics on the table in this episode. Learn the origin of #turdstorm! and the magical, universal time when all services agencies hire their first dedicated biz dev person (Spoiler: the answer is always 6-12 months too late).

Acronyms and jargon can become the building blocks of corporate culture and build unintended barriers. This week we dive into how to engage with strange new company cultures. How good leaders destroy obstacles while recognizing their limitations. And how context permeates and informs everything. Then it needs to change.

In this episode we challenge the traditional sales playbook, examining the real impact of common tactics like AdWords, LinkedIn marketing, and Clutch.co profile creation. We underscore instead the crucial need for personalization in business, with a particular focus on the pivotal role of CEOs and business leaders in forging direct, meaningful engagement with customers. We unpack the art of creating genuine connections with potential clients, moving beyond the confines of generic marketing techniques. Our discussion further illuminates the power of storytelling and personal branding in an era marked by digital overload and growing distrust in conventional marketing. Don't be a muggle! Use your detectiveness skills to lead and contribute to conversations that turn into successful relationships.

We’re having too much fun making the podcast which leads us to question, is this “too much fun” to be called work? In this episode we dive into the transformative power of integrating playfulness into our work lives. Challenging the entrenched 'grind culture' that glorifies overwork and undervalues leisure, we unravel how adopting a playful approach can lead to more meaningful and sustainable success. We dissect the illusions created by visibility and hard work, advocate for the impact of soft power in leadership, and celebrate the unsung heroes who achieve without the need for fame.

PhilaMade's return sparks interesting opportunities. Richard tackles pricing and estimating. The podcast addresses the role of co-working spaces in building community. They discuss the fraudulent nature of billing hourly. The importance of designing conversations and processes in sales consulting is explored. Preparing for the future and the importance of continuous interviewing in consulting businesses are discussed.

Richard and Joe could barely wait to record this episode as they both dive into GPTs. ChatGPT launched GPTs, enabling users to build their own LLM and AI-based applications. Your Losers (Richard & Joe? Is that a thing?) immediately built a variety of experimental GPTs and plunged into building a sales enablement GPT based on their catalog of writing, consulting, podcasts, and more. The result is a sales copilot providing the answers and data AMs and salespeople need to more efficiently and effectively shorten and deepen the selling process. Dive in with us as we figure all of this out and build as we go.