Enjoy The Work

“If you do live brainstorming you have diminished all the folks that prefer to sit and chew on something first.”

“You don't sell to a company. Magic box is about finding the person. You're finding the champion on the other side. The person who has motivated for their own reasons, career, money, reputation, what have you, they see the fantasy, they fall in love.”

“And what it led me to realize is that every well-run company has a rhythm. It's unmistakable. You can't miss it. You can't not see it. You just spend a couple of days, like through a spy cam watching a business, you'll see the pattern.”

“In those cases, I only would want to bring on an architect if they'd been an architect before. If they'd only been an optimizer, they are going to fail because they've never written playbook from scratch.”

“Where the founders often get hung up on for us is that they've moved towards selling without contemplating ideal customer profile, without contemplating qualifications, without contemplating discovery questions to get to that, and most importantly, kill criter…”

“Start with the job description. It's a fucking mistake. Start with, it's 12 months later. You've hired the person they started today, 12 months have gone by, you're clinking champagne because of how great it's been. What's changed about the business? What does…”

“I think ready, fire, aim is the most common that we've seen.”

“Founders often make the mistake when planning for the year ahead of, I need to be at this revenue to justify this multiple. And then all of the funnel math is a plug. And that's just, that's death. As opposed to here's what's been true for the last three month…”

“First question was, well, describe to me your ideal founder. What's a great founder? And the answers universally were the same. Investors would use words that meant grit and tenacity and courage and insight. And I'd say, great. Question number two. Describe to…”

“Intuition comes from, in my point of view, A deep understanding of self and the capacity to get quiet and be well resourced. Meaning you've slept well and you've eaten well and you have enough love in your world. And I think what founder mode can confuse is my…”

“We like to joke that more companies die from suicide than homicide. And it's grim, but also if the two or three people in charge of the business can't get along, nothing else matters. It's all gonna break apart.”