Latest / GTM Made Simple / There's No Perfect Time to Bet on Yourself
Transcript
- Sangram here again on the move. The question I got in the last CEO conversation, I [music] do CEO roundts and one of the questions was and I wrote it down. You were asking like what made me the entrepreneur that I am right now having built multiple hundred million dollar plus businesses. I thought about that question quite a bit and I didn't want to just answer that. So I thought about a relevant inflection point that happens in everyone's life and it [music] might happen to you right now. what people were asking for in this year round table. So what's the perfect time to get this right [music] where you start building a business and start scaling and thinking that this is it because self-doubt creeps in and wonders of the world creeps in and the temptations to move into every shiny new object comes in like [music] how do you stay focused to do what you need to do in order to build something that's worth buying or selling or scaling and so I remember this thing so just a quick snapshot of my story to get to that inflection point because this is very important and you have to really dial into this thought I ran in marketing [music] at Parlot and we got acquired with a $10 million company got acquired by Exact Target and then by Salesforce for 10 billion. So I went from a $10 million company [music] to a $10 billion company. Then I remember this is just me learning and being at the right place right time and it was phenomenal experience. I learned so much at Salesforce how to think big and I remember after that going and meeting [music] the terminus co-founders who just a new company just launched here in Atlanta. I saw their pitch. Then I met them at the coffee [music] shop. And then I actually met them in their office. Just two founders. That's all they had. And spent a whole day on their whiteboard telling them like, "Hey, I saw your pitch. What's wrong with the pitch? Here's what you should do." I told them like, "The world is moving toward accounts." This is 2015. You like imagine if can you do account advertising? They're like, "What is that?" And like, "Well, what if you were able to target companies and people within the companies?" Because in B2B, it's not like B2C. You don't need to do a banner ad to random people. If you can show that you spent $100 on Home Depot and the ads are going to the executive team of Home Depot, then people will pay buddy for it. Then nobody has ever done that before. So they were like, "Well, yeah, I think they spent a few hours thinking about it, working through it, and they're like, "Yeah, I think we can do that." I'm like, "Well, great. If you can do that, that's new category. We should be calling it accountbased marketing." And they both were like, "What is account?" And I I was just passionate and excited about it. And at the end of the day, they were exhausted. I was like just lit up, right? And Eric asked me this question and said, "Sang, if you're so excited about it, why don't you come join us? Why don't you become a co-founder?" That that stumped me because I wasn't trying to be a co-founder. You know what I was thinking was, man, I'm coming out of Salesforce. I maybe get some equity and some shares to be an [music] adviser, but he actually offered me a really amazing thing. What I didn't know, like, can I be an entrepreneur? And I had to go back and talk to my wife. And we just had our second kid. So, and my wife wasn't working at that time. So, here we are, immigrant family, one person working. We're trying to figure out what to do next. And I come home and say, "Hey, look, I just met these two guys. I spent a day with them on a whiteboard. I think I want to join them." And she's like, "Well, okay. Well, great. Good. Good. Awesome. How much are you going to make?" I'm like, "Probably zero. Maybe something close to that." And she's like, "Well, but but we don't work." And I'm like, "That's the point. you need to go get a job because we need to put kids in daycare and we need to pay the mortgage and I don't think I'm going to make any money until we actually have something to show for. And she's like, "Well, but haven't they got revenue?" I'm like, "No, really, not really. They have some little money to start off with." And we went back and forth and she was just flabbergasted. She's like, "What are you talking about? You want to be an entrepreneur at 35 with two kids, one just born, wife not working? What are you thinking?" So, let me just pause there and say that guys, this is probably for anybody, guys, gal, doesn't really matter. There's no perfect time to be an entrepreneur. There's always something that's going to [music] stop you and you will be like maybe not a great time. And either those are true things or those are excuses. In my case, this could be a legitimate thing for me to say no to. But I was so fired up about it because I knew the problem so cold. I'm a marketer. I was at Salesforce. I saw all these things happening where people are running after leads and I wanted to break that cycle. So I wanted to speak about it, talk about it and solve that problem to a point where somebody just said why don't you come join as a co-founder. So I just kept talking through that and in a week she did three things for me and said three things which that was the inflection point. Going back to that infection point, she said to me about after a couple of days of conversation and she said, "Sanger, I can see in your eyes that you're going to regret if you don't do this." I'm like, "That is so true. I I can't sleep. This is so important. This is so good." And she said, "Okay, well, we don't have means to an end. So, what we're going to do is I'm going to get a job." And she literally found a job in 4 weeks and we put our second baby in in a daycare, which wasn't the plan so early on to do this. And then she said the third thing and probably the most important thing what you need in your life and I needed that. She said all right go do it but here's the thing. You got one year and in one year show me this thing has legs otherwise you're going to go find a real job. You know that that conversation was so straight up because she gave me something that every person needs. One a gift of time and two a gift of forcing function. It was a forcing function from her perspective. She's like, "You got one year." She didn't say, "Go live your dreams, my honey. I will just keep, you know, slogging away while you are doing all these things." She said, "No, no, go do your thing, man. Go live your dream. But you got one year. One year. Show me this thing as legs. Otherwise, you're going get a real job cuz I'm not doing this forever." So, think about it. The fire that was lit underneath me because of the passion for the problem I wanted to solve and the ticking time bomb of like one year. The more time I spent on solving this problem, the more excited I got. So, I worked so hard. This has probably never happened in the world of B2B. We wrote a book called accountbased marketing because we wrote and talked about it so much. We did four events across the US. Typically people do one event a year. We had four events across the year. We became the category king. If you go look at terminus and account marketing, you will see us as the category king. As a matter of fact, even Forester, a research company said that this is what built a category. We started a daily podcast called Flip My Funnel every day for thousand episodes. The point I'm trying to make here is that look, there's always an inflection point in your life, a partner, someone in my case, where they would tell you and speak truth to you and say, "You got this, but here are the rules of the game." And if you play by that, you have an opportunity to change the world. I mean, to me, that changed everything for me. My life, what I do now, everything was because my wife, my partner gave me the gift of time and the gift of forcing function. And that's what every leader need. Give yourself the time that you need, but also create a forcing function that's not forever. So you need to create that sense of urgency that only drives you to do better and bigger things. And to me, that's what made me an entrepreneur. That day I became an entrepreneur. That day she made me who I am today. That day everything changed for me. And we both have a very different life today because of the success Terminus had and the exit and then the business I'm building right now. But it all started with that inflection point. So find a forcing function. There's never a good time but the the best time is right now for whatever you're trying to do. If there is that inkling in you saying that man I have this problem I want to solve for it. Just don't create a passion project. Create something that will create business and value that if that is a problem that you cannot sleep unless you solve and find a partner and a forcing function that will help you do that. That's what will get you moving. With that, let's keep moving.