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Venturing Boldly, with Priit Martin (Sales, Estonia, Entrepreneurship, Careers) · The Action Catalyst

• 0:39
  Adam Outland: Welcome Action Catalyst listeners, today we
• 0:42
  have Priit Martin. Priit now serves as the president of
• 0:46
  Southwestern Ventures, formerly E1 Ventures, founded as part of
• 0:49
  the Southwestern Family of Companies to create career and
• 0:52
  entrepreneurial opportunities for young people across Europe.
• 0:55
  Priit. Welcome to the show.
• 0:57
  Priit Martin: Hello, Adam. Your equipment is way fancier than
• 1:00
  mine. I really haven't done any podcast recordings like this
• 1:04
  before. I'm open to anything, we can just talk and see what comes
• 1:07
  out of it.
• 1:08
  Adam Outland: We want at least a couple of embarrassing stories
• 1:10
  from your youth.
• 1:11
  Priit Martin: I have had a very vanilla life. I hope I have
• 1:17
  something interesting to share.
• 1:19
  Adam Outland: Perfect. So give me a little bit of your story.
• 1:23
  How did you find the role and position that you're in today
• 1:27
  with Southwestern Ventures?
• 1:28
  Priit Martin: That journey, as it often is was a little
• 1:32
  unexpected? So if we go way back to the early 90s, in elementary
• 1:37
  school, never even once did I consider that I would end up in
• 1:41
  the field of sales or leadership or anything like that. So if you
• 1:45
  imagine that 50 pound geeky boy with you know that what cut hair
• 1:50
  with a little ponytail, and every time I I had to like read
• 1:54
  a poem in front of the classroom or something. Sometimes I got
• 1:57
  nosebleeds because I was so scared and afraid of talking in
• 2:01
  public, my face would always always turn red. So yeah, like
• 2:05
  sales, not for me. But you know, as I got older, I got a little
• 2:09
  bit more confidence, I was at least able to speak to people,
• 2:11
  right. But when I was in college, my older brother kind
• 2:14
  of by accident, went to sell the books in in USA. So once he had
• 2:18
  done it for a couple years, I figured that, hey, if he can do
• 2:21
  it, I should probably do it as well. I always had this feeling
• 2:23
  that, you know, I was a good kid, can my grandmother say that
• 2:26
  you're a nice boy, I got good grades in school, and so on. But
• 2:30
  I never really had the feeling that I had tested myself. And as
• 2:34
  the years went by, it started to bother me more and more. So I
• 2:37
  saw this chance to go to the states and sell educational
• 2:41
  books door to door kind of as a as a test to see if I really was
• 2:46
  who I thought I was. And I was still scared. I actually was
• 2:50
  supposed to go the first year I got into college, but I didn't.
• 2:54
  I had many excuses of all the great things I would be doing
• 2:57
  back in in my home country in Estonia. And what I ended up
• 3:01
  doing is I ended up playing a lot of games, computer games
• 3:04
  over the summer, I actually made money like that. So it was the
• 3:07
  first like serious money I made in my life playing computer
• 3:10
  games. So I figured I would do it next year. And when next year
• 3:13
  came, I figured I would do it next year because I had new
• 3:16
  excuses. So I caught myself that if I always think I'm gonna do
• 3:20
  the scary things next year. So when I'll be able to then do it,
• 3:23
  and I will have done nothing.
• 3:24
  Adam Outland: I gotta pause for a second; how did you make money
• 3:27
  playing video games?
• 3:29
  Priit Martin: It was not poker or anything. There was this new
• 3:32
  kind of concept that was like an online worlds where you could be
• 3:36
  whoever like I don't know, Hunter or whatever. And they
• 3:40
  even gain money was convertible to actual money, and vice versa.
• 3:45
  Wow. So my last year of high school and first couple years of
• 3:50
  college I made I think 20 or $30,000, which back in that time
• 3:56
  Adam Outland: Well if you're still in school, that's amazing.
• 3:56
  was a lot.
• 4:00
  Priit Martin: I didn't do anything smart with that money
• 4:02
  apart from paying, you know, for the tickets and visa and
• 4:06
  everything that I got to go to the States. And of course, I
• 4:10
  bought myself that really rad car with no extra added lights
• 4:14
  and chameleon color and very stupid.
• 4:16
  Adam Outland: So you maybe being a financial adviser was not your
• 4:19
  best.
• 4:20
  Priit Martin: Not in the past then.
• 4:22
  Adam Outland: Any nosebleeds the first time you sold books?
• 4:24
  Priit Martin: I was just as scared. So that part didn't go
• 4:27
  away. But by that time, I had somehow developed my discipline
• 4:31
  muscle a lot at annual sports and like pushed myself to, I
• 4:36
  don't know, run laps during summer breaks around my house
• 4:39
  and you know, silly stuff like that. So one thing I was very
• 4:43
  good at. I was good at following a plan. And one of the good
• 4:46
  lessons that that I got from my first summer is that experience
• 4:50
  is valuable, and it makes sense to listen to somebody who has
• 4:53
  done well at what you want to do. So going into into my first
• 4:57
  year I had a plan. I had a plan that I would do Oh, everything
• 5:00
  100% If everything would go smoothly, nice, right? I have a
• 5:04
  good summer. And if it would be a disaster, I could play my
• 5:09
  brother. So it was very solid plan, you know, work like crazy,
• 5:14
  do your demos in sales, you know, all of those things. And I
• 5:17
  did everything by the book. Exactly. And they actually ended
• 5:21
  up being number one first year from from Europe.
• 5:24
  Adam Outland: Wow, that's fantastic. That also does
• 5:26
  positive things for your your confidence in this arena of
• 5:29
  sales and working with people. Right?
• 5:31
  Priit Martin: Yeah, it taught me that communication. You know,
• 5:34
  being good with people, it is not something that you need to
• 5:37
  have or you don't that it's it's some sort of magic skill. But
• 5:41
  you could practice it, you get better number one, and you lose
• 5:45
  the fear as it is with everything right.
• 5:47
  Adam Outland: So then jump to Southwestern Ventures, when did
• 5:51
  that transition happening between selling books and this
• 5:54
  initiative?
• 5:55
  Priit Martin: I never stopped selling books. I was on the
• 5:58
  bookfield myself for I think it was eight years. And then I
• 6:01
  became a district leader. And up until 2020, when COVID, I was a
• 6:07
  DSL, but 2020 was very tragic year for very many people, it
• 6:13
  changed a lot of lives. And it changed a lot of ways we do
• 6:17
  things. But honestly, I have to say that for me that looking
• 6:20
  back, it was a very good year, I had some personal changes that I
• 6:25
  went through, I actually had a divorce, which I thought that
• 6:29
  would never happen to me. And that was very, very hard. But it
• 6:33
  was also absolutely, you know, positive thing in the end in the
• 6:36
  end. And you know, having gone through that, I just got to
• 6:39
  figure that it didn't see who they are for change. So this
• 6:42
  other opportunity of joining ventures presented itself. And
• 6:46
  it wasn't a very big change. I changed the country where I'll
• 6:49
  braided in and change like the product, but everything else is
• 6:54
  gonna stay the same. I can most of the people around me stay the
• 6:57
  same, the values that we have a lot of the methods and so it was
• 7:01
  a safe way to get myself on a new track.
• 7:04
  Adam Outland: For our listeners, I guess some perspective is in
• 7:07
  2021 COVID hit one of the challenges for your organization
• 7:11
  continuing to lead students from Europe coming to the states to
• 7:15
  sell. That became a much more difficult proposition.
• 7:18
  Priit Martin: By much more difficult, if you mean made it
• 7:19
  impossible, then yes, that was accurate. No, there were, I
• 7:23
  think it was even more than 500 people in our organization. So
• 7:27
  students from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, who
• 7:32
  had trained for the whole year paid for the the sign, they work
• 7:37
  permit and everything already. And then COVID hit in March,
• 7:40
  April. So suddenly, they had no outlets to do the thing they
• 7:45
  were selected to do. So the challenge for us was to find
• 7:49
  something to do for you know, four or five 600 People in the
• 7:53
  span of one month. So that's kind of how ventures, what it is
• 7:58
  today got like its first first reader book boost. A lot of
• 8:02
  their students, they switched from selling books to doing
• 8:06
  fundraising or selling the smart smoke alarm service to families
• 8:11
  in Europe. And it was a lot of work. And I was asked to help
• 8:14
  out with that just in the beginning. And I started putting
• 8:17
  more and more time. And by the fall of that year. So after the
• 8:20
  summer, I had actually made the transition to two inches out of
• 8:24
  the book selling business.
• 8:25
  Adam Outland: Talk about taking lemons and turning them into
• 8:28
  lemonade.
• 8:28
  Priit Martin: Yeah, definitely Southwestern family of companies
• 8:31
  as a whole. And it's definitely true about Ventures that what
• 8:34
  we're building, we our values and methods, people based
• 8:39
  company, not a product or a service based company or a
• 8:42
  business. So it doesn't really matter what the product is or
• 8:45
  how it's gonna change in the future. The way we do things is
• 8:49
  who will proof enough that it's going to survive drastic
• 8:53
  changes. And I think that's what happened in 2020. And during
• 8:56
  that and the COVID times.
• 8:58
  Adam Outland: So how do we define Southwestern ventures
• 9:00
  today? It's a combination of a number of businesses in and of
• 9:04
  itself. Is that correct?
• 9:05
  Priit Martin: Kind of. Like we call them divisions. The dream
• 9:08
  is to win about 10, 15, 20 years can I build like mini
• 9:13
  Southwestern family of companies but in Europe. So back when it
• 9:18
  started, it was actually created in 2018 by Rosada because y'all
• 9:23
  back then was also ready to move on from the books ads business.
• 9:27
  And that quite literally the first month or two y'all had an
• 9:31
  office and the whiteboard and he you know, he was like sitting
• 9:34
  around and you know, coming up with ideas what to do. Five
• 9:37
  years later, we don't do any of those ideas. We do something
• 9:40
  totally, totally different. But that's okay. So what we do now,
• 9:44
  yes, we are like a little collection of divisions or
• 9:46
  companies and we plan to grow well at the in in the future. So
• 9:50
  to the outside worlds. It's very simple. We sell things to the
• 9:54
  other businesses, other partners we help them sell stuff.
• 9:58
  Currently. We we sell Insurance, accident insurance and life
• 10:02
  insurance, different product with the investment portion. We
• 10:06
  do fundraising for many different smaller organizations,
• 10:10
  we do a little bit of five business to business sales that
• 10:12
  we are just starting, we sell these smart, connected smoke
• 10:17
  alarms to two families, some of whom home security. In five
• 10:22
  years, we had about 100,000 customers in a face to face, or
• 10:27
  by calling them up on the phone. So that's what we do for our
• 10:30
  partners, we help them grow their businesses, by bringing in
• 10:34
  new customers often. But that's not our main product, our main
• 10:39
  product really is not for our partners or the you know, other
• 10:44
  businesses, but it's our own people. So that the reader
• 10:47
  product Adventures is a cool career, it's a cool career
• 10:51
  opportunity. And I know, you know, career is almost like a
• 10:54
  dirty word on social media, in the past 1015 years, there's so
• 11:00
  much about you know, you know, keep trying new things and move
• 11:03
  around and you should stay, you should never stay put more than,
• 11:06
  you know, two years in one place and all that stuff. But I
• 11:09
  believe there is great value in in building something in
• 11:12
  building your skill in a particular area, in building
• 11:15
  relationships with the people you work with, and your partners
• 11:18
  and so on. On the other hand, I understand the challenge that
• 11:20
  nobody wants to do the same thing for 20 years, the half
• 11:23
  life of a job, you know, currently is, what 40 years now.
• 11:27
  So percent of the occupation didn't even exist in back in the
• 11:32
  90s. Right that are today. So the idea of Ventures is that you
• 11:35
  are not tied to a specific partner, or a product, you don't
• 11:39
  need to sell insurance for 50 years only you are tied to is
• 11:42
  the family of companies like that the values that we have,
• 11:45
  and the methods we do things. A bonus is that whatever you you
• 11:49
  earn during your career, so if you become a company owner,
• 11:53
  because we are a privately owned company, right? Everybody become
• 11:56
  a stock owner. Or if you build a customer base, like life
• 11:59
  insurance, you have customers paying for 1015 2030 years, even
• 12:04
  if you move around within the ventures are you even start
• 12:08
  something totally new, you get to keep all the benefits. That's
• 12:11
  the dream.
• 12:12
  Adam Outland: Priit, for you, what are the muscles that you
• 12:15
  get to exercise as president of southwestern ventures? What are
• 12:18
  the new muscles?
• 12:20
  Priit Martin: The first part of my career when I was selling
• 12:23
  books, Ed is simple, but not easy. So people have done it for
• 12:29
  more than 100 years, literally, I think more than 250,000 people
• 12:33
  have done it by now. Right? So you don't need to invent
• 12:37
  anything. There is a there is a method to everything. And there
• 12:40
  is a manual to everything right. So it is your job to use it to
• 12:44
  the best of your skill. And now in the last five years, I found
• 12:48
  myself many times in a situation where there is no manual, or you
• 12:52
  have a scanner, the idea or the direction where you want to push
• 12:55
  it to. And then you start not from zero, but you start from
• 13:00
  like 25% instead of from 75% Complete. And you know, one
• 13:05
  thing we have adventures is an absolutely wonderful team, we
• 13:09
  mostly come from the same backgrounds, most of us have
• 13:11
  sold books before. And you know that core team has worked really
• 13:15
  well trying to figure out new ways of doing things. So sending
• 13:19
  these the same setting is in successful communication. But
• 13:22
  there are nuances whether you sell books in America to moms
• 13:27
  with families, or you sell some sort of b2b service type product
• 13:33
  to a company in Estonia. And figuring that out has been a lot
• 13:38
  of fun, any new business, we have done things in stupid ways.
• 13:42
  And we have changed that we have this running joke that whenever
• 13:45
  we feel that the heart finally we have it like whether it's a
• 13:48
  compensation plan or you know, whatever that we have finished
• 13:51
  now, Big changes are just around the corner. That has always been
• 13:54
  true. I'm selling different things to different people. One
• 13:58
  thing that I am selling myself is that idea that you don't need
• 14:02
  to reinvent everything just because it feels cooler or looks
• 14:06
  cooler, or you know sounds that sounds different. That pendulum
• 14:09
  can swing too far right, as I was just saying that. It's been
• 14:13
  fun figuring out how to do things different. But the
• 14:17
  challenge sometimes also has been at how to make sure that
• 14:21
  the core things are the same. You know, the things you learn
• 14:25
  that schedule is important, right? Having good goals and
• 14:30
  clarity is important. Making sure that it doesn't matter if
• 14:34
  it's a business meeting or you're talking to whoever it is
• 14:38
  doing good and consistent self talk and self motivation is is
• 14:43
  important. So that's one idea that I'm selling to myself and
• 14:46
  also to all of our salespeople, because with them as well. It is
• 14:50
  easy to not understand what makes you successful at
• 14:54
  something in sales, at least people tend to think that what
• 14:58
  makes you successful is the fanciest But is this my special
• 15:01
  joke or my special clothes I have, it's the way that I will
• 15:05
  always leave office at 330. Because then I am, whatever it
• 15:09
  is. And it is my job to remind them that, on average, what
• 15:13
  makes you good with ease is doing the basics. And sometimes
• 15:16
  it's a challenge, I am selling the idea of thinking long term
• 15:20
  to my own team and to our salespeople. Because when when
• 15:23
  you're young, when you are in your early 20s, there's this
• 15:26
  common feeling that by the time you're 30, or 35, Your life
• 15:30
  should be complete, however much money you want to make you, you
• 15:32
  need to have your 10 million by 35. And then it's time to
• 15:35
  retire. And then you're adopting charities, when you are 35, you
• 15:42
  have probably had 15 good years, where you're actually productive
• 15:46
  and creative and adding value to society. And you know, people
• 15:50
  live to like 90 or 100. Now. So even if we, if we looked at you
• 15:55
  stay productive until you know, you're 80 or so 3545 more years
• 16:00
  ago, that's a hell of a long time. So sometimes it's a
• 16:03
  challenge to sell the idea of thinking and planning longer
• 16:08
  than six months ahead, or one year ahead, especially in sales
• 16:12
  people run into this trouble that they don't like being
• 16:15
  uncomfortable. And if you start selling something new, if the
• 16:20
  first six months are hard, there's this feeling that it
• 16:23
  must be the wrong thing that I'm doing. And it's not most of the
• 16:26
  times it can be the right thing. Just need to go through that
• 16:29
  uncomfortable portrait and learn, have enough patience and
• 16:33
  learn.
• 16:34
  Adam Outland: Yeah, really well said. You know, when one
• 16:36
  question that's somewhat related to this is you had a name change
• 16:40
  from E1 to Southwestern ventures, what spurred that and
• 16:43
  what's the what's the significance of changing your name?
• 16:46
  Priit Martin: There is an organization called European
• 16:48
  basically, it's like a big part of the Europeans that sell
• 16:52
  books. And when Manchester was first started, the name simply
• 16:56
  came from that even the logo and everything came from that it was
• 17:01
  E one ventures. And at some point, we figured that our
• 17:05
  vision, same if we think 20 or 30 years into the future, it was
• 17:09
  gonna grow too far apart. And, you know, having ie one always
• 17:13
  tied to, to our name doesn't really represent the scope of
• 17:17
  what we want to accomplish. So if the goal is to become a
• 17:21
  collection of companies in Europe, you know, as we have in,
• 17:25
  in in the States, then just being Southwestern ventures
• 17:29
  represents that better. So we want to emphasize the fact that
• 17:33
  you know, any new businesses or things that come to us, it's a
• 17:37
  part of southwestern, not only part of that E1 organization.
• 17:41
  Adam Outland: I love it, kind of the vision that there's more
• 17:43
  scale than what the initial name implied.
• 17:45
  Priit Martin: And also luckily, at least in in these parts of
• 17:48
  the Eastern Europe, where we, we operate, southwestern, it's a
• 17:52
  positive name. In the early 2000s. When first people really
• 17:56
  went to sell books. There's not really much high quality sales
• 18:00
  training here. You know, I thought that it actually came
• 18:03
  from Southwestern, at least in Estonia. And people were like,
• 18:07
  wow, what great ideas. So Southwestern as a name also has
• 18:10
  at least in have some some power here. So embrace that.
• 18:14
  Adam Outland: Yeah. Well, just as we tie up here, we always
• 18:17
  like to do a little lightning round of questions, just very
• 18:22
  quick answers, but interesting things for our listeners to
• 18:26
  hear. What's the one habit or practice that saves you the most
• 18:31
  time each day?
• 18:32
  Priit Martin: I have a list of small habits that I go through
• 18:35
  every morning, I have this cell stock written out, it's about
• 18:38
  you know, a page, and I update it every once in a while. And
• 18:42
  every day, I read it. So that describes the idea. I am not
• 18:46
  like that. But you know, that's why, you know, I work towards,
• 18:50
  and then I go through the list of my yearly goals, just to
• 18:53
  remind myself if I'm on the right track. And then I also
• 18:57
  think what I'm grateful for what I did well, yesterday, every
• 19:01
  morning, I gave myself a little pat on the back. And then I
• 19:05
  write down like one or two things that I want to get done
• 19:08
  that day. And I've done it for so many years now, not every
• 19:12
  day, but honestly about 250 to 270 days out of every year I go
• 19:16
  through my list, I feel it helps me keep my focus pretty well.
• 19:20
  You know, get focused on what the needs are accomplished that
• 19:24
  day. But also, you know what's going on in my life as a whole.
• 19:28
  And if I'm moving in there in the right direction.
• 19:31
  Adam Outland: Good way to start your day and get your head on
• 19:34
  right before you tackle all the things that maybe you can't
• 19:38
  control. What about success? What does success mean to you today?
• 19:42
  Priit Martin: I think success is to me means a trend, because
• 19:45
  everything is relative, right? You're gonna have a billion
• 19:48
  dollars and feel super bad because somebody has more.
• 19:51
  Everything's rotted like people lived 10,000 ago and they were
• 19:55
  miserable people and they were happy people and they had
• 19:58
  totally different lives. And then you know, 10,000 year in
• 20:02
  the future and be absolutely different, but I bet you there
• 20:06
  will be miserable people and really happy people. So to me
• 20:09
  success, I don't need, you know, X amount of money or house that
• 20:13
  has, you know, that kind of square footage or whatever. But
• 20:16
  it is the trend. So as long as I am getting slightly more, let's
• 20:20
  say wealthy, every year, I'm really happy about that. As long
• 20:24
  as I, you know, my health, I'm always doing something in it to
• 20:28
  improve it, I feel happy about it. And the good thing is that
• 20:32
  trend can be small, right? They can be just, you know, one, two
• 20:35
  or three percentage every month or a year or whatever it is. And
• 20:39
  to have that small positive trend just comes down to those,
• 20:43
  you know, little habits. And luckily, those are controllable.
• 20:46
  Those are absolutely controllable. So, to me, success
• 20:50
  is moving in that positive direction and the speed, or my
• 20:53
  current location doesn't matter at all. It's you know, the
• 20:57
  direction I mean.
• 20:58
  Adam Outland: It's making the little progress. That's great.
• 21:01
  And then any book or podcasts you've listened to recently that
• 21:05
  stuck with you.
• 21:06
  Priit Martin: I listen to podcasts all the time.
• 21:09
  Adam Outland: Besides The Action Catalyst, I mean I know that's
• 21:13
  your number 1.
• 21:13
  Priit Martin: I'm such a strong advocate and believer in
• 21:17
  exposing yourself to stuff like that. So whenever I am moving
• 21:21
  from point A to point B, and I am alone, I am listening to some
• 21:26
  podcast doesn't really matter what it is my strategy is that
• 21:30
  if I exposed myself to so much stuff, eventually something is
• 21:35
  gonna stick. Right. So, you know, listening to as many
• 21:39
  different types of podcasts as possible, I think is one of
• 21:43
  those things that has kept me growing in the in the past
• 21:47
  couple of years as a person, not only in business, but also as a
• 21:52
  parent, and you know, just as a way around, interesting person.
• 21:57
  I listen to action catalyst, Freakonomics, radio, Huberman
• 22:01
  lab, people I mostly admire by Steve Levitt, and the Jordan
• 22:05
  Harbinger show.
• 22:06
  Adam Outland: Very cool. Thank you for sharing that. That's
• 22:09
  great. Priit. This has been a great episode. Thanks for
• 22:11
  sharing some of your wisdom with us your journey and what's
• 22:14
  happening at Southwestern ventures. I appreciate your time.
• 22:17
  Priit Martin: Thank you for having me.