Having values on paper means nothing unless you're willing to roll up your sleeves and live by them every day. Many companies invest in creating a strong mission statement and defining their core values but falter when it comes to actual implementation. We discuss our philosophy of being an "A Player" company — a culture that demands ambition, adaptability, awareness, and accountability. Learn how our consistent emphasis on these traits in every aspect of our business, from recruitment to team meetings, has helped us attract and retain top talent.
Thanks for listening!
Having values on paper means nothing unless you're willing to roll up your sleeves and live by them every day. Many companies invest in creating a strong mission statement and defining their core values but falter when it comes to actual implementation. We discuss our philosophy of being an "A Player" company — a culture that demands ambition, adaptability, awareness, and accountability. Learn how our consistent emphasis on these traits in every aspect of our business, from recruitment to team meetings, has helped us attract and retain top talent.
Thanks for listening!
All these years blood, sweat and tears nothing could stop me. What's up, grow nation? We are back. I'm here with my partners in growth, Eric Clapton's and Jeff winners. My name is Scott Sculley. We're here today to talk about your journey in growing your business, and hopefully we've got some nuggets to share that will make it just a little bit easier for you in your path. We'd like to start the show off with Jeff, our local LinkedIn. What would we say was his new title?
Eric Watkins:I think it was the warden, warden. And he's moved his way up from Sheriff,
Unknown:chief police warden. Anyway,
Eric Watkins:he's assistant to the warden.
Unknown:He's a lot of things, but he is calling out the people that are spreading the bad news, the lies, and he's certainly celebrating the people that are passing along the good advice. What do we have today?
Jeff Winters:For those of you binging this podcast, you won't notice but for those of you weekly loyal listeners, we've been off for a minute. And one of two things can happen when you're off for a minute. You could get rusty, or you could be rested.
Eric Watkins:And just
Jeff Winters:rested, I'm rested. Baby, I'm back, we're back. Coming back on LinkedIn, we were off. The bad advice on LinkedIn was not that was all the way on volume turned up loud. I am reading and passing along the good, the bad and the lies to you all from LinkedIn. So let's get started. Number one. Sierra summers, this is a truth to me. I would rather fill out a form on your website than spend 60 seconds interacting with a chatbot I love this. So now AI is like allowed everybody to have a chat bot. None of them more work to me. And I love our chat. We have a great chat bot. I want to fill out a form. I want it to be easy. And then you can call me or email me. I don't want to fight with your chat bot. I think this is a truth. Accurate.
Eric Watkins:I think it's true to it reminds me of that the video I think I sent it to you guys have Tesla is doing automated calls now. Yeah. And you can tell like what they're trying to say isn't terrible, but it's just like no one. I just feel like no one is gonna want to just communicate with a robot.
Jeff Winters:Did I get your answer? Right? No. Okay, how can I best serve you? Okay, fine.
Eric Watkins:What about one of these other 43 options? What
Jeff Winters:about these things? Have you seen our customer resource? thing? No. Arson.
Unknown:You know what, in addition to that, I would also be okay, answering even more questions on the form. So someone would come back at me prepared. I'm alright with that. I
Jeff Winters:agree. So long as they're not overly per, you know, the overt. Nobody likes the overly personal form. Yep. How much do you save as a percentage? Come on, like we don't business keep it busy. What's your favorite food? I don't need to tell you. All all soup. True. This is practical. And we'd like to give practical advice that helps people Christine Turnbull. Three things you can do this week to improve cash flow. We'd like to be actionable and this is helpful. Number one, you can review last year's or potentially in this case is your last six months p&l look at every single line don't just look at budget versus actual look at every line and what's in there like nothing needs to stay nothing is supplanted forever. You'll be astounded by how much you spend on non essentials to settle unpaid invoices. Stop being Mr. Nice guy or girl, chase down debts and get your cash back. Couldn't agree with this anymore. chase down people that are not paying you and review your pricing strategy, unpopular opinion and alert it might be time to increase your price. It's a tough call but essential for survival. Great advice. actionable. That's what business leaders come to this podcast for Scott.
Unknown:I love it. I would just for an extra nugget. I would say go back at your top five vendors and renegotiate and it might not be that you are just getting a better price period. It could be that maybe you if if it is truly a good partner and you see yourself using them for a long time. You may sign a longer term and drive your monthly cost down Giving you more cashflow, of course. So I would look at your top five vendors and see if there's some negotiation or tweaking to the existing agreement that you could do to free up some monthly cash flow. That's a win win for
Jeff Winters:Yes, for sure.
Eric Watkins:Yeah, I agree. truth
Unknown:lies. Here comes
Jeff Winters:lies. St. Louis live local Lyor Cohen. Rob, SEO expert, expert SEO quote, your LinkedIn says you're an SEO expert. Yet you were doing cold outreach for SEO clients, three question marks. Here's the deal. True SEO experts don't cold outreach to prospects. They let the SEO results do the talking. If you're the real deal in SEO ellipsis your results should shout ellipsis not your cold emails.
Eric Watkins:Do you fold that up? Are you frustrated?
Jeff Winters:Here's this is the worst kind of lie to me because it is both self serving and really bad advice. So that's this guy being self. So I'm sure he's a nice guy being self serving, in that it benefits him if people do believe this. But if you run a small SEO company and you look up to this guy, that's just dead wrong. Like, why would you do that? Why would you say oh intentionally, I'm not going to use cold outreach, because there doesn't take much research to figure out that the multi pronged omni channel approach roses a winner, like you're not going to get everybody on with SEO and pay there are people who just aren't searching. So we're going to do just leave those people out. Like they're just not searching, you just gonna let them be off in the wilderness. And by the way, perhaps they don't know anything about it, which is why they're not searching. They know nothing about it, which is why they're not doing it.
Unknown:The last part, you said is the biggest part. Like there are people out there that just don't know what the heck, yes, horrible. You know what I do know him, they do have a nice business. But there are plenty around the country that are larger. And you know what I would almost guarantee the ones that are larger are the ones that are doing outreach. In addition to their in addition strategy.
Eric Watkins:The easiest way for me to look at this is we've bought a lot of things as a business over the past 12 months. And I think I've actually bought zero things. And maybe this is just me, but I'm one person out there one person zero things starting with the website, do I look at the website? Does it enter the sales process? Absolutely. But almost all of these has have been started by someone reaching out to me and getting my interest in something.
Jeff Winters:Yeah. And you could be one person, you could be everybody. But like at least one person is not searching for stuff, and still buying things.
Unknown:I think another reason why Jeff is passionate here, and the guy that obviously is over all of our revenue is he knows that we also have hundreds of SEO clients. And we ourselves cannot surpass the results of our outreach. You have to have both. We offer SEO as a service, but I'm sorry, between the calls and in the email processes that we run. We have never surpassed results of the cold outreach. Like you are killing yourself. By not doing Yeah, and
Jeff Winters:I'm sure we could be better at all phases. But do them all? That's the obvious answer. Do them all. Leave no prospect behind? Why tell people this?
Unknown:By the way does he does he drive results for clients and then tell him to not pick up the phone when they get a lead.
Eric Watkins:The other part of this is if you have a really great website, one of the best things you should be doing is finding out ways to drive more traffic to that and it's not just through SEO, calling, emailing LinkedIn, that's going to get people Hey, what's this all about? I'm gonna go to the website and check it out. So I mean, it's such Yeah, everybody buys and researches in different ways. And you have to cater to everybody. And you have to get them before they're at that point. Or you're in further competition. rested. rested.
Unknown:You were you were not rusty, you were rested, rested. Good job, just job as always, Jeff. All right. We're back. That means we're back at the 50 for 50. Today we're going to talk about living in your values. Right you guys we've talked about this a lot. There's so many companies that ship there's company that will charge you a lot to come in and help you design your values, your mission statement, you know, give you a tractor. And here's the problem, people do that, they get their mission statement down, they put their values in place, and then they don't live in. They don't live in them, they just do it, because that's what they are told that they need to do, well, I need as part of my business plan, I gotta come up with a mission statement, I gotta have my corporate values. But in order for that, to actually matter, you've got to live in it, you got to roll around in it, I will tell you about some of our values. And that is our a player. You know, our, our people have to be a players. And what that means is they have to have good attitude, they have to be adaptable, they have to be aware, ambitious, and they have to be accountable. From the beginning, we knew that if we were going to do big things, we needed to have incredible people on the team. And incredible people have these characteristics. So every day, we are using these words, and living by this in our in our brand new interviews, in our interviews, for people that are getting promoted in the weekly maps with supervisors, the touch base meetings, we're using these characteristics. They're in our urine reviews, we hand out trophies, on each team throughout the building for people that are acting, or living in these in these words, it's in our a player scores. It's in our acknowledgement process within slack. It's on the walls, in writing, everywhere, it's on our website. Everywhere where we live and breathe, are these words. And that is why we get a players to come here, we keep a player's here. And that's why we've been winning. So you have to not only, you know, have your values in place, but you have to live by them on a daily basis. Or you might as well not have them at all, what do you guys think?
Eric Watkins:I think this is key. And values are a really hot topic over the past, what five years, I feel like everyone's hitting on, you got to have your core values. And what people struggle with is they throw them on the wall, or they throw them on the website, they talk about them in a meeting. But nobody really loves them. They're just kind of just the values. And the brilliance here is, in my opinion, is building them into mechanisms within your business, integrating it as much as possible. And then that is just continuously reinforcing those values for everybody in their business. And these are really our values for our individuals, how you should show up as a team member here. And I would argue that if one of our employees moves on and goes to another company, and they were to interview him and rate them on this scale, you would find that they're pretty damn good at all of these. And it's because they've reinforced those values throughout their time here
Jeff Winters:can't have values that are too big. And that's counterintuitive. But when you talk about those values, we break them down into a couple sentences to and it's very actionable for people here at work. And let's not lose sight of that. These are values at work. I don't give a shit if you're ambitious in your personal life, or adaptable, you'd be least adaptable person in your personal life that you want. And I think a lot of companies values are like these are the values that you should live by. I don't need to live by him outside of work. I need to do it here. When there's change. I needed to be adaptable. You don't want to go to a different pool and your wife tells you to go into this pool couldn't care less. These are values for work. Don't lose sight of that work values. Live them at work. Do it describe them at work
Eric Watkins:have you been told to go to different pools recently? You go under the wrong pools you
Jeff Winters:know I'm saying Scott smiling and laughing at fucking work.
Unknown:He has he is rested. He is feeling good. You know I'm right. You're doing a great job. You know, I'm right. This is one of your better episodes is halfway through. Yeah, I would like you have more done yeah,
Eric Watkins:he's just heating up.
Jeff Winters:It's a good take on that topic. Thanks Neil.
Eric Watkins:Note that note that
Unknown:you know what we also in the segment are amazing nuggets in just how you grow that pile of leads. What are the what are the things Things that you can do to make sure that your pipelines predictable, and that you have a chance for growth and Eric's conference more generals today.
Eric Watkins:Yeah. So we've been talking a lot about, you know, in the most recent episodes, I've been digging into partner success or account management. And, um, you know, I'm out there, I'm listening to the so called experts, I'm seeing all the posts, and I'm seeing so much complication, you need to have this many touch points and use AI in this part of your thing and do this and get this survey to your clients and this satisfaction score. So what I wanted to do is just keep it simple. Like, I'm just gonna give you a simple tip today to be better at account management. And that is, first and foremost, you have to communicate with your clients on a regular basis. Sounds easy. But I bet a lot of you aren't doing that you're doing one of two things, you're either not communicating with them at all, or you're only touching base with them. When there's a problem. If you don't have a proactive communication frequency, established right now, you need to do that. And then really, from there, if you're doing that, all of account management boils down to four questions. It's just the easy four questions to think about every single time you're meeting with a partner. Where are we at right now? In the partnership? Where would we like to be in the partnership? What's holding us back from being there? And what steps do we need to take to move forward toward that vision and toward what we want to accomplish with that partnership? And those are, this isn't super complicated, right? But at the end of the day, what happens is people get up on calls are they have, you know, if they are even having calls with their customers, they just go over, here's where we're at, here are the numbers, everything good with you? Yep, everything's good with me. And they're off the call, there's no steps forward, they're not moving towards anything. And that is just a relationship that you're that is going that is doomed. It's, it's going to end at some point, because you're not moving it forward. And the other thing is, you just get on the call, and you talk about all these issues. But if you haven't framed where you're trying to go in the partnership, you may be talking about issues that aren't the right issues that you should be talking about. You stay focused on on what you're really trying to accomplish, and what's truly holding us back from there. So we can pick the right things. So if you're not leaving, and I'm not talking action items, from your meetings with clients, if you're not meeting with and leaving with game plans of how to improve the partnership, you're doing it wrong.
Unknown:Yeah. I think back to my days in the automotive industry, and we were selling a product that was just month by month, right? And it was even more simple for me. I mean, it was more simple times. But it was one question at the end all the time. It's like, look at I want to be doing business with you, for a lifetime. Like, this kind of marketing makes sense. As a long term strategy. I want to be here month in month out. Is there anything in the way from that happening? And then it was important to ask another question, because a lot of them because they don't really want to tell you are like a admin things or, you know, things are, things are good. Really, like everything's perfect. Like, so if it stayed the way that it is, today, the results were exactly the way they are today. We'd be doing business for years, you know, then it'd be like, well, I could deal with a lot. I could have a lot more traffic, or haven't sold enough yet. So I need that. Okay, thank you. And then is there anything else? Right? So it was I first made the mistake of only asking, are we going to do business for a lifetime? And then of course, a lot of them said they were going to even though they weren't. And then I dug deeper? Not just once but twice, like that first thing that I said, is there, really? And then they tell me? And then is there anything else? And then a lot of times, they'd give me something else to write and say as in you say Is there anything else until they don't have anything else? Then repeat it, acknowledge it, put a plan in place, come back the next month show that things are better, right?
Eric Watkins:Yep. Move forward. I love that. Because it really boils down to we're both really saying the same thing is intent. Like you need to want the answers to those questions. And this is like a good test right now to go. If your owner or president or your over account management, go find one of your partner success managers and ask them where's the client at right now? Where would they like to be? Why do you feel like We're not there, and what are you doing about it? And they better have a good answer.
Jeff Winters:Let me tell you something.
Unknown:That's that's, that's it. That's it.
Jeff Winters:But here's why it's not happening. It's not happening. And I'm talking specifically to CEOs, chief customer officers, chief revenue officers of sass companies have tech companies, because here's what happens. They look at a bunch of stats, and they go, Oh, we know what's going to predict customer loss, it's utilization. So if you're not using our tool, you're probably going to leave. And so we're going to attack everybody who's not, quote, unquote, using the tool. Here's the problem with that. A lot of these tools are built into the day to day process of work, you got to use them, like they come, whether they come onto your call automatically, or they're part of your email process. Like we're using the shit out of these tools. That doesn't mean we're happy with them. So it's like those metrics, I get it. We're in a data driven age, and we're going to use the data, ai 17 touched and we're going to take data, and we're going to make insights, oh, insights, here's an insight, call an ask of our biggest vendors, I don't know about you, Eric, I'm putting you on the spot. I have not been asked if I am happy with our biggest vendors ever, zero ever, we spend a pretty penny zero, and we control this. And they don't ask us because we're using the shit out of the tools. Don't make that mistake call and
Unknown:ask. And we have insights, we have one of our biggest vendors, we're considering a change. Because, like if somebody would have asked us what we really needed a long time ago, maybe we wouldn't be in the same situation. Right? Right. And if we were a super user,
Jeff Winters:and by the way, all of your customers are considering a change. Out there, everyone. Yeah, your products not that good. It's good. Everybody's considering a change. Everybody's cutting budgets, ask the question, easy to hide behind the data, ask the question,
Unknown:one more thing, then we're gonna, we're gonna go to Jeff, about sales, a lot of times you're not asking. Because you also don't really want to know. Because it's not that much fun. Like, when I went to these car dealers, it wasn't that much fun to hear, eventually, what I need to do improve on it was way more fun to leave and feel like everything was rosy. I crushed that meeting. Yeah, you know, but when half the people that you go see tell you that you better work on certain things done, you're not maybe feeling as good going home. But at least you'd know, and you'd be able to do something about it. And your your retention rates would be higher. So that was a awesome category. Thank you, Jeff, how we're gonna build.
Jeff Winters:So I was reading online that now more than ever, this was a LinkedIn post. That's a truth, but I didn't want to commingle my sections, you know, but there's a lot of what they're calling quote, unquote, sales slippage, q2 to q3, q3 to q4. And the post argued that that was kind of having to do with things outside the sales rep and the sales silos control. And it leads me to my tail from sales, which we are vetting out this month, Scott. And I think you will pile on to with great vigor, which is, you need to change the rhythm of your sales month, quarter, and year. Let me explain. If you track sales on a quarterly basis, you'll get sales on a quarterly basis. If you track sales and expect sales on a monthly basis. You'll get them on a monthly basis, weekly, and daily. And I'm talking to you enterprise sales reps. I know what you're thinking you don't understand. My deals come in when they come in. No, they don't. Because they still come in at the end of the quarter or at the end of the year. And the only reason that that's happening isn't because people love signing deals on December 31, or at the end of q2. It's just like, that's the expectation. And it's as much in your head as it is anywhere else. So the tip today, shorten your rhythm. If you're yearly, make it quarterly. If you're quarterly, make it monthly. If you're monthly, make it weekly. If you're weekly, make a daily and expect $5,000 A day in sales. Instead of $400,000 a quarter, make it $130,000 a month. Change your expectation. Change your sales rhythm, change your life.
Eric Watkins:Change your life as deep
Unknown:I couldn't agree more. I'm sitting here back to the car business again. I think everybody that's And then realizes that you should go and do a car dealer at the end of a month, because they're trying to make their month. Right? And, and you also know, hey, that incentive that's all over TV is done in two days. So I am, and I want it, I want five grand off, or I want 100% trade value. So I'm going in by the end of the month, but I'm going in at the end of the month, because they're going to give me a better deal, everyone knows that, that's just, I would totally flip the switch in the car business, I'd, I'd put in sales weekly, like I wouldn't have it just one for the month, so that I could push sales weekly, not just for that month, you know, there's just things that I would do to just disrupt that. Or if I'm a car dealer, I'd offer better deals in the first half of the month, not in the end. And I advertise that I know what you're hearing, I know why you think you should come in, at the end of the month. Yeah, but I'm actually going to give you a better deal if you're here before the 15th. And
Jeff Winters:don't let your sales reps talk you out of this. And don't let your sales VPS talk you out of this. Let them solve the problem. Don't let that you you can don't let them convince you that the problem is unsolvable. And if you
Unknown:track daily, which we're doing. And you have those success, successes early on, people get used to it, and then you're not in the last week of your sales month trying to get 60% of your sales. And then if something God forbid, happens in that last week, which which does happen. You're screwed. You can't make it up. There's not enough time to make it up. You got to track smaller periods of time.
Eric Watkins:And I want to hit on one point is in a good exercise for this would be go listen to one of your reps, sales pitches, and see how many times they put this thought in the prospects head. How many times they say, well, by the end of the month, you would need to make a decision. Or when they're educating the prospect on how people typically buy are they saying? Yeah, most people make a decision within 30 days. And then from there, they go to this process like you control it, you educate the buyer how to buy and we all know, the further a sales process goes, the less likely the deal is to come in. You know, it's
Jeff Winters:and let me tell you something about the end of the month and the end of the quarter. Let me tell you the holidays that occur at the end of the month, which could be the end of your quarter. New Year's, Thanksgiving. Labor Day weekend, July 4 weekend, Memorial Day weekend, spring break. That's it. You got like nine months for that you got like three or four months. Oh, Halloween scuze. Me. It's like September, end of September, end of April. Like there's like a couple of months where there's not some huge thing that happens. That's a holiday where people don't work at the end of the month, which is the end of your quarter. That is really good. It's good point. April Fool's Day. I mean, I could just keep going my birthdays in April, I mean, Leap Year, Super Bowl. Selling the beginning of
Unknown:cat. We did have him take a few weeks off always. Yeah. Good stuff weird to that point. Everybody's favorite, whether we like it or not. To do or not to do.
Eric Watkins:To do or not to do and this comes from I was recently reading a new study that I think it was in Georgia. They were or not, not a new study, it was on the news that the buses dropped the school buses, kids are going back to school, and they dropped them off at 10pm because they were doing hand to hand drop off which understand that, but 10pm Like could you imagine if your kid didn't come home till 10pm Jeff sitting over here smiling. I'm all in all in. So the question today. There's a lot of new parents out there. Right. And there's a lot of there's a lot of parents that are thinking, you know, should I find a way to pick my kids up from school every day? Or should I have them ride the bus? And I wanted to hear your guys's opinion today. What do you think?
Unknown:I think there are too many parents out there that think that it's better if their kids with them instead of other people and you need to wake up. Like seriously, like, get some separation. Let your kids go to school, go to a club, enjoy other people hang out at a friend's and get off your kid. Get off them. Please started
Eric Watkins:So you're bought your team bus? Ya know
Unknown:what I rode the bus through eighth grade some shit happens on the bus you meet a girl on the bus you learn new swear words. You like people don't want to hear this. You learn what to do what not to do
Eric Watkins:to do or not to do you learn that from the girl show as well. You do
Unknown:you actually grow up and learn responsibility and have some independence on the bus. As opposed to mommy picking you up every day. Or daddy. Sorry,
Jeff Winters:the bus is life. Did you ride the bus? Hell yeah. You know what stuff happens on the bus. Bad stuff. Nothing good happens on the bus. Nothing good happens on the bus. Bad on the bus and your kids got to be there. You could get to sit alone on the bus sucks. You pit because a friend on the bus they break up on the bus. somebody pushes them on the bus. They defend their brother or sister on the bus. I had my first kiss on the bus kiss on the bus. The bad shit happens on the bus and you gotta be there for it because that's real life because bad shit happens.
Unknown:You got to the first graders got to be around the eighth grader. Like all the thing
Jeff Winters:is late bus. I do have to tell you something. The difference between when I rode the bus and now I could show you the texts I get when the bus is early. The bus is late. The bus is on time the bus is hot. The bus is cold, like I am in real time communication with the damn bus. And I don't care. Like be there. At some point. Ideally 10pm whatever school that is offline, I'll figure it out. No.
Eric Watkins:Company is texting you or your kid is no no, no, no, no, it's obnoxious. Oh, no, no, no.
Unknown:No, it's crazy. Not only do I want the kids to go on the bus. I don't want the school to call me when my kid does something at school. I want them to just take care of it. Take care of it. Yeah, they're on a phone. Take the phone. He said fuck you. Then make him come to school at 7am for the next month. I don't care ground him crowded. You want to leave them there overnight. Is there a camp then you should do that?
Jeff Winters:Let me say something all the what happened bus drivers out there. Okay.
Unknown:With the bus number one the bus drivers. You did not want to mess with the bus drive. What
Jeff Winters:we love you. We appreciate you. And you can do whatever you want to my kids. You are in full control. And it is a rolling pandemonium laden, crazy house. There's their 75 seven year olds and you can't even look at him like whatever you got to do draconian measures
Eric Watkins:Absolutely. Saints i i rode the bus up to a certain point and then I and then I got I had doesn't matter. Great topic. Great topic.
Unknown:I just visuals
Eric Watkins:and I got ya points the bus drivers to beat the kids is basically what this came down to
Jeff Winters:my full permit. Can you imagine what do you do? Like three out of three seconds out of every 10 minutes to be like What the hell is going on with all of these nine year olds?
Unknown:All right. I was in the I was in the back of the bus when I was little. And I flipped off for kid that was in the front of the bus. The bus drivers saw it. Well first I don't know how the hell that bus drivers aren't supposed to be driving us. And then I'm in the principal's office. Because the bus driver said I flipped him off
Eric Watkins:and that was first grade.
Unknown:Yeah, I wouldn't say that
Jeff Winters:shit happens on the bus but a kid's got to be there for
Unknown:don't do them the disservice. All right, great episode. As always, if if you need us for any reason, reach out, you know if you if you are not doing some of these things internally and you want to talk a little bit more about some of the nuggets that we're putting out there. That's why we do this that we would absolutely love to do it. Find us on our website, abstract and g.com Connect with us on LinkedIn or any of our sources. And as a bonus, let's grow let's grow let's grow. The grow show is sponsored by inbound SDR digital search that works