Nobody wants death by mouse click

Yeah, exactly. So creative. Yeah. thank you for having me. I appreciate it. I'm I'm I'm always happy to share an opinion.

I got fired. that's the fun answer, right? The the real answer though, the real answer is I was working for a great company called Mashery. They were doing API management, you know, 14 years ago, 15 years ago, before APIs were really like well known and understood. And they were getting acquired by Intel, which I didn't know. And you know, I was line four hundred and thirty-two on a 75-line spreadsheet of employees to keep. Intel didn't need my role, right? They had plenty of people doing my role. And Mashery Mashery did a really nice job. Like they really I I call it hugging people out the door. You know, I'm I'm I'm married, I have two kids, I have a house. You know, they gave me a very respectable severance package so that I didn't have to worry, so that I could have time to to

you know, figure out what my next move was gonna be, right? So so I compliment them and and I I, you know, the seriousness of it is they they treated me very well. and I started interviewing and you know, was I was I was at that spot where I was like getting to the fourth or fifth interview, but I wasn't getting the job. meanwhile I'd spent time this is in 2011, 12, 13, I started posting a lot on LinkedIn or responding to people's posts and You know, because I I you know, I I had this challenge of self-worth, right? Like what am I worth if I don't have a job to provide for my family? Right. And and I found out that people actually liked my opinions, that that the advice I was giving was spot on, even though I thought it was like stuff everybody knew. And so that helped me with my self-worth. And then through that, people started asking me for advice and then started asking me to to you know, be a consultant and to, you know, how much would I charge? And it just kind of fell in my lap. Like I d you know, this was not on the bingo card. This was not on my, you know, wish list of gosh, I want to be an entrepreneur and start my own business. so that's how I got into it. Like that's that's how I got into this. I I really it kind of fell in my lap. just you know, in the way fate and life sometimes does.

Well, everything falls on you, right? So in some ways, there's a tremendous level of freedom, right? I don't have to get approval for vacations, right? I can, you know, I can take as much time off as I want. That's great. I'm around for my kids more, right? I'm around for my wife. I'm present in my family more. I think because I'm not at an o you know, I work in my I I have a home office. So I've I've been working at home since twenty thirteen, right? So long before the pandemic. And so I think. You know, those things have been fantastic. the constant concern of where's the next piece of business gonna come from is really a hard, you know, hump to get over. And it took my wife and I about two years for us to just accept that this was gonna work. Right. I I was doing great. I was, I was, you know, I I have great clients, I was constantly getting clients. But it was kind of like, okay, how how do we sustain this? Right. Like I think that's the hardest part of any entrepreneurship, any kind of founder-led growth, whatever, whatever you're doing as a founder, whether you're on your own or you're doing, you know, creating a SaaS or an AI platform, it's like, where am I going to get my business? I think that was the hardest thing to get. And then there's the logistics of just like getting it all done, right? There's always something to do, right? There's always something you can get better at, right? which is you know, always a challenge and feeling like you're never going to get it all done. So I think coming to terms with that, learning how to manage your time and your schedule, learning how to still be present at home, right? I think those things are those are the those are the things that I've noticed. You know, if I if I if I understood your question correctly.

A little bit, you know, it is and it isn't, right? So keep in mind I started doing this at the age of how old was I? 43. So I had, you know, I'm very different than like a 23 year old, right? Or a 25 year old or a 30 year old where maybe, you know, they they don't have a significant other or kids yet, right? Where that grind of twelve hours a day is a little bit easier for them than it is for me. For me though, there are times where I've had to work at night. Like I can, you know, I could work in the morning and then be present when the kids got home at school around three or four for an hour or two, and then do a little more work and then be present to do dinner and homework and support. And then a lot of times seven to ten. I was just sort of, you know, my wife and I were watching a show and I was just plugging away on different things on my laptop, right? so there are there are those moments. You're right. There are those 12 hour days, 14 hour days. And then there's days where it's like, You know, like today's Friday, and I've gotten I'll I'll share, I'll share one thing that I do. So I put on my calendar every Wednesday and Friday from about three o'clock to the end of the day. I put golf on my calendar. I can assure you that that's been there for years, and I can assure you that I don't play golf every Wednesday and Friday. In fact, I'm lucky if I play once a month. However, I've built it into my schedule so that if I want to do it, I can.

And so that is the luxury of being your own entrepreneur. And I think it's, you know, from a mental health perspective, it's super important to do those things to to a go play golf or whatever your activity is, or B, just have it that space there. There's a lot of times where that space is there and nobody can come take my time for another meeting, which means I can get other stuff done. Right. I can go build something on my website. I could write a blog post. I can do that kind of stuff. So the

It's a blessing and a curse, right? It the blessing is you set your own schedule. The curse is you have to adhere to it. You have to be good at it. and do those things. So, but yeah, to your original question, excuse me. Yes, many long days, many long hours, many hours of worry, like I said, of like where's that next piece of business gonna come from? Or my God, I've got these three really important things that, you know, matter. to to my business success, etcetera.

So it's, you know, so yeah, good question. so one of the biggest differences between now and and then, right, 2026 to 2013, there's way more entrepreneurial opportunity for people. There's a lot more competition for what I do, because that's the way the world has moved, right? starting since COVID, we saw a lot of people who got laid off, start their own business, start their own thing. And you know, start their hustle, right? We see people with their side hustle now. so the competition is definitely a little tighter to some degree. back then there was competition, but there was there was definitely, you know, as as and I know many people in the sales training space and go to market strategy space, right? In 2013 to 2020, definitely competition, but a lot of business to go around. as 2020, 2021, 22 came along, we saw a lot of people move into the space. and my prediction, and I was right, was that I give them 12 to 18 months. because then they're gonna have to go back and get a real job. And they did, but then some people kept the side hustle. so that that was a very interesting piece. I think the and still seeing that now, there's a little bit more competition. So back to your answer. Yes, I'm having to do more blog writing. I'm having to focus more on making sure my content's on the on the in the LLMs for people to find me. Right. So I didn't have a paid acquisition channel like you suggested. I ran some ads here and there and I still run some ads here and there as an experiment. I think I came along at a time where, you know, LinkedIn was so powerful at that point that that helped. my blog and SEO were powerful at that point. So I was able to find business. Referrals were able to find me. I was part of several communities before communities were a big deal. so I kind of figured that stuff out versus a paid acquisition channel. to come back to your to your question.

It w I mean, yeah, it was and it and it's still a channel, right? but keep in mind from a business perspective, right? you know, whatever founders listening to this, a good friend of mine, Steve Richards, gave me this advice a long time ago, which is you gotta fish where the fish are. Well, the fish were on LinkedIn, right? The VPs of sales, the directors of sales, et cetera. Well, it's 2026 now. The fish are on TikTok, they're on Instagram, they're Kind of on LinkedIn. They're in all these other social places, right? And so your strategy has to adjust to that to fish where the fish are, to drive awareness and to hopefully drive inbound. You still have to have an outbound approach. You still have to have those things. I wrote a book, you know, three years ago, Shameless Plug, The Seller's Journey. and this summer, summer twenty twenty six, I decided like, I I need that book to be in the LLMs. So I posted my entire book word for word, chapter by chapter, on the website, on a on a website, so the LLMs can find it. Cause look, I'm not a New York Times bestseller, right? Like I'm not that guy. I'm not Simon Sinek, right? Lord knows I wish I were, right? I wish I was Malcolm Gladwell, right? I'm not there. So it's a nice calling card, my book. It it shows value that I exist, that I know what I'm doing, at least I think I do, all those things. But I needed it in the LLMs. So that's been a big shift to making sure my content is in the right places.

the biggest takeaway is that Sales is personal. And if you don't understand that, that's going to be a challenge for you. Right. You have to take it personally. And I think that you could even say success is personal, right? As an entrepreneur and someone who started my own business, again, if you're starting an AI company, right? You got your own podcast, right? Just this part of your business. It's personal. And when it goes well, it feels great. And when it doesn't, it feels terrible. The biggest takeaway, take other takeaways from my book is it's very strategic and tactical. It teaches you how to earn the right to ask questions, know which questions to ask, when to ask them, and it gives you the right questions. It gives you the framework of like, well, how do I negotiate with procurement? Stuff nobody's ever taught us. How do I find out who the skeptics are, which is more valuable than the decision makers? Because you're not going to get to a decision maker till you get to the skeptic. So there's a lot of this. Very tactical, practical stuff, as well as some mindset stuff, right? The mindset stuff is like, yeah, you should be proud you're in sales. So often, you know, you go to a meeting and you use you know, you go to some cocktail or you know, dinner and people are like, I'm a lawyer, I'm a doctor. I'm like, what do you do? I'm a say I'm in sales. And we often feel less than. And I think that's wrong. You know, if you think about what we do in sales, we affect People in very different ways, right? I've trained thousands of salespeople, created, you know, millions of dollars in pipeline and revenue and commissions for people. And that's life-changing, right? Like that's cool, in my opinion, that I can help other people be successful. and that's all all of this is wrapped up in the themes of the book, along with the okay, well, here's how you do it and here's how you say it. You know, give it a shot.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for asking. knee, you know, when I first started this, I was like trying to come up with a way to differentiate myself, like we all do. And, you know, Bant was out there, and I think medic was out there, and there were all these things. And I just kind of came to this conclusion that it needed to change a little bit. neat stands for need, the economic impact of that need, which is E, A is access to authority, because you're never getting to authority. And timeline. And I was playing around with it and you know, and I was like, okay, this is kind of cool. So feels a little more modern. and then as I was putting together the, you know, first I was going to call it Nate, N-A-T-E, and have a little character and all that stuff. And then I realized, I could do neat, and I made it look like a compass. You know, N is at north, E is at east, A is down in the south, and T is timeline. Additionally, you don't have to follow that pattern. Meaning, you don't have to start with need. You don't have to start and follow a specific thing. So it's a little bit again, it's like a compass. It's a guidebook. It's a guide to helping you figure out and helping your prospects figure out where their challenges are, what how is that impacting them? And who's going to be held responsible if something doesn't change at the at the client? So that's how I put it together. It was just really just a way to differentiate myself. I never, you know. knew what it was gonna do for me and that's sorta where I am.

It does. And so I think that there's a couple of things that I will say and and and it comes back to a way AI can help us, which is our job, in my opinion, in sales, is to get people to fall in trust with us. They don't need to fall in love with us. They can fall in love with the what we deliver, right? Our service, our product, the results it delivers. But before that, they have to fall in trust with us. They have to trust Richard. You know, they have to trust McLiss. We have to trust everything that we say is going to be true. And AI can help enhance that. Right. I think that the note taking and the summary stuff that that AI can provide helps build that trust. It helps them know that okay, this person's on top of it. And it helps them trust themselves that they're saying the right things too. Right. I've always been doing that for you know 13 years. I take very c copious notes. I send an email. Even though I have a note taker in every meeting that can send an email, I still personally write my own summary email to them because I still want it to be from me. It still needs to be personal and human. You know, we need to make sure that we maintain humanity in sales. And AI can enhance that. I'm not sure it's there to replace it yet. It could. But we're not there yet, right? Everything AI's doing is still kind of background information to tell us what to do next. I'm not seeing it. replace us entirely yet, right? will it at some point? You know, if you sell to IT services and, you know, very technical buyers, they're gonna love talking to an AI salesperson. They're gonna love it, right? Because they hate talking to humans, salespeople, I should say. and that's where I think it'll come first to replace the sales reps at a at a at a higher level. So

pitfalls of being an entrepreneur and a founder. okay. who we could do a whole three podcast episode on that. you know I think there has to become a reality with yourself to recognize mental health matters. Right? and yes you can grind it out and you need to grind it out. You also need to give yourself some moments

To just exhale. And little moments can exist. I'm big on meditation, right? So I have on my another thing, I I time block my calendar. Every day from 12 to 1, I have lunch on my calendar. I assure you, I don't take lunch every day for an hour. Many days I don't even eat lunch, but it's there for me to decompress, to go get caught up on something else. And I meditate and I literally use headspace. They're, you know. No, I have no goal to I get no affiliate revenue from saying that. But I can take five or ten minutes in headspace and it'll walk me through a relaxation thing. And I think that's super critical. And however you do that, however you find that as a human is what's really important. because that reset actually gives you more energy to get all the other stuff done. I think it's healthy to be nervous. About things, I think you should expect failure. I think you should expect that it's lonely. Right? It's lonely to be an entrepreneur and a founder. and so I think to acknowledge these things are, you know, will help you get through some of these pitfalls of like, that didn't go as planned. I'm a little behind on something, or I can't get this done, or I'm frustrated about things. I think the other things you gotta remember, I've I've written this list if someone wants to Google. You know, the sins, you know, the you know, the sins of being a founder. And it's things like, you know, you're not always the smartest person in the room. Stop acting like it. do not think you're going to do something better and faster than anybody else in the world. Do it as fast as you can. when it comes to sales, founders, you are not the expert in sales. founders, Founders need to understand when they start to scale their sales place. Founders get can sell based on their title of being the founder or CEO. When they give it to a sales rep who has a different title, they fail to realize that their original customers are buying because of the founder. That you are the founder, you are the creator, you are the one that if something goes wrong, they know how to get a hold of. As soon as you put sales in front of somebody, it's not gonna go as fast. Right. It's just not. Don't think that it is, right? yes, you need to grow sales fast and quickly and get there as fast as possible. However, don't think you're

There, can you hear me? Check one two.

Okay. Where did you stop hearing me? I can re answer it if you want to edit it.

Switch again.

Not letting me Can't change mic while recording. That's super weird.

So what are the pitfalls of being a founder? Okay.

Okay. So why don't you just ask that question again and say, Richard, what are the pip and then I'll just go into my to my spiel.

you know, so many. and I'm gonna I'm gonna interpret that question a little bit like a founder, like particularly what I see as the pitfalls of being a founder and founder led sales. Let me let I can do both. So as an entrepreneur, time and if you don't if you don't manage your calendar, your calendar will manage you. Right. So you've got to find ways to do that. I created red, yellow, and green on my calendar to color code. Green is anything revenue related, right? Yellow is anything that's kind of supports that that could lead to revenue. Like this podcast is yellow, right? Like I maybe it'll drive some revenue for me. I'll probably go. You know, I know we'll both go make some cuts to use on social media and see where that happens. Red is paperwork, right? Red is everything else. You know, I also have blue for family things. I have I think I use pink for any doctor's appointments. I just want to be able to look at my calendar and see what's going on for the day. Particularly if I have a lot of green. You know, if I have like four green meetings in a day, it means I'm on, right? I'm doing something with sales, I'm working with a client, I'm You know, I'm working with a prospect and I kind of have to look at my wife and say, hey, honey, I'm gonna have like four hours of conversations today. So I might be tired at the end of the day. Right. Like I gotta communicate to my wife. if I don't see a lot of green on my calendar for the week, I'm like, I need to see what I can shift my priorities around to see if I can drive some green. Right. So I think that's a really time management's a very crucial thing for entrepreneurs. and yes, I still have those break times that I mentioned earlier. I think at the founder level, these are some mistakes I see. Founders, when you start demoing your product, stop trying to show everything. Nobody wants death by mouse click in a demo, right? Nobody needs to know how you upload the Excel sheet of data into your system during a first demo. That's not what they're there for. They're there to see. How the product can actually enhance and make their life easier. Yes, it might be easy to upload that data, but that's not what they're there for. Nobody's buying anything because, man, that was easy to upload my data. That is not the value prop that you have, right? I think that's the first thing that I would say to founders. The second thing is don't fall so in love with your baby to think that everything's perfect and always right. That's fine.

I think the other thing is don't drive to perfection early in your sales pro in your creation process because you don't need the the tool to do everything perfectly all at once. You need an MVP. MVP means minimal viable product, not maximum viable product. Right. And you want to get feedback from prospects and customers on what can be done. Yes, it needs to work, but it doesn't need to have All the stuff that you need, in my opinion, or that you think it needs. It doesn't need to have everything yet. So stop, you know, I've seen so many founders spend 12 months building something and not talk to enough prospects to see if what they're building is the right thing. Meanwhile, they built it so far out that they could have stopped six months ago and started getting customers. other things for entrepreneurs. It's the revenue's never going to come as fast as you want. You, as a founder or entrepreneur, need to sell the first 15 to 20 customers. Just because you built something doesn't mean you're ready to go hire a salesperson, even though you suck at sales, which you do. Don't think they're going to solve that problem. Understand that your first 15 to 20 customers are probably going to buy because you're the entrepreneur and the founder. They're buying you. They're not. Always just buying your product and service. And when you start to shift from founder-led sales to sales, recognize that shift is going to cause delays in deals getting closed. And you're going to get frustrated. Why is it taking so long? How come they can't do it as fast as I can? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because it's not the same sales process. That's why. There's a different approach there. And knowing those things matter early on to help you set yourself up. For success for the long term.

And I've got, by the way, I've got if someone wants to go, you know, you know, founder, you know, the sins of founders, you know, I've written about it. Or I think I said, you know, your founders are guilty if, you know, I've written tons of stuff that probably have like 40 different things, mistakes founders have made, you know. So feel free to go Google that and that's on my website and some other places.

Yeah, it's yeah. Yeah, so thank you for asking. so we go to Costa Rica every year. last year we actually went to Portugal for the first time we did Europe. And we take about 18 people down, rent houses right on the beach. We spend about four hours a day on content, right? whether it's sales or interviewing advice, or sometimes we have marketing people come down and and give advice on marketing. We have founders. share their story. we have people come to us to say, well, Richard, what, you know, Scott, Richard, what what should I do with my life? Like I'm, I'm at this crossroads, right? So it's, you know, we're spending four hours a day on content. A lot of the content is is also done by the attendees. Those who have something to say, we'll create space for them to share with the group, to, to knowledge share. The rest, you know, the rest of the time we are, you know, we have surf lessons for those who want to surf. Not everybody surfs or has ever surfed. so we spend time on the beach surfing. and then there's a lot of those in-between moments, you know, those those in-between moments at conferences where you spend time getting to know somebody. And it's not a bro fest and it's not a party fest, it's not that kind of a thing. it's meant to be personal, it's meant to be smaller and intimate, and you create lifelong friends. We've got WhatsApp channel groups going all the way back to 2018 when we first started this. And people are finding jobs and getting career advice and starting their new businesses. And they've they've had this community of trust that I think is super, super important. so that's the basics of it. and it's coming up in November this year of twenty twenty six. still have a few spots left. So we're excited about that. But if you're interested, go to surfandsales.com.

Yeah. My friend John Barrows gave me this advice and I didn't heed it. And he's right. I would have collected email addresses a lot sooner. I would have made an effort to do things that drive email addresses because I think that's the, you know, even now, but back then that that's the strong, you know, contact information's critical, right? As an entrepreneur, right, getting people's email addresses matters.

Yeah. next is I've got some things in in play to help enhance sales knowledge and learning using AI and sale and my sales tactics. How do you combine the two? Right. Because I think everything is still too siloed between here's how you can use AI and sales and here are sales strategies and tactics. I think we need to merge those together.

Yeah, I'm I'm crazy this way. plus one, if you're international, because in the US, four one five five nine six nine one four nine, four one five five nine six nine one four nine. That's my real phone number. I know because it's the number I get requests from my teenage sons when they need money, but they never respond to anything I send them. so that you can always get a hold of me, you know, send a text. to just say hey, I heard you on the podcast. you can also you can also find me at the Harris Consulting Group dot com or on LinkedIn. I'm Richard Harris. I have the little trademark emoji next to my name.

Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed the conversation.