Jake Dunlap, CEO & Founder of Skaled | Cold Calling, Side Hustles & Terrible Marketing

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About The Guest

Talking Points

• 00:00 – Intro
• 03:14 – Jake Dunlap’s Origin Story.
• 04:52 – What Was The Thing Which Pushed Jake Into Telemarketing?
• 06:10 – How Does Jake Get Quick Wins?
• 08:38 – What Was The First Job Jake Took?
• 10:00 – Oldschool Sales & Marketing Strategies.
• 14:05 – Sales Process In 2010 Versus Now. 
• 16:16 – Is Sales Dependent On Technology?
• 19:19 – Jake’s Most Impressive Career Roles. 
• 21:57 – Jake’s Mission In Life.
• 23:12 – When Jake Doubled Down on Entrepreneurship.
• 24:16 – What Does The Modern Sale Organization Lack? 
• 26:34 – “Sales Are Not Relationship Building In 2021” – What Does This Mean?
• 29:24 – Framing Things Differently.
• 32:35 – Lowering The Minimums Instead Of Tracking The Activities.
• 35:10 – Is Jake’s Team Still Cold Calling?
• 39:42 – Why Are Marketers Not That Creative? 
• 42:16 – Why Everybody Has A Side Hustle When They Are Young?
• 44:31 – What Is the Difference Between Inbound And Outbound Sales?
• 47:30 – Building Your Own Brand Is A Good Use Of Time.
• 51:28 – Some Advice For Salespeople.
• 53:06 – Where Do People Connect With Jake? 
• 53:23 – What Was The Biggest Challenge Of Jake’s Career And How Did He Overcome It?
• 54:00 – How To Hire & Onboard New Employees?
• 55:57 – Who Is Jake’s Mentor?
• 57:34 – Jake’s Book Or Podcast Recommendation.
• 59:44 – What Would Jake Dunlap Tell His 20 Year Self?
• 1:00:33 – What Does Success Mean To Jake Dunlap?

Show Links

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakedunlap/
• https://www.youtube.com/c/JakeDunlapSales/
• https://www.jakedunlap.com/

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1. FEEDBACK LOOP – https://go.feedbackloop.com/success
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3. HUBSPOT – http://hubspot.com/successpod/

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What is the Success Story Podcast?

On this podcast, you’ll find interviews, Q&A, keynote presentations & conversations on sales, marketing, business, startups, and entrepreneurship.

The podcast is hosted by entrepreneur, business executive, author, educator & speaker, Scott D. Clary.

Scott will discuss some of the lessons he’s learned over his own career, as well as have candid interviews with execs, celebrities, notable figures, and politicians. All who have achieved success through both wins and losses, to learn more about their life, their ideas, and insights.

He sits down with leaders and mentors and unpacks their stories to help pass those lessons onto others through both experiences and tactical strategy for business professionals, entrepreneurs, and everyone in between.

Website: https://www.scottdclary.com

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Machine Generated Transcript

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

sales, people, hire, calls, jake, started, scale, side hustle, dunlap, building, linkedin, career, grew, outbound, company, brand, post, months, job, meetings

SPEAKERS

Scott D Clary, Jake Dunlap

Scott D Clary  00:00

Welcome to success story, the most useful podcast in the world. I’m your host, Scott D. Clary. The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network. The HubSpot Podcast Network has incredible podcasts like the salesmen podcast hosted by wil Baron. Now if you work in sales, you want to learn how to sell or you want to peek at some of the latest sales news and insights, you need to listen to the salesman podcast. The host will Baron help sales professionals learn how to find buyers and win big business in effective and ethical ways. If you think any of the following topics resonate with you, you’re gonna love the show, how to find and close your dream job and sales 12 essential principles of selling digital body language, how to have better zoom sales meetings, or how to tell a remarkable sales story. If these are topics that would interest you. Go check out the salesman podcast wherever you get your podcasts or at hubspot.com/podcast Network. Today, my guest is Jake Dunlap, Jake is the CEO and founder of scaled they work with some of the largest organizations in the world by optimizing their sales processes people technology with customized repeatable and sustainable strategies that can help them drive revenue. Prior to scaled Jake headed sales and customer success for Chartbeat. In the first nine months of his tenure at Chartbeat. He grew annual bookings by more than 300% year over year and doubled monthly recurring revenue. Before that he was VP of sales at glass door where he expanded the department from one to 40 employees and grew direct revenue from $0 to nearly $1 million in monthly recurring revenue. Since launching scale in 2013. He’s been a sought after industry thought leader, he’s been quoted by Forbes, Inc, and Huffington Post on all things, sales and revenue. We spoke about sales, we spoke about his background, how sales has changed from when he first started in sales to a modern selling environment. We spoke about sales tech, we spoke about the modern sales organization, we spoke about why sales is no longer about relationship building. We spoke about activity tracking and performance optimization for sales teams, we spoke about whether or not cold calling is still effective in 2022. We spoke about building a brand we spoke about side hustles we spoke about the difference between inbound and outbound sales and just general advice for people that are either at an executive level and sales all the way through to somebody who’s starting in their first sales gig, Jake has basically worked with sales organizations of all size, he knows the tools and strategies attack to take an organization to the next level, regardless of what they’re selling. He’s an incredible sales mind. And we go into pretty much everything in anything sales, which is obviously something that I have a passion for, since I’ve done it most of my career. So let’s jump right into it. I’m not gonna ruin the show. Let’s let Jake give you the rundown on everything you have to know about sales in 2022. This is Jake Dunlap, Founder CEO of scale.

 

Jake Dunlap  03:14

So I mean, what a lot of people don’t know is my origin story starts in the Midwest. So I was born in a 800 person town in the middle of nowhere, Iowa, and then lived in Nebraska, Iowa, and really grew up in Kansas City, though. So I spent most of my years in the Midwest. And when I kind of reflect back, I think that there’s you know, think about like, Why didn’t get active, you know, more out in the public sooner. It’s that, you know, when you grow up in the Midwest, I think you get this idea of you just put your head down and work. You know, I started working, I think when I get my workers permit 14, I really don’t know why maybe I wanted to buy some extra tennis shoes or something. But I think I’ve always had like a very strong, you know, sense of like work ethic. And, you know, I think that comes from where you where you grow up. And so, you know, I was fortunate that as I went through high school, and then in college, I got into telemarketing. And why because it paid the best. And I found I had some like natural skill there. And so you know, my origin story is very much just one of working hard, having a lot of fun along the way. I took five and a half years to graduate college,

 

Scott D Clary  04:18

which we would have been friends and we would have been friends.

 

Jake Dunlap  04:22

We can get into some at some point. And you know, just really trying to perfect the craft mean, meaning I’m one of those people that is a lifelong learner. I hire lifelong learners. I struggle with people who are complacent or just want to collect a paycheck. And for me, my journey is always about am I getting better to prepare myself for whatever the next next thing is? Versus a paycheck or, you know, immediate immediate gains or rewards.

 

Scott D Clary  04:52

Okay, that makes sense. And that’s something that you started taking with you. You’ve had a very impressive career and I want to dive into some of the roles that you’ve had and some things that you’ve learned For over your career, but that’s that’s what pushed you into telemarketing. That

 

Jake Dunlap  05:04

was something that was money.

 

Scott D Clary  05:05

I mean, let’s be honest, that was money. But I mean, but I mean, yeah, fair. But I mean, like, you’re, you’re still living that today, even like, you know, we’re talking, we’re just shooting the shit before about like what you’re working on now. Yeah. And you’re still pushing yourself outside your comfort zone? Hmm.

 

Jake Dunlap  05:18

Yeah, it’s all it’s all like, I feel like there’s two types of people. There’s the people that run into to the shit. And there’s people that don’t. And I’m definitely one of those. You know, I remember when I first started my company, the amount of people that I met with that said, Jake, do not start a services business. And trust me, there’s times when I’m like, You were 100%. Right? But you know what, we’re 4045 People now. And I didn’t want to start a lifestyle business, you know, making half million million dollars a year, just doing my own thing, I don’t think would have been that rewarding. And I made more money in 2012 than I’d have in any years being, you know, running my own company. But I’m building you know, and we’ll get there just, you know, I wish we’d get there faster. Sure. But, you know, we’ll figure it out. And so I think I’ve always kind of chosen the path of, to push myself to be better in whatever it is that I’m doing.

 

Scott D Clary  06:10

So you you got into sales. You know, you you were you got into sales for money, it was a good option at the time. But you were at some point successful? Because you’ve made a career out of it.

 

Jake Dunlap  06:22

Yeah, it’s almost successful immediately. But like I you know, when I did the telemarketing in college I, I, when I found that the skill that I had, that most of the people didn’t, is I didn’t take it personally. And I had fun with it. Like I think I’ve told us before, like I created alter egos like there was Dennis and Dennis McKenna retainer, and he would cold call you. And hi, Dennis. And like, I knew that that this is a numbers game, and that I could have fun. And I didn’t you know, people got upset. I’m like the next one. The next one. I think whether it was through training that they had, I just realized that this very formulaic if I just do enough of these things, and I continue to get better, I will hit the results that I want, and not dwelling on what happened before. So I think that’s what gave me this kind of natural propensity to be good at sales. And then, you know, coming out of college, it was I wanted to work in sports, right? Probably like a lot of people. I wanted to work in sports. And the first you know, I applied to a bunch of jobs and the Tampa Bay Rays were hiring for a group sales teams. And so I applied to some roles. I flew down to Tampa, I’ve told the story before I’ve had my business plan, one of the smartest things that cannot remember the professor’s name, I wish I could give them credit. They’re like, bring a business plan to your interview. And I’m like, you know, how would you actually do the job. And so I brought a business plan with me that said how I’m going to sell group tickets in Tampa. And I went online, probably the Google or web crawler or whatever it was back then. And I looked at trends in like demographics in Tampa and St. Pete and put together this thing is probably horrible. But I got the job. And what happened is, I used to love to read, you know, and kind of in college, I think you can get away with that because you’re like always reading or you kind of get away. And there’s a guy who’s a little bit older, and he got me back into reading kind of sales and professional books and marketing books. And I just gobbled it up. I sales for me satisfied a lot about curiosity, problem solving, that it just doesn’t get that much credit for that, you know, great, really great people. I think professionals true professionals are very curious people and genuinely focus on providing the right outcome and they’re an expert in their world. And all of that was very appealing to me early on. Yeah, yeah.

 

Scott D Clary  08:40

You were so those are all great. Tracy. Hi for now, but you didn’t I don’t Did you know that you weren’t self aware enough. Back then. When you were when you were applying for like you apply for Tampa Bay Rays that you got that job? Then you were Arizona coyotes? Yes. Throwing it back a little bit too. Is that Phoenix? Phoenix, Arizona coyotes. What is that? That’s Oh, okay.

 

Jake Dunlap  09:04

Change it to me broader.

 

Scott D Clary  09:07

That’s great with me now,

 

Jake Dunlap  09:08

from Tucson is going to drive to go watch the coyotes. No, it was my first job. I mean, honestly, that job with a raise. I mean, not to kind of sound like I’m bright. I destroyed everybody really quickly. Meaning like, I had already done like, just imagine these kids a lot of people coming out of college one I already had that experience already worked. Already done. I already hadn’t learned techniques and and so I went from group sales to season ticket sales to Senior Account Executive me and just one other guy to me and him running the inside sales team in 16 months. I knew really early that that skill of not caring, putting in the work. treating it like a profession was I saw results quickly. You know, that

 

Scott D Clary  09:56

was that was like 2000 That was like early 2000s 2003 Or like my early to mid 2000s. Yeah, but even the stuff that you talked about now so let’s let’s talk about like what sales was back then is that like dialing for dollars? Like, is there a process where you just throw in a phone book and say go sell?

 

Jake Dunlap  10:10

Yes. Well, I’ll tell you actually, so yeah, 2010 Six after I got out of sports, so I put it on my LinkedIn profile. I, I thought that being the best met that you were untouchable, it does not. And so I got into it with my boss, I told him to eff off. He fired me for even I was the number one premium seat seller at the at the coyotes at the time, was really eye opening. And it wasn’t sure what I was going to do jumped in at this company called Career Builder without your time, it’s the largest job site, they just opened an office in Phoenix. And it was Career Builder, where I found the process of sales, I had a lot of natural ability and like intuition, but CareerBuilder there’s there’s a really kind of like very pivotal moment, my career. Where I was at training class of eight, I took a step back, like account executive role, didn’t have the I didn’t know that I wanted to work in tech or in like, you know, online services. But I was the second last person to sell anything. Like I’ve been there for like a month or something month and a half. I hadn’t sold anything. I’m like, What is going on? And my boss’s boss listened into a call. And he’s like, Dude, why aren’t you following the script? And I’m like, Dude, the script, man, come on. I’m not following a script. I’m Jake Dunlap, you know, I’m not doing that. And, and he goes, Do you think we train 1000 people on this because we’re stupid. He’s like, do you think we train people on a process that doesn’t work? And I was like, probably not. And so I did it. And I fall, I literally was I remember reading, I remember this. And I’m like, This feels really awkward. But then all of a sudden, I hear they’re responding. They’re just like, opening up. I’m like, I start following it. And then the next month said, my first month after doing it, I closed $60,000 A new business. And that was for me when I was like holy shit. Sales is a science is a process, there’s actually a right and a wrong buyer journey, and a way to move customers through the process. And before I kind of always thought it’s very happenstance, and everyone’s different. And so it’s actually that experience that I think solidified like, this is like, this literally checks all the boxes of like something that I want to go deep on and really be an expert at.

 

Scott D Clary  12:20

I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today’s episode, feedback loop. Now, if you’re a product person, entrepreneur, startup guy like me, you have at some point in your career, tried to take a product to market, you’ve tried to come up with a new idea, and it fell flat, it’s ultimately failed 85 to 90% of all new products of all new startup ideas fail. Why is this basically it is really hard, really expensive, and really time consuming to validate product market fit with your potential consumers or customers oldstyle market research is way too slow, too complicated, too time consuming for dynamic, fast moving teams and want to build great stuff. But what if you could test out your idea your product with your target consumers whenever you want before you invest in the money time energy effort that it takes to actually develop a product? Well, that’s what startups all the way through to Fortune 500 are using feedback loop for you get quality feedback from your target customers early and often. Feedback Loop is the test before you invest product research platform. It has built in expert templates for concept testing, user discovery, prioritizing features on your roadmap, and much more. You can create your own test in minutes and get quality insights from your target consumers in hours, they set up a special link for everybody who’s a success story podcast listener to test it out to try it go to go dot feedback loop.com/access You get three free tests. That’s go dot feedback loop comm slash success. You can try it out for free, you get three free tests. So if you want your next product idea or feature to be a hit test before you invest, build based on data, not opinion, and launch with confidence with feedback loop, check it out right now. So will you were you that was your first sales leadership role that you moved into a career builder? Correct.

 

Jake Dunlap  14:11

And then leadership two months later, two months later?

 

Scott D Clary  14:15

What is what is? What is the sales process in 2010? Compared to what it is now?

 

Jake Dunlap  14:24

The same is the honest

 

Scott D Clary  14:25

you think I’m asking? I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m asking.

 

Jake Dunlap  14:29

It really  isn’t? I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you what, what I think, cuz I’ll tell you what’s kind of interesting. It’s like what happened is in the mid 2010, we started get all this sales tech. Right? You got you know, different sales, engagement platforms. There’s a whole bunch of other things that kind of popped up during this like genre. And what actually started to happen is I think sales started to get worse we digressed we started to we started to simplify sales into like qualification criteria, and are they qualified and we’re moving them through the funnel. And now we’re kind of coming back to this idea of like The customer experience and like, what do they feel like? So, you know, I think the things that are different are things like access to information, that to me is a big one. You know, it used to be you don’t talk about price or, you know, you don’t, you know, you wait for them to get other people involved, whereas now people don’t have time for that. You know, it’s like, I think removing friction, I think was maybe a little too much friction back then. And there still is today. That I think is certainly one I think customers are much more educated, whereas they were relying on a salesperson to kind of educate them on a space etc. than ever before. I think that that’s a big trend that I see now. And then just the rise of sales tech, there’s, there’s, I think there’s almost 2000 sales technologies now. So your ability to do more with less, and automate things that you couldn’t even imagine that were automatable, 10 years ago, I think those are probably the big trends. But I think the concept of like, what is great sales, it’s having a comp, it’s being educated on somebody space to where you can actually provide real value. It’s knowing how to dig deep and understand what the true priorities are, and then walking through how you might be able to help them that my friends, that has not changed since forever. But I do think we’ve tried to dumb it down too much. And we’ve kind of automated the wrong things. And we’re doing manual things that we shouldn’t be doing at this time.

 

Scott D Clary  16:16

I was I was going to ask, like later on, but I was just curious if you think sales reps have have almost become like complacent and just dependent on technology to the to a fault. Now with outreach and Gong and all the automation tools that you can now use and I think that now that’s actually in my opinion, it’s turning customers off. Because they they get so used to being highly targeted, and with specific automated sequences to the point where now somebody who is more I hate this old school, like just like is a little bit more like less regimented in their process, the customer will feel that they’re they’re actually not part of a sequence or something like that.

 

Jake Dunlap  16:59

Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of it is do people feel it is a habit this I’ll maybe start here. I don’t think it has ever been easier to stand out. Like, God forbid you spent five minutes personalizing. So that’s relevant. I feel like at the end, but I blame lead. I mean, to go back to your point. But but that that’s like one point. The second is, this is a leadership problem. Leaders are the ones doing this leaders right now are too short term focused. They can only think about this month or this quarter. I very specifically remember when I first moved into leadership. I said, Jake, you got eight months to turn this team around. Right? I said, Okay, we’re here. Here’s about we’re about middle of the pack, get eight months why had to get the right people on the bus wrong people off the bus, up level upskill. And I don’t think we think enough about the personal development of our people as leaders. And that it’s our job as leaders to stay up to speed on what these tools can do, I think I think what you’re actually seeing is that too many, too many executive team CEOs, too, don’t even know what’s possible. So they can’t build sales machines differently. Because they don’t even know it’s possible to outsource that knowledge to like operations people. And I think that that you’re going to if you’re going to be a senior leader in marketing, or sales in the future, you have to know the art of possible you have to stay up to speed on the latest technology, what people are doing, you don’t have to know it intimately. But you have to understand how it fits in the ecosystem and what it’s capable of. And then you have to refresh that knowledge every nine to 12 months, because those tools are evolving so quickly as well. But we had a couple of new executive hires, join. And they’re like, Jake, why do you take so many of these partner calls, I probably meet at least two to five new technologies every week. Half of them, like most of them, we’re not going to do anything with it. I’m like, Oh, that’s interesting. Oh, that’s interesting why that’s my job, my job is to stay ahead of where it’s going. So if we’re building a modern sales org, I have an idea of what’s possible and what’s not. And so I think a lot of sales leaders right now, and CEOs are not doing a good enough job of thinking about how to build tomorrow’s team for recruiting the team that I was successful, you know, 10 years ago, or 12 years ago.

 

Scott D Clary  19:20

So when you I want to, I want to touch on that. But I want to I want to first keep going through your career because I want to talk about so it’s up to you, whatever you want to focus on either either Chartbeat or glass door whichever one was the most impressive. Actually Chartbeat Glassdoor or no wait, which which one is the most impressive cuz then you hit you hit after this? You had multiple, like VP sales roles, right? Or head of sales or sales executive roles?

 

Jake Dunlap  19:42

And I was done. I mean, yeah, I was like, Well, what happened after Chartbeat? I got fired, because I hit the numbers. I sucked at politics. Okay, so this is what happened for me as a VP, Glassdoor thinks the most impressive just because, you know, we exited for 1.2 billion, right? That’s pretty damn impressive. Right and I built the team from nothing from zero No matter how the last game went, anytime you take the field, you’ve got a shot at greatness. Give your team the best shot at winning by recruiting more mbps with indeed, if you’re hiring you need indeed, because indeed is the hiring partner where you can attract, interview and hire all in one place. start hiring right now with $75 sponsor job credit, upgrade your job posts at indeed.com/blue wire offer valid through March 31. And indeed is the only job site where you’re guaranteed to find quality applications that meet your must have requirements, or else you don’t pay. Go to indeed.com/blue wire to claim your $75 credit before March 31. One of the things I love about indeed is that it makes hiring all in one place so easy, and indeed delivers four times more hires than all other job sites combined. According to talent, nest indeed.com/blue wire Terms and Conditions apply, need to hire you need indeed.

 

21:12

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Jake Dunlap  23:14

to I took the team from zero to 40 people in about a year and from zero to a million in MRR in a year. And we close 20 What was it, we close 25 of the Fortune 100 In the first in the first year. And that for me was just like, Oh, I’m good at this. Like I can build replicas. Again, I like what happened, I learned this repeatable process. At the previous company, I was able to transport over make some changes. But what I sucked at was politics. I’m just like, I’m like 30 years old. 31. Like, I’m like running. I don’t know how to forge. I didn’t do a good enough job getting mentors, etc. It’s I didn’t know how to forge relationships with my CFO or CTO. And I did a really bad job of that. And so it’s really easy to kind of layer me which is what happened at Glassdoor. And you know, even though I’d done the job successfully, and then the same thing happened at Chartbeat. Like we had crushed our numbers went from one to 4 million in less than a year. And I couldn’t get along well with others, like my kind of like, some of these people weren’t my peers, but counterparts. And I just realized, like, what, what, what, what’s my real path, I love doing the work. I love building the teams. I love building out the sales processes and, and tackling these problems. But, you know, what’s my next thing I’m like, I’m just gonna go to another startup. And like, it’ll the same thing will happen in three years. And then I just realized that’s what it just what happens in tech. And so I said, Well forget that. I’m just going to do it myself. And no way it was one of my first clients actually. And we helped it taught them to close a quarterback in a $4 million deal with them that helped them to exit to Yelp about a year and a half later, two years later. And, you know, it’s kind of after that experience, where I really started to scale that consulting company. You know, I technically no, wait slash Yelp was a part of scaled, but I was spending a lot of my time there and not in building the company as much. But we had employees from almost day one, I think we had five, at least four to five people from almost day one.

 

Scott D Clary  25:12

When you when you started scaled you, what was the goal of scale? Like? Did you have an idea of what you want to build up? What was the problem that you’re trying to solve? And say, you had no idea you were just good at sales? That’s an entrepreneur lesson. That’s an entrepreneur lessons. So what did you do?

 

Jake Dunlap  25:27

Yeah, I’m good at, it’s probably the biggest mistake was I didn’t have a clear vision. What I knew is that I like to solve sales challenges, right. And then I thought that I had a unique skill set. And I’d proven it right. Everywhere I’d ever went, that I could build repeatable, scalable sales processes and develop people to generate repeatable results. That was a skill set that I had. But what I didn’t know is like, what did I want to do with it? You know, what do I want the company to be? You know, any of that. And so I think we kind of meandered for a few years and just like, oh, is it sales related? Like we’ll do, it didn’t matter as a project base, or, you know, whatever it was. And so it caused a lot of schizophrenia, I think in the company and people like, we’re doing this now. And that now, and I think it wasn’t until probably 2017 or 18, where we started to kind of focus on Okay, who do we want to be? And I think we’re, you know, we’re kind of going through that exercise right now to have, what does the future look like? How do we do? How do we need to evolve the business, etc?

 

Scott D Clary  26:27

What was what was that? What was that somewhat some what sensitive, the evolution of that company, what was the final decision? What did you finally double down on as a company that you thought you didn’t really sell for?

 

Jake Dunlap  26:39

It was eliminating stuff, right? It was saying like, so we had scaled and outsource lead gen arm that was doing like a million a year and like five months, but it was the I hated the business. I hated it. Like I was having these conversations with CEOs about, well, we thought we were getting 20 qualified meeting, we got 16. And it’s like, we’re building outbound from scratch, you just met with Capital One and delta. And you’re sitting here complaining to me, like, and I’m like, yuck, this is not white God. And so we, we asked it, we sold off some of our competitors, converted some of them to consulting clients and just let the other ones go. A funny story when we had some baller clients like discover org, which became zoominfo was one of our first clients for that. They had eight salespeople. And we were doing outsource Legion for Discover org back in like 2015, or something like that for 15.

 

Scott D Clary  27:29

I guess what I’m trying to figure out is like, what, what does what does a modern sales org lack? Where they need to actually go out? When’s the point? When a modern sales organization, VP sales CRO was like, I’m not figuring this out in house? I need to go to scale or or otherwise? What’s that? What’s, what’s that need the fill?

 

Jake Dunlap  27:49

So here’s what I’d say. I think the way that you phrased the question is a part of the problem. And what I mean by that is in every other part of your organization, okay, let’s take marketing, marketing, hires and performance Agency Marketing hires, a PR agency marketing hires, a web agency, marketing hires, a Digital Agency Marketing hires a brand agency, you hire experts, right? Finance, they hire audit experts, they hire tax experts. Sales is the only organization that has a notion that, that instead of hiring experts at sales tech, at this part of unclogging, our funnel, that instead we’re just going to do it in house. And I think that we’re seeing the shift that it’s certainly changing, right? Like we’re seeing like, people get it now I think more and more of like, well, you’re not going to find some sales ops person who’s done 300 outreach instances like overhauls, like we have, like, why are you trying to hire that person, when you know, we’re not that different in cost? And we’ve done it hundreds of times. And so I just think it’s a sales mindset. And part of it is self imposed by leadership sales leaders make more than any one in the company, usually, CEO, sometimes not and, like obviously, fortune 500. But and so there’s almost this like, backlash, right? Of like, Well, why would a sales leader need help? It’s like, well, because things are shifting really quickly. And like, it’s hard to stay up to speed on what’s happening. So I think it’s actually you know, like, we’ve got to change this, this stigma, almost of like sales leaders aren’t can’t be experts on everything either. And, you know, that’s, that’s really where we come in, is that tactical support, you know, strategic support as well too. But there’s just corners you haven’t seen around or things that you haven’t done that you should really bring in experts for and stop trying to hire a jack of all trades in house, you’ll get the same jack of all trades results.

 

Scott D Clary  29:49

Let’s um, I want to I want to drill down into some of the like some of the topics you speak about on LinkedIn because I you know, there’s so many things that you’ve done in your career and all honestly, I didn’t really know what to do. to talk to you about because there’s so many different options taken. But I think like, you know, the general the general umbrella future of sales, there’s just there’s just some topics that keep coming up. And I think it’s, I think it’s good to just get your opinion on that, because you’ve lived, you know, you’ve grown and exited high tech, high, you know, high, fast growing tech companies. And now you work with a whole bunch under scale. So one thing that I saw you mentioned, which I thought was interesting, I’m going to try and like, I’m going to try and pick up points that are gonna like, yeah, basically, maybe be unpopular opinions for some people, but I want to I want them to see it through your lens. So sales is no longer relationship building and 2021. What does that mean? Because that’s something that if you haven’t, you know, if you’ve been in sales, you keep hearing about building relationships, relationship building, depending on what industry you’re in, maybe more in some industries more than others. So what does that mean?

 

Jake Dunlap  30:50

Yeah,actually posted as a second spin on that today? And yes, there’s similar, but most people kind of got it. I don’t think buyers today, and let’s just think about our speed of our world, and how much we have on our plates today. With emails and slacks and respond, pair rental respond, we have so much going on in our life today. Do you think that that person in Seattle once another friend, oh, I can’t wait to be friends with Johnny random vendor number seven. Now over time, we might build a real relationship. The reality is, people want people who can help them solve problems, and that they can trust. That to me is foundationally different than people that you like and want to spend time with. And I think that is where sometimes old school or not old school, just people who grew up in a different era. Get it get missed, they focused on like, being likable. And oh, yeah, we have got a great rapport. I’ve never been like that. I’ve always been let me understand what you’re trying to accomplish. Let me tell you what I think could be a good option for you. Let’s work through it together. And let’s see if we can really make an impact on your business. And that is the difference between focusing on how strong or do you like to do you know, did I send you a gift when your kid was born? Or did I help you to get a promotion in three months? And I have consistently found that the ladder actually drives more business and actually better row, air quote, relationships. So it’s are you focusing on the personal relationship? And it’s all personal, right? We’re all humans, but or are you focused on helping individuals achieve their outcomes? And so when I say that, that’s what I mean by it.

 

Scott D Clary  32:38

Because you even mentioned something interesting before we started recording and you said you’re focusing on on, on framing things differently. So when you look at a b2b relationship, it’s still dealing with a person. That’s what you’re that’s what you’re speaking about. With that, correct?

 

Jake Dunlap  32:53

Well, yeah, and like a b2b, it’s like, if you define relationship, right, most people think of a relationship is like Johnny’s likable, right relationship building. I think you know, if you categorize relationship building is like building a business outcomes based relationship then I can get down with that. I think it’s when people define it as like, you know, people do business with people they like, I think that’s bullshit. I think people do business to people that can help them and if those people

 

Scott D Clary  33:23

are then then the like them then they will like them. They will probably end

 

Jake Dunlap  33:27

up liking you but they might not invite you their daughter’s wedding you know, I’m saying like that that’s that’s what I mean when I say that.

 

Scott D Clary  33:34

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Jake Dunlap  36:14

Yeah, I many times were to focus. I’m a big fan of the concept of leads in legs, right. And if you’re not familiar with this, it means when you focus on the leading indicator, the lagging indicators should become an outcome. The issue is today. So I want to let’s rewind back. So you asked me a question about what’s the difference between sales today and before. So this is actually this is actually a difference. Every activity you did in sales, a call or an email was to generate a meeting. So every activity had one specific purpose. And so tracking activities as a leading indicator to setting meetings, etc. made sense. Now, enter LinkedIn. Now I want you to go like and comment on somebody’s posts, I want you to go interact with someone, I want you to go do this, this, this or this. Huh, what’s the value of that activity? It’s not one to one anymore. And so what I want people to do is now that we’re asking sales teams to not do one to one correlated one action over and over like that telemarketing example, right, I knew if I made X number of calls, right, it would get to here make sense in a highly transactional world. But as we’re asking reps to do more rapport building other things, I like the idea of moving to meaningful conversations, which is, you know, we’re working on setting up time to meet the connected me to the right person, and focusing on outcomes. And if Susan can get there in 40 touch points, but it takes Jake 70 to get there. Well, why are we talking about activities? Why aren’t we talking about out the first outcome from these, this this pot of things we’re asking people to do? So that’s where that comes from, is that we need to if you are asking your sales team to do things that are not one to one correlated, you I don’t think you can track activities the way that you did. Now I can see you have like a minimum of 40 a day or 20 calls fine. But you should be managing to how good is my team at getting conversations that lead to meetings. And that might mean activities that aren’t one to one correlated to an activity to generating that meeting.

 

Scott D Clary  38:25

So on that thought, where should your sales team spend time? Wherever your buyer wherever your customers are, you know, like the customers let’s go granular on this. So like say you’re running an outbound campaign like Are you are you still cold calling? Are you still emailing? Are you still on LinkedIn? Are you? Yes, yes, yes. But so is it just a mix of everything and then some is there some that work better than others? Or

 

Jake Dunlap  38:52

don’t take here’s here’s, here’s how I tell people, you can listen to what my answer is going to be but it might be different for your your industry. The key to to Legion, and to outbound I’ll just focus on outbound for a second is outbound is just like cracking, you know, performance marketing, Google AdWords campaign. There’s no difference. You set up systems and hypotheses, you track results and you optimize your face off. And too often without bound we have this very set it and forget it, we set up our sequence we do we just run it we don’t think go back and run back the game film. What worked? What didn’t work tweak here? Most of our clients, we just ran a campaign. I’ll tell you this is very recently like last two weeks. Most but a lot of people don’t know this on your LinkedIn, on your phone. On your phone. If you go to the mobile app on LinkedIn, and your one to one connection, you can drop a voicemail to someone or you can hit the plus button and send a one to one video. We just had an 18% reply rate from the one to one video 18% Wow, that’s pretty. That’s pretty so you get someone to connect with you. What do you do? Just send them a personalized video. long’s that take, you know what I mean?

 

Scott D Clary  40:02

Like 20 seconds, the length of the video, whatever

 

Jake Dunlap  40:05

it is so long story short? You know, I think, I think it’s all of the above. And a lot of people who rip on calls right now, I don’t think they get it. The funny part is is so anyone who shits on calls right now, here’s, here’s what I want to challenge you. What is your email hit rate out of the emails that you send? How many of those reply to you? Few few out of 100. And people say well calls, I only get a hold of, you know, a few people, like, what’s the difference? Like, what’s the difference, like, and then guess what you optimize over time, it could be maybe you should be only doing calls, maybe you should only be doing emails, maybe you should only do videos. But the fact that one more and more teams aren’t just optimizing around general best practices. To me, it’s just insane. And to the fact that companies think that they know, and they’re not tracking and optimizing. It’s just crazy. You know, I’ll tell you a story about again, this is back, this is my first year the red is 2004. Okay, 2004. This will help you to understand like how I think 2004 After the first season, the we had an inbound phone loop. So basically what happened is a phone, kind of like, it kind of jumps around like a round robin almost right. But if you’re on the phone, it skips you and goes to the next person, right. So you know, the person calling in goes the next person. And and what I did after the first year is I did a scatterplot. And I plotted every single inbound sale in that year. And what I found is there were gaps of times when nobody called in, it’s like 11:11am, like 2pm. And like 410 or something, there’s like half hour gaps. And so I just did a scatterplot. And then I and so what I did is I just sat there, and I did all my administrative stuff until those so it would just keep they were making calls and data like Tampa Bay Rays. This is Jake Tampa Bay raises Jake. And then people started to get pissed. My teammates started get pissed, I said, I showed them the scatterplot. I showed them the data, I said guys look at this, that this is why I’m not doing it. You know what they kept doing? They kept calling. I’m like, showing you the data. And this goes back to like, I started to run my own career very early. And I think a lot of reps need to listen to this. I’m trying to optimize my own outcomes. My boss doesn’t need to tell me, I need to know my own numbers so I can get better. And they eventually, like broke the system and like three weeks later. But you know, I just we’ve got to start to think of these as processes, with constraints that we’re trying to optimize for a very specific outcome. It’s not about opinions. And so I think, sales, we have to take a more scientific method, post your side scientific method approach to how we think about sales. So you know,

 

Scott D Clary  42:57

it still blows my mind that everything everything you said resonates. But so many people still will not take it upon themselves will listen to the activities or the KPIs that are just given to them. And they don’t they don’t think outside of this little box that they’re they’re placed in as a sales rep. And it seems like it seems like every other department doesn’t have this issue. It doesn’t seem like other departments have this issue, because I think other departments are probably I have no idea why actually, I really don’t know why. But marketers don’t seem to have this issue. Like they’ll suggest new things they’ll be creative have their job is to be creative to come up with creative solutions. But I don’t see sales reps challenging their VP saying, Hey, I don’t think this is working. So great. Can I try? XYZ?

 

Jake Dunlap  43:42

That’s all you have to do. You say, Hey, I’m going to do it your way. If for anyone out there who’s like, yeah, Jake, this sounds great. And what you said just sounds great, too. Here’s what you do. You go to your boss, and you say, Look, I know these are metrics, I’m going to hit those metrics. But I want leeway to do 15%. Additionally, my way for the next two weeks, and if I prove that, you’re gonna let me spend 55% 50% of my time doing it that way. Only if I prove my outcome. What do you think? Right? What do you think? I think we should do that. I think most leaders are not stupid. Mostly go back to my point. Most leaders are not dumb. All right, he’s still gonna she’s still going to do the things that we asked and wants to try something. But again, it’s like people don’t want to put in the work. You know, like, they just want people to change. You know, like, no, like, you need to do the work. You need to do like, sitting here asking everyone to bend around you or change. I have got an idea. We’ll test the idea. Since they’re waiting for us and they’re waiting for permission. I was talking to like, especially when the pandemic first hit, if you’re an SDR now and you’re like but I really want to get in sales. Why aren’t you just taking your own first call? Just take the call. Nobody will know. You’re sitting at home. Like what are you waiting through? What are you waiting for? If you want to get more sales at bats or run a discovery like to start to do it? You know, and I think too many people are looking for someone to walk them through their career. And the reality is no one’s gonna care more about your career than you, not your mom, not your boss, not anybody. And you have to take that learning and growth mindset with you throughout that if you just sit around and wait for your company to develop you, and I’m doing my own cycles, listening to my own calls getting better, man that interest compounds, and that’s again, that’s why I was a VP by, you know, technically I think 31 But I just turned 31 is because of that mindset.

 

Scott D Clary  45:31

You also talked about, you know, you’ve you’ve posted about everybody when they’re young should have a side hustle. Is that also to do with taking your career in your own hands.

 

Jake Dunlap  45:38

I post I said, you said

 

Scott D Clary  45:41

you said you said quote, he said, focus on work life balance. Now this is I’m sorry, it was a message that will be wildly wildly unpopular for 95% of my friends. 25 to 35. Anyways, you said focus on work life balance. Now 98% of people pedaling this wouldn’t be where they are, they didn’t work 5060 hour weeks for years. Everyone should start a side hustle when they’re young. Sure, I’m all for it. But most people are not cut out to work 40 hours side hustle for 20 and they’d be successful at both. So I didn’t really get the final takeaway.

 

Jake Dunlap  46:10

But mostly I was I don’t have it in you to start a side hustle.

 

Scott D Clary  46:14

I was thinking I was thinking the opposite. I was thinking you were saying if you are going to side hustle, do it when you don’t have kids. And when you don’t have that, that’s that’s what I was. That’s That’s what I was thinking

 

Jake Dunlap  46:23

that’s true. And that’s yet something both I’m saying, okay, that are but hustle. It’s not like that. The thing is this, there’s a lot of people on LinkedIn, a lot of people, you know, who are my age roughly, or maybe a little younger, a little older who grinded their asses off. And now, now they’re now they want to sit back and tell people back when they were 25. Like, you should think about work life balance, Oh, I get that. It’s like, oh, you never would be where you are, if you did any of this shit that you’re peddling to people. And you know, you’re trying to make mailbox money off of people now, because you want it easy, and you’ve already been there and done it. And I think it’s not that someone who’s 25 or 26, or whatever, shouldn’t start a side hustle. But you know, you got to you got to really go deep on something and really develop a skill set first, you know, as opposed to but you know, good. If you want to start a side hustle, great, just be prepared to spend 20 extra hours. Or you could spend that same 20 extra hours on your own craft and your own job, not because your boss told you to work 60 hours because you want to get better at it. And so I think you just can’t have your cake and eat it too. If you’re like, Yeah, you know, you can have a side hustle, and you can have a full time job. I’m not saying it’s not possible to be great at both. And there are certainly people who have done it. But I guarantee those people are working 80 hour weeks. And just I think you got it, you just got to know what you’re signing up for more than anything.

 

Scott D Clary  47:46

Last thing I wanted to ask you about sales is inbound versus outbound. Because you have opinions on that, too. So we were talking about going outbound. So early stage company, I’ll say early stage company where the where the CEO founder is not so experienced. Where should they focus their time, initially?

 

Jake Dunlap  48:06

Oh, man. Well, it’s like I know,

 

Scott D Clary  48:09

these are not listen, I don’t I don’t bring you on to ask easy questions. If you Google

 

Jake Dunlap  48:14

1. It’s here’s what I would say. Everybody wants to do outbound because it feels good. You’re doing you’re doing activities. Inbound takes time. Sometimes you can’t track it. Right. So like me posting on LinkedIn one to two times every day? What’s the ROI? Mike put up a post 49 minutes ago? What’s the ROI of that post? No idea. No, but I know that you should be no idea. What I do know is that LinkedIn is our number one traffic source. And we’ll probably generate a few million dollars this year. From business where the lead sources Jake’s LinkedIn. But I don’t know it’s a one to one connection. So outbound feels good. It is one that goes back. Remember, it’s kind of coming full circle with this right? A lot of that outbound activity can be one to one I did an activity, this number of activities equals this it feels very formulaic even though the formula breaks now. So I think the answer is probably both for most people, but start doing that brand, the experience stuff now even if it’s little, little little, because building inbound takes time, you know, building inbound takes takes, you know, it just doesn’t happen overnight. So you know, too many companies, I think, wait to think about Inbound, they start outbound, they start doing all this stuff. And then they’re not thinking about well, am I building the reputation and SEO and those things to make my life easier in two or three years? Because when I just focus on outbound, I can see the fruits of my labor immediately. And so my answer for most of you is both you start to think about where your audience lives and are you establishing a brand and a reputation within that group where they live digitally. Coupled with Are you starting to figure out how to do it generate interest from people who don’t know about you. So I think the answer is both. And I think most people wait too long to start on an inbound, and therefore over focus on outbound. And because here’s the thing, if you only learn outbound, how does that scale, he’s got to keep throwing more bodies at it. More bodies, more bodies, whereas brand starts to snowball, you know, brand and reputation snowball. And so I think, you know, that’s, that’s how you got to think about this, that you’re doing it, you might not see the results for six months, nine months, 12 months. But if you’re putting out interesting content to your target audience, and you’re always pitching the the, the people will come, it will happen for you.

 

Scott D Clary  50:44

So then, so then just the follow up to the close that thought up, if somebody does want to just do a side hustle is building a personal brand, a good use of their time. I don’t even

 

Jake Dunlap  50:54

think that’s a side hustle. I think that’s a requirement for being in marketing and sales. I think, yeah, it’s a requirement. I don’t think I don’t think I would ever view it. I never viewed it as building a brand for a side hustle. I viewed it as as it

 

Scott D Clary  51:09

takes time. Right. And I’m just trying to clarify for the CEOs or executives that are like, Why are you spending time on LinkedIn? Why are you posting job? And I think that I think it’s skewing, I think it’s skewing more towards the norm now. But there’s there’s still outliers, there’s still company I know companies that I speaking to speaking to a girl the other day, and I won’t name the company she works for or she used to work because enormous, but in her contract, they made her sign an agreement that she would not have social media of any sort. Wouldn’t post that all

 

Jake Dunlap  51:34

stupid, right? I’ll give you one of my favorite stats is SAP, I think SAP, SAP is corporate page posts on LinkedIn, about 40 times a month 11,000 SAP employees posted in the last 30 days. Imagine if instead of doing what you just mentioned, you even harnessed a fraction of that, how much more of an impact I’d make on your business. And I think too many people, we still have a very archaic view of organic social because again, we can’t track that one to one. So yeah, that’s that just let that let that sink in for a little bit. And almost every company’s got like a similar ratio. You know, I mean, a big company, I should say. Where your people if enabled correctly, can make or break you know, they can gone I mean, like look at Gong Gong has shown us they’ve gone a killing it with this guy’s all they’re doing is posting text only posts on LinkedIn, because they are not doing anything. It is so repeatable for any company out there. And you’ve seen what it says their valuation is silly. Fuck silly. They I think they have like the if not the, if not the one of the highest valuations to revenue I’ve ever seen. And I promise you that their brand has a big reason to do with that. And so you know, and all it is, is posting text only posts on LinkedIn. Do you think I do it every day? Because I’m stupid. Do you think they do it every day? Because they’re stupid. No, we do it because it drives revenue. And and because I enjoy it. I genuinely enjoy, like helping people and giving advice. So like, I think you can say more and more companies are going to have to we’re in a golden era right now. And I don’t think most people quite realize it where we’ve got at least another few years on LinkedIn, where there’s still so much open space. So much so much open space.

 

Scott D Clary  53:35

I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today’s episode HubSpot. Now, the new year might have you thinking ahead to what you want out of your career. So when you think about your success story, what do you actually picture? Is it retiring early with a beautiful view of the skyline? Is it leaving a legacy with your name on it? Or maybe it’s helping influence and change some of the world’s most pressing issues? Whatever it is writing your success story starts by working smart because when you work smart your success story writes itself. A HubSpot CRM platform helps your marketing campaigns work harder and smarter. With intuitive visual workflows and bot builders. You can create scalable, automated campaigns across email, social media, web and chat so your customers hear your messages loud and clear. Are you tired of your content not adapting to mobile making it difficult for your customers to absorb your message a HubSpot CRM platform optimizes your content for multiple devices so that you can reach your customers wherever they are, which is just smart. Learn more about how you can transform your customer experience with a HubSpot crm@hubspot.com Okay, I want to I want to do some rapid fire to close this up but closing thoughts from you. What do you want people to take away when they consume your content on the future sales any sort of just last last thing to give the audience

 

Jake Dunlap  54:55

well look, I hope people come and when they come to to check me out there go Oh, I could just go try that today. You know? Oh, you know, again, I challenged CEOs go listen to 10 sales calls. You even know what’s happened. Your last post? I saw that. Yeah, yeah, you know what’s happening, right? The one this morning here two myths you need to think about like, so if you’re looking for. Yeah, I talked about the future of sales and philosophy, you know, philosophically where I think but I love the tactical stuff, I love the nuances that make that are actually really easy to execute. So if you want tactical advice, and you know, mixed in with a little philosophy, I think, you know, check out my LinkedIn, I’ve got now almost 450 videos on YouTube as well. So that’s been a big push. So you can just Google Jake Dunlap, YouTube, and you know, find those videos as well. So yeah, that’s That’s me, if you if this is your first time listening, I really enjoy the tactical side of it. The game the game, as you call it, of what goes into actually getting things done versus what sounds good. And that’s, you know, I think that that’s me. And I just launched the podcast too. So the Jake Dunlap show if you go to Jake dunlap.com, you know, definitely take a listen, that’s a little bit different side of me, where you get to hear me not talking as much and talking to some pretty amazing people CEO of hint water. Neil Patel’s coming up. So it’s kind of a fun outlet for me now.

 

Scott D Clary  56:21

Awesome. And do you have any socials, you want to drop?

 

Jake Dunlap  56:24

Dead simple for slash Jake Dunlap? And then I think yeah, go check out YouTube. I’m really proud of like, the new stuff that we’re doing out on YouTube. So definitely go check out YouTube and check out the website Jake Dunlap calm, and, you know, you can get a lot of the stuff from that.

 

Scott D Clary  56:38

Awesome. Okay, so let’s do some rapid fire. So biggest challenge that you’ve overcome in your career? What was it? And how do you overcome it?

 

Jake Dunlap  56:47

I think I’m in the middle of it, meaning it’s the transition from being a part x excellent at a discipline to becoming a CEO, and how that changes, what it means what success looks like. So I think I’m actually in one of my most difficult pieces, I’ve you know, hiring in an exec team, and scaling my own company. And what it takes to be a CEO is a different set of skills than what it takes to be a successful head of sales or head of marketing.

 

Scott D Clary  57:16

How do you how do you because you’ve done a couple pivots, right? You’ve done you’ve done pivot into sales leadership, then you’ve pivoted into, like running the agency. And now you’re pivoting into probably taking a step back and agency and making yourself a little bit redundant, so that other people step in. So what what’s your what’s your strategy for actually tackling this? Because I think a lot of people try this and fail miserably. How many people start agencies after they’ve been an executive for how many years and just totally screw it up? Right? So what do you do?

 

Jake Dunlap  57:45

You don’t do step one, don’t put people in positions that they’re not ready for, you might think you want to give people an at bat. But you know, you also want to set people up for success. I think that’s a mistake that I’ve made quite a few times, is, you know, meeting people with where they’re at, and giving them you know, giving them a lot of opportunity, but also not putting them in over their head. And I think, you know, I’ve done that quite a bit. And I think my big learning has been, you know, hire for experience at times. You know, I think it’s just like the that running headfirst, I want to develop people and I want them to grow. And I think what I’m realizing now it’s that, you know, hiring for experience, Wolf, man, you don’t have to explain. It’s like, no, no, I’ve done this eight times, you’re like, oh, so I think hiring for experience has been one of my biggest recent learnings, not that I still don’t have people that are in leadership roles that, you know, kind of grew into them. But I think as you scale, you need people and I made this mistake. It’s actually interesting, man, I’ve never thought about it this, I did this exact same. I made the exact same mistake at Glassdoor where my first five managers I had hired from within one of them, a couple of them had like been managers, but then they didn’t have any, like, experienced other leaders other than me. And so, you know, they, they leaned on me, and I couldn’t give them as much coaching whereas if I hired some more experienced leaders early on, maybe they could help them. So I think the concept of like, you know, hiring for potential is okay, but there’s a time when you need to hire for experience too. And, and that’s okay, too.

 

Scott D Clary  59:12

If you had to choose one person, there’s probably been many who was incredibly impactful in your life. Who was that person? And what did they teach you?

 

Jake Dunlap  59:22

I’m gonna pick Gary Vee. And I remember when I first heard him talk, it was in 2018. It’s actually right when I when I started, and I didn’t like I listened to back in like 2012 or something. I wasn’t a big fan, but just positivity. Positivity always wins. And, you know, don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and tune out the haters. You know, I had a lot of people come up to me, I remember in 2019 Really 2019 20 You know, after I’d been kind of at doing my own thing for you know, on LinkedIn and other social for a bit and like, Jake, when you started doing that, like I was kind of like, who’s Jake Dunlap? Was he trying to do this and like, you know, I can feel it I can feel that hate. Like, but I think Gary’s outlook when you really follow him, I feel like is truly a very I don’t know man like very not normal outlook on life and positivity in a game. I think it gave me a lot of courage, candidly to start to do something my on my own in terms of building my own brand, but and knowing that I was doing it from a place of altruist, like altruistically and not from a place of bragging because going back pulling this whole question full circle, a whole interview full circle growing up in the Midwest, you know, you’re told, Don’t brag about yourself, you don’t talk about yourself. And I think he really gave me the courage say, Well, I’m not talking about myself. I’m just sharing my experiences. And so I’ll give Gary Vee a shout out.

 

Scott D Clary  1:00:48

Good. I like that. Okay, so a book or podcasts or audible or some resource that you’d recommend people go check out that you’ve liked?

 

Jake Dunlap  1:00:58

Well, there’s, there’s actually a really good book that I’ve read literally just finished it for the second time called Five Dysfunctions of a Team. And I think one of the biggest issues that we have is organizations actually, same guy wrote a book or his other book, I think it’s that data meetings or meetings. I can’t remember this is right now we are we are having more meetings than ever before. Do you feel that way?

 

Scott D Clary  1:01:19

Do you feel like you and I think I actually have that I think I actually

 

Jake Dunlap  1:01:21

have that books, five dysfunctions, and I actually

 

Scott D Clary  1:01:24

think I have it somewhere but I can’t find it. Now. I just looking

 

Jake Dunlap  1:01:28

at Patrick Patrick Patrick Lynn Coneys his name?

 

Scott D Clary  1:01:31

Yeah, no, I that’s a good book. Yeah, no, I do. We’re having more meetings than ever. Man. It is. It is our next level, how many meetings I have any god? The answer’s no, though. They are not. They

 

Jake Dunlap  1:01:42

suck. And so for me what I’m really interested with my company right now. How do we become world class at running meetings? How do we make sure our agendas, we’re not wasting time people are prepared? How do we let people create space to become prepared to come prepared? This is at all levels. So five dysfunctions and his other book, I think it’s called death to meetings. Just let’s Patrick Lind Kony. I’ve just been kind of absorbing these books, because I’m really focused on how do we get better at meetings and do meetings the right way?

 

Scott D Clary  1:02:14

I think that’s probably that’s probably the been the biggest, the biggest issue with working remotely, it’s that a conversation that would normally happen in the hall or in the in an office, a quick five minute conversation turns into a 45 minute catch up on everything that’s happening in your life. That’s and, man, it just, it is a time suck and a productivity killer. And that stuff in the in the short term in the micro doesn’t actually it doesn’t feel like it’s kind of annoying. But you think about how many hours you lose, and then you’re burnt out and you’re working on weekends, or you’re working after five, or you’re taking time away from your family or your things are falling through the cracks? Like it’s a big deal. It’s a huge deal. I think that’s actually that’s a smart recommendation, because I think that impacts people more than they realize it impacts people,

 

Jake Dunlap  1:02:57

for sure. Okay,

 

Scott D Clary  1:02:59

if you could tell your 20 year old self one thing, what would it be

 

Jake Dunlap  1:03:07

just thinking of myself at 20. You know, have a little bit more vision on where you’re trying to go. And again, at 20, I was not a great student in undergrad, I stepped it up at the very end, and I got my MBA. But I think at 20. I didn’t have a lot of role models. And I think that’s something I could have maybe focused and spent more time on, I was working a lot. But you know, just having a little bit more foresight into what I wanted to do to make smarter choices about school. And like, as opposed to just going down a path that, you know, I think a lot of people at 20 think they’re supposed to go down.

 

Scott D Clary  1:03:47

Smart. And last question, what does success mean to you?

 

Jake Dunlap  1:03:51

Success for me right now is defined on by how repeatable Am I making things in my life and building routine throughout my life personal and professional. So to me success is like if I’ve got a routine where my company is in a solid operating rhythm, my family’s in a solid operating rhythm. I’m one of those guys who fights routine. I like spontaneity. And I’ve just realized that that actually causes a lot more heartburn. And so I think I’m trying to live a more disciplined life and to me I think the more discipline that I become, the more successful I’ll be both professionally and personally.