Hey, everybody, this is Stella

Hefty and this is heating Shah. And today, on the startup chat, Stelly is prodding me to talk about a tweet. And this tweet was talking about how sales and marketing is a grind.

You like talking about more than just sales and market. We just want a bullshit and chat about business and life. Hopefully, while we're doing that, provide a lot of value to the best business for people trying to get shit way. Don't want to give you feedback.

That's bullshit. You want you to do your best and you have to do the same thing over and over and over again. And you might even quit before you hit gold. So what? Ofsted it spur for you?

Well, first, let me actually read the tweet.

Yeah, go for it. I'd probably

butchered it. So the most difficult part of sales and marketing is getting used to the grind during the same set of things over and over and over again, sometimes with such mediocre results that you think about giving up right before striking gold. So I like that tweet because I think there's there's a kernel of truth in there but this also there parts of me that instantly recognize the truth in this on my truth in this. But there's also part of me that want to disagree. And then there's a immediate question that I have once in a while when you tweet, which is what prompted this like I literally go, huh? I wonder what prompted this? Probably something interesting. Yeah, I have to remember to ask him. Ask him next time I talk to him. So let's start the episode with that. I'll tell you what I think about this, but first would meet you. Tweet us. What prompted the street this fought?

Yeah, I think Especially what sales and marketing people look for sort of the silver bullet. And, you know, the silver bullet is like the one thing you can do, and everything felt taken care of what I've noticed for sales and marketing. It's not that, And so what prompted? It is like nothing like super in particular one event or anything like that. But I was just thinking why, why a lot of people have a hard time with sales and market, while let's say within cheery for design or even product they might not have as hard of a time. And one of the reasons that I sort of one conclusion I came to is like you're doing the same thing over and over it. When it comes to some of these other areas, like engineering or product, or designed the repetition and not the same, you're not necessarily doing the same thing over and over again and likely seeing mediocre results.

You have, ah, tangible like feeling of progress and mo mentum that can happen in those scenarios while its sales and marketing. I don't want to say it's hit or miss, but especially earlier on when you're trying to sell something, or even like market A product or service. The amount of grind is there, and then when something works, the next thing you have to do is just grind some more on the same thing. So even when it works, you're just doing more of the same. It just happened to work that time and you think you could make it work more whether it's like closing a deal because you're you change your pitch all of a sudden because you learn over many other conversations that you need to change your pitch or with marketing where you like, do a lot of, like, usually just doing a bunch of experiments early on to figure out what channels. But things were and then,

you know, and that's like a grind itself. But then, when you actually figure something out that works, get some guess what to do more of it. Same grind. You just do more of whatever ended up working. And it's not to say that no creativity to these things. It's not to say any of that. It's more about what feelings people go through it and what what motions they have to go through in order to be successful in those areas and also feel like they're successful and feel like they're making progress. And, you know, the whole thought on sales and marketing to me is like it's a grind. It's like the same thing over and over and over again, and you have to kind of get used to that and realize that like you're gonna have a outcome and things are getting work. But if you stop,

they will, Yeah, In that sense, it's sort of like maybe a good metaphor is Ah, working out right. Like going to the gym working out. Um, it's not the type of thing that you can do full while reach mastery in and then can stop. Because now the result into accomplished forever yours, you know? Yep. It's just like your body is always gonna be super fit and super muscular for the rest of your life. Because you worked out for five years really hard, right? You have to do your entire life, you know, if you want to maintain those results.

So let's do this. I'll share something about kind of how I dealt with the grind and sales, because that's kind of my world. And then maybe you on the marketing side, like, what made you or what is making you able to stay on the grind? Especially the repetitive side of marketing for such a long time, where many people would have stopped at some point on all share the same thing on my end on sales.

You know, first guy?

Yeah, I think in sales. So some people that have bean embracing the grind of selling for long period of time, the reason why some people can succeed with that and kind of sustained with it is that they love the chase like they love. You know, the feeling off, chasing a deal, the feeling of direct accomplishment, of closing a deal and acquiring a customer, convincing somebody to purchase something that was never me. I said that never worked like I also like it. But it's not something that fuels me in a way that I could do this because I just love the chase. What fueled me would allow me to grind. I've done like, I don't know, I've done an insane amount off selling in my life the amount of co calls I have made in the amount of cold emails a lot of deals I've closed are astronomical, right in the reason why I was always able to do it.

I mean, one is definitely that I was always passionate about what I was trying to accomplish, but I always thought about one thing differently than many other sales people, which is that to most salespeople, the person that's involved in the deal is secondary right there, trying to get the deal. The deal is at the forefront, like we're trying to get Corporation X to buy this product and to sign this contract and to bring in this amount of revenue, that's at the very forefront. And then we have maybe four people Mary, Bob, James and Joe. And they're all decision makers in this. So I have to, like, convince all these humans and collaborate with them and get them to make corporation X y z purchase.

I always thought about these people, and I was thinking, Well, you know, sales gives me this unique opportunity to influence people, hopefully create value in their life, but also to get them to get to know them really well. And I have to do, is is when I'm doing all these cold calls when I'm closing all these deals is to pick winners to pick people that I'm like, Wow, this person is actually really cool. I'm really connecting with this person. I think this person is very smart. I think this place is gonna go far into really interesting things in life. And then I found a new person to invest in to build a relationship with that could serve me for the next 30 years. All right,

so then if if what I'm doing is repetitive in the sense that I'm just working on deals, cold, calling cocoa and trying to close. There's a secondary program that is running for me, which is this is a great opportunity for me to get to know people in a really unique environment and then to build friendships and relationships that are everlasting and that will pay lots of lots of dividends this person might purchase for me for the next 20 years. You know, as they progress in their career, I'm always gonna have them. Court acquitted my Rolex. I'm always gonna be able to present the new products new features have them by. Maybe they're coming off from the opportunity. Give me referrals. So where thinking that way allowed me to not feel like the moment that my quarters over and I close the deal. That work is wiped off and it's worthless because what was still there were the people that I've met in the relationship that I built with him, and that was compounding, and that helped me a tremendous amount.

And then the other one is, I think, in that way works similar, just like I know there's a certain discipline to know that you need to be willing to do some unpleasant things if you want great results and eventually you fall in love with that feeling. With the feeling off cornucopia grind is is a you know, a bittersweet pain where you like this just at the gym, like when you do a great workout and usually pushes your to a certain point of exhaustion or discomfort. And in the beginning and for most people assume that discomfort is a signal to stop, and it's just negative. But once you fall in love with it, that discomfort is a positive signal. It's something you get addicted to it something you know. This means growth, and it feels great and very fulfilling. And it's the same thing. It has been the same thing for me on the sales side of things, especially with the kind of more repetitive

things. Yeah, when it comes to marking its like, the majority of it is really about the success you find and knowing that you will find exhausted. You just keep experimenting and keep going and having that sort of belief. And the reason I say that is because the difference would I think sales and marketing is this. So you do sales, and it feels like you have to focus on the inputs and the number of inputs that you're doing, UH, number cold call number of emails sent etcetera, and then obviously there's replies them in the next step. A number of next steps e book With marketing, it's a little bit different. You have the ability to see some kind of data or information, usually at a faster pace, usually not always then sale. So there's only so many calls you could make it a day.

That's a little bit different, mark anywhere there's, I mean, depending on what channel, what tactic you're using. There's a lot more to the sort of grind where you do get some kind of measurable results a little bit faster, potentially where it's like, Oh, you know, you post somewhere and you get some traffic to your website, for example. Okay, you got some traffic that's like actually not not a bad thing may be not, but now you know you know something that can help you do the next step. We just want, like in a day,

for example, mullet sales. I don't think you could know anything in a day it just because he sent a bunch of emails or did a bunch of cold calls. Maybe you'll know whether that first evil got any responses or not and stuff like that. So there is some learning there, but I think with marketing, you configure out much faster whether you should move on or there's something there to continue to me, like the way I get through it on marketing is just remembering and looking at what I do know and what output I've gotten from what I've done, I think it's sales. You could do the same, but again with marketing. And it's quite a bit easier because you can measure things and these air, typically more. There's more volume to those things that you measure and then, you know, like the way I get through the grind on both areas actually is.

By focusing on knowing that basically focusing on integration and improved and taking whatever I had learned and applying it toe whatever I do next, and for both of these sort of areas of a business, I think it it is the copy, the writing, the creative side of it, you know, in imagery. In the case of marketing, a lot of the time, it's all those types of things that I get excited about tweaking or changing even the same with like a sales email in trying to figure out the best way to say it and send the email and see what happens. And then, you know, if nothing happens, great something was wrong, are not wrong. I just didn't you know there's there's a better way, and they're trying to figure out that better way. So a lot of the motivation for me comes from the fact that I could improve it or I can change it and that in treating everything that's happening as a learning and like I said, I think in marketing might be a little bit easier.

I love that went whenever I think about the grind, I have to think about wrestling this grade. Wrestlers that make the transition into MM a and become kind of mixed martial artists and compete and some of these guys, one of the big difference between if the background is wrestling and versus if the background is boxing or kickboxing or any other kind of march fired. One of the distinct differences is that wrestlers are just better, it embracing the grind that just much tougher and often times they can break their opponents just by the will, or how far they're willing to go in terms of how hard they make the fight or how uncomfortable they make it for both. And so, whenever I hear the grind, I see kind of wrestling practice rooms where people shouting to each other to embrace the grind of like these are just tougher. People make other very tough people break. I don't know. I think it's an interesting topic. I think that obviously, just like everything else in life, I think there's a you can overplayed in both directions there. People that probably advocated too much embrace much just the repetitive hard work.

More hours just pushed through everything with Shia will and force. And then there's the country movement that's also extreme. That's like, No, you never need force. You never need Will. You never need to push. You never need to grind. All you need to do is to be smarter than everybody else and find a shortcut and relax and be peaceful and magically. Everything great will come to you because you you did in this of soft, smart way. And both of them are too one dimensional approaches that are over the idealistic might work for some people, but for most they won't truth. Oftentimes, it's somewhere in the messy middle of both so fascinating topic. I love that. We got to talk a bit about the grind on the subject. All right, I think this is it for us for this episodes or he recent training.