Paradox Of Expectations

Speaker 0: about your new book, the paradox of expectations.

Speaker 1: sure. yeah. i mean, the book is obviously inspired by the experience i had building and selling the business and, you know, real realizing how much of my own experience and my own knowledge as an anthropologist really played a role in helping me tap into sort of this not so logical side of the marketplace, what i call the cultural dynamics. so paradox of expectation is really inspired by that, but it covers two important aspects. one is, you know, i meet so many people who talk themselves out of things. and a large part of that is because the world places expectations on us, and we don't realize how often those expectations actually reshape our own internal desires. a great example of this is, why does every founder believe they need to go to a vc? because that's what's told of them. and, you know, you look at every start up publication, they celebrate fundraising as if these companies have gone and gotten a hundred clients. the world is upside down. meanwhile, there's hardly any articles about companies doing well, companies being profitable, companies having amazing impact on other companies on their customers. very little about that. all the coverage is also and so raised four million in series a. and so the paradox of expectation really teaches you what i call the five movements, the five ways in which you can, a, recognize how the world is shaping your own ideas of what is success as an entrepreneur. and it's really a book for anybody who either wants to get into entrepreneurship, a side hustle, or they wanna dive full time into the field. and it's really about leveraging these five steps, these five movements in order to do exactly that, recognize what those tension points are, figure out how to leverage that to create a safe space for you to experiment like that dominique brown story i was sharing with you, build initial credibility, then expand on that credibility to scale and, you know, build a sustainable resilient business. i talk about resiliency a lot because to me, a resilient business is one that can stand on it on its two feet, doesn't necessarily need outside funding to survive. and then if you go get funding, it's for the right reasons exactly as what you were alluding to earlier. so that's really what the book is about, and, you know, i'm i'm working with a fantastic publisher. it's gonna be out in twenty twenty six. i'm doing a lot of research and sort of deep into the writing process at the moment. so, and, you know, i will also share, you know, some initial chapters with, other entrepreneurs to get feedback along the way as well. so it's it's a really rewarding experience going through this now post exit.

Speaker 0: adrian, great question about mvp versus msp. we'll get to that. i just wanna finish breaking down this conversation. how does cultural anthropology intersect with sales, and how has the unique perspective help you uncover hidden buyer motivations?

Speaker 1: yeah. so, i mean, there are couple of things, and and a few of those things we talked about already with this idea of expectations. the biggest thing i think that, anthropology teaches you is to understand sort of what we call the hidden requirements behind anything. right? so, and and there's many things that impact how you go to market and how you sell. and i'll give you some very tangible examples. what does a classic salesperson do in b two b sales? they hop on, and they start by saying, thank you so much for making the time, dear customer. every little thing you say and do implies something. it tells the prospect something about you. so what happens when you thank the prospect for making time? you have straightaway told them that their time is more valuable than yours. so the way anthropology impacted us is that we you know, anthropology is about the study of language. so we distilled down to what language we need to use in a sales call that allows us to maintain authority, credibility, allows us to, make sure that we're on equal footing with the prospect, maintain control over the narrative. you know, i'll give you another example of this. one of the common ways in which people lose control is they talk about features and benefits. oh my god. how many calls have we all been on where there's a fifty minute discussion of features and benefits? right? very little discussion of expectations and how we can help meet those expectations. so, you know, we had this mantra where if we had a thirty minute call, twenty minutes of it would be about expectations. ten minutes of it would be about the technology and how it can help meet it. and once you've built credibility and authority with the prospect, call two, call three, that equation, that ratio can change. that's okay. but you first need to do the work to build authority and credibility. and these kinds of nuanced, you know, ideas, we pulled it apart so much that every salesperson had to use the exact same language, exact same you know, almost i mean, we are all used to scripts, but not necessarily a script, but there was a way we had to introduce ourselves. there was a way we had to conduct ourselves. there was a way we had to look on the call. every little thing we had deconstructed. and it all made a huge difference because our cost of acquisition was so freaking low. you know? we were at, five million arr. we had one salesperson. nowadays, you look at a start up at one million arr, they'll have seven salespeople and a head of sales that they've just hired out of salesforce dot com. you know what i mean? so i think a lot of this really helps in terms of managing costs and really maximizing throughput.