before spamming your prospects again ....a few questions that will change everything 1. what do i actually know about this human?beyond their title and the fact that they “just raised.” what do they care about? what are they trying to build? people leave clues in what they write, share and spend their time doing. go look.what are they personally responsible for delivering? “growing revenue” is a guess. hiring twelve reps before january or getting a project approved is something you can work with. learn enough to understand what a good week looks like for them. 2. what could i do for them before asking for anything? make the brief. find the opportunity. introduce the person. give them something they can use even if they never buy from you. this question forces me to think harder than “how do i get a meeting? 3. ”how could i make it worth noticing? a useful idea can arrive as a boring email, a ridiculous video or a tiny shovel in a beautiful box. the delivery should make sense for this particular person ... and give them a reason to stop what they’re doing. 4. am i willing to actually do it? this is where i catch myself. i love the idea until it requires my face on camera or a trip to the post office.

if you reject other people before they can reject you... this post is for you.. Zain built a company that exited for $780 million. he says going back to founder-led sales is “humiliating” and he’d rather be coding... humiliating.... but why ... why humiliating? because we’re all thinking ... “who the hell are you to approve or reject me!” i’ve felt exactly this in maybe a thousand tiny moments in my career ... for some reason it’s worse with investors. there’s this framing of “i need your money and you know it” and they act like it. or maybe that’s just my own inner dialogue. because i do need their money. that voice isn’t trying to hurt me. it’s a part of me trying to keep me from getting hurt. but, so now when it shows up i try to notice it instead of believing it. that’s the whole move. it’s not confidence it's...... *awareness* it’s recognizing the voice is mine, not theirs. i’ve got investor calls this week. i'm sure it'll show up again.

sellers and gtm ....left or right ?

the next big thing in sales is a fucking jar of jam. blackberry habanero. a 1980s mullet on the label. we’re selling a small batch to help fund earl jam: a startup helping humans win dream accounts without AI spam cannons. selling jam to kill spam. who wants a jar? ⚡

better than ezra accidentally wrote a b2b sales play 30 years ago..... it’s called GOOD. and all it costs you is a few minutes .. the idea is almost stupidly simple. instead of telling a prospect how great they are, go find somebody else who already did. a customer quote. a LI endorsement. an old comment. a weird reddit mention. a podcast shoutout. a review they may never have seen. then turn it into something worth keeping and send it to them with a handwritten note: “found this in the wild and thought you should have it.” that’s it. no fake personalization. no tortured segue. no “just circling back.” just a tiny moment of recognition that proves you paid attention. i’m getting more convinced that the best sales plays don’t start with your product. they start with the human. anyway … steal this one. if you run it, tell me what happens. good. ⚡

lola and i are back in motion...building in public #001! 💁🏼‍♂️ after sitting a little too idle for the last 8 months, i’m finally back in the arena building earl jam in a real way again. and if i’m being honest, getting initial interest is always the hardest part. not because the work is unclear, but because it is so easy to look sideways, compare yourself to people who seem to have momentum, and start acting like you need some brilliant, extravagant master plan just to deserve a little traction. the best thing i’m doing right now is putting the blinders on and chunking way, way down. not 1,000 users. not a huge launch. not some big dramatic growth story. my goal right now is incredibly simple: get 2 more awesome-fit founders / sellers into our queue for the closed beta in the next couple of weeks. that’s it. nothing brilliant. nothing fancy. just connecting with people i genuinely think can benefit from what we’re building and inviting them to test it and feel it for themselves. so far, 14 of the 21 seats are taken. and honestly, every single one feels like a win to me. for us, obviously. but also for them. because i really believe the human, social, fun elements we’re building into earl jam need to exist. they need to be born. the future probably gets more automated from here. that part feels inevitable. which is exactly why i think the human layer matters more. >>>>the humans are the moat<<<<< anyway ... back in action. grateful for the 14. excited to meet the next 2. if you’re a founder or seller and this sounds like your kind of thing, link in comments 💁🏼‍♂️

builders...DISQUALIFYING bad fit customers over optimizing for every sheckle is maybe the single most important thing you can do in the early days. just say NO ..especially when your gut says "NO" 🤌🏽

having a blast creating experiential b2b sales plays..here's one you can steal but lmk how it works! this one is called wish you were here. (Incubus inspo) the idea is simple: find a future your prospect has already told the world they want. maybe it’s a market they want to enter, a conference they want to speak at, a customer they’d kill to land, or a place they’ve talked about expanding into. then make that future feel real. send them a beautiful postcard from that place or moment with a handwritten note from the future, almost like it already happened. no fake personalization. no “saw your recent post.” no tortured segue into your product. just show them you were paying enough attention to notice where they actually want to go. then follow up with something simple like, “hope your postcard made it :)” that’s it. i’m becoming pretty obsessed with this idea that great selling is less about convincing people to care and more about understanding what they already care about deeply enough to meet them there. anyway... steal this one. and seriously, if you run it, tell me what happens.

one of my favorite sales tools right now is blink-182....yes, the band. 🤟🏽 seriously. most outbound is getting worse, not better, because everyone is using the same tools to chase the same obvious “signals” and send the same fake-personalized garbage. earl jam is built on a very different idea. the move is not another clever email. sometimes the move is noticing one small human thing the other person actually cares about ... a song, a band, a weird obsession, a little piece of identity ... and using that to start a real conversation. that’s what this play is. all the small things. earl spots an artist, song, or band the prospect clearly loves. then it gives you a few angles. you pick one. in this version, you grab a spotify gift card, print the song cover art, add a handwritten note, and ship it in your branded box. then once you connect, you send a simple message: “awesome to connect, [name] ... sent something over to your office 👀” that’s it. no 14-step sequence. no ai slop pretending to care. no “just bubbling this to the top of your inbox.” just one thoughtful move based on something human. because great selling isn’t convincing someone to care. it’s figuring out what they already care about ... and meeting them there. ✌

wait. you’re telling me i give it the dream accounts i want to sell to.. and every morning it finds the 12 people i should actually care about + gives me a completely different play to get each one’s attention? and i’m not sending another fucking automated sequence? jam.earl.live ok. this is much more my speed.

if GTM / selling has felt a little lonely, AI pilled, repetitive or heavier than it should lately… i wanna talk to you..... in sales health alliance’s 2024 survey of 500+ sellers + leaders: 70% said they were struggling with their mental health. 82% were stressed or highly stressed. 69% were having trouble sleeping. and this matters.... poorer mental health is associated with worse sales performance....less energy, confidence and consistency. i don’t think the answer is more pressure or more automation. i think part of the answer is better people around you. better prospects. more creative moves. more fun. that’s a big part of why I’m building ⚡️earl jam. If selling has felt a little too isolated or mundane lately, DM me. I’d love to talk. ps check out link in comments :)

wanna kill some AI SDR's? 🤡 come play the earl jam ai sdr shooting gallery.... then stick around for a one-day sales coworking jam in Austin, TX Oct 14th. bring the deal that’s stuck. the prospect ghosting you. the campaign that’s going nowhere. we’ll coach it, challenge it, and dare you to do something a little unhinged about it.... live. 🤘

As Satya put it, without human direction you have compute “running in circles.” but is this true in 2-5 years ?