The Sales Hacker Podcast
The Sales Hacker Podcast

Episode · 5 months ago

166. Announcing Pavilion w/ Sam Jacobs



What You’ll Learn

  1. Revenue Collective is Pavilion now!
  2. How Revenue Collective first began
  3. Elminiating antagonists and protagonists in favor of self-actualization
  4. Why paid communities are superior to free communities
  5. The three codes of conduct for Pavilion members
  6. Dos and don’ts for community building

Show Agenda and Timestamps

  1. Show Introduction [00:10]
  2. Announcing Pavilion [3:57]
  7. Sam’s Corner [44:30]

One two one: Three: Three: Everybody at Sam Jacobs, welcome to theSales Hacker podcast today is a unique show and it's a unique show because I'mthe guest. We will explain why, in the episode directly but Max Al Cheer, mygood friend the founder of sales hacker is the person that interviews me and wetalk about the announcements that we have today, first and foremost of whichis that my company revenue, collective, is becoming a new company. It's calledPavilion and we talk about what that means, and why- and I hope it's aninteresting conversation if it's not feel free to skip to the next episode,but I enjoyed it and I'm so grateful he sales hacker team that they gave me theopportunity to sort of explain everything that we're announcing. Ifyou were listening to this in the morning, eleven am Eastern. We have ourtransform two thousand and twenty one event, which is where we'll beannouncing a bunch of other stuff which you were about to hear in the episode.So. But the big news today is that revenue collective is now pavilion andwe've got a bunch. Many many other announcements that are related to that.Now before we get to that conversation, we have three sponsors. The first isout reach outreach, as you know, has been a long time sponsor this podcast.They just launched a new way to learn. Oure UN out reaches the place to learnhow out each does out reach learn how the team follows up with every lead andrecord time, learn how they turn leads from virtual events into revenue. Youcan also see how outrage runs account base plays managers raps in so muchmore, using a very on sales, engaging platform. Everything is backed by datapulls from outrage processes in the customer base when you're done you'llbe able to do it as well as they do had to outreach that io forward slash onoutrage to see what they've got going on. The podcast is also sponsored by mycompany Pavilion. Formerly revenue. Collective pavilion is the key togetting more out of your career. Our private membership connects you withthe network of thousands of like minded peers and resources where you can tapinto leadership, opportunities, training, mentorship and other servicesmade for high growth leaders like youth with a pavilion membership. You'llbuild deep connections with peers access, a full suite of training, acertification programs all included a membership and unlock over a hundreddifferent job opportunities. All in one place unlock your professionalpotential with a pavilion membership go to join Pavilion Com, that's the newwebsite, join Pavilion Com and, finally, linked in today's virtual sallingenvironment demands a new kind of approach, one that prioritize the buyerabove all else, as the world's largest professional network, with over sevenhundred and twenty two million members Linkin as the only place where buyersand sellers connect share and drive success for each other every day findnew ways to connect with your buyers virtually with linked in salesnavigator. You can learn more or request a free demo at business, dot,link, oncome Ford sales, dash solutions and without further ado, its listen. Myconversation with Max altura everybody at Sam Jacobs, welcome to theSales Hacker podcast today. We've got a very special episode for you and that'sbecause we've got my friend Max Alt Shuler on the line Max is the founderof sales. Hacker he's also the general partner of GT Fund. He used to be theVP of marketing an outrage and still does a lot of work without reach,although he'll educate us on what capacity, but the real thing is thatI'm the guest today, not the person asking the questions so Max, introduceyourself, I suppose, yeah thanks for having me on on your show today, orshould I say thanks for having me having you on what my so today I don'teven know the ring of the the ring around the rosy were playing here, butit is on our privilege to have you on the show good friend, old friend, hereyou were an early sales taker supporter when you were at live street to it was,and we used to live stream. You know somewhere our events and stuff likethat. So appreciate your support over the years, and now I get to support youtell us why you were on the show cow why you were the guest and I am thehost I'm the guest, because we've got some big announcements at my company.The thing I do during the day my day,...

...job as they say at revenue, collectivewe've got some big announcements were making those announcements and Ifinagled through a complex negotiation with you and the team at sales hackeran opportunity where I could basically be the guest for once and not just bethe interviewer. I love it. I love it. So, let's not keep people waiting. Arewe announcing all right so we're announcing a lot? The first is that, asof today June, twenty second, the company revenue collective, will nolonger be called revenue collective. Instead, we will be called Pavilion asa consequence of being called pavilion. We are expanding our original mission,which was to help our members who were all sales, marketing and customersuccess executives. Meeting revenue, revenue, members, revenue people helpthose people in not going to achieve their professional potential. We're nowgoing to do that for essentially any any operating professional any personat a companyi that wants to achieve their career goals. We want to enablethem to do that, and so with pavilion were also announcing. A new Financepavilion. All of the south communities will be pavilions will have a salespavilion, a marketing pavilion and we will have pavilions for everyfunctional area. As part of that, we're announcing the acquisition of twocommunities to enhance the pavilion membership. One of them is a communitycalled Fin. OPS focused on finance and operations professionals. The other isa community that will power. Our New pavilion focused on people in theirfirst five years of work, so we're actually acquiring S. DR defenders andthe five co founders there and they are going to serve as the atomic unit fromwhich our new pavilion analyst community emerges. So pavilions goingto have three layers of seniority, there's going to be an analystcommunity for people in their first five years of work and associatecommunity for people from five years to VP and an executive community forpeople that are vpon above. We are also announcing that we've officiallycrossed five thousand members. We are also announcing that, in addition tocro school revooma school frontline manager, school revenue, GrothArchitecture school we are also creating and including in membership.Two new schools, chief customer officer, School Chief Marketing Officer Schoolthat will launch in the fall along with Siargao Semester, as well as a falsesemester, a full fall semester for revenue operations, that's also new andthen finally, to wrap it all up that we've raised twenty five milliondollars with a round led by elephant ventures, which is a boutique vic basedin New York City in Boston and with participation from none other than G TM fund, of which many LPS are revene, lective members. So now many revenue,collective members- are also investors in pavilion. The new entity, as aconsequence of you Max at GT, fund investing in Pavilion. So that's a lotthere's a lot of stuff there. That is a lot. Congratulations, a whole lot ofstuff to unpack and hopefully we'll get into the bulk of it on this show heretoday, and I also want to backtrack. I want to get to know you know howrevenue collected was started. You know if this was the intention all along or if you'vekind of figured out the path, so we're going to get into a lot of this but wow.That is pretty incredible, so much to announce here and some incrediblechanges you built at an amazing organization, and we are proud tosupport here at GT funds up without any delay. Let's get into it. I want to goway back to the beginning. How did the revenue collective get started? It's agreat question now what Leoville or the Revenue Co? Well you! You know we forthis conversation we can toggle, but then you know it going forward. It'llbe pavilion. So pavilion was revenue collective as of five minutes ago. Howdid that that all get started? It really got started at live stream andaxel. So this is like, I guess, two...

...thousand a D, Thirteen, two thousandand fourteen you were there Adam Liebman. Was There Katie Sullivan fromYelp? Was There Brimacott? was there? Basically, I started putting dinnerstogether for sales leaders in New York really to get to know each other andthen also because we were all encountering different challenges andobstacles in the course of doing our jobs, and I thought that we needed tolearn from each other, and so it was originally a free community. It was meand like fifteen to twenty other people that would meet regularly for andregularly I mean like once a quarter for a dinner where we'd all go Dutch,and then it was a bunch of people asking emails on an email string whereeverybody was in the two line, and so the shortest answer to your originalquestion, which is, did I envision? All of this happening is no. I didn't. Ireally started it as a means of bringing people together. Just in NewYork. We gave it a name in two thousand and sixteen that's when we officiallycalled it. The New York revenue collective- and that was the name ofthe Google Group and it became a place where select people could answer andask questions based on what was happening in their lives and it stillwasn't a business because it was still free and one of many inflection points happenedon really. When I you know- and I'm actually writing a book about this. Butwhen I got fired from the mews, which was two thousand and seventeen, it wasOctober two thousand and seventeen, and that was a moment at which I decidedthat I had to get off the merry go round. That appeared to be my careerand try and create alternate revenue streams. Basically like at that point.It still wasn't some big world conquering mission. It was just I needto make money in other places than just my day job, because my day, job isincreasingly unstable by every appearance, and so we started chargingdues January first, two thousand and eighteen and that's when it officiallybecame a business and I would say the rest of his history. But again to yourpoint. There's been a number of evolutions and changes until today andtoday it's a very different thing than it was eight years ago. The one thing Iwill say: that's not different is our values and the talking point that I'm usingrecently, which I believe to be honest in a world where you work at a softwarebusiness for a software business, the technology or lines of code, and that'sthe tech we're not a software business. You know I would call us a techingeservices business where I'd O call it something. But for us the technologyare our values, and I don't mean that just to be cheeky, I mean that to besincere, the thing that has been consistent since two thousand andthirteen and fourteen is really the spirit of what we're trying to do,which is we're trying we're not it's not community. For its own sake, it'scommunity to help and support specific human beings achieve their careerobjectives, to help people get where they want to go in their life and those,and I can articulate in greater detail the specific values, but those valueshave been the same and they are still the same, and it's what's amazing isthat you know today with five thousand members, when people join pavilion usedto be revenue collective. They always comment on how helpful and supportiveall the other members are, and, if you think about me as a person that is notpersonally greeting every single person that joins the community, I am notpersonally doing all of the different activities that the team of now thirtyfive people is doing. What is enabling this scale, because we've gone fromtwenty people a few years ago to five thousand people, and the thing that isenabling the scale is the way that we teach people to behave to each other asa consequence of being a member, and that is it's not even our secret sauce,because I'm stating it publicly it's just the thing that I do feel is hardto copy. I think it's hard to compete against those specific values becausewe believe them with so much transparency, incredibility andauthenticity yeah, and I always think for businesses like this there's alwaysa reason for like this being successful...

...correlated to who started the business,and even when I look at a bunch of the sales communities with me and saleshacker and pet Casandia in modern sales prose who just completely geeks outabout all things: Sales and sales technology and metrics, and things likethat and you, your super power or thing that made you kind of special misregard.Is You were four time tech, Cro in New York City? So argument like one of thego to people who has been around the block in tech as a sales leader- andyou know I remember a lot of conversations in you- know, Fourteenfifteen. Sixteen and even seventeen where people are like well, you knowwho should I talk to about negotiating my cup for this company or you know I'mgoing to start doing consulting? Who should I talk to or or whatever whathave you? You were super well network, but you were also well versed in a lotof these things that people needed for their careers, not just for their jobsand when you start to see now in this, you know remote world that we're inthis kind of like transient world that we're in where people work for startupsfor two or three years at milestones, and then you know, especially as asales leader, a marketing leader, what not they get turned out for the personthat could take it from the next stage and you kind of hand the baton off. Youhave to make sure that you're, you know you're able to negotiate the rightthings in your packages when you go to work for a company and you've been achampion for executives versus you know, founders or v CS, and I think thatreally kind of helped solidify the brand, but also made it super authenticfrom the founder of the community and you've essentially scaled yourself.Instead of doing cro classes or what not or cro like mentoring or what notyou know, have classes for it. Instead of giving people one off advice orintroducing them, one by one, you've created a community for it and you'vekind of figured out a way to scale yourself over the different phases ofthe business and especially when it went or from dinners that were all inperson, then into the you know, part in person, part on slack, then coid hiteverything seamlessly translated to online, and I think that's when youknow the business came out with the you know, cro school, and things like that.So it's been really interesting to watch it, but it's also been reallyinteresting to to look at it. From you know my perspective, having seen itreally from the very beginning and say well, there are very few people canstart this from scratch, but Sam makes total sense did a good job on it. I think it wasranks yeah. Thank you, yeah and I I guess yeah I mean to the point oflike, like you said in many ways, the joke that I make to my wife is you know:Pavilion is Sam as a service, it's all of the things that I believe trying tobe placed into a recurring revenue business with Joe Course. I'm also ahuge believer in, and I think that the difference that I see t is one difference is that I always say youknow certain communities. I've even heard you know pete talk about this,like elevating the profession of sales, elevating the profession of Rev ops,and for me that that wasn't why I did this. This isn't for me about elevatinga specific profession, it's about helping individual human beings andthat's why, from the beginning, it was always it's not about like antheoretical construct of what a sales person might be. It's that this personis a VP's and they are negotiating a new job or they are in their job andthey need to know how to do territory design or they need to know how tobuild that. A partner strategy, let's specifically help this person, so thatthey can be better in their job so that they can reduce the risk that they getfired or find a better job or just sleep better at night, and that'sthat's. The thing that gets me out of bed in the morning is not again, it'snot community for its own sake, because the word gets tossed around so muchthese days. There's a point to it. I call it community powered products andservices and the produce and services...

...are all designed with a very specificgoal in mind, which is to help you as a human being get where you want to go inyour life yeah, and you also had a really good story and created amovement. I think you know you had a you were the protagonist and theantagonist was the founders. Who could kick you out at any second andhave no risk whatsoever and got the majority of the equity or the V CS, whoown the majority of the company? But what about the executive, who put theirkind of life and career on the line to go work for a company only to be youknow, fired in nine months or something like that, because the vs changed. Youknow their aggressive goals or something, and I think, a lot of peopleresonated with that story. Like wow, I need to do a better job of building mypackages. When I go to companies or calling the shots, I am an asset. Youreally created a movement, I think with you know the C mos in the Cros at leastto start it. Now it's great to see you going through not only those threetears but into the different functions across the board. What do you call it?Is it? Is it non code roles? Do you have like a name for those functions? I don't knowI mean for me we're going to go into every function where there arecommunity leaders that want to build community in support of peopleachieving their cregols, so we're going to have a product pavilion, we're goingto have an engineering pavilion, we're going to have a CEO Pavilion and you'reright that you know. That's part of the reason why we're changing the name bythe way is because, besides the obvious fact that there's ten million thingscalled blank collective- and you know many of our competitors, you know justcall they just like put a slight modification on then a pend collectiveto you know whatever the name is but beyond that, the exactly your point Maxthat sort of speaks to part of the evolution, which is that I did startoff in kind of like this US versus them mentality and the concept of acollective. For me it doesn't necessarily evoke confrontation orconflict, but it kind of does you know it evokes in celerity in a way, it'slike us against them this. It's this group of people against something.Perhaps it's against the outside world and I've shifted personally and become.Hopefully you know, I would imagine less antagonistic, and so now it's it'sless about like there being an enemy, I don't think founders or investors orreally any function is the antagonist. I think the brand is about personalactualization. You know it's about helping whoever you are achieve,whatever you're trying to achieve and making sure that you have as manyresources as possible to get there. I do think to your point, though, thatyou know we're launching a will launch a CEO pavilion that will sit alongsideour sales pavilion or market in plate. Frankly, one of the reasons is becauseso many revenue, collective members from the old days are now CEOS,including me, and I can rattle off a long list of others. But the pointisn't that CEOS are the antagonist in this equation. The real point is thatthere are no antagonists and that everybody is going to be treatedequally and that they may not be the antagonist but they're also enough toprotect and is this is not a story built around founders or built aroundinvestors. It's built around all of us as human beings coming together andreally that we're coming together. The point of pavilion is that we're comingtogether, because we believe in the essence of a certain way of doingbusiness and that way of doing business is not transactional. The whole pointof what we're trying to do and the reason that we think there could bemultiple pavilions is because the core concept that was revenue collective,isn't about US versus them. It's about this idea that if you help other people-and you have a long term view on what that means- and you don't you don'ttreat them as trans. Actually you give before you get, you look to support,which so many other communities are built around right. Many manycommunities are built on the same concept, which is why we think thatthey're, their great potential part...

...ners, afore US or potential parts ofpavilion. But the core concept is like hey: we can all go further by helpingand supporting each other than we can alone and whatever that means in thatmoment is what it means. But we all agree that, as a member of thiscommunity, this association we're going to be responsive to each other, we'renot going to span or solicit each other and we're going to help each other andsupport each other and whatever way we can as long as it's not directlycompetitive and most of the time it's not, and so that's the foundationalLynch pin that undergirds all of the different things that were building isthat basic idea, and that idea can again it's not specific to any functionand it doesn't have an antagonist. It only has a protagonist in theprotagonist. Is You as a human being and so the world that we envision theworld? I envision increasingly right because to your point like this is anevolution for me personally as well: it's not about like V, C's being thebad guys or girls or CEOS being bad people, nobody's definition, ally a badperson, we're all going to agree within this community within as members ofPavilion, and I can talk about like how the business is specifically designedto enable that. But we're all going to agree that like this is the way that webelieve success is possible, is not just by being cut throat and mercenaryand zero. Some it's by helping and supporting other people as much as wecan and that in so doing, we can further our own personal professionalobjectives, so yeah and I want to learn more about the long term vision and theRoad Map. But I like your sentiment there around this is most over time and I think allcommunities, kind of or in general movements start as maybe one thing and over time, moveinto another. Like can be a good sales force. I mean their whole like rallycry was no software, and that was fifteen years ago. Right. So, likewe're, okay, we'll get it we're pass off, were we everybody knows what thecloud is now, and so you know they have they've, probably gone through three orfour iterations may be the more on that, especially as they acquire acquiredcompanies over the past fifteen twenty years since they've you know, startedlaunch on public, etc, etc. So it's interesting to see you know again frommy point of view. The phases of revenue, collective and ow pavilion tell uswhere it's going. What's the long term vision for the organization, so the long term vision is sort of whatI just mentioned, which is that and again this is me and like I'm always onsome soap box o years ago, was like making sure everybody gets severancebecause I've been fired so many times, but so this so fox is about likeeverybody's experience of the Internet, so we've all been trained to experiencethe Internet a specific way, and that is that and I'm only parroting, youknow the social dilemma or any anybody's main criticism of you know.Platforms like face book, but bottom line is that we experienced theInternet as basically free and in exchange for being free. Ourinformation and our behavior is sold to third parties within the professionalworld. The way that that works is that our information is often sold torecruiters, to str and prospectors and to other advertisers that want to sellus a stuff and, as a consequence, like the way that certain platforms evolvedbecomes about getting as much audience engagement as possible and that'sbecause it's a feature not a bug right, like the point of like gettingengagement on posts and making sure that they are surfaced high in the feedand that you get as many likes as you can, and you have to you know, get asmany comments as you can and to incite, conflict and debate. That's a feature,not a bug of the way that these things are designed because advertisingfundamentally advertising is the business and so to make that businesswork on you as many people as possible. There's a different world, that'spossible, in my opinion, that's a world where it challenges norms. So one ofthe norms is that, like every platform should be free, so our platform, ofcourse, is not free right, so the world that I envision is a world that is noteight hundred million people or a billion people or five billion peopleall on one platform. It might be only a million people or two million people orten million people. So a fraction of these, the largest kind of consumersocial platforms that are out there,...

...but everybody on these platforms willhave done something different because they will be paying and as aconsequence of them paying, they will be customers of this platform, which ispavilion and as a consequence of being a customer and not just audience or auser. They will experience a different level of service and engagement thanthey really have ever experienced around the concept of helping themachieve their professional goals right so the world that I envision is. Let'ssay it's a million people and we're only at five thousand today, so there'sa long way to go, all of whom are paying pavilion members as aconsequence of paying. We can build stuff for them that other people can'tbuild. There will be, you know right now. Every pavilion member gets awelcome, call the minute that they sign up from a human being that welcomesthem to the community and walks them through how to use it. Every member,that's on an annual plan, gets a welcome box with a great book by LatiniCona and a Thermus and a handwritten note from me, and that's just thebeginning of all the things that we want to do for people. We have a careerservices team that helps people find jobs and helps people find talent. Wehave all of the schools that I mentioned at the outset that you talkedabout there all included a membership. All of that is a function of the factthat people are paying. So we take the money that people pay to do s and wereinvest it back into tools and services that they can use to help themget where they want to go, and people again are not used to this, becausewhat we're used to is like something like face book where, like there's nonumber to call, if you have a problem with face book like there's, there's nohelp desk, they don't you're, not the customer right, you're, the user, sothe core will be to treat as many people as want to join and arequalified to join as customers and treat them amazingly well and then thesecond part of it is those values that I talked about. So this is a worldwhere hey we want your money, you know we do want you to be a paying customer,but also all of the people that are members of this thing. This pavilion,this big Global Pavilion, will all have agreed to abide by our Cota conduct inthat code of conduct, as I mentioned, is basically three important tenets.The first is that you believe that, in order to get something, you need togive something first, that the world is better when we all believe in Karmawhen we all invest, in goodness and support and pat and compassion and inhelping other people, and that we don't immediately send them a bill when wehelp them that this is not. This is not transactional. Relationship Building.This is long term investments in helping and supporting other people,because it'll make you feel good as a human being and because it will re downto you in the form of success, it'll just possibly take place over a longerperiod of time than closing the deal right away. So the first most importanttenant of all of these people is that we give before we get. The second isthat, as a consequence of that, you know this great power that we're allgoing to be good to each other means that we're not going to spam each otherright, we're not going to scrape the network and then give it to you, know asales team or a recruiting team and pound people with emails. As a functionof their membership in pavilion, there are other places where that happens,and that's the business model and those places are awesome. But that's not whatwe're going to do. We're not going to use our membership as a means ofdirectly transactional, creating new sales opportunities and selling topeople we're going to sell to people in the long term by being helpful andsupportive and establishing ourselves as experts and as a consequence ofdoing that, we will end up doing more business for our companies. So thesecond rule is no no Direxia ion no unwanted selling, and the third is as aconsequence of all that, because we've agreed to that. You do have to beresponsive, that it means something when another pavilion member reachesout to you and so those three values all baked into the community. Inaddition of the products and services that we build mean that there's adifferent world, that's possible a different world where work is donedifferently, where, yes, it's not eight hundred million people, but a millionpeople still a lot of people and so in New York. You know we've got close to athousand members now that Ar remembers just in sales and marketing and CS so,let's say it's five thousand people. It's ten sand people, so you know Maxthat anywhere. You go you're in Austin you're in Seattle, you're in New York,you're in Bangladesh, you're in doubling it doesn't matter you're inStockholm, you're in Singapore, you're in Sydney, Australia, you're in Tokyo.Wherever you put your feet down,...

...there's a group of people, all of whomhave put their hands in and said we're going to help you we're going tosupport you. Just let us know if you need anything so the minute that youland in a new city like you just moved to Austin you've got a baked in groupof two thousand three thousand people that are willing to help you findtalent will and help. You find a job willing to be find office, space, aninstant ability to push, go on a button and get all of the support that youneed and that's just the membership, in addition to the infrastructure andresources that we are building at h, q, to make sure that you get the training,you need the certification. You need the long term opportunities that youneed et ce, so the big vision is a million people all over the world,working to support each other, believing that you know cut throat.Business is not the only way to succeed and that there's a way to succeed byhelping other people and by being a good person. That's amazing! I meanit's it's a lot to do as a lot. It is a lot to do and my my follow question foryou was like I guess what the hell they need. Twenty five million dollars for,but it does seem like that is a capital intensive and pretty large vision, butbut all serious, Miss Revenue. Collective now pavilion was a profitable business growing quickly.Twenty five million is a large number. You know you've been notoriously kindof against raising money, so this plan just come out of an off side one dayand you were like Holy Shit. We actually need some cash to do this orkind of what was time for this for the race. The impetus for the raise was, Imean we weren't. Looking to your point, you know we were profitable. We grew,you know in two thousand and twenty we grew membership. We're about. I don'tknow, twelve hundred thirteen hundred people at the beginning of two thousandand twenty we were thirty. Seven. Fifty at the end, were five thousand now, sowe've been growing at essentially what I would which would or adventure rates.So we are, I would say we are a candidate, for it depends how you think about ourbusiness. If you, if you think that only software businesses are thingsthat can scale, then you wouldn't we're not a software business, and if youthink that, actually because of no code and because of all the tools that areavailable, that many many businesses now have the profile of a softwarebusiness. Even if they are not explicitly a software business, thenmaybe you're interested so elephant reached out to me. I've been in touchwith them over the past couple of years, because I take frankly every call, andit was just I would do a deal. We would do a deal if it were under the rightterms, but also to your point. It was sort of like the catalyst for me tothink bigger about what might be possible and, of course, we'd nevercontemplated acquisitions before we never contemplated that in that's whenit was sort of like everything kind of happened at once in the sense that theystarted talking about possibly investing. And then my brain opened upto this idea, like this vision that I just described to you. As I said, thosevalues that that I talked about are not they're, not so specific to me and to pavilion they're, actually prettycommon across the people that tend to start communities and the problem withmany. Not that problem. It just depends what you want from them, but but thereality of many communities, especially one that are free, is that it's hard toascribe enterprise value to them, because they don't have revenue or theonly reverend that you have a sponsorship Refino. So there's allthese communities out there that could potentially be very valuable, ifperhaps they were part of something bigger and if that bigger thing sharedthe values that they had when they started their community, and so thatwas sort of like a light ball bever, my head in the middle of these fundraisingconversations of wow there's an opportunity to grow in organically, aswell as organically that there are lots of different people, community leaders,people that have started. You know people like, although we haven'tapproached you, know Pete, but like people like me and you and Pete Kazagi,all of whom might want frankly, both some cash money, but also someoccurrency meaning equity in a global...

...entity that might be worth somethingwhere they could be greater than the sum you know when the whole is greaterthan the some of its parts with all these community leaders, working undera common umbrella have an opportunity to build something that is moremeaningful, perhaps than just doing it on their own. Now not everybody isgoing to want to do that. Many people are going to want to be to remainindependent and that's totally cool and awesome, and many people are going tothink that their community is worth a hundred million dollars. When you know,there's a point of disagreement about that and that's totally cool too, butthere's A. I would imagine a large group of people that are saying youknow I'd love to keep doing this. I want to do this, but I want to do itwith some infrastructure. I want my people to get a welcome call when theysign up, and I want my people to get a welcome box in the mail, and I want mypeople to get a school that they can take. That's related to the topic so,for example, one of my friends- that's a member emailed me a year ago, and slike hey, you know. Obviously cannabis is a huge and growing industry all overthe world, especially in every state where it's legal. So there's this bigburgeoning group of entrepreneurs- and he said I want to you know- should Istart the canibus collective, I said sure do whatever you want. Well now, ayear later I can say hey, why don't you start the Canvas Pavilion and why don'tyou create a pavilion which is basically our word for a sub communityand we can give you all the infrastructure you need. You can stillbe the leader of that Pasilides if you're doing it to make money. It'sprobably not the best way to make quote unquote money, but it is a way to haveinfrastructure around you that you can support that. Can support you and youcan still be the leader of the community. You can be the person at thecenter. You can be the person that connects other people as a consequencemaybe has influence and power. Maybe you'll get visibility on the good jobsand, of course, you'll promote wherever you're working at the time, and thisperson works at a at a Canavas company, of course. So is the equity or cashfrom you O for them yeah, it's both yeah. So there is still some not notthat okay, so you didn't waste any time. You know itis putting this money to work. Tell us about the two communities you'vealready acquired. Is there any more information you can give us in thispodcast about the two that you mentioned over yeah they're, just they're Finot I meanwe, you know we're building out our finance pavilion. We had this thingcalled operations collective. You know to be completely honest. It was not. You know there was a sense of there's asense of vibrancy within revenue, collective that wasn't present andoperations collective and we wanted- and we realized, we needed people thatwere leaders of finance communities and operations communities in order toinject it with some life, and so we approached this community called Finops, which is a couple hundred people. It's run by these two guys, Brianseplied and Peter Nesbit, and again the the pitch that I made just nowresonated it was yeah. We want that. We won't. We don't have time to do this.We d to make this everything it could be. We constantly are debating whetherwe should quit our jobs and do it full time. We decided that we're going tokeep our jobs. It would be really nice to make sure that this thing becamesomething more than just what it is right now, and so we did that and thenwe wanted t to you know we have an aspiration of kind of like not cradleto grave, but from your first day of work as a professional to the day thatyou retire. You know we aspire to have a community for you and we didn't haveone for people early in their careers and, of course, a bunch of revenue.Collective members, which is how it all came to beast, had started SR defendersabout a year ago. It was Kyle Coleman and Josh, Roth and Nishapur and NickieIvy and Tom Becard. Those are the five, so we approached them and I thinkthey'd been waiting for me to approach them, so they were very enthusiastic.So that was that was amazing, and there are other conversations I can't youknow share right now, but yeah I mean we're we're in lots of differentconversations, because there's lots of people out there that want to or areleading groups of people. They just want more support and help to do it.Love it yeah and you know, Gt Fun came in on this round. I think it was a veryfair and reasonable valuation. I think very, very great for both sides.Honestly, I think there's a lot of...

...upside for us or the investor. I think the evaluation was definitely atestament to the work that you've done to date in, quite frankly, a shortperiod of time getting a Villian to where it is now, and I know a lot of your employees andteam members who you know I think world of- and I personally have been involvedin building businesses in this space for a long time between you to me,which is you know, Full Ed Tech on that education marketplace and sales hacker,which was community for bobs sales people with about a hundred and seventythousand members and that's a free community, and I really believe thatthis is the future of kind of new age. Education communities, cohorts, reallife, skills of investor personally in on deck and Matin, and now we're inpavilion. So I think, there's just so much opportunity right now to to reallylearn some life skills, develop networks, it's not location, dependentany more, and you really created something. I think I've said thisbefore a while we were on. We did our short run on club houseshortly, be it we run there off byway. Your company is your community for yourjob, but this is your community for your career, and sometimes you got togo outside of your job and outside of that community to get the things thatyou need to look out for yourself and look out for your family. Look out foryour career and what's best for you, so having something like pavilion as it'san amazing resource and has been amazing resource and I'm sure the NP isoff the chart. But you know just from speaking to people who are in it withmyself. Obviously our race has been a long time sponsor and proud supporters,so we're pump for you. This is incredible and I want to end and herewith a quick lightning around action. L Takeaways built the five thousandperson pain community. Let's say in three years time or so four years in me,like the top one or three things you must do and like the top one to threethings, you definitely shouldn't do when building that community in abusiness like the rip, Leven, U collection and now wow, okay action, a will take away. SoI'll try to be high level and medium level or- and I don't know if these arethe top- these are just the things that are coming to mind. The first is, Ithink you should, I believe, in paid communities versus free communities,because this is up to you listener, whatever you want to do and lots ofpeople that bit free communities, so I am being you know non conventional bysaying that, and the reason I believe in paid communities is because Ibelieve that you need to over invest in member success, and so one of thepoints that we pride ourselves on is our member success. Team is alwaysgoing to be the biggest team at the company, and it's you know we havethirty five people and well over. A third of them are fact that you know it's like are on themember success team, and we expect that to always be the case, because wealways want to amaze and delight our customers, who are our members? I don'tknow if that's super actionable. Here's something super actionable. The problemwith the free version of slack is that you can't change people's names and I'ma big believer in kind of hygiene. That communities need to be a well tentedgarden. They don't they shouldn't, be overgrown and part of the way that youkeep them well tended as by having naming conventions for how People'sNames Appear in slack, if you're, using slack or on a different platform, ifyou're using a different platform, so we upgraded to the paid version ofslack at the very beginning, because I wanted to change how people's nameslook so that you couldn't have like philly philly Joe Seventeen. Ninety twonext to Sam Jacobs, N Y C, so everybody has their first and last name and theircity affiliation. But it's consistent and it's well organized, and I thinkthat gives the appearance of order which helps, because it gives peoplecomfort and engaging knowing that sort of there's a sense that that the thingis being attended to in terms of you...

...know what you shouldn't. Do I meanagain like I I don't know. I I think you shouldn'tstart a community. If you don't know why you're starting a community or ifthe point of it is that you feel like you need to be at the center of a groupof people, and you don't have the values that motivate you beyond that, I trying to think, as I say, any bonehead errors you made along the way that were like. Oh Damn it am. I don't knowI wish I could no, I don't it is not because I'm egotistical it's becauseI'm like one of our core values is this thing listen closely at quickly. Thepoint is like rapid iteration in response to customer feedback. So, likeI'm, I'm sure we made a ton of ars, I mean. Obviously the platform is totallydifferent than what we do today, but I don't view any of the other I wasmaking at every point. I was making the best decision. I had given theinformation that I had the biggest error I mean again. These are like soso high level, as so PA perhaps be annoying, but I think most people, youknow I have to think called the decision coefficient, which isbasically a math problem of person, makes two decisions an hour, but isonly correct two thirds of the time so wrong, often and there's another personthat makes one decision an hour, but is right most of the time ninety percentaccuracy rite and what you do when you compare those people, as you realizethat the person that's wrong one third of the time, a lot is correct. Onepoint four times per hour and the other person's correct point nine times perhour, which means that the person that's wrong. More often is correct.Fifty percent, more often the point of all of that is that one of the thingsthat you can do is take too long to make decisions and that you know likethe way that you win, I think, is by being highly iterative and byunderstanding that most of the time you're not going to make a decisionthat you can't turn back that the subject line of the email. The way thatyou've designed whatever the process is the process can change a software canbe rewritten and its and speed helps you cover more ground so that you canmove more quickly. So that's one thing that I think yeah they have A. I thinkit's something that Amazon that they talk about, where it's like revolvingdoor, decisions where two ways or an a one way door it's like. If thisdecision could be reversed easily, then let's make it quickly. If this decisionis a one way door and we can't reverse it, then we can take time on it, yeahand understanding which one is which so you can move quickly on the ones thatyou can reverse and slow or on the ones. You can't yeah, it's a great it's agreat way of thinking about it. I think that addicotes could take away cool SamMax so much for coming on yourself. Thank you for having me on my showexactly: We've had you as the host of the Sales Harker podcast for how manyyears now it's been like two and a half years, three years, two thousand andeighteen three years well, three plus years now, Matida Yeah I mean, then youhave the fundamental Fridays and, and he and your music, I think, was theis leading so your you in the prints all over. But it's been fun to watchnow fun to be a part of through the GT fund. You know we have our relationshipto sales, hack or two or a big sponsor through at reach as well. So now we'reinvesting in digital ponies. We Are we're part of the same stable,no well, no fun follow. While son said that one notthey will no fun we're doing and a few horse racing. I guess now. I don't knowwhat this world is coming to, but take my money here. You Go. You and me areinvolved in fifteen different business ventures. Yeah we're investors in GT,find GGS investors in us. You know, fifteen different side deals. It'sgreat I've! You know we've been very successful, doing business together Max,so I'm always happy to do it, and the great thing is the entities involvedhave all been very successful because of it too. So I think you know it's notjust a selfish thing. We are it's been fun. It's been fruitful, enjoyable andlooking forward to a lot more of it and...

...congratulations on all theannouncements, if you, if you missed it, go back to the beginning of thisepisode, where Sam Monologues for five minutes about other mats pulledtogether, including the twenty five million dollar fun rays and someacquisitions and a rebrand from the revenue collective to pavilion. Thank you Max thanks for having me I'lltalk to everybody next time he everybody it's Sam's corner. Well, Iwas the guest this time. So so I don't know that I need a Sam'scorner to wrap up all of the things that I just said and rambled on about,but I do want to say thank you to sales tacker. I want to say thank you to allof you for listening and supporting both this podcast and revenuecollective over the years. As hopefully, you just heard, but we announced thatwe are now a company called Pavilion. We close a twenty five million dollarfinancing around led by elephant fencers. We crossed five thousandmembers s. We announced a bunch of new schools that are all included inmembership. We acquire two communities, fin ops and str defenders and much muchmore to come and there's probably a few other announcements that I'm forgetting,but those are the big ones. So if you want to learn more go to join PavilionCom, of course, we want to think our sponsors pavilions one of them, so Ijust told you about them, but also outreach. If you want to learn howoutwards outrage, which was recently valued, I think over four billiondollars, so a Quata corn or whatever. That might said. But the point is thatmanny and the Timo for that rich have done. An amazing job had to outreach,got io for slash on out reach to see what they've got going on and finallylinked in find new ways to connect with your buyers virtually with linked onsales navigator. You can learn more or request a free DEMO IF BUSINESS DOTLinkin for Sales Dash Solutions, thanks for listening everybody and thanksagain for your support. I.

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