Episode #14 - The Best and Worst Business Advice We've Ever Received
If you didn't start a business, where would you be? Dale and Coby get personal — Dale would have been an underwater welder or Antarctic fabricator, Coby would have become a personal trainer. A fun episode exploring roads not taken, plus a candid conversation about what to actually do with your first big paycheck.
Hello and welcome to the Sequoia Project podcast. Episode 14 today, and we are going to cover advice — specifically the worst and the best advice that both of us have gotten in business.
Coby: One of the bad things that I got was when I was doing a lot of research when we were doing the marketing sort of stuff and it was that you have to make a hard sell. Like your goal is to sell on the very first call. That is awful advice. That is terrible. I hate that. And I refuse to do it. The idea of coming on and being like, you have to give me your card. You have to sign up here. I felt so uncomfortable. When I went in and did some calls, they were so pushy.
Dale: If someone gets off the phone and feels bad about buying something from you, you're not a businessman. You're not doing business. The way that we look at transactions within our businesses is your job is to give the customer enough information that they can make an informed decision. That's it.
Coby: Something that I had from my side, probably the best advice that I've ever gotten, was from you. And it was — it's not what you say but how you say it. That has always been something that's probably the best advice you've ever given me and that I live by literally every single day.
Dale: Yeah, that's on my list as well. And I think when we, when we went through that — if you can even apply this into just like talking to your partner or talking to your friends or like whatever it is, you can see the difference immediately. It's never what you're saying, it's always how you say it.
Dale: Some of the worst advice I ever got was don't trust anyone to do a good job as you. That was some of the worst advice I ever got. What I learned is that if you know how to hire and if you know how to train and you give people a vision about the business and the customer that you have, and they align with that, they will do as good a job as you ask them to do. All you need to do in advance is set that example over and over and over again.
Dale: Some of the best advice I got was don't be afraid to hire a lazy person. That sounds like shit, and everyone's like, why would I want to hire a lazy person? Someone who's inherently lazy will find the easiest way to do something if they have to get a result, because they're lazy. They don't want to do more work than it takes. So they add steps that don't need to be added. Lazy people take steps out.
Coby: If the most important words to you, like if you're worried about succeeding, if you're worried about being happy — take those words that mean a lot to you and just define them for yourself. Because the dictionary definition for everyone is different. A really good example of that — if I asked any business owners, would you rather have 500 genuine inquiries or 500,000 people that know about your business? If you had 500 genuine inquiries and you're selling a service like Kobe, you're booked out for the next five years.