I like to hang out with inspiring entrepreneurs.  No, not sipping coffee in their offices… I like to get out and do something fun. Even if it means breaking bones. When you connect without it being about business, two things happen: First, you get insights into the character of a successful business person. Second, when the conversation isn’t forced, that’s when the most valuable business advice flows organically.

Today, I’m going to show you how to get 3x-5x as much value out of a brand new employee. Think about it… If every time you hired someone in your business, you got more value from them, how much of a difference would that make to your: Productivity? Budget? Business growth? You already know I work closely with SaaS founders both big ($100 Million+ ARR) and small ($10k monthly), and I can tell you this:

Sometimes you can glean insights about life from the most interesting places... Like that time my buddy Brad learned the hard way while snow-biking in the backcountry. He was supposed to zig zag, and not go straight fast, so to avoid hitting tree stumps or river banks head on. That missed instruction from our guide resulted in him cracking open his pelvis which required surgery. I know. Intense right? While a terrible outcome, I took away a HUGE company killing

There are plenty of customer success managers. There aren’t a lot of great ones.  A customer success manager is the person in charge of making sure that customers receive the promise we make on our home pages or by our salespeople. The great managers know that their work requires at least five practices to make sure that they’re succeeding at their job. Here are the five practices of a great customer success manager. #1: They address customer concerns early. Remember,

When I was 16 years old, I screwed up. It wasn’t pretty. There’s no way to sugar coat it... I crashed a stolen car into a house while trying to escape the police. High on drugs. No driver’s license. Stolen handgun in my backpack.  And I woke up the next morning… in a jail cell... wondering what my life was going to look like.

Years ago I attempted to raise money for my first company, Flowtown, with my co-founder Ethan. You know what we did? We cold emailed investors.  We figured “We have a startup, they invest in startups... so surely they want to hear from us”, and hoped our confidence would cut through the noise. It didn’t work. Obviously. They didn’t even bother to reply. So we hunted for advice and came across Naval from AngelList.  Everything he said about fundraising just… clicked.

Health is wealth. It’s a mantra I repeat to myself a dozen times a day anytime my brain wants to slack off on training, or reach for those nachos. It’s also a belief I share with many of my entrepreneurial friends, like David Hauser. I first met David (co-founder GrassHopper.com / Chargify.com and many others) 10 years ago when I cold emailed him for an interview on my blog (recorded with a Flipcam :). Since then we’ve spent a lot

In my career, I’ve hired dozens of salespeople… and I made some big mistakes when I did. Expensive mistakes. In my 20s I hired a guy and paid him $80k salary and all he did was talk about how he was going to close big deals… without ever doing it! For a whole year, this guy promised me the world and delivered absolutely zero value. And I actually paid him for it! Compare that to now: Last week I hired

How do you get invited to spend a week at Richard Branson’s house in Switzerland? Or for guys like Mark Cuban and Travis Kalanick (founder of Uber) to happily invest in your company? Or to get invited to travel to 8 European cities on a private jet? These all happened to me... and I believe it’s a natural result of one thing I did right: Investing In Relationships. I began figuring this out in my mid-twenties and WOW did it

You're a cash-starved startup owner. You go hard after one of your big enterprise clients and they pay for a whole year of your service in advance… Just like this, without any additional questions or arrangements. This is what happened to Vivek Sharma back in the day, when his now $50+ mil ARR company MovableInk was struggling to score its first few corporate clients.  But this idea to ask for a 12-MONTH ADVANCE PAYMENT didn't come out of nowhere.