Tell them what to do.   Check that’s been done. Tell them what to do next. Leadership 101 right there. A fine recipe if you want to run a mediocre company with eight or  ten B level players that constantly tap into your managerial bandwidth and cripple your capacity to achieve accelerated growth. An outdated paradigm for any SaaS founder with more ambitious plans to scale. For that SaaS founder, I offer a major upgrade from the “transactional leadership” approach.

We’ve all suffered through it. The end-of-year Zoom call where the fearless founder, likely fueled by a few craft beers, starts riffing off bold projections for the upcoming year. “We’re gonna crush it”   “We’re gonna change the game” “2x… 5x… 10x” You get the idea ;-) I’m all for setting ambitious goals, and have crazy amounts of respect for any founder audacious enough to pursue them.

“Why would they ever give me the time of day?” “How could I possibly add value to their life?” “How could I reach out without feeling needy, desperate, or an intrusion on their day?” These are just a few of the excuses founders make for not reaching out to the game-changing mentor or advisor that could dramatically accelerate the growth of their business. Instead of the “who” -- they play it safer by focusing on the “how”.

If you’re feeling like you’re in a rut and spinning your wheels around your next “big move” inside your SaaS company… I’m gonna make you a little promise, k? If you watch this week’s video and follow through on the 3 questions… your company will look drastically different by this time next quarter. Why am I so confident making that prediction? Simple…

Did you know that there’s a multibillion dollar industry dedicated to doomsday prepping? Even crazier… Reid Hoffman was quoted in the New Yorker, estimating that about 50% of Silicon Valley billionaires have acquired some level of “apocalypse insurance”. Now whether you buy into that idea or not, there is a type of doomsday in the software world you absolutely NEED to be prepared for. It’s this:

Nightmare scenario: You just spent 30 mins delivering an amazing product demo. The guy on the other end of the Zoom call is all hot and bothered. Loves your solution. Sees the value. Wants it yesterday. So you go in for the close…

If you run a small team of just 5 employees/co-founders… Your weekly meetings are likely costing you well north of 50k/year. Simple math… … average hourly rate x number of people x 52. That’s how much you’re spending to run your weekly meeting.

Few things can shatter a founder’s confidence quicker than a poorly managed board meeting. At best… … you’ll get glossed over stares and “checked out” investors who secretly hate you for wasting their time. At worst… … you’ll accidentally knock over the first domino in getting kicked out of your own company. Pay special attention to Step #4 in this week’s video to make sure that never happens.

“You’re not suppose to succeed!” “The numbers are against you from day one.” Those were the words hurled at me across the board room from one of my mentors. Encouraging, right? Up until that point I had so much confidence that failure wasn’t an option. But the truth is - and you hear it all the time - most startups fail.

All SaaS companies need sales people. Even products like Dropbox & Slack have sales teams. If you look at the Montclare SaaS 250 list, they all have sales teams. So why do startups push off making this hire for so long? It’s usually because they don’t know what to look for and are scared that a new fancy pants sales person wouldn’t close enough deals to cover their cost. A totally legit concern. But one you need to quickly blast