Belongship is the New Leadership — From the Vault
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Hey, everybody, welcome to the understand leadership podcast. And before we get into today's content, I wanted to thank factor for sponsoring this episode. No prep, no mass meals. Factor meals are ready to eat and eat in just two minutes.

So head on over the factor meals dot com, slash A S L P fifty and use code A S L P fifty to get fifty percent off your first box plus twenty percent off your next month. And now let's jump in in to today's podcast episode. This month I have my good friend sand and vibrate in the studio with me to talk about what he calls me long ships.

Thanks for coming. I M little. And actually ran marketing for part of which you may be familiar with, which was acquired by exact target.

And an exact target was acquired by sales force for about three billion dollars. And a sand was there for that entire journey. And last time he said that was like an instant in bh.

Ah that's like a master class like the other .

yeah just a storing experience. So currently, sanon serves as the chief evAngels for terminus E A cofounded terminus, which is A B to b company business business sales company, hit about a million dollars of sales. The first year raised over hundred twenty million dollars, a little under three hundred employees.

It's just gone, gaming busters. But in the midst of that author, a couple of books, including an word winning book, A B, M is B2Be why B2B e market ing and sa les is bro ken and ho w to fix IT. So if you are in B2Be mar keting or are int erfacing wit h com panies tha t are, you may want to check that out. And sandham has a podcast, which is a bit intimidating because the the stain leadership podcasts, about twenty five minutes once a month, and you have a daily podcast.

we have to get into how daily IT is because how much I do, what is how the community does, is big part of today's conversation.

So we're going to talk a little bit about that. So let's jump right in before we get distracted again. You developed this term belongs.

So what is IT? Why is that important um what's the take away for our audience? And honestly, and I told you this before we started the term belonging sounds little bit I A little bit soft. So IT absolutely does.

IT absolutely does. And IT almost felt like for four profit organization. That sounds like, well, it's not really you write business to in culture that people like you, you want excEllence, you want performance like all these things just comes to you naturally but be long ship now that for people is like, well, yeah, it's kind of cushy and especially as we get into the framework a little bit might sound even more.

But I want to share that we hit a million ten, fifteen, like all these numbers are coming in. And I go back and look at IT, like what did that come from? What did we do that was unique enough for us to head for first time founders like we are based out of the land. And i'll give you a quick story before that. But I was, as I was driving in here, I recognize that there is another way to explain this idea of the longer p have you ever driven a jeep yet?

Both my sons, actually, I thought them use jeep. Terri, yeah.

So you know, like there's a wave sign that you would do every time you're driving by another jeep.

I've heard .

about this. This is a crazy stick. I didn't not realize this when I, so I went to use to about obama and I I drive a jeep.

And I recognize that every time I was driving the first couple of days, everybody had a jeep would do a wave. Syn, tim, with the two fingers, with the two fingers is Better than one. Yeah, right? absolutely.

So that that was a good time like I was living spicious, but now I know but then I realized that that's to the longship, right? Like you're on a road and all of that in somebody you don't know is a stranger, but they feel a sense of belonging to me. That's like the best way I can think of somebody recognize.

And as such, a successful brand is like people feel like they are part of something. So I think about the ongry is that the longship is where people feel these three things. They feel that they're trusted.

They feel that it's a safe environment and they feel like you care about them again. These three things are, as we all know, individually. Everybody talks about a room.

But when they come together in an environment where trust is their safety is there, care is there, you feel like, oh my god, I can run through walls. And I saw that first hand at terminate. So the framework that I went back and looked at, I called the peak framework.

P, E, A, K. Each other stands for something. But IT came out of an investor conversation I had about three years ago.

An investor invited me and said, sangria, I want you to come and share how you guys built terminals here. And am I yet? Totally fine.

I thought I don, to talk about marketing over that. He, like nina, I want you to tell about the process, the thought process around this, and that's what I like. I was forced to create something to explain what we did and how we did. And that's how the belonging concept really can.

Can I ask one question before, talk to more about that? Because here just, you know, push back when soft concepts are talked about within the context of business. I think the assumption is and maybe this is true, but you're about to say it's not the assumption is or after you get things up and running once you're successful, then you can sit back and talk about let's just I love each other, get along and have some big bag chairs and a pink pung table.

But the assumption is culture is an after thought because who has time to think about IT, right? What you're about to pitch is that it's not an after thought. And in your experience with terminals currently, this was you're about to try to convince us this was up front in the beginning and IT was a part of why you are so successful that right? absolutely. yes. I feel like you're promising me on a microphone that wasn't an after thought so you had something to talk .

about absolutely true absolution you because .

that sort of the assumption is like, oh yeah well, of course you can have .

as a matter fact, i'll give an example. I right back for every one of those things because that was I had to go back and literally go back to drawing board like so what did we do like because and you're in the motion of building a start up, you don't know what you're doing. You're just keep doing that and keep moving word.

But sometimes you take a stay back and look at IT. So when the investor Collins said he, look, have a billion dollar invested in this room, they're about seventy five, eighty five c years here. I know eighty, ninety percent of them are gonna fail. And I was like, that's what you think about us too, maybe because we got a lot of investment from them, said eighty five, nine percent of them are going to fail. And the only five or six companies that are gonna .

a do what you guys did, outperform s of startups.

CEO of start up companies. And i'm like, okay, he's that tell the process that you went through and I had to like success. Dally pulled together.

So I came up with the framework and I said, well, i'm calling IT the longship because I think what we created, not for just our team, but the entire community, a place where people felt belong. So what? How do you do IT.

So I came over this frame, were called P E A K. Peace stance for a picture of success. Let me give a concrete examples to what we did to support that. We didn't know that before that. Hey, that's what we did, but that's what I came that came about.

Picture of success means not that we're gna have a million in revenue, that's a lot of companies have like start up like I want to have a million. That's not a picture of success. That's like, okay, well, i'm not gonna to all for, but picture of success to day.

We're gonna change the way marketing and sales is done. So we created a fund that every marketing, sales people understood. And we flipped IT and got a flip my final.

Now that way people knew this is what we are trying to do. We are changing the way marketing and sales is done. For decades.

That became the picture of success, that became the book, that became the podcast, that became the thing that people ranged around, and that became a community. You've heard me say this like without a community, you're simply a commended. Yes, that became the .

about that on your daily part.

on a daily bus. I I imagine andy driving listings to flip my fun like that is making my day right. That was the picture of success. And I chAllenged every was .

a literal picture. Yeah, it's a literal picture.

IT is not a something that you just say you actually see that you feel and you know, IT and you presented, you use IT is is that love stupid? What stop? E is extreme focus. Now we we talked about IT before we started a record is like I think good companies are gonna have picture of success because you typically have some sort of mission or vision statement. But boy, if you want to actually deliver on that, you gotten be extremely focused.

We all know that like we all have like squirl, we just go in different directions, especially the start of company starts out there, extreme focuses the ability to have this one thing that you're super focused on. So one of the things we think can we did as a matter of fact was like, you know what, we're onna own the narrative that was our focus. Like we're onna own the narrative of chAllenge in the start square.

So we said, we're onna do something that no other start up typically does in the very first year. We're gonna write a book on this, and we gna get go wildly or somebody big a publisher to publish our book so that we get authority on that topic. And once we have that now we can go and tell, like this is how to do and read the book on IT.

even before you'd actually done IT.

even before we have actually, if IT was literally interviews of fifty different top influences and marketing, like if you were to chAllenge the status of marketing and sales, how would you do IT? And we thought a book on the topic of account y's marketing that became literally the bible for A B. M.

And or although how you do go to market, and that really changed the way because people started looking at us like, well, they got to know what they were. The book on that yeah. right? Like that just became a thing.

IT wasn't about making money. IT was about making sure that nobody throws a book away, andy. So, so people had IT on their desk.

We leally create a list of a thousand companies that we want as our customers, and we shipped the book to each one of them. And then guess what, we actually having calls with them because they have a signed autographed book from us. They're not putting .

IT away nothing that's written caries authority. Yeah, that's always been the case.

So that's P A, is what auenthal. Now that's going back to kushi. There is no more squshy word than authenticity right now, right? Like everybody talks about IT.

Here's how we did IT flip my fund. We when we actually came out with terminals, we said, you know what? We need to do an event that all starts do.

We need to throw an event and tell people that we have arrived. Guess nobody came to that thing because nobody wanted to know about terminus. Nobody cared about ten minutes.

Nobody wanted to sponsor terminus. We are like, what's wrong? What do we do? We have arrived, but nobody cares about us. We literally went in bad the domain for aid bugs flip my function, call the same investor, same sponsors and say, hey, could you sponsor this event? Call flip my it's not determined event.

It's a lip is about changing the way marketing and sales work we going to invite these ten influencers to come and speak at him. And guess what? IT was packed.

IT was packed because I was not about us. And we've learned another big lesson is like, hey, look, if we don't make IT about us, people are actually gonna trust us more. And that's what authenticity that gives us.

So we still today, we have done like probably fifty flip map on events. Still today, we do not do a product pitch is an industry conference. Most startups think about doing their own company or maybe their user conference, but we are doing an industry conference from the dead goal.

So this is not enough. thought. This is we ended up start the first year doing fp of conferences. That's eight. And then k, again.

this was in the first year.

First year we did four conferences, four flip my conference in the first year .

as you're raising capital, developing the product in a sales and marketing yp ARM of the company.

yeah. And as a matter of fact, did you sleep this first year? Well, there's a story on that too, which we just might get to a little bit. But here's the thing. The first conference we did, filip maal, right here in a lanner, we ended up closing twenty five deals out of IT, and we were a booth just like anybody else.

As a matter of fact, we were invited, andy, our competitors, to come and speak at a event which is a big no no in the start of what, why would you bring your competitors to speak? And even today, our competitors speak at a event. But what that did was we own the narrative.

We said the stage people knew who were behind this thing, but we never went on the to say, this is our conference. We said, this is a community conference. This is something where we learn together.

And we still today do the same exactly. So authentically ity. yeah.

Well, and then kindness. Now if I were to say where you double down on that on more than anything else is kay. And again, in the profit world, maybe that is something everybody talks about the profit.

You might say what kindness, you know what's kindness like you need to win or you you you're out of business. Well, from a kindness perspective, we do something that I would highly recommend everybody do in their their own organization. We bring in a customer in the office now virtually for our all hands meetings.

So we had a customer, and i'll tell you a quick story on that. We had Daniel day, one of our customers come in. This was in in like the second year of our our company. And he said.

so he is a business owner.

He is A A matter who buys our product, uh, he uses our product. He talks about our product like I want to come and share your experience with this will invite them to, once a month, all hands meeting for the entire companies sitting. And the focus is all on the customer.

And we do that for a very big reason. We want everybody from the sales person to the marketing percent, to the back office person to know who we serve. Like IT is very, very important.

Lot of companies completely missed on that. They just keep going doing their thing. But if everybody who we are serving and what what takes, what matches to them to change, but here's what Daniel said, andy, that still today is talked about in the company. He said, sanger, you and your organization has changed my life.

Wow, his personal life.

his personal life. And we like, dude, there's no way like we are not saving lives here like, come on, we are not doing that. I know you have a lot respect for us and all stuff come on here you don't understand you did like how and this is in in all hands live.

We had no idea he's going to say that like record IT, right? And he said, look, because of what the the tools and services and the information that you gave me, I can now go to my C E, O and tell them how I drive revenue. I never knew how to do that before.

So now if I get kicked out of this company, i'm okay because I where I can find a job any day, you have changed the way I looked, so I don't have to worry about a job. You don't know how big of a deal stress the liver is for, for me to do that. And imagine the back office person listening to that, the engineer who's coding those features like they all like, oh my god, they're like, we have like places everywhere with that quote of this person because people know that meant something.

IT was genuine. IT wasn't scripted. So you think about this picture of success, extreme focus, authentic and kindness.

There are practical things that we did every single time that let us do to create the sense of belonging where people wanted to, like, we want to be part of the stripe IT. IT is Better. IT is that gives us food for for how you Operate our business, our lives. And even in a software world, I think you can do that and you can do that big time.

So belonging defined by these four ideas, yp peak, right? P we will jump right back into today's content in just a moment before that. As you know, fall is officially here, which brings busiest schedules and full calendars, making IT hard to eat the way you like.

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And now let's jump back into today's episode. So back to the meeting with the the billion dollar event with all the CEO. So what was your? What was your message? Was that the message?

IT was the message like you, if you want to create a category, if you want to stand out of the crowd today, if you want to go out there and actually make sure that you're not one of those numbers in one nine hundred and percent that fail, you need to figure out and take some risk. And the risk is really go and actually have a very clear picture, success big.

That one thing your great, i'd be extremely focused on IT make sure you do that authentically and with kind. But here is a big message. I hope nobody misses this part, andy.

The p ne, the picture of success and extreme focus. I think most companies have that and and that's great. That's how you actually hire great people.

Like here's our vision. Here's very going. Here's what we when you can hire great people.

But the A N K, the authenticity and kindness is why your people stay in your company. The good people, the good people. That's why your customers want you around.

That's how you actually create loyalty very quickly. Brand holy gan, who is the see of hub spot? He is an investor terminals.

He said, like, well, well, you know, how do you do this? And he said, what we created in bound, which is a conference that they created, they don't call IT hubs, but they call IT inbound, for exactly the same reason you think about sales force were all learned from. They call a dream force.

They don't call IT ge sales force. So you start thinking about that. Well, this is not something that we just came up with. This is something actually been done by every category leading company that build a community because they no longer want to be a commodity. Well.

and again, I can I can see that five, ten years down the road. But to have embraced that approach in the first year. And again, you're saying this is why not only were you able to raise the capital, but you are also able to develop a product going back.

What we talk about last month that people actually needed and wanted is supposed to falling and over the product that people didn't actually need or didn't understand that they need. So and you've kind of talk about this, but this is so important. And we talk about this a lot on podcast, but recreating are trying to fix the culture is so difficult.

So if somebody says, hey, and this is helping because I mean, every organza has a culture, yeah whether you can define IT or not, whether there is good or not, you don't have to create culture. You have one is there. You've inherit one. You accident the cultures there.

So what do you say to the group? This is, well, unfortunately, I can start over. So i'm in a culture that has some thing, some witnesses. What are some first steps to begin bringing some of these ideas into an existing culture? Because that's.

I think you've said this, something is like, you know what um you know what gets rewarded is repeated, you know like i'll say the same thing on that. I like go that I want people take that home with that because for example, bringing a customer in the office virtually or physically is something that I see ninety, eighty percent of the companies not doing that. I don't understand that like you can literally take that and help that customer shape the messaging and what you are.

what you stand for.

extremely personal, extremely personal, right? I think about the most important meetings in your organization. When I ask people what what's the most important meeting? There's all kinds of meetings people talk about is actually your one on one. That's really where your culture is created, your one on one meeting because if you're a leader and you're having a one on one with somebody that reports to you, that person is going to prepare, that's gona person is stressing about IT, that person has an agenda. And if you are late to that meeting, if you don't show prepared to that meeting and if you are like, you know, you just brush off and you run with your own agenda, adding your culture is created in those one on one meeting.

which are meetings that many business leaders, especially cfs, avoided because IT feels like a waste time because i'm only talking one person and i'm not getting anything then. But you're exactly right. IT is it's where values are shared in the clearest, most the same way, and it's where people fill a personal connection. So what else those yeah.

So i'll even think about picture of success. Picture of success isn't have to be a big vision statement that you have to trade over and over again. We have done something for six years now every single week and i'm i'm don't founded when I hear people not doing that, which is every friday will send a note to the company about what is the state of our company .

every friday.

every single friday for six years with with eric when those there, eric.

he used to ask eric and we didn't know about eric but erin the cow yes. When I first met eric and he tell me about this, has said, send those to me. Yes, so he began sending .

those to me every friday. Yeah, he did that. I did that. Not tim cop who are see you. He's doing that every friday. You can send a note, your company saying where we are and he doesn't have to be just rather like all the good things like that is how you set your culture.

So if you are someone who just wondering, like, well, how do I reset IT started? I will see those are very simple things from a picture of success perspective. Start sending your friday notes, make that a habit, make that a responsibility and a privilege that you would have as a leader.

Uh, if you're thinking about focus, get focused on that one on one meeting, make sure you never skip that, make sure that you have completely supporting that. And actually, that's how you really start building a great culture and you're authentic and kinder abit. If if you want to really, truly be authentic and kind, get your customer in the office, make the outside in perspective, shape the way the company .

companies going to be three staff meetings ago at the campus that I am the leader on, supposedly that's my time. North community church, holy guttered is like a chief of staff sort in that role. And so i've let her set the agenda for our pcc staff meetings.

And SHE does a way Better did because she's focused on IT. In three meetings ago, SHE brought in a couple whose experience or their story is that relates to our church is exactly the story we would love to see replicated. You'd never heard of us.

Somebody told them about us. They don't go to church. Somebody else told him about us.

We don't go to church. I don't know. The third of fourth invitation, I finally came the day.

So this is in front of our staff. Here was our experience. Now they are super involved in volunteering. And first of all, the fact that holy knew them because he knew them personally, invited them again, to your point, into the staff, me to tell their story suddenly exactly is what you're saying in all these concepts know so many people sit behind a computer screen all day long. We're block and tackling or straight and chairs.

It's it's just stuff IT doesn't feel like ministry right out and having this couple come in and tell their story. IT was so IT brought all the emotion back to kind of attack tile blocking and tackling. Here's another tuesday.

Here's another windley feels like last wednesday IT was so powerful. And as I SAT there, I thought how he's a great leader to see this opportunity to arrange IT. And of course, I said they were thinking White, and I think of this, but I was so powerful.

So you're exactly right. And to add to what you said for the individual or the team is trying to figure out how to fix a culture and they hear you say that and they think of themselves, I don't know a customer story. What does that .

tell you all my that you are so far .

removed from the reality? I can think of a name. I can't think of a somebody that story about us yeah, that that is the story.

And that itself is the chAllenge. Like IT starts with you. The culture is not the person on the side of the table. The culture with you, how you represent yourself and everyone derful executive member. Do you actually ask them you've tt a have at least ten customers cell phone number on on your mobile like you need to have the mobile number so that you can call them up and you have a relationship with them if you don't have that if don't have that level of relationship with our customers or top customers, then what are we doing? Yeah.

this goes back to say, and I know you tell me, is my subtitle, my social media feed is do for one what you wish you could get, everyone. And in the push back what we have, we have five hundred customers. okay?

Well, you can have all five hundred in your phone, but pick a few. Because what you do for a few is symbolic for what you wish you could do for everybody. So that's critical.

okay. I where this has been so great, i'm going to completely switch gears because i'm curious I should have asked you this before we began. But um IT terminals, you implemented a forced vacation this it's kind of call IT theaters at just whatever. No, we have asked managers to to go .

because he's what happened as the start of me like we don't need to do more thing. We don't need people to put that time in and a time sheet or anything like that. So from they wanted was like unlimited vacation.

Go take IT. But here's what we noticed, andy. People are not taking vacations.

They are constantly working. And we're realizing like, hey, you have not taken a vacation. I take IT. I just need to get this thing done and we like, that's a problem. That's unhealth that's not good for you.

And so at some point, we had to like go back and we looked at the numbers and details and we saw that, oh my god, they're like tons of people have never actually taken a vacation. So we literally told managers you're gonna have them take a vacation and that's going to be a forced vacation like it's not on a paper or it's not a policy or anything like that. Like every manager has is responsible to make sure that their team members take vacations because this unlimited vacation is not working, which is so where you .

gave them unlimited vacation, then had to forced them to take a vacation. Yes, how do you find these people that we would everybody say, how do I find some of those people? Yeah, now and before we closed to stay on this just a minute. So that is an unhealthy culture.

And you know, we think, no, I want to hire all the work aholic and I can right, we get more work than but it's an healthy culture that you first of all were aware of and didn't pack yourself on the back like this is amazing. We give him unlimited vacation and what is taking to take a you realized it's a problem and address that because it's a culture thing yeah which feels like a soft thing. But at the same time, we don't want people to burn out and you don't get the best of people.

Steven, couple years ago. D about sharpening the saw, but you just saw and ever sharpening the saw, eventually you get less, then spend more time trying to do IT. So that's that's powerful. Well, before we wrap up any last words, I mean, you know, imagine you're sitting in front of entrepreneurs and this is your final thought.

What you say them, what couple of things like and look at this is not just a the belongings idea, is not just an organization idea, is also a family idea. Like to, for example, what baffles me lot of time is anything about picture of success and all those things. People think what I got have a vision statement, but people don't have a vision statement for their own family. I don't have core values like we have, like we have, we call IT, like Rogers, all make IT through with god's love, Grace and truth Grace and .

truth again, heard before about your family .

is my family that's a picture success, more time goes, always make IT through but god's love, Grace and truth well so love, Grace and truth at our core values, we like we always have love um we we will give Grace to each other but we expect nothing less and nothing more than truth in every conversation we have.

And if ten years, twenty years from now, if that's what happens, that's a great picture success so so I don't want to go to each one of these letters, but if you think about this idea, this framework is that you apply this to organization, IT will be a healthy organization. You apply that, you IT will be a family organization. So i'm creating a website called the longship about us, where i'm going to just put some of this information because, andy, quite Frankly, this is not for everybody.

This whole idea of the longship requires somebody to really think about IT, take a step back and lean into IT. But it's not something that you can just put dip your toes in IT. You are either all in or you're all out.

You don't walk into IT and walk out of IT. So either you're fully out, I cannot tell anybody to be nine tomorrow morning. You need out and just doesn't work, right? You know you need to be something just doesn't work. So either you are or you're not and you have to make that decision. So on belonging p at us, i've just put some resources for people who just walk through that and make a decision if this is for you and if IT is, then lean and fully.

Well, saying this has been fascinating. The only chAllenge for me as I was not able to take notes while you gave a such great content, but i'm going to go back and do that. And for those of you who listen today and thought, wow, how do I take all that? And especially if you're driving or not in the place where you can take notes, just go to understanding dot com and understanding dot com. And you can download the leadership podcast application guy that actually includes a summary of this discussion along with some questions for reflection for you or your entire team and of course, make sure you join us next month on the understanding leadership podcast.