Episode 107: Ethan Chase – The Art of Storytelling

Humans are storytellers. We share stories, we’re moved by stories, and we cling to stories. This insight is what helped Ethan Chase, a memoryBlue Account Executive, have impactful cold-call conversations and achieve success in sales. While storytelling and conversing came naturally to him, he also credits Academy for helping him learn how to better structure his calls and effectively direct them.  

In this episode of Tech Sales is for Hustlers, Ethan discusses the experience he gained through internships prior to memoryBlue, his time as an SDR, and the power of storytelling in sales.  

Guest-At-A-Glance

💡 Name: Ethan Chase

💡 What he does: Ethan is an account executive at memoryBlue.

💡 Company: memoryBlue

💡 Noteworthy: Ethan was born and raised in Austin, Texas. When he was a kid, he went to summer camp in West Virginia, and in high school, he did travel programs. Ethan ended up at James Madison University, where he graduated in organizational communication. After several internships, Ethan started working at memoryBlue as an SDR. He progressed quickly, and today he is on the cyber security AE team.

💡 Where to find Ethan: Linkedin l Website

Key Insights

⚡ Working with two clients at the same time has its advantages. While looking for a job, Ethan ran into his friend Andrew Macho Camacho who told him about memoryBlue and explained what an SDR is and what kind of work they do. Although he didn’t know anything about the role until then, Ethan was interested and sent his resume to memoryBlue. As he says, when he was an SDR, he had amazing clients all based out of Denver; he was working two split shifts and learned a lot. “It was definitely more challenging. It taught me some serious time management in an organization. Two emails, two different front spins, two weekly calls, two different talk tracks, and [two different] products. I found success really early. Because doing cold calls, being on the phone, having that kind of confidence and conversation, it’s always come naturally to me; I loved it. And the clients were great. I found success and hitting quota for me wasn’t like ‘I had to do it.’ So, I worked really hard to maintain those relationships and hit the numbers.”

⚡ The idea of structuring cold calls. Although he gained a lot of experience during his internship, the SDR job was new for Ethan. While he knew some stuff about being on the phones, there was still a lot he had to learn about being an SDR. Ethan notes that the first time he closed a meeting or deal was when he came to memoryBlue. “I didn’t know about discovery questions. I didn’t know about paying funnels and closing on the meetings. That was where the Academy really came in. The whole idea of structuring cold calls was totally foreign. Just structuring: the opening statement, asking those pain-driving questions, giving value, and then doing a hard close to get time on the calendar, and recreating and bringing that value back up. It’s one of those things that you can’t forget about, especially when I’ve been in the AE seat. That is like a deal is stalling or something like that.”

⚡ SDRs as storytellers. As an SDR, Ethan hit the numbers in the first six months and was promoted to a senior sales development representative. He reveals his signature move for contacting customers. “For me, it was all about telling the story of my client’s technology — almost painting a picture — and telling a story of why they came into the business and what we solve and how we would [do it]; [we’re] putting a storyboard in their head. That’s what my senior SDR presentation was on. What I learned in school and communications is that humans are storytelling animals. We thrive off stories; we hold on to stories; we move states and jobs based on stories. It’s just what sticks with us.”

Episode Highlights

Ethan’s Internships

“My first internship during college was with a small recruiting startup. And I got it through an old lacrosse coach. I thought, ‘My dad’s in recruiting. Why shouldn’t I try it? I’ve always been interested in it.’ It was great. I was cold calling old candidates. I was helping them filter through and change their talk track on how they pitch an opportunity. It was a lot of selling opportunities and doing more technical staffing. That was also my break into not only recruiting but also into tech. So I got an idea of the lingo software engineers are using and what tools the hardware engineers are using. It was really interesting when I got an idea of how lucrative it was. […]

One of the internships was with Expedia Group. It was so new. It was one of those companies where they had every kind of snack and drink you could ask for. They had people walking around giving finger foods. And it was like, ‘You have a badge; you’re a number.’ But I got this internship also through a network connection where I held out the sourcer. I was now in big tech. So, I got the startup experience, then I got into big tech, and after that, I realized, ‘So, maybe something in the mid-market, in the middle, would be great.’ VRBO was an awesome experience. I got to work with really smart, experienced, professional people; I got to learn a lot. And after that, one of the internships that I was gunning for fell through. So, I hiked up to Alaska for eight weeks to work at a salmon processing plant.”

Ethan’s Senior SDR Presentation

“Part of getting the perks of the senior SDR is that you have to give a company-wide training, and it can really be on any topic you want. Some people do ‘How to prospect effectively,’ ‘How to social sell on LinkedIn,’ whatever it may be on follow-up. My biggest thing — and what I think made me so successful — was client-facing, which is somewhat of an issue SDRs have about communicating and conveying the right message to their clients. So, I brought in my knowledge about storytelling and how people really grab onto this, and I would do that on my client calls. So, I wouldn’t just walk through my KPIs and the book meetings we have; I would walk them through. That morning, I drove to work, picked up the phone, and talked to this one guy. We had the conversation around this, but he decided it wasn’t a great time to talk. So what he did was say, ‘Hey, give me a call back in 15 minutes.’ And then, I would walk them through the story of the booked meeting and the conversation we had had, and the things he’s expecting. And I just framed it in a much more interesting and engaging way.”

Becoming an Account Executive

“I was absolutely not even considering being an AE. I was looking everywhere else — at rising stars, the clients, the public sector team. I was putting fuel on all of them. I was on a three-hour car ride for Nicky Johnson’s birthday, and Ken Arias was a good friend of hers. So, I’d never met Kenny before, but I knew he was on the memoryBlue sales team. I really didn’t know what that entailed. When I was sitting in the car with him, he was walking me through everything there’s to know about the team: about the structure, about what he does, who he talks to, what his day-to-day’s like, his expectations. He was breaking it down, and so at the time, he was moving on to the next step in his career. So, he was in Denver with an idea of, like, ‘I might be leaving soon. I’d love to find a backup and help the team out.’ I guess that was me at the time, and so I listened to him, and I thought, ‘Development is one of the biggest pillars at this company, especially developing sales talent. Why would I not get the title, get the experience, and stay at memoryBlue to start that and build a foundation instead of possibly going to a company where it’s swing, sink, or swim?'”

Transcript: 

[00:00:00] Ethan Chase: Your list building, do your cold calling, do your emailing, it’s out there, do those little things, get everybody involved in the sales cycle, run it well, and you’re gonna be paid. Chris Corcoran, I have Ethan Chase here, live and direct.

[00:00:37] Chris Corcoran: Ethan Chase is in the house.

[00:00:39] Ethan Chase: We’re in the house, beautiful, it’s good to be here. 

[00:00:43] Marc Gonyea: On a snowy day here in November, creeping up on, uh, Thanksgiving. 

[00:00:47] Ethan Chase: Yep. Yeah. It’s that holiday time, the snow’s starting to fall, cars are slipping. 

[00:00:51] Marc Gonyea: That’s right.

[00:00:51] Ethan Chase: But we’re staying safe. 

[00:00:52] Marc Gonyea: That’s right, safe and inside. So, Ethan, Let’s talk about it. You’re currently an account executive 

[00:00:58] at memoryBlue. Before we get to that, let’s go back a little.

[00:01:02] Ethan Chase: Sure.

[00:01:02] Marc Gonyea: This is for the, you know, Chris and I, but also for the listeners. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Like, where’d you grow up? 

[00:01:09] Ethan Chase: no, no. It was like, 

[00:01:10] Marc Gonyea: What were you like as a young Ethan Chase, young flipper snapper? 

[00:01:15] Ethan Chase: It was a, it was a warm summer day, June 18th, 1998, Austin, Texas, and

[00:01:21] Marc Gonyea: 1998?

[00:01:22] Ethan Chase: I know, I know, right? So, yeah, no, I was, I was born in Austin, born and raised, you know, lived in Chicago for about a year while my mom got her residency in psychology, but for the majority of life, you know, born and raised as an Austinite, and it was a great, great town to grew up in. It was before a lot of the change, like, you know, Austin 15 years ago is a lot different than it is now,

[00:01:45] but it was fantastic, you know, like, you know, great, great growing up in the neighborhood, you know, biking everywhere and doing, doing all the things kids do. But just the culture kind of set me up for, you know, I, I think, I think a little bit of the success of just kind of, you know, being relaxed in a lot of, uh, you know, different situations. It was just very, it, was a very, it was very relaxed culture there, you know, people were very open-minded, it, it was awesome, and then, uh, and then, what, go ahead. 

[00:02:13] Marc Gonyea: What were you like as a kid?

[00:02:15] Ethan Chase: As a kid,

[00:02:15] Marc Gonyea: Like, so, let’s talk about the high school real quick. Were you, like, some people playing sports, some people working, people doing other interests, like, kind of what, what were you into?

[00:02:25] Ethan Chase: Well, I was big into my buddies. I love, I love my high school buddies and, and we grew up together, you know, we got, got into all sorts of stuff together, it was fantastic, you know, all the way from elementary, middle, high school, you know, still in touch with all of them today, but, uh, lacrosse was also a big part of my life.

[00:02:39] Um, I tried, I tried, you know, I tried baseball, I tried soccer, soccer was fun, baseball too slow for me. And I kind of found a mix between no hockey, soccer, football.

[00:02:49] Marc Gonyea: Lacrosse is the fastest, what did they say?

[00:02:51] Ethan Chase: I think, I think it’s like the, they say it’s the fastest growing sport in America right now, it’s probably true. There’s some, there’s some big names in, in, in high school, you know, Dallas and Houston has some crazy teams, but, no, lacrosse was great. That was what I played for probably seven years, it was awesome to be part of that team, get competitive, um, you know, being a senior, senior under the lights, it was great. 

[00:03:12] Marc Gonyea: You’re in Austin, and certainly, like, an amazing place, right? Enjoying Austin, growing up, doing lacrosse and your buddies, and so on and so forth. What did you think you wanted to do when you kinda got older? 

[00:03:27] Ethan Chase: Yeah, no, good question. 

[00:03:28] Marc Gonyea: What’d you think? What’d you think? 

[00:03:31] You’re high school, it’s different. What’d you think you wanna do? 

[00:03:34] Ethan Chase: So I, I grew up in a house of, half the house was in recruiting, half the house was in psychology. 

[00:03:42] Marc Gonyea: Okay. Who was in recruiting? 

[00:03:43] Ethan Chase: Right. So, so it was my dad. 

[00:03:45] Marc Gonyea: Your dad. 

[00:03:45] Ethan Chase: My dad, you know, I think, you know, he started, he started out right through college selling, uh, cell phones for, like, GTE. And then he was, you know, before that, he was selling running shoes.

[00:03:56] So, he was always kind of in the market of sales, um, you know, after a while, uh, I think around 2000, he took his sales acumen after doing that for, like, 10 years, um, and took it into starting and, and continuing to grow the family business. So, so, we have a company called Chase and Associates that my grandpa, his dad started, which is essentially a really niche executive search firm that finds, you know, C-Suite, VP-level persona for, for the packaging companies, right?

[00:04:26] In the, in the plastics, and, you know, those, those boxes that Kraft, Kraft uses to ship their mac and cheese and things. So, he knows all about that. So, so, he’s in, he was always in that business of selling, whether it’s shoes, cell phones or opportunities. So, I was, I always had that personality growing up.

[00:04:43] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, and you were around that. 

[00:04:44] Ethan Chase: It’s awesome, I was

[00:04:44] Marc Gonyea: But your mom was a practicing psychologist, or? 

[00:04:47] Ethan Chase: Yeah. 

[00:04:48] Marc Gonyea: Okay. So, this, that’s an interesting dynamic, too.

[00:04:50] Ethan Chase: Totally, totally. So, so, I, I mean, it worked out great, you know, it was match made in heaven, uh, which is, which is awesome, you know, she, they’re both extremely extroverted, right? 

[00:05:00] We’d have, you know, parties at the house, I’d come home from hanging out with buddies, and there’d be, you know, 30 people, you know, work friends, family friends, like, things like that. So, I, I always grew up around, you know, the idea of, of connecting and, and just being around people and using, leaning on them, so, that’s how, that’s how I kind of got into the sales piece, but, and then my mom, you know, she worked really, really hard and had a private practice for a while after, getting her Ph.D. at UT. 

[00:05:25] That’s kind of why they both ended up in UT in Austin. And after that she had a private practice and is now, you know, she’s like the executive director of an eating recovery center, um, actually based out Denver. So, she flies out here a lot, but she runs the Austin location. Yeah, so, so, ex, like, like extremely driven, you know, people in my life and, and who I got to grow up with. So, that’s been, that’s kind of like the status quo, that was the expectation.

[00:05:52] Marc Gonyea: But you weren’t sure what you were gonna do, you had this 

[00:05:54] Ethan Chase: No idea. 

[00:05:55] Marc Gonyea: No. No idea.

[00:05:55] Ethan Chase: No idea. Well, I started a business major at, at James 

[00:05:58] Marc Gonyea: Well, let’s talk about that. So, how does a kid, this, I’m always fascinated by this ’cause you’re very, you know, although in memoryBlue, we’ve got some native who are native to Austin, but there, there are, there are many more people in Austin who are from Austin, at least from my experience.

[00:06:12] So, you, you’re born and raised in Austin, 

[00:06:15] most part. How did you end up going school James Madison? ‘Cause memoryBlue, who was a ton of dukes at the comp, at the company, too, who loved, who loved being in…

[00:06:23] Ethan Chase: They do.

[00:06:24] Marc Gonyea: Particularly not, the good football team. 

[00:06:26] Ethan Chase: They’re doing well.

[00:06:27] Marc Gonyea: They’re good in their own. 

[00:06:28] Ethan Chase: Oh yeah. So, actually funny story, like, when I was, when I was a kid, I, I went to this summer camp in, in West Virginia, it’s the same camp my mom went to ’cause she grew up on the East Coast, same camp she went to in the eighties. It’s been around seventies, eighties. It was a camp called Camp Timber Ridge, it’s not 

[00:06:46] Marc Gonyea: Camp what? 

[00:06:46] Ethan Chase: Timber Ridge. 

[00:06:47] Marc Gonyea: Timber Ridge, okay.

[00:06:48] Ethan Chase: It’s not there anymore, sadly. 

[00:06:50] Marc Gonyea: Okay. Awesome.

[00:06:50] Ethan Chase: Kind of got,

[00:06:50] Marc Gonyea: That’s a bummer.

[00:06:51] Ethan Chase: I know, kinda got run down, but great, great memories, and I, I went for about seven years. It’s, summer camp on the East Coast is very much a part of, like, the East Coast Jewish upbringing, yeah, it’s, it’s, I don’t know why, I don’t know why it’s like that. 

[00:07:07] Marc Gonyea: No, it’s dead, culture is, what, what would you do in the summer?

[00:07:10] Ethan Chase: It just did, yeah, but like, it was primarily like, like a big Jewish population, like, they have Shabbat dinners and stuff, and yeah, that’s just, that’s what it was. So, it was the middle of, you know, nowhere in West Virginia, and it was like, you know, your old summer camp, but I had one counselor that I loved, like, he was the man, he was awesome, I looked up to him. And so, what he, he would always rep 

[00:07:32] Marc Gonyea: You had him, you had him for subsequent summers? 

[00:07:34] Ethan Chase: Yes, yeah, for, for multiple summers, like, I stayed in touch, like, he was a great guy. 

[00:07:38] Marc Gonyea: And he would always, sorry, sorry, he would always rep?

[00:07:41] Ethan Chase: rep his JMU, just alumni stuff, I was like, what is that, JMU? I only knew Texas, you know, UT Tech, A&M, which is funny, uh, and so, like, at the time, you know, senior year rolled around, it was time to start picking colleges, doing whatever. 

[00:07:58] I’d always been a fan of traveling, you know, moving around, you know, I just, even going to West Virginia for that camp growing up, kind of set the stage for, you know, I did travel programs in high school through, through a company that took me to Mongolia, Thailand, Peru for, for different summers.

[00:08:12] It was amazing, learned a lot, just how to navigate those things. So, I was like, why, why stay in Texas, you know, I wasn’t going to UT just because, you know, didn’t hit my grade point. 

[00:08:25] Marc Gonyea: It’s hard, UT’s an amazing school, it’s hard to get in school.

[00:08:27] Ethan Chase: Great school, yeah. 

[00:08:28] Marc Gonyea: Even the born and raised in Austin. 

[00:08:31] Ethan Chase: No, no, and, and they’re super big into letting outstaters, it’s a lot easier for them. 

[00:08:35] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, that’s unfortunate.

[00:08:36] Ethan Chase: But yeah, no, Austin, you know, UT’s great, but know if I wanted to do the whole college station A&M thing. So, I, I decided to just, like, tour a bunch of outstate schools. And one of the last ones was, was JMU. So, and I had family, like, family up in Bethesda, so, that, that was nice, but, uh, I didn’t know soul going up there. 

[00:08:55] And, and after the visit, my dad and I were like, “Okay, this could, uh, this could probably work actually, this, this is pretty cool.” And then I applied, got in, and that was, that was it, and I just decided to just pack up and go there. 

[00:09:08] Marc Gonyea: What did you major in? 

[00:09:10] Ethan Chase: I started, I started as a marketing major in business, didn’t love, didn’t love it.

[00:09:17] Marc Gonyea: Why not?

[00:09:19] Ethan Chase: You know, it just wasn’t my thing, I think I took econ granted I was also in a fraternity, so I was very busy doing a lot of different things, but no excuse, but, you know, I, after econ and, and taking, you know, business legal and, and classes like that, you know, it just really wasn’t my thing, you know, like, I, I wasn’t, I wasn’t, like, loving what I was doing, you know?

[00:09:37] So, so then I kind of had to make a decision after my first year, it’s like, do you wanna stay in the business school and kind of get into those 300 level classes, start doing your case studies and, like, really get into it, or, or maybe, maybe pivot, you know, it’s like, you know, if you realize kind of like the dip, for example, if you realize, hey, I’m not gonna be putting everything into this,

[00:09:58] this is not really what I’m going to love doing, why don’t I pivot and put something, put my energy towards something that I’m gonna really commit to? So, that’s what I did with communication studies and, and organizational studies. So, so focusing on the business hierarchies and, and kind of how they communicate, you know, what, what those dynamics are, um, and I loved it. It was public speaking classes, it was rhetoric classes, it was, it was studying, like, it was great, and, and I loved the next three years communicating with those people. 

[00:10:27] Marc Gonyea: Excellent. When, you had some good internships, right? Talk about that ’cause I’m noticing a common thread of the folks we have in these podcasts, they all have some interesting college experiences and not necessarily things that they end up doing things, you know, so tell us about that, too. So, you found your kind of a major you really appreciated and enjoyed, going to the school with most, you know, everybody I know genuinely loves the heck outta that school. And then, what, what, what were you doing in the summers? 

[00:10:56] Ethan Chase: Yeah. So, kind of, it kind of varied, um, yeah, the, there was, there was always, you know, my, my dad would always give flak and pressure, like, “Hey, you’re, you’re not gonna just spend your summers, you know, you know, goofing around, like, just doing nothing,

[00:11:09] like, you need a job.” And it’s like, you know, I could have gotten a waiter job, or a, or a server job, right? Like, you know, would’ve been fine, but like, in, in truth, like, in this day and age, like, you need, you need some sweet experiences in the summer. Like, like, that’s really what separated at the time, you know, those kids, you know, determined what kind of job you got outside of school, it, it’s a, it’s a big factor, it’s not the only factor. So, so, you know, my first internship during, during college was with a small recruiting startup, and it was through, I, I got it through like an old lacrosse coach, I, I thought, you know, “Hey, my dad’s in recruiting, why, why don’t I try it now?”

[00:11:44] You know, like, I’ve always been, like, interested in it. It was great, I was, I was cold calling, you know, old candidates, I was helping them filter through and change their talk track on, you know, how they pitch an opportunity.

[00:11:54] It was, it was a lot of selling opportunities and kind of doing more technical staffing. So, that was also my break into not only recruiting but also. So, I kind of got an idea of, you know, what the lingo software engineers are using and kind of what, you know, tools the hardware engineers are using. So, it was really, it was really interesting, kind of got an idea of how lucrative it was, lucrative. 

[00:12:13] Marc Gonyea: Lucrative?

[00:12:14] Ethan Chase: Lucrative. 

[00:12:14] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, yeah. That’s a great experience. So, you combine that with what you, in school, what did you think you’re gonna do when you got out? 

[00:12:23] Ethan Chase: So, I knew I was, it was gonna be recruiting or sales. I think I, I, I think I knew that pretty early on that recruiting or sales was that, that that was gonna be it. I mean, I, one of the, one of the internships was, was at Expedia Group and I got, I got

[00:12:35] Marc Gonyea: Tell us about that. 

[00:12:36] Ethan Chase: Yeah, it was, oh my God. It was so new, like, like, it was one of those companies where, like, they had every kind of snack and drink you could ask for.

[00:12:43] They had, like, people walking around giving, like, finger foods, like, it was, yeah, it was cool. And it was, it was, like, you know, you have a badge, you’re kind of a number, but I got this, I got this internship also through a network connection where I held that was a sourcer.

[00:12:55] Marc Gonyea: Okay, at Expedia? 

[00:12:57] Ethan Chase: At Expedia for, for Vrbo. 

[00:12:58] Marc Gonyea: In, in Washington? 

[00:13:00] Ethan Chase: No. So, they 

[00:13:01] Marc Gonyea: Oh, that’s really huge office in Austin. 

[00:13:02] Ethan Chase: Huge office, yeah, right next it’s, like, Apple, Expedia, Facebook. So, it’s like I was, I was now in big tech, so I got the startup kind of experience, then I got in big tech and, and after that, you know, I kind of realized, like, so maybe something mid in the mid-market in the middle would be great. But yeah, Vrbo was, was an awesome experience. I got to work with really, really smart, experienced, professional, professional people. So, I got to learn a lot. And then, and then after that, one of the internships that I was gunning for fell through, So, I hiked it up to Alaska for eight weeks.

[00:13:35] Marc Gonyea: Oh really? 

[00:13:36] Ethan Chase: To work on salmon processing plant. 

[00:13:38] Marc Gonyea: You did that job? 

[00:13:39] Ethan Chase: I did that. 

[00:13:39] Marc Gonyea: I would always see those things on the wall. But, actually real quick, before we move away, what did, what was, what, what did doing the Vrbo work you with, what you wanna do out of school? Did it help solidify what you wanted to do, what you didn’t wanna do? What, what? 

[00:13:53] Ethan Chase: When we say Vrbo work, like

[00:13:55] Marc Gonyea: Vrbo, V-r-b-o. 

[00:13:56] Ethan Chase: Oh yeah, Vrbo, yeah. 

[00:13:57] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, yeah. Did you, did you, did, did those things point in a direction, because you got this whole staffing thing the recruiting your father’s business, the family business, right? Did that kind of be, like, okay, when I get out, I wanna do this? Or are you still, like, just taking it all in? 

[00:14:13] Ethan Chase: So, I, I was pretty much still a sponge, I was taking it all in, however, I didn’t see the successes that I saw on the sales team at Vrbo So, so, so, that, that’s kind of what, what pivoted. So, like, we, we work closely, you know, I was, I was in the HR department, right, I was in HR recruiting, staffing,

[00:14:32] I was, that’s the umbrella they fall under. I’ve, I’ve, I saw calls, and I saw rooms, and I saw, you know, different meetings with the internal Vrbo sales team, and, I mean, those, those people looked like they were just, you know, they were moving and grooving, they were having clients come in, they were, they were taking ’em out,

[00:14:49] they were having awesome conversations, building relationships. I don’t know if my, I don’t know if talking to, you know, getting software engineers about a potential opportunity was really for me. I didn’t see the speed, I didn’t see the reward, I didn’t see, I’d see the passion for it.

[00:15:07] Marc Gonyea: I see, okay, got it. Okay, I get it, that makes sense. So, that’s a great, that’s another, you see what you like and what you might not like. You’re looking over there wondering what was going on with those guys. All right, but tell us about the Alaska thing ’cause I, I’m always fascinated, I’ve known anybody who’s, I’ve never known anyone who’s done it, but I’ve remember people advertising it. It’s probably when I was at Tech, probably the same, same companies.

[00:15:25] Ethan Chase: It was, it was crazy. Like, it was, it really was. 

[00:15:29] Marc Gonyea: What possessed you to do it?

[00:15:31] Ethan Chase: So, um, so, so it was like one of those internships where I was like, I was applying, I had a connection, um, but you know, it didn’t, it didn’t work out because they didn’t have the spot for, it was, it was another staffing initiative,

[00:15:42] it didn’t work out, right, like, towards the end of the summer, so I talked to my dad, I’m like, “Damnit, like, my internship fell through, not sure what I’m gonna do, like, I can hang out in Austin for a little bit.” He’s like, “Well, hold on, you know, since I work in packaging, I actually know a guy that I’ve done business with that does canning for salmon processing plants. So, so, he, like, you know, he’s got canning guys, he’s the packaging guy. 

[00:16:05] And so, I guess, you know, this canning guy was telling him, you know, about how he would send his son up to Dillingham, Alaska on a salmon, huge salmon processing plant where people live on it, for, like, eight weeks, nine weeks out of the year in season where, you know, this guy’s son would be on the quality assurance team and, you know, be in charge of when big tender boats, like just, like, exactly the same ones on Deadliest Catch, like Cornelia Marie. 

[00:16:32] Marc Gonyea: What do you call? Tender boats? 

[00:16:34] Ethan Chase: Tender boats. So, like, all the little boats out in the ocean would dump their salmon to big tender boats, bring them to us, we would be in charge of getting ’em up and, and processing them for Costco, things like that.

[00:16:45] Marc Gonyea: Interesting. 

[00:16:46] Ethan Chase: So, so, I did quality assurance, meaning that every boat that came in, I had to be on the boat, going up and down the ladder, checking the temp, checking the fish, go upstairs into the, to the slime line where it all come out, and people are cutting it for, you know, 14 hours a day, and, and I would be in charge of that, but, but the craziest part about that was not really, like, the work, it was pretty mindless work, it was, it was easy. The hours, so, for, for eight weeks straight, I, I worked 20 hours a day, seven days a week. It was great

[00:17:15] Chris Corcoran: Wow.

[00:17:16] Ethan Chase: Yeah, it was, it was, it was a lot. So, so there, so, people normally work, like, you know, 40 hours a week, right, and then there’s about 150 hours they have off if you work nine to five. So, I ended up working 160 hours and having, like, you know, 30-some hours off. 

[00:17:32] Marc Gonyea: When do you sleep? 

[00:17:34] Ethan Chase: So, that’s the thing, like you, you really don’t, so, you sleep in between boats, that’s probably 15, 20 minutes. So, we had like a, like a cubby to put our stuff in. So, people would put their, take their jacket off, get in the cubby, and then just sleep standing up.

[00:17:49] Marc Gonyea: Really?

[00:17:50] Ethan Chase: Serious. It was, like, I, I learned how to sleep just like, like a horse, just like standing up upright, and then moment a boat comes in, you’re on, you gotta go back out to the dock and take care of it. 

[00:18:00] Marc Gonyea: And is that ’cause it’s still seasonal?

[00:18:02] Ethan Chase: It was, yeah. So, it’s only eight weeks, so they try to squeeze as much salmon as they can because the, you have to let, you have to let most of the salmon kind of go back up river to reproduce to, to kind of keep the population up, but, but I, I mean, like I, I met some, I met some interesting people.

[00:18:17] The, the best thing I heard was some guy, he, what did he say? He was like, “You know, there’s two people, two types of people in Alaska. There’s one that live here, and there’s two that’s running from the law.” So, it’s like, so, so, so, I, I knew that I, I want, I wanna do something where I don’t have to come back here. 

[00:18:38] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, we, so hopefully, no running from the law.

[00:18:41] Ethan Chase: No running from the law. 

[00:18:42] Marc Gonyea: And when was this? What year in terms of your college years? 

[00:18:45] Ethan Chase: This was me going to my junior year of, of college. 

[00:18:47] Marc Gonyea: Okay, going your junior year of college? Okay. 

[00:18:49] Ethan Chase: So, yeah, I was about, about 19, 20. 

[00:18:52] Chris Corcoran: Ethan, I bet you made some good money. I bet you made some good money.

[00:18:56] Ethan Chase: I did, I did. Yo, it was actually pretty decent, like, the time and a half, all those hours, like, we ended up, ended up making some pretty good money for the year.

[00:19:03] Chris Corcoran: And you’re working so much, you can’t, you have no time to spend it.

[00:19:05] Ethan Chase: No time, no. So, so, I saved it all. So, like I, I lived on the processing plant with, with those guys in like a, in a shipping container, make shift into, like, a bunk room. And so, we’d all have walkie-talkies,

[00:19:17] we’d sleep for two hours, beep, get up, all right, put your boots on, get your rain gear on, it was raining, it was cold, shoveling sand in for 20 hours a day. It was nuts.

[00:19:27] How, how happy were you to come home?

[00:19:30] Ethan Chase: Oh my God. I think I slept for, like, three days straight. I was, it was, it was, like, I, like, getting into, like, a real bed was life changing? It was nuts. 

[00:19:42] Marc Gonyea: What did that job teach you about what you wanted to do? That experience? 

[00:19:47] Ethan Chase: It tell me find a job, you know, that, that pays enough to never have to come do this again. That, that, that’s, that’s what one of the guys told me that I worked with, he’s like, “Listen, this is, it’s cool in all for a summer, right? And we were happy to have you, stay in school, work hard, get yourself a job, don’t ever come here again.” That was it. It, it didn’t teach, teach me much about sales, but no, it did teach me that 

[00:20:11] Marc Gonyea: Its life experience.

[00:20:11] Ethan Chase: Some life experience and, and, honestly, some, some hard work. Pays off. 

[00:20:18] Marc Gonyea: So, then, alright, so, you come back, you’re rocking, do your final year. How did you, how did memoryBlue go down? 

[00:20:26] Ethan Chase: Oh yeah, no, that’s a great story. So, I’m walking downstairs Sunday morning in my apartment, or like my little house of,

[00:20:33] Marc Gonyea: In Harrisonburg?

[00:20:34] Ethan Chase: In Harrisonburg. And lo and behold, I see, you know, our old friend Andrew Camacho. 

[00:20:39] Andrew Macho Camacho, oh man, did he sleep on the couch or something? Yeah, there you go. Love that guy. Miss you, Andrew, miss you a lot. No, Andrew was great and, and so I found him sleeping on the couch, and he wakes up, he’s like, “Hey, bro. Good morning.”

[00:21:02] Easy if he does the accent perfectly. 

[00:21:04] Ethan Chase: It was, it’s, I, I, I heard it enough, that, that caught on, but it was awesome and, you know, he pops up, we hang out just for a little bit, catching up ’cause I, I didn’t see him so long, I think it was like a year or two since he’s been out.

[00:21:15] So, he was back for alumni weekend, I found his way on my couch and, and we were just talking, and this was probably like mid, mid-year my senior year and, and I was like, “Listen, man, like, like, tell me, tell me what you do ’cause I know you’re in DC, like, like what, what’s your day to day?” He was just walking me through memoryBlue

[00:21:33] and I had, I thought he was at Enterprise. So, he was at Enterprise for a while, selling cars, then he went to memoryBlue. And so, he was telling me about memoryBlue, like, I didn’t really, like, know what an SDR was, I didn’t know, like, I knew about tech sales, but I didn’t know, like, do it or how to get into it. So, he is walking me through like, “Yeah, like, I have a client, and I’m cold calling, and I’m talking to prospects, and I’m setting up meetings, and I’m, you know, having these conversations and learning.” And then he talked about the office culture, like, yeah, he’s like, “We have a gong.” I was like, “A gong?

[00:22:04] What? What are you talking about?” Showed me pictures, and he’s like, “It’s, it’s, you know, everybody’s like, kind of around our age, outta college, hard working.” And it was, it was, just like, caught my so much that I was like, “Listen, like, can you submit my resume?” He’s like, “Absolutely, like, let, let me take care of it.

[00:22:23] Send me your resume.” And yeah, before that I’d never heard about memoryBlue, so, and then kind of the rest was history. And then, a recruiter reached out to me, had few conversations, and, uh, and that was it. 

[00:22:35] Marc Gonyea: But you didn’t wanna live in North Virginia, though? 

[00:22:37] Ethan Chase: I, I wanted, I wanted no business living, living in Northern Virginia. Well, I, I love everybody there, but, it’s just, it is just kinda what happens, you know, like, the, the, the schools will go into the cities and just be at the school 2.0, you know, I, I wanted something different. 

[00:22:52] Marc Gonyea: Yep. So, how did that happen? 

[00:22:55] Ethan Chase: So, so, after my interview with, actually Joey Plesce, we’ve, we’ve gone through it together at this point, yeah, so, so, he was my, he was my role-play comp-and-close, and, and, and, you know, I was talking to him, and he was bringing up the idea that, “Hey, listen, like, you know, you can, you can come here and, and work at HQ, but like, I want you to know, like, I’m opening an office in Denver.” And I already knew that also because of a, a, a close buddy of mine, as well as pledge brother, we were hanging out one day, and he’s like, “Dude, I ended up getting an offer with memoryBlue. I’m going out to Denver.”

[00:23:29] Marc Gonyea: Who is this? 

[00:23:30] Ethan Chase: This is Isaac Blum. Isaac, great, great guy, good friend, and, and, you know, telling me about Denver, I was like, “This is great, like, this actually, like, a pretty, pretty interesting idea.” So, when I talked to Joey, I asked him like, like, what are the chances there’s still spots open in that Denver office?

[00:23:48] There were two spots left, and Isaac and I ended up getting the two positions to come out here, I think we were like the seventh and eighth SDRs, but I saw that opportunity and I jumped.

[00:23:58] Marc Gonyea: And why’d you wanna move to Denver? 

[00:24:01] Ethan Chase: Honestly, nope, there, there was no particular reason of why Denver was calling. Denver, Denver just, just made sense because Isaac and I were gonna get a place here, I had the job lined up, and, and I’ve, and I’ve always loved, and I’ve always loved mountain activities

[00:24:16] Marc Gonyea: Mountain activities?

[00:24:17] Ethan Chase: Snowboarding, hiking, camping, like, that’s, that’s what I grew up with, with family activities and trips and whatnot. So, Denver just seemed, like, that great mix of Austin and Mountain Life. So, it just kinda made sense. 

[00:24:29] Marc Gonyea: So, what was it like when you started? So, ’cause this is COVID time, right? 

[00:24:34] Ethan Chase: It’s COVID time. 

[00:24:34] Marc Gonyea: So, you graduated in May of 2020? So, couple months after COVID kind of settled, you start working for us later on that summer?

[00:24:42] 

[00:24:42] Ethan Chase: Yeah.

[00:25:38] Marc Gonyea: Here. 

[00:25:38] Ethan Chase: Yeah, yeah. There were a couple times I was, I was, you know, in the COVID summer calling Joey. I was like, “Hey, like, do I, like, like, am I still able to come to Denver? Like, like, what’s going on?” He’s like, “Oh, don’t, don’t worry about it, we, we’re all set, we’re all set for you, come out, we’re gonna be good.” so, that was great, that I still had the job, you know? 

[00:25:53] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, right?

[00:25:54] Ethan Chase: Nobody knew what was going on.

[00:25:55] Marc Gonyea: Nobody knew. You were back home in, in Austin, Austin?

[00:25:58] Ethan Chase: I was back home in Austin. 

[00:25:59] Marc Gonyea: Okay. Got it. And then, so, what do you remember when you started? 

[00:26:02] Ethan Chase: So, I just remember, with COVID happening, everything was pretty, everything was closed. So, like, you know, it was meeting people out, out and about, just really wasn’t an option, but they really didn’t have to be with memoryBlue, like, I, I just remember our first couple days. Isaac and I would go home and be like, I think we made, like, one hell of a decision ’cause, you know, the, the personalities in the office were, were Nikki Johnson.

[00:26:27] Marc Gonyea: Nikki, yeah, I mean, that’s a, she’s a personality, she’s character of a life, right? 

[00:26:32] Ethan Chase: Absolutely. 

[00:26:32] Marc Gonyea: She’s amazing. 

[00:26:34] Ethan Chase: And she’s still, like, a lifelong friend of ours, and, and she’s amazing. 

[00:26:38] Marc Gonyea: Who else you know, Morgan Hargett? 

[00:26:40] Ethan Chase: He was here, we had Abby Peters, we had, I’m trying to think, yeah, a couple other people. 

[00:26:47] Marc Gonyea: Yep, yeah, it’s a good crew.

[00:26:49] Ethan Chase: It was a great crew, all, all quota hitters, all hard working, all over the place, um, and it was just, it was, it was awesome. And then, like, you know, the office started to grow, great people started to come in, like, my closest golf buddies I have now from memoryBlue.

[00:27:04] Yeah. Who are those guys? We got Alex Morshing and Ralph Smith, those were good guys. But yeah, no, when I first started, like, it was just, it was a really much, like, a startup kind of energy out ’cause ’cause we knew what we were building and helping that happen. I had amazing clients all based outta Denver, so, I got to go happy hours lunches with them. 

[00:27:25] Marc Gonyea: So, you were an SDR here with clients. You’re the perfect example of someone who we may not been able to get come work here, had we not been opening office in Denver. 

[00:27:33] Ethan Chase: That’s probably a good point, I mean, maybe Austin, maybe Austin, I mean

[00:27:37] Marc Gonyea: Maybe Austin. 

[00:27:37] Ethan Chase: That’s a good point. 

[00:27:38] Marc Gonyea: But then, we, so, talk about, talk about the gig a little bit. So, you’re obviously working with a good, like, by the crew people who, what clients were you on? 

[00:27:49] Ethan Chase: So, I was on two half times. 

[00:27:50] Marc Gonyea: Okay, oh wow, that’s the way Chris likes it. So, you got 20 hours a week working with one client, 20 hours a week working with another?

[00:27:57] Ethan Chase: Yeah, exactly. And it, it taught me

[00:27:59] Marc Gonyea: It’s more challenging. 

[00:28:00] Ethan Chase: It was heavily more challenging. It just taught me some serious time management in an organization, you know, two emails, two different front spins, two weekly calls, two different talk tracks and products.

[00:28:10] Marc Gonyea: I remember that. Mm-hmm.

[00:28:12] Ethan Chase: Yeah, it, I mean, it was, I, I found success really early, um, just because I think doing cold calls, being on the phones, having that kind of, you know, just, just confidence and conversationalism, like, it was, it just, it’s always come naturally to me, so, yeah. I, I loved it. And the clients were great,

[00:28:28] and, and yeah, like, like it was, like, you know, I found that success and, you know, I just, hitting quota for me just, like, wasn’t, like, I had to do it. So, so, I worked, I worked really hard to, to maintain those relationships and hit numbers. 

[00:28:41] Marc Gonyea: What was the biggest change for your life? So, so, you knew some stuff about being on the phones, right? ‘Cause you had some pretty cool internships. But what was it something you had to learn that was different about being an SDR than maybe you had experience before? 

[00:28:53] Ethan Chase: So, I mean, the whole idea of, of closing on, on just either, whether it’s a meeting or a deal, it’s like, you know, when I was on the, on the phone with, with, you know, software engineers, like, it was more just getting a status update, kind of seeing what they’re doing, uh, like, you know, I, I didn’t, I didn’t know about discovery questions, I didn’t know about, you know, paying funnels and, and closing on the meetings, like, that was, that was where academy really came in,

[00:29:17] kind of structure these kind of calls, and then using those skills to, to just develop my SDR acumen, it was, it was great, yeah. So, so, absolutely, like, you know, that, the whole idea of structuring cold call was totally foreign to me. 

[00:29:31] Marc Gonyea: What do you mean by the structure? 

[00:29:32] Ethan Chase: Just, just structuring, you know, like, you know, the opening statement, you know, asking those, asking those pain-driving questions, giving value and then, you know, doing, doing a hard close to, to get time on the calendar reiterating and, and bring that value back up. 

[00:29:46] Um, I mean, like, it’s, it’s one of those things that, like, you know, you can’t forget about, especially when I’ve been in the AE seat, that is, like, so, like, say, like, a deal, you know, is stalling or something like that, you know, hey, like, I dunno if you remember, but like, you know, we talked about x, y, and z at the beginning of the sales cycle. What’s gonna happen if that doesn’t change? ‘Cause there’s a lot of things can get mixed up in the sales cycle.

[00:30:10] Like, there’s a lot of people that can get brought in, a lot of legal contracts. So, it’s like, you know, maybe, you know, keeping, keeping a pulse on why we’re here that, that, that was, that was one of the biggest things. 

[00:30:21] Marc Gonyea: Interesting. What were you good at? Well, what, like, what was your signature when you were in SDR? ‘Cause you, you became senior quite quickly, right? Did you get your number right outta the gate? 

[00:30:31] Ethan Chase: Yeah, after six months. 

[00:30:32] Marc Gonyea: Every six months, for the first six months, they hit the number, hit the number, hit the number, then got, got promoted. What, what were you good at? On the phone, or on the email, or on the LinkedIn? What was kind of your signature move? 

[00:30:44] Ethan Chase: Signature move, I, you know, I don’t know if it was exactly, like, 

[00:30:46] Marc Gonyea: Superpower.

[00:30:47] Ethan Chase: a move or a one-liner 

[00:30:48] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, who’s bad, that’s a bad, I gotta strike vocabulary. 

[00:30:51] Ethan Chase: No, I, I, I, I get, I see where you’re coming from, I get where you’re driving at. So, I mean, for me, um, it was all about telling the story of, of my client’s technology, and almost, like, painting a picture and, and telling a story of kind of why, why they came into business, what we solve, and, and kind of how we would do it, like, like, like putting kind of like a, like a, a storyboard in their head. 

[00:31:13] That’s what my senior SDR presentation was on, is if, what I learned in school and communications is that, you know, human nature, like, like us humans, like, we are storytelling animals, we thrive off stories, we hold onto stories, we, we, we move states and jobs based on stories, and it’s just what sticks with us. So, it, after I kind of took that, uh, that information and incorporated into my conversations. 

[00:31:43] Marc Gonyea: Let’s go back to that real quick, go on. You said you did your senior SDR presentation. To, tell people what that is. 

[00:31:49] Ethan Chase: Yeah. So, so,

[00:31:50] Marc Gonyea: ‘Cause we have people listening, you know, who don’t know what that is, or SDRs who are new, or think about being SDRs who haven’t gotten that yet, so, tell, tell people what it is and go into a little bit of what you, what your presentation was on, you hit it, but go into it little deeper. 

[00:32:02] Ethan Chase: Totally. Yeah, no, so, so, senior SDR presentation, it’s changed a little bit, but for me, when, you know, you have to hit quota six months, you have to write a blog post, what I, I’m trying to think what other record, like, requirements these days are 

[00:32:15] Marc Gonyea: And you do a presenta, you do company training.

[00:32:17] Ethan Chase: And, and you do company training, okay. So, but it still is hitting the six months, right? So, yeah. 

[00:32:22] Marc Gonyea: So, better be.

[00:32:23] Ethan Chase: I hope so. But yeah, you know, you know, part of getting that, you know, perks of the senior SDR is you have to give a company-wide training, so ,can really be on any topic you want, you know, some people do like, you know, how to prospect effectively, how, how to social sell on LinkedIn, whatever it may be…

[00:32:40] My biggest thing what and, and what I think made me so successful with client-facing, which is okay, which is sometimes an issue SDRs have about communicating and conveying the right message to their clients are, it doesn’t show up. Um, so, so, I, I brought in, I brought in my knowledge about, you know, storytelling and, and how, and how people really, really grab onto those,and, and, and I would do that on my client calls.

[00:33:04] So, I wouldn’t just kind of walk through my KPIs and the book meetings we have, I would kind of walk them through, hey, you know, like, you know, that, that morning, drove him to work, picked up the phone, and talked to this one guy, we had the conversation around this, but, you know, he, he decided it wasn’t a great time to talk.

[00:33:19] So, what he did was say, “Hey, give me a call back call in 15 minutes.” And then, I would walk them through the story of the booked meeting and the conversation we had, and, you know, and things he’s expecting and, and I, I just framed it up in a much more, you know, interesting and engaging way. 

[00:33:34] So, my, so, my clients could also, like, remember that because, like, I’m, I’m gonna just run into them again, you want to be, they’re gonna have a lot of SDRs throughout their tenure as, you know, VP of sales or AE, or whatever it may be. So, so, the SDRs that stick out to them, not only, everybody can work hard, but how are you gonna engage ’em? How are you gonna be? And it ended up working so well with one of my clients.

[00:33:58] He was an AE, he was the VP of sales at Elisity, which was my halftime, that I’m still in close contact with him when he joined his new company Graphiant, he was my POC who I sold to for a two FTE year-long contract. And so, not only did he, was he remembering the value of memoryBlue, the management layer, the tech act, everything.

[00:34:18] But he also knew, he was like, “I’ve, I’ve worked with Ethan, I know what he can do, you know, if he’s gonna be in this office too, watching over this campaign, like, why not do it again?” 

[00:34:27] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you hit your number 15 months in a row. 

[00:34:31] Ethan Chase: 15, yeah, 15 months in a row. Absolutely.

[00:34:33] Marc Gonyea: Crush it. What are you, that to, that’s not, that’s consistency, and that’s a definition of like, ’cause this is at a high level, how were you able to do that? 

[00:34:47] Ethan Chase: A, a lot of it was internal competition, I loved, I loved being the golden hair in the office, that, that was sick, I, like, I love the idea of being that guy, and also 

[00:34:57] Marc Gonyea: What do you mean that guy? Who’s that guy? What do you mean by that? 

[00:34:59] Ethan Chase: Just, yeah, there’s certain, you know, there’s top performers, they’re top performers and, and, and it’s a great feeling, like, like getting, getting the validation from, you know, higher ups and in leadership and things like that, like, that for me is extremely important, like, I, I think it was in, in one of the Dale Carnegie books, like, you know, praising people in public, shaming in private, like, like validation, appreciation is so vital in organizations because it’s, sometimes it could be overlooked. So, for some people it’s almost as, you know, equivalent to, to their salary to get that attention.

[00:35:31] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. It can be more valuable than some forms of money, for sure, right? So, you like being that person and then what, what were you doing? You, you liked internal competition, so you competing with, like, some of your peers. Who are you competing with? Some of the people you mentioned earlier?

[00:35:45] Ethan Chase: I was competing with some of them, I was competing with myself, I was competing with other people in the, in, you know, other offices where we would meet on TOPS and, and do that.

[00:35:52] But, I, I think what I, I just, I owe it to, to consistency, consistently list building, consistently doing the little things, and then all the big things will fall into place. 

[00:36:03] Marc Gonyea: Interesting. 

[00:36:03] Ethan Chase: That’s, that’s the biggest thing I learned was that it can be super overwhelming, especially going to the AE role, you know, I was very overwhelmed after having so much success as an SDR and staying consistent, making my calls and just, like, keeping the night sharp on the phone. Um, there’s times that really overwhelming, so just remembering that, you know, doing those little things, being consistent, you know, everything will eventually fall into place.

[00:36:30] Marc Gonyea: So, you did your 15 months of quota hitting? TOPS, TOPS performing, senior SDR promotion, you just take advantage of the model. You, you got offers from both your clients, right? Talk about that.

[00:36:44] Ethan Chase: Yeah. So, um

[00:36:45] Marc Gonyea: Not even that Verizon Star part yet, or why you decided to be, be an AE, but 

[00:36:48] Ethan Chase: Yeah, yeah, no, it, it, it’s got, it’s a kind of interesting story, like I, I mean, I was really heavily considering going to my clients. You know, that, that’s, that’s just what you did, right, that was, that was the norm, that’s what I was seeing. It was either that or be a DM, right? And, and management wasn’t for me. So, both my clients, you know, they, they came to memoryBlue for a reason, right?

[00:37:09] They, they weren’t totally ready, right? And, and, and at the time, you know, they, they said, “Okay, we’re now, we’re ready after 15 months, start building this in-house and, and create our own engine.” But, you know, the off, the offers that were on the table, the structures, the questions I ask about, who am I gonna be reporting to?

[00:37:26] What are my KPIs? How am I gonna be incentivized? Things like that, the, they, the, the answers really weren’t there. So, I just, I just had to take a lot of data points, a lot of, lot of kind of red and green data points that, that I took into account and ultimately it just didn’t make sense to, to, you know, be that founding SDR at a, at a company that really wasn’t ready. So, so, it was great to get offers from them. 

[00:37:50] Marc Gonyea: Sure. It was part of the experience. 

[00:37:53] Ethan Chase: It was awesome. 

[00:37:54] Marc Gonyea: But you, not doing that, and then what about the Verizon Star popped up, but how, how did the memoryBlue thing happen? Tell that story. How did you decide to be, be an AE? 

[00:38:01] Ethan Chase: Yeah. So, I was, I was absolutely not even considering being an AE, to be honest with you, I was like, I was looking every, everywhere else, could be at Rising Stars, the clients, the public sector team, like, like I was just, I was, you know, putting fuel all of them em, um, but it wasn’t until I was in a three-hour car ride for, for Nikki’s, Nikki Johnson’s birthday, and a good friend of her, hers was, was Ken Arias.

[00:38:28] Marc Gonyea: Kenny. Kenny. 

[00:38:30] Ethan Chase: So, I’d never met Kenny before, maybe once when he, when he is in the office, but I knew he was on, you know, the memoryBlue sales team, I didn’t really know what that entails at the time, all I knew is that I wanted to be an AE. So, when I was sitting in the car with him, he was walking me through everything there’s to know about the team, about the structure, about what he does, who he talks to, what his day-to-day’s like, his expectations. 

[00:38:56] Marc Gonyea: He was breaking it down. 

[00:38:57] Ethan Chase: He was breaking it down, and so, and so, at the time, I think, you know, he, he was, he was moving on to his next kind of step in his career. So, so, he was in Denver with kind of like a, an idea of like, “Hey, like, I might be leaving soon, like, I’d love to find a backup, you know, and, and help the team out.” So, I, I guess, I guess that was me at the time, and so, and so, I kind listened to him and, and I thought, man, so, you know, development is like the, one of the biggest pillars at this company,

[00:39:27] like, developing sales talent. Why would I not get in title, get the experience and stay at memoryBlue to, to, to, start that and, like, build a foundation instead of actually going to a company where it’s, I mean, it’s freaking swing or, sink or swim, who knows. 

[00:39:45] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Things may, may or may not happen, that’s what I like, that’s what I like about the role, it’s, you know, it, you learn to, well, you talk about the role, not me, you talk, this is 

[00:39:58] Ethan Chase: No, I’d love to hear your point of view. 

[00:40:00] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, well, I mean, I see folks who, who leave, I think sometimes with the, with offices, the geographic offices, memoryBlue remote offices, whatever you wanna call it. There, there becomes more of a real focus on going to work for the client,

[00:40:15] which is, but as, like, that’s it, and, and I don’t know if that’s always the case and for whatever reason, people jump in that ship really quick. And you, you, you, maybe it was the internships you had, maybe it was some other experience, maybe it’s just your personality, you’re through, sometimes when you add up, uh, these, when you add, ask questions out, all these things up, I’m know. 

[00:40:37] Why would you do that? I’m not saying you should’ve go work for the client, but we’re also talking about a job where you’re gonna be going outbound, closing work, selling an expensive service, it’s not cheap to work with memoryBlue. And you’re selling to smart, sophisticated people, you’re gonna negotiate, learn to beat the competition, you’re discovering what’s going on in these companies, and it’s also selling to marketing side, sometimes you’re selling to owners and businesses. 

[00:41:00] I mean, and it comes at you pretty fast, but you just alluded to earlier. So, versus kind of rolling the dice to be in SDR for another six months or a year, and like, be the first person to do is, I don’t wanna be the first person to go on Elon Musk’s rocket ship tomorrow. Like, there’s gonna be some, some, some carnage along the way, right, I, I, you, you, however, it worked out, you weighed it all.

[00:41:22] And so, talk about that transitions. You said, “I’m in, I wanna do it.” What was it like going from an SDR to learning how to close? You’re still, everybody’s still learning every day. You’re still kinda learning how to close. 

[00:41:32] Ethan Chase: Yeah, it, it never stops, I mean, there’s people that’s been doing this for 20 more years than I have, and they’re still learning. Yeah, I, I mean, you know, you know, to, to be completely honest with you, and, and transparent, I mean, it was, it was hard, it was, it was overwhelming, it, you know, I, I, you know, the, the, Frank and I, Frank was a, you know, fantastic segue into, I, I got, I’m extremely lucky to be able to have started on Frank’s team.

[00:41:59] I think he’s by far one of the best managers I’ve ever had, uh, just the way he kind of carries the team and holds everyone accountable and, and, you know, keeps it, keeps a distance, however, is, is, you know, very hands-on, and developing, but yeah, I mean, it, it was tough, it was just, it was a lot, you know, I, I was responsible for that niche part of the sales cycle as an SDR, and then all of a sudden, I had to do that, and then a hundred other things, you know, red lines, discovery calls, follow up, selling, like, you know, it’s, it’s a whole, it’s a whole different ballgame. So, so, it felt like I was drowning for a little bit, but that’s just, that’s like any, any job, so, so, you know, the biggest thing is that what I leaned on was Francois,

[00:42:41] Ethan Chase: he, he was, you know, he was extremely helpful in kind of helping me ramp, he started, like, a month or two before me, and, and, and one thing he told me, he was like, “Listen, man, keep out with the little things, do the little things right, stay consistent, and like I said, everything else will fall in place.” And, and, and I just, I have that on repeat, you know, when, when I’m getting overwhelmed, when I’m feeling like, oh, there’s so many things, I don’t know what’s going on, things are falling, just keep doing little things, you know, it’s, it’s a consistent workers that are gonna stay on top. So, so, after a little bit, you know, lean on Frank, Francois, the rest of the team, we, we ended up starting to get into a group, you know, after, after a month or two. 

[00:43:19] Marc Gonyea: Um, and what muscles did you have to develop that you didn’t have to develop as an SDR?

[00:43:24] Ethan Chase: Running a 45-minute discovery call. Like, that was, that was brand new, I was only on three, seven-minute cold calls. So, the, the idea of, you know, controlling and navigating a conversation to, you know, drag ’em down, you know, a pain funnel per se is, it’s, it’s, it was overwhelming.

[00:43:44] It was, it was, it was really fun to learn, and then, you know, you get to get the lay of the land of, of a prospect’s life, and then you get to turn around and pivot, and show them, “Hey, I can, I can help you. I can help you.”

[00:43:56] Marc Gonyea: ‘Cause you’re not selling a product. 

[00:43:58] Ethan Chase: No, we’re selling 

[00:43:59] Marc Gonyea: So, demo, right, there’s not a download this and try it out, like, you’re kind of selling hopes and dreams. 

[00:44:05] Ethan Chase: We’re selling, we’re selling hopes and dreams,

[00:44:07] Marc Gonyea: But, like, you’re, it’s, it’s more tangible. 

[00:44:10] Ethan Chase: Right. And, and selling a service, I, I mean, I, I knew that was gonna be hard, really, really hard going into it just because there’s nothing tangible, uh, like Matt Kre at Graphiant, he told me when he, he’s been sort of a mentor through all this.

[00:44:23] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. What’s his role? 

[00:44:24] Ethan Chase: He’s, uh, he’s, he’s head of sales.

[00:44:26] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, he lives in Denver, right? 

[00:44:27] Ethan Chase: Lives in Denver, yeah. 

[00:44:28] Marc Gonyea: Track that guy down. 

[00:44:29] Ethan Chase: He’s great, I think he’s coming to the office tomorrow. 

[00:44:31] Marc Gonyea: Oh, of course. 

[00:44:31] Ethan Chase: To hang out, be a bummer, but yeah, no, he’s a great guy

[00:44:35] Marc Gonyea: And what did he say? 

[00:44:36] Ethan Chase: He, uh, he originally when I, I, I, I don’t know if he’s gonna listen to this, but originally when, when I didn’t take the offer. 

[00:44:41] Marc Gonyea: I’m sure he will.

[00:44:42] Ethan Chase: I’m sure, I’m sure he will. When, when I didn’t take the offer for, um, for Elisity, you know, he, he was bummed, he, he didn’t love the idea and, and, and there was a response he gave me I didn’t like, so I ended up calling him back, I’m like, “Hey, Matt, like, I, I, I don’t love how that conversation went down, let’s, let’s try that again.” He looked at me, he’s like, I’ve never had anyone do that, I guess that’s part of my management style that I could change, you know how he kind of reacted, and after that, like, that just, like, got us, you know, tight-knit and, you know, I was talking about the AE role here at memoryBlue, kind of walking through, like, my thought process, and maybe I’m gonna take this offer, he texted me, he is like, “I see no downside to this.

[00:45:17] You know the, you know the service, it’s gonna be hard, it’s a service, but you’re gonna get some great experience, and I think you should do it.” I was like, “All right, man, done.” Yeah. So, so, he’s been great. 

[00:45:27] Marc Gonyea: That’s great. All right, so the, the discovery call, what’s the key to a, to a good discovery call, Mr. Chase?

[00:45:33] Ethan Chase: Oh, man, you know, it has, it has to be just taking a breath, take a breath, you know, these are all people that, that are on the call, one, for a reason, and two, they’re, they’re, they’re, they’re here to learn, they’re here to learn. So, I, I think, you know, having a conversation, just keeping it light, keeping it simple, the, the most, the simplest sales calls I have have always resulted in the quickest turnarounds, um.

[00:45:57] Marc Gonyea: What do you mean by that simple sales call? 

[00:46:01] Ethan Chase: You, I mean, I mean, you don’t have to be the smartest guy in the room, the, there was a while where I think I thought that, you know, being account executive means you were an absolute expert who are a consultant, which you are, but, but, you know, you don’t have to solve every single one of the problems, that’s just not true, you know, you, you need to figure out, you know, obviously, how their problem relates to your solution and, and just keep, just keep it simple, you know? I think just having the conversation, relaxing, you know, people buy from people they like, bottom line. So, so, just kind of keeping that level of connectivity being real, being vulnerable,

[00:46:34] I think that, I think that’s been my biggest kind of, you know, come up skill to run effective discovery calls, but, you know, obviously, you have to talk business, but at the end of the day, you know, these people are hurting, and their jobs could potentially be on the line, so, that can be there for.

[00:46:49] Marc Gonyea: All right. And then, what, so, who do you sell to now? You have Vertical, you have? 

[00:46:54] Ethan Chase: Yeah, so, I’m, I’m on the cyber security AE team. So, I…

[00:46:58] Marc Gonyea: And what’s it like selling in the cyber, cyber-related companies?

[00:47:02] Ethan Chase: It takes a little bit longer, a lot more hoops you have to jump through in terms of, you know, security clearances and competition, I mean, cyber’s not an easy space to break into either. So, you know, a lot of them have teams, but, but I will say, you know, the, the, the VPs of sales, or the directors of domain generations at these cyber companies, like, they’re, they’re the real deal, these, these big cyber firms, like, they’re selective on their talent,

[00:47:27] hopefully, they choose to build it out, so when we’re selling to them, I mean, we gotta be our game. Which is, which has been a great experience.

[00:47:34] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, yeah. That’s, it’s fast-growing, fast-moving, right, sharp elbows, lots of wins, lots of losses. Right now, these companies make it,

[00:47:46] Ethan Chase: Lots of losses.

[00:47:47] Marc Gonyea: most of ’em don’t, but they need to know that they’re doing all the right things, so they want somebody to sell to them, kind of knows what’s going on, but also all those things you said. So, what’s your most memorable deal so far? 

[00:47:59] Ethan Chase: Oh, okay. So, my, my most memorable deal was the biggest outbound deal I’ve, I’ve ever closed.

[00:48:04] Marc Gonyea: Outbound. 

[00:48:05] Ethan Chase: Outbound, completely outbound, cold email list building, like, it was a normal Tuesday afternoon, send out, make a couple calls, send out an email Wednesday, and I get an email back Wednesday morning from one of, like, the three VPs of sales had this company called Capacity. It was, it, it, pretty similar to the Genesis, right?

[00:48:25] Kind of that workload, customer experience, like, automation, things like that. I never heard of the company until I list build them. So, you know, I got an email back saying, “Hey, you know, we’d actually, like, love to hear about your services that you laid out in this, in this email. I’m gonna bring on a couple members of my team,

[00:48:39] like, like, let’s, let’s sync up tomorrow.” So, I was like, you know, doing some more research, Capacity looks pretty big, they’re getting a lot of funding, what’s going on here? So, I decided, hey, I was like, “Hey, Frank, like, you should come on this call.” Maybe Nimit even, just to kind of bounce the scales, it was like four of them, two or three of us. And so, you know, after the discovery call with, with this Capacity team, one of the different VPs of sales told Frank and I to hang back, he says, “Can, can you guys hold on for a second? I have some more time.” We’re like, “Yeah, sure.” Which is, that’s always a great sign. And so, I mean, he just, he just unloaded all this pain after Frank and I were able to keep it simple.

[00:49:18] Be personable and just, like, be a cons, consultant for them, and he just, you know, went into details around the current SDR team, what’s going on, he’s worried about his job, it’s been so hard, he’s getting pretty done by the investors. So, we set up another call and then another call after that, bringing on more people

[00:49:35] to talk about strategy and what we’re gonna do for scope of the work. They said, “Okay, you know, Nimit, Frank, nice to meet you guys. I’m the CRO, blah, blah, blah.” Had the conversation, and then I asked the question, I was like, “Okay, so, how do we take these follow-up calls to a potential partnership?” And the CRO was like, “Okay, I like that,

[00:49:52] here’s what you’re gonna do. Call me on Tuesday after we get done with this meeting and, and we’ll tell you what’s up.” So, they’re like, “We’re looking at two, two SDRs.” It’s like, okay, like, that’s awesome, like, outbound, two SDRs, maybe they commit, no problem. Tuesday, Tuesday afternoon rolls around. I call, I called my, my champion, my VP of sales,

[00:50:11] he’s like, “What’s going on, Ethan? Great timing.” I was like, “I was, I was told to give you a call then.” He’s like, “Based on everything we’ve learned and share with you guys, we decide to just lean in really freaking heavy, we’re gonna go five SDRs, 90-day commit, try it out, and if, if it goes well, we’re gonna expand.” And so, I got that news, I called Nimit, Nimit’s, like, jumping in his chair, that’s awesome. Work all the red lines with their lawyers, all, all solo by myself, working with the CRO. Um, sent out a DocuSign and, and that was it. So, it was running, like, $157,000 outbound deal, um, just waiting to be emailed.

[00:50:48] Marc Gonyea: They were out there. 

[00:50:49] Ethan Chase: They’re out there. 

[00:50:50] Marc Gonyea: So, so what, what was the big, what’d you learn from that? It’s a takeaway. 

[00:50:56] Ethan Chase: It’s, it’s just, you know, it, it all comes back, it all comes back to my whole mantra of hey, do your list building, do your cold calling, do your emailing, it’s out there. Do those little things, get everybody involved in the sales cycle, run it, run it well, and, and you’re gonna be, you’re gonna be paid. 

[00:51:19] Marc Gonyea: So, knowing what you know now, right? What would you have told yourself, like, the night before you started at company, COVID time, that some August 2020. What would you told yourself the night before first day? 

[00:51:34] Ethan Chase: Man, that’s a great, that’s a great question. I would just say soak it in, squeeze every ounce of training and development and people and client-facing that you can get out of, out of memoryBlue ’cause, I mean, there’s so many aspects that I would not have gotten if I joined as an SDR at an ADB, that some kids, or went to, like, an insight global instead of recruiting,

[00:51:59] like, you know, I, I, I would’ve just said, you know, just get, get what it’s, get everything you can out of it, that’s, that’s my biggest, biggest takeaway ’cause it’s, I mean, it’s not gonna last forever, maybe, you never know. 

[00:52:14] Marc Gonyea: No, but I, you gotta, you gotta take full avenge of the experience, and you did that, you jumped in both feet.

[00:52:21] Ethan Chase: Both feet, yeah, yeah. I, I would say, do it even more. 

[00:52:25] Marc Gonyea: Okay, well, well, Ethan, Corcoran, and I are very thankful that you joined up with us, and you’re still here doing your thing, you’re definitely a pacesetter, you’re a model for all the people who are coming to work here, and for people who are listening to this podcast, I can’t wait for it to go.

[00:52:40] Yeah, I appreciate that. Thanks for having me. Yep.