Tech Sales is for Hustlers Podcast

Episode 74: Jake Akin – From the Suburbs to Silicon Valley

Jake Akin learned quickly that accepting feedback and adapting your strategy early on in your career can have benefits, not only on your teammates, but the prospects you call.

In less than 4-years of being a memoryBlue alum, Jake is now the Regional Vice President at Randstad RiseSmart. Jake started his role eager and ready to make things happen. With feedback, he soon realized that level of intensity could be a real turn-off. Adaptability and social intelligence are now defining elements of his leadership and coaching style. His advice? Take in an array of feedback, apply what makes sense for you, and develop your authentic voice.

In this episode of Tech Sales is for Hustlers, Jake discusses career development coaching, the misconceptions surrounding the SDR position, and the importance of taking a dynamic approach with prospects.

Guest-At-A-Glance

Name: Jake Akin

What he does: Regional Vice President

Company: Randstad RiseSmart

Noteworthy: Jake is a former Sales Development Representative at memoryBlue, which was the starting point for his current role at Randstad RiseSmart.

Where to find Jake: LinkedIn

Key Insights

⚡ Be creative and have an open mind. Jake believes that creativity and an open mind open the door to various fruitful opportunities for salespeople, even when they lack self-esteem. “As long as you’re creative and you keep an open mind, there’s endless opportunity here, and it made me incredibly hungry to start a career in sales. […] Being overly creative is a distraction, but it’s about applying that creativity to resonate with exactly what that person’s need is and uncovering that gap.”

⚡ Don’t push your potential buyers. It will lead you nowhere. Although Jake loves to win, he believes that salespeople must understand that their solution might not work for everyone and shouldn’t force a deal that doesn’t stand a chance. “The hardest thing for me to learn is that it’s okay for that person not to be the perfect fit. You don’t have to shove it down their throats. There are ways to be strategic, weed that out, and help illuminate that. But also, if it’s not a good fit, pushing that person isn’t going to get you the outcome you want.”

⚡ SDRs are unfairly underestimated. According to Jake, most companies underestimate the role of an SDR, which is unfair. And that’s one of the reasons why SDRs move to other companies and seek better opportunities. “There are people who are destined to be lifetime SDRs because they’re good at it. The issue is that a lot of companies don’t value SDRs to the degree that they should. I think the SDR function is harder than the AE function.”

Episode Highlights

From Wisconsin to Silicon Valley

“For me, it was a big change to move 1600 miles and not know a soul. I mean, you’re in a place where the culture is entirely different. People are more hungry. There’s an energy here that I hadn’t experienced before. I was making 30 grand when I left AroundCampus Group, and the comp at memoryBlue was higher. I considered that. It’s about recognizing that this is a starting block. And if you want to make this happen, you need to make some sacrifices in your personal life. […] Many people come here [Silicon Valley] for the opportunity, whether it’s for schooling or an engineer who has the skillset and wants to get started. So many people are moving here. […] So, as long as you’re patient with it and you don’t jump in and make hasty decisions, I do think that it is workable.”

Challenges on the Way

“I’m an energetic guy. I talk pretty quickly, and when I’m in person, it’s easy to read the non-verbals. You can see what that person is displaying. You can respond to it. On the phone, you’re trying to read all those nonverbal, and it’s not as obvious. And so, I got what I like to call commission breath. […] It involved tempering myself by speaking in the same tone, not getting too excited, and understanding that my solution is not for everybody.

Figuring out how to do that was one of the building blocks that led me to be successful long-term when I started taking on more responsibility with other roles. But figuring out how to mirror that — meet people where they are at, not be overly excited, and understand that what I’m talking about might not make sense for this person — was the hardest thing for me to learn.”

Introducing the Culture Club President Role

“I did [Culture Club] for a couple of reasons. One, I wanted to make sure that we had bagels every Thursday. […]  I wanted to make sure that people felt included. Coming from elsewhere, I wanted to make sure that if there was someone else in my shoes or situation, they got the same reception that I got. […] I wanted to do whatever I could do to make this experience as good as possible for the people that were going to be coming on, to pass the torch, and keep it up. […] I wanted to have a role in that. So, I stepped into the Culture Club president position, and I was quite pleased with how it went.”

SDRs Don’t Feel Confident About Their Roles, But They Should

“I think the mistake that a lot of people make is that they don’t know what they want to do. They don’t have the confidence to say, ‘I love being an SDR. It’s a great job. It’s a great career. I can do this forever.’ I feel like a lot of people want that next step because they think that’s how you get the money. They think that they need closing experience, even if it’s not what makes the most sense for them. And a lot of people get on this track where, if they don’t see what that next step is within a year, they just leave. They go to another SDR job thinking that it is going to be better despite having no validation or real rationale for why they’re doing it. They just hope that it’s going to yield a different outcome.

There’s an opportunity to make really good money being an SDR. But a lot of people think the SDR is an entry-level job. They don’t see it as something to go home and write about. […] But I think we are going to see that, moving forward, a lot of companies will start to increase the value of the SDR because it’s much harder.”

Development Coaching is for Every Person Seeking Better Job Opportunities

“We’re career coaching. It’s not just executive coaching. It’s development coaching for not just high-potential employees but every person because everyone’s struggling with something. People may have had some discontent with their manager for two years. And since the organization across the street offered you more comp, you can take that jump, but we’re not addressing what the actual issue is. By giving people the opportunity to work with someone who understands where they’re coming from and where they’re at, we can get at the root of what makes individuals stick, how we keep people engaged, and give them the opportunity at the organization they’re already at so people don’t have to go through all of that change.

What we’re doing from a career coaching standpoint is helping individuals learn what the next iteration of their job might be before the company’s even prepared to make that happen so we can start skilling people about what their next role is going to look like.”

Transcript: 

[00:00:36] Marc Gonyea: Jake Akin live and direct, in person. 

[00:00:40] Jake Akin: It’s a pleasure to be here. 

[00:00:40] Marc Gonyea: In the house. 

[00:00:42] Jake Akin: In the house, back in the house. 

[00:00:43] Marc Gonyea: Back in the house, back in the house. 

[00:00:45] Chris Corcoran: How long has it been, Jake?

[00:00:48] Jake Akin: Since I’ve been in here? At least three years. 

[00:00:51] Marc Gonyea: Wow. 

[00:00:52] Jake Akin: Three and a half since I left, since I was hired out. 

[00:00:56] Marc Gonyea: And, your story is amazing, so we’ll want to get into that. 

[00:00:59] Jake Akin: Yeah, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t say amazing. I think it’s a chronicle. 

[00:01:03] Marc Gonyea: It’s very rare, just to tease it a little bit, very rare that somebody gets converted by the client, goes through, goes to the company, that sort of gets acquired,

[00:01:13] and then the person who started as a memoryBlue SDR just continues to rise through the ranks at where they got hired. I can’t. 

[00:01:21] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, it’s rare, rare. 

[00:01:22] Marc Gonyea: So that’s why it’s amazing, to me and him, whereas amazing. I guess. 

[00:01:26] Jake Akin: It seemed natural at the time, but looking at it now, it does seem like an anomaly and surprising, but it, I don’t know, one day just led to a month, led to, you know, half a year, and it all made sense. But yeah, looking at it now, in retrospect, it seems pretty fast. Yeah. 

[00:01:44] Chris Corcoran: His re, his recruiting cycle was well over a year, a two-year, two years, two-year-long recruiting cycle. 

[00:01:48] Marc Gonyea: To come to work for us?

[00:01:49] Chris Corcoran: To come work with us. Yeah. Well, we’ll get into that. 

[00:01:51] Marc Gonyea: We’ll get to that. So yeah. So, yeah, man, and let’s, let’s talk about it. Well, first of all, that’s a testament to your talent and how hard you work on the other tests. That should, doesn’t just happen magically. 

[00:02:04] Jake Akin: I agree with what you’re saying, but there was magic. I mean, all, all the variables had had to be there.

[00:02:10] If I wasn’t, you know, if I didn’t have them as a client, we did go on site, I went to blend in with the culture and it’s, it’s all of those different components, and it just happened to be what I was looking for from an organizational standpoint. I wanted a small company, I wanted that room to grow up, I wanted that visibility and

[00:02:28] thankfully, Risesmart was the perfect client to let that all happen. And, sticking with it and giving it the time that it needed to come to fruition also was a big factor. But at the time of, you know, the patients and everything, it’s like, “Oh my gosh, this is, I don’t know if this is going to make sense,”

[00:02:43] and then, you know, three years later it’s like, “Wow, that was the perfect formula and recipe too.” 

[00:02:47] Marc Gonyea: We’re going to detail. Before that though, you live in California now, but you’re not from California, right? From Wisconsin. We’re, just tell us about that, where you’re from, where you grew up. 

[00:02:57] Jake Akin: From a small town in Wisconsin, a little village, actually, 700 people, and in high school, we moved. 

[00:03:03] Marc Gonyea: 700 people? 

[00:03:04] Jake Akin: 700 people, the village of Hewitt, the city and the center. 

[00:03:08] Marc Gonyea: That’s small. 

[00:03:09] Jake Akin: Two churches and a bar.

[00:03:14] What was it like growing up there? 

[00:03:16] Jake Akin: Well, maybe that big yard over an acre, we had, you know, cows in the pasture in the backyard, a big cornfield. And, everyone is pretty close-knit and welcoming and friendly, and that’s honestly kind of how I got my start and what I would call sales now ’cause I would knock on doors and ask, “Hey, do you need someone to shovel your driveway?

[00:03:36] Do you need someone to pick the weeds in your landscaping? Do you need someone to do some lawn mowing?” And, you know, it just kind of started right. I got a couple of neighbors and, you know, they were on board with it, and then all of a sudden they turned into clients and I was doing that all summer long. How old are you? Like, 12 years old.

[00:03:53] Chris Corcoran: He’s come to TUV. 

[00:03:56] Marc Gonyea: Nobody’s knocking on doors in the town, Chris, I live in. Yeah. 

[00:04:01] Jake Akin: I wouldn’t knock on doors in San Jose. 

[00:04:06] Marc Gonyea: You might. 

[00:04:07] Jake Akin: I would scare people at yards. People at yards. 

[00:04:10] Marc Gonyea: In gene. So. Okay. So you start talking about high school. Well, how big was the high school? 

[00:04:17] Jake Akin: There were 350 people in my graduating class. So it’s pretty big, for the size of the town.

[00:04:22] Yeah. 

[00:04:24] Marc Gonyea: But the sales thing kind of, e, set early with you. If you’re, if you’re 12 years old, you keep yourself busy in the summer. 

[00:04:30] Jake Akin: Yeah. Well, my parents were teachers and you know, they, my mom grew up on a farm, I mean, they were dairy farmers and Christmas tree farmers, and family still does that so the hard work and the ethics and, you know, “Nothing in life being free” and, “You got to work for everything” was instilled in us from a young age.

[00:04:47] And, you know, my parents had the numbers, they were really, “Hey, if you want to, you know, have a little extra spending money to do X, Y, Z, then you got to make that happen. We’re not just going to flip the bill for everything.” So kind of figuring out how to make those side hustles happen and, you know, get a little pocket money is what got me going,

[00:05:05] and then it’s like, “Holy smokes. I can make some decent money doing this,” and you know, it’s a lot faster than, you know, the $2 an hour I got weeding for my mom and dads. Yeah. I’m going to look externally and, you know, start, start working with the neighborhood, and that’s, that’s kind of how it began, and I did that all through middle school and high school,

[00:05:22] and even through college. Really? I just kind of added on full-time employment on top of that. Really? 

[00:05:27] Chris Corcoran: Brothers, sisters? 

[00:05:28] Jake Akin: I have one sister, she’s two years younger than me. 

[00:05:30] Chris Corcoran: Two years younger. Okay. She had it kind of shorter way. 

[00:05:33] Jake Akin: I tried. I tried, um, she’s smarter than I am. I mean, I’ll, I’ll say that flat out from a book’s perspective,

[00:05:39] and so she, she had the academics and the math and whatnot, and she’s, you know, she’s in healthcare. She got her Master’s Degree in Health Administration and she was a little more well off in that regard. I had to kind of figure out where I could make my niche. Right, 

[00:05:53] Chris Corcoran: right. Love it, 

[00:05:54] Marc Gonyea: man. Love it.

[00:05:55] All right. So you went to high school, you’re in high school, what’d you think you’re going to do, like, when you, when you, you know, coming out of high school, going into college? 

[00:06:03] Jake Akin: It’s a great question. I thought I was gonna be a doctor. Everyone in my community that was successful, had money, was a physician. Where I’m from, there’s kind of three different tiers of people.

[00:06:14] There was the medical community, there was the education community, which we were a part of, and then there was the True Manufacturing labor community. I mean, those were the three primary only industries in our town, so my whole upbringing was if you want to be successful and you want to take vacations and you want to go skiing and do these things that require some funds, then you have to be a doctor.

[00:06:37] And so I took a ton of science classes and math classes, and as I said, that wasn’t my strong suit, but that’s where I buckled down. And, when I went to college, I was a biomedical science major, you know, I chose La Crosse because it was the number one program for that. 

[00:06:53] Marc Gonyea: Did you play sports or anything else besides? I did.

[00:06:56] Jake Akin: I swam. My dad was a cross country and track coach, so I had to pick one of his sports, so I chose cross country. My sister did track. Okay. And I did, started swimming as cross-training, cross country. Michael Phelps had his big debut in Beijing in 2008 and I watched him, I’m like, “Wow, that was awesome,”

[00:07:15] so went out swimming and it, from the first time I hit the water, it was my first love. So really pivoted, and cross country became my secondary kind of cross-training sport and dedicated all my energy to swimming. I was, actually, conference champion a 100 free, my senior year. You were free, free? Got the blank for it?

[00:07:32] I was a sprinter. Yeah. Nice. I tried to fly a little bit. The technique wasn’t quite there, but. That’s a baller. Muscle through a little bit. It was fun. It was a lot of fun, but. We 

[00:07:44] Marc Gonyea: could, I want to talk to you about something a little bit later. I kind of equated anything in the discipline that comes with the sport with the sales. We’ll come into it. So let’s sort of go back. So you were in college? 

[00:07:53] Jake Akin: Yeah. I started as a biomedical science major and you know, the first semester was kind of a rude awakening with chemistry and math and statistics and all the rest of it. After the first, second semester, then I had to kind of reevaluate

[00:08:09] ’cause I had a 3.3 GPA, and my advisor sat down with me and like, “Jake, you need a 3.9 to get into medical school, and with this, you know, you’re okay, you’re going to get a job, but you’re going to end up, you’ll end up in a lab, bio lab, looking through a microscope.” And, I was so afraid of that being my future,

[00:08:28] I’m like, “I can’t be in a lab with no one around me, like, that’s not going to be a good fit,” So I, I wanted to teach and I started student teaching, I did this for two more years and Wisconsin’s political system with the teaching side went through some turmoil and I wasn’t a hundred percent on board with that direction.

[00:08:49] So then it came time to figure out what I was going to do because the doctor route didn’t click and teaching didn’t seem like it would be a perfect fit, so I was talking with my mom and, you know, my mom went to school to be a nurse, and my dad went to school to be a teacher, and so it was pretty translated where you do this and then you get a job doing that.

[00:09:10] Like, “What do you want to do Jake?” And, it was, I couldn’t really put an answer to it, and so my parents, you know, they’re very encouraging, like, “You need to get some experience, like, you can’t get a job telling people you mowed lawns, you know, for a living. That, that’s not going to work. You have to get an internship.”

[00:09:24] You. Some places. Most places. Get some experience, so I grabbed my assignment notebook, you know, I’m, I’m a pen and paper guy, at this time I had switched my majors now where I was a double major in interpersonal communication studies. And then I love writing, I mean, I do the Christmas cards still to this day, and so my other major was English rhetoric and writing with a minor in literature.

[00:09:47] So two kinds of different focuses with calm, you know, taking the liberal arts kind of perspective, and I grabbed my assignment notebook, where I wrote down everything that was going on for class projects, schedules, and I go to this career fair and I’m walking around and not have to get an internship, you know. That’s what mom and dad said I need to do, to, you know, be able to stay in, you know, live in the summer and have some fun and whatnot.

[00:10:09] So I’m going around and I’m talking to all these different businesses, and the first one was, like, a paving company, like, “Do you want to make $30 an hour?” I’m like, “Heck yes.” “Do you want to, you know, be covered in tar all day?” I’m like, “No.” And then I talked to this second business and it was called the Brown Campus Group, and I’m holding my assignment notebook and I’ll never forget this, the manager there

[00:10:31] and it was Rachel Handley, she’s like, “Hey, I see you have this assignment notebook. How often, how often do you write in this thing?” I flipped it open, I’m like, “Every single day, you know, using it constantly.” And, it turns out what around campus did is they sold collegiate advertising, print and digital to all the local businesses,

[00:10:49] and you can get them to advertise in the student planner. Like, “What’s this all about?” And, she’s like, “Basically you make your ads. It’s entirely entrepreneur-based. You make of it what you want. We bring everybody down to North Carolina, we do comprehensive sales training. You can, you know, if you want, you can run the team in Lacrosse,

[00:11:08] you can be a sales rep if you want to run it, you, you know, just want to go out and focus on the business side, depending on what you want to do,” and it was the opportunity that I’ve been looking for. It was one of those “aha” moments that made total sense to me from the first conversation, but I didn’t even know that it wasn’t an option,

[00:11:25] so threw my name in the ring, I’m like, “I want to interview for this job.” And, I applied online and I think it was a month later, I was down in Daytona Beach, having spring break, and got a phone call that I was, in reality, in no shape to answer, “Hey Jake, it’s Rachel Hanley. We want to bring you on board. There are two positions.

[00:11:44] One is the sales team leader, and one is a sales rep. You know, if you want to be the sales team leader, we’d love to have you.” And, of course, I was like, “Heck yeah, I’ll take the sales team leader job,” not knowing what it was about, but, “Let’s, let’s do it.” And that really kind of catapulted and jump-started my entire sales experience.

[00:12:02] And, you know, from there, then I got a job with the Alumni Foundation at the university where we’d call the parents and previous grads and try to get some money for them to start scholarship funds. 

[00:12:11] How did you do that job? You just got a side, or like? My ex-girlfriend, actually, got the job the semester before I started there, and she’s like, “Jake, this would probably be a perfect fit for you,” and I interviewed for it and I got hired, and, actually, the first semester I was our number one seller with credit cards and everything else. So I was, kind of a, it just made sense, and yeah, you know, jump-started into around campus from there and flew down to North Carolina and had the training and got us in front of a group of 200 people and did alive, you know, a role-play.

[00:12:43] Marc Gonyea: When was that? When was that? When did you go down to North Carolina in your college tenure? 

[00:12:47] Jake Akin: May of 2016. And, what year were you? Was that? It was before my fifth year. So with all the major changes and everything, I had to go one final year, but still, with changing twice and graduating with two degrees and a minor, I was pretty happy that that happened, the way it happened. 

[00:13:03] Marc Gonyea: Trying to get your sister for the minor degrees, right? So it was the summer before your senior year, 

[00:13:09] Jake Akin: Before my senior year. 

[00:13:09] Marc Gonyea: You’re down in North Carolina. 

[00:13:11] Jake Akin: I’m down North 

[00:13:11] Carolina. 

[00:13:12] Marc Gonyea: Tell people what went on that ’cause I missed this stuff. I miss interviewing around campus people ’cause I would always ask them about their summers and they would tell me it sounds like such a great experience.

[00:13:23] It’s amazing. 

[00:13:23] Jake Akin: It was crazy. I mean, I, I had never worn a suit, you know, I, I was a, you know, regular Joe-from-Wisconsin kind of guy, you know, sweat pants and t-shirts so, you know, had to, I had to go to Macy’s and Gold’s and, you know, get some dress shoes and get a, get a suit and some ties, and I’ll look at the pictures and now it’s like, “Wow, that was some older style stuff,” but, you know, got the job done.

[00:13:49] And, you know, you pack a bag and I ain’t been on a plane by myself before or anything like that, so it was, it was all new, but you, you land and, you know, you get to that Charlotte airport and you, Raleigh airport, excuse me, and you, you go down these stairs and there are all these people in matching t-shirts and they’re, you know, “Ra, ra, ra” at the airport.

[00:14:13] Then you get on this bus and they cut you off to the dorms at, you know, Chapel Hill, and it’s the whole UNC cobblestone brick experience, and it was, it was awesome. And, you know, 750 people are in the same boat as you. Yeah. You’re all a little cocky, you’re all feeling pretty good that you got selected for this,

[00:14:32] and then it starts that next chapter where now I have to prove myself, “I got here, but now there are 700 people that are all here, and how do I make myself stand out?” And so it was interesting, you know. I jumped at every opportunity. I’m like, “I don’t care if I embarrass myself. I don’t care what any of these people think. I’m from little UWA La Crosse and there’s, you know, like, University of Miami and Ohio state, you know, UCLA and like, like big schools that, you know, like, I watched their sports on TV.

[00:15:04] No one’s here to La Crosse.” Like, I was lying to people, I told everyone I went to Madison, knew, you know, where I was from. And, it was awesome though because everyone either crashed and burned or struggled or, you know, crushed it from the first time, and then you kind of get to see how everyone works and, “Okay, that, that went well for that guy or that gal

[00:15:28] and, “I’m gonna adopt a little of this,” and just learning that who I am and what I, you know, what I brought to the table is okay, and it’s going to get me this far, and, you know, gaining that self-confidence was the most pivotal part, I think, of the entire experience, and. 

[00:15:44] Marc Gonyea: They’re true. So hold on. So they’re training you there, right?

[00:15:47] Jake Akin: Full-on, you get a playbook. 

[00:15:49] Marc Gonyea: What did they train you in, though? To what, to do what? 

[00:15:51] Jake Akin: Outbound in-person B2B sales. Door-to-door? You’re going to 30 to 35 businesses every single workday, you’re sitting down with an actual decision-maker and you’re giving them the full pitch. You’re building the value, you’re creating the ads that you think would make sense, and you’re trying to get them to buy into this solution and see how they can get more students to come to their place.

[00:16:16] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. So, and then you’re walking, just walking in, the door knocking? On door-knocking, he’s walking in, right, ’cause it’s the business. 

[00:16:21] Jake Akin: Oh yeah. I mean, I tried to make appointments ahead of time. Everyone’s giving me the runaround, and this is a whole summer. I mean, you have four months from the end of May until August to close all this, you know, out.

[00:16:32] Marc Gonyea: So, so you’ve been trained in this and. 

[00:16:38] Jake Akin: Verbatim script that you have to memorize and you’ll process it out, and you do role-plays and you’ve got the, you know, the group that you’re going to be working with at your school, so it was me, Brady, McKenzie and Trevor, there’s the four of us that are representing UWA La Crosse, so, you know, getting to know each of them and what made them tick.

[00:16:56] And then it’s like, “Alright, you graduated,” you know, “We have the final ceremony and we’re going to fly you all back. On Monday, it goes live.” So, you know, it’s like, “Oh, okay.” And, you go, you know, the fear comes bubbling out, but it’s, it’s make-or-break time. Yeah. You got 95 days to make it all happen. So I’ll never forget this,

[00:17:17] we flew back and we had our first meeting and, you know, it was awesome. They had it organized by time zone, so they have three meetings, you know, every day, at seven o’clock sharp, and you’d get on and there was a big, you know, getting pumped up and excited about, you know, how we’re going to take this opportunity to happen,

[00:17:32] and you’re mapping out on, you know, the whole city map with all the businesses, you go to the chamber of commerce and you find out about all these places you didn’t know existed, and you start charting, “Okay. This is what I’m gonna do the first day.” And, my first day I went to a bank, Credit Union, and I also went to a different pub,

[00:17:51] I know I hit, like, 46 places ’cause I’m like, you know, “30 is the goal, got to do 40. I want to be above the mark. I’m leading this team. I’ve got to set the example.” And, the Credit Union, I went in and I started talking to a director of operations and she was interested in what we had to sell, you know. They hadn’t done any advertising for those, the school,

[00:18:12] and I just, remember asking her, “Do you guys have a program dedicated to college kids?” And, she’s like, “Yeah, we have a bike loan program.” “What’s the bike loan program?” She said, “Well, students, you know, they either don’t have a credit card or they can’t get financed. They’re trying to build some credits, so we offer a program where people can buy a bicycle, typically around 400 or 500 bucks,

[00:18:32] and we finance that. Gives them the initial credit that they need, so they can start building that foundation.” “This is awesome.” So I went home and I took out a little notecard and I, it was a CEFU you was the Credit Union, and I drew a little guy on a bike and, like, “Start your credit line here as a student” and, you know, put a little color in it and brought it in the next day,

[00:18:53] and she let me then meet with the president, and we had, like, a 20-minute convo, and I walked out of there with a check. And, they bought a front-cover spot. What? Couldn’t believe it. Then I go to this bar, it’s the first day, so now I go to this bar. 

[00:19:08] Chris Corcoran: Walking out of there with a check.

[00:19:11] Jake Akin: I’m not going to lie. I was an avid nightlife inhabiter of the community,

[00:19:17] and so, in my head I’m like, “If I can bring a couple of my buddies to all these bars, we can show them that just by having five people, you can start racking up some tabs and we can make this revenue realize.” So I brought all my buddies the first day to the first bar and I had an advertisement, I had the mobile app ready to go,

[00:19:35] they too, we sold that bar. And so that just kind of jump-started it where I’m like, “Okay, if I can bring this to life and I can make people see the vision and show them that this is an opportunity, I can make something happen here in my little UWA La Crosse.” You know, the team ended up finishing in the top 25 in the country,

[00:19:54] and I was rep number 7 out of 750. 7 at a 750? One, two other people at the bigger schools ended up having more revenue closed in September, so officially I’m at number 9 out of 750. {} Paperwork, I got bumped back a little bit, but I closed out at number 7. Unbelievable. And, it was, honestly, it was trying to find different ways to get in there and be as creative as possible,

[00:20:18] and really, I hate to say illuminate the gaps, but it was showing people a solution that they hadn’t considered before. I mean, there was an instance with a towing company, one of my colleagues went in and he got kicked out flat out, but, like, “We advertised with you last year. It was a waste of money. We had no one, you know, use any of this.

[00:20:35] In fact, you guys sold an advertising spot to another towing company, and I was promised to be exclusive.” These two guys with crowbars kind of walked up and they’re like, “You know, it’s time for you to go,” and so he left. He was like, “I’m never going back there.” He told me this story. I’m like, “It doesn’t sound like this guy is mad that he didn’t get any people,

[00:20:53] he’s mad that someone else, another towing company, got a spot that he said to be exclusive.” So I’m like, “This is interesting.” So I drew up a huge ad forum, put it on the, taped it on the back cover, prime real estate spot where what we were selling, and I went in there, I’m like, “Look, I know that Don’s was the other towing company, you know, got this little front cover blip

[00:21:14] and you’re upset about that. What if we move them to the inside front cover? To be able to renew, let me give you this entire back page?” A little bit of a discount, all of a sudden, walked out of there with the signed contract. So it showed me that as long as you’re creative and you keep an open mind, there’s endless opportunity here, and, it made me incredibly hungry to start a career in sales. 

[00:21:37] Marc Gonyea: It’s interesting, right? ‘Cause people think creativity is a part of the sales game, but according to you, it is. 

[00:21:45] Jake Akin: It is. 

[00:21:46] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:21:47] Jake Akin: It’s, it’s how you apply it. You, I mean, being overly creative is a distraction, but it’s applying that creativity to resonate with exactly what that person’s need is and uncovering that gap and how it all comes too full to eliminate an area that they hadn’t maybe considered before,

[00:22:04] and that’s, I think, how I was pretty successful when I first started with that. But then I got hired as the brand manager and ambassador, and then I interviewed with AroundCampus and they hired me as a regional sales manager. 

[00:22:16] Marc Gonyea: The summer ended. You went back to school, you finished 7th.

[00:22:21] Officially, unofficially. And, you just, but you are okay, buying this and something like, “I want to pursue a career in sales.” 

[00:22:25] Jake Akin: Yes. I knew that with a hundred percent certainty. 

[00:22:28] Marc Gonyea: What happened?

[00:22:29] Jake Akin: I got hired by AroundCampus. Yes, so you’re on AroundCampus. So I interviewed with them and yeah, they offered me, three open territories.

[00:22:36] So my manager in Wisconsin had gotten promoted to a district manager, so her spot was open in Wisconsin. There was also a territory in Denver, Madison, she, yeah, she left, and so that was open. And then California was an open territory in Southern California. And, I had been to Colorado the year before for a, you know, a family trip,

[00:22:58] it was a lot of fun but California seemed a little bit even better, and I had never been there before, and so inexperienced Jake was like, “I’ll take the California territory. How different can it be from Wisconsin?”

[00:23:12] Well, little did I know. So yeah, I mean, I flew out, actually, the week before I graduated from college, even, so I knew I had to fly back the day before to walk and do all that stuff. It was Mother’s Day and I couldn’t let my mom not get to see that. So took care of all that. But yeah, I met all these, you know, reps, then, from California and, you know, started learning about some of the cultural differences and whatnot, and flew out to Los Angeles,

[00:23:39] I landed at 12:30 in the morning, I drove to my hotel in Inglewood, and at 7:15 the next morning we were selling for, you know, California state, Los Angeles. And, I was learning all about these different California towns and it was a whirlwind ride. 

[00:23:55] Chris Corcoran: So what was the territory?

[00:23:57] Jake Akin: Fresno through Tucson, Arizona. Okay. 

[00:24:00] Chris Corcoran: Wow. And, how many reps?

[00:24:03] There were when we started the summer, there were 18, and we finished the summer with 14. 

[00:24:10] Chris Corcoran: 14. And, talk, talk about how the payments were for the reps. 

[00:24:15] Jake Akin: I’m sorry? 

[00:24:15] Chris Corcoran: Talk about how the paying works for the reps. 

[00:24:18] Jake Akin: So the reps, they were interns, that’s the technical, uh, hiring qualifications for all of them. Yeah. They were paid $200 a week, and then they got commission payments on top of what they sold. So from an earnings perspective, it wasn’t the most lucrative position unless you delivered. Right. And so that was, I mean, the entire structure of the model was to reward high performers. You have to encourage people, I mean, it’s B2B, you had to, you know, actually get out and hit the, hit the ground and you’ll get that visibility. So off the top of my head, I don’t know exactly what the pay rates were. 

[00:24:57] Chris Corcoran: Essentially, it was 200 bucks a week? 200 bucks a week. 

[00:25:00] Wow. 

[00:25:01] Jake Akin: Which is not a lot of money, especially when you’re in California. 200 dollars a week? 200 dollars a week. 

[00:25:09] Marc Gonyea: You got, will take the job, right? Yeah. There’s some other stuff that comes with it. Right? But like, that’s how, you know, you, you, you, you have to say that out loud at some point to someone, right?

[00:25:18] Jake Akin: And, when you’re an independent contractor, so they, you know, it’s, you don’t have any taxes pulled out. Right. You know, so I, I remember spending every penny of my 200 a week and then December came and my dad’s like, “You’ll, like, three grand, you know, taxes.” I’m like, “What are you talking about?” So my poor dad had helped me out a little bit there ’cause I,

[00:25:42] what was I going to do? I have loans.

[00:25:45] Chris Corcoran: Talk about the summer when you’re, when you’re leading, 

[00:25:50] leading, leading the team. 

[00:25:52] Jake Akin: It was wild. I mean, it was, I mean, the company itself was entering its, you know, next chapter of, you know, honestly kind of winding down as an organization, and we were clinging to the print media life, and especially in California, I mean, Yelp had been here for two and a half years,

[00:26:14] I mean, we’re talking 2017, I mean, this is 4 years ago, the tech landscape looked entirely different. So we were selling new connection, and we were asking people to pay 800 bucks just to list themselves on the app, and they were getting huge pushback, like, “Why would I do this when I can get free visibility on Yelp?” and already running into these obstacles,

[00:26:33] and, you know, even my reps were using tablets and what not to, you know, log everything and going in and trying to sell a print platform. It was really falling on deaf ears, and so trying to, I can say this, so the, I mean the businesses that you targeted almost had to be more legacy-type businesses that weren’t fully adapted into the technical sphere because it’s print platforms,

[00:26:58] so in a way, it was almost selling a solution that wasn’t going to necessarily deliver as well for these businesses as they maybe could have if they had looked at something else. So for me, that was kind of the writing on the wall, where it was time to maybe start evaluating a pivot, and I know my reps were giving me a lot of pushback and feedback that it just didn’t seem to be meeting the demands of the market,

[00:27:21] and we certainly understood that. And, we also had a job to do and come August, me and all of the other regional managers that I was close with us just, we got a call from HR and it was quite simply, you know, “It’s been great having you, but the company’s direction is pivoted,” you know, “Today’s your last day.” 

[00:27:37] Marc Gonyea: What a great experience though, your first summer out of school and you do, what you talk about it is so compelling because you have a real good handle on what’s happening, right, what you’re going through, and you go through that so early in your career on your first job? 

[00:27:52] Chris Corcoran: He lived in a hotel there the entire summer.

[00:27:54] Jake Akin: Yes. I was just about to say that. I mean, I was driving between 1250 miles a week, you know, Fresno to San Diego is a little bit of a hike. And yeah, I had no home base,

[00:28:05] I didn’t have an apartment, I didn’t have a place to call home. I had two suitcases and a duffle bag and rental cars. And, you know, every night, my parents flew out, actually, for 10 days, just to see what it was like. Yeah. Well they did, and it was wild, you know? They’re like, “What?” Like, “What are you doing there, going to Santa Barbara, now you’re in San Luis Obispo and then you’re in Tucson,

[00:28:24] then you’re in Phoenix, then you’re driving with the Flagstaff,” and so like, “We want to know what this is about.” My parents, you know, the teachers, they had summers off, so they lasted, like, six days,

[00:28:34] like, “We got to go. This is it.” And so, yeah, it was, it was fun, but you know, for them, it was check out of the hotel at eight in the morning, seven in the morning and get to the spot and you know, they’re stuck, you know, they’re essentially homeless. They, you know, in California, there are no restrooms that you can just go to, there’s no spot to sit,

[00:28:56] so they’d be in these college towns, like, we got to find a library so we can find a spot to chill ’cause they’re holding their bags and whatnot, and that was it. I’m with my reps driving around, and it was, you know, you clock out for the day at five o’clock when you’re finished with everything and you grab a bite to eat and you’d get in the car and you drive a couple of hours to the next spot, you get about halfway there,

[00:29:17] and then you log into hotels.com and, “Okay,” you know, “What’s the discounted hotel?” ‘Cause I only had a budget of $120 a day, so trying to find a place in LA for that price, you know, that was a bit of a challenge and stayed at some, you know, places I would never stay at now, but it was all part of cutting my teeth and learning.

[00:29:34] Marc Gonyea: That’s right. 

[00:29:36] Chris Corcoran: It’s a shame that place is out of business. What a great, great experience with all these young people. 

[00:29:43] Jake Akin: 10 years of learning and a year and a half. 

[00:29:46] Chris Corcoran: At least that much. At least that 

[00:29:49] much. 

[00:29:49] Jake Akin: And, when you talk to 30 different business owners, you know, a day, I mean, that’s a lot of conversations, a lot of it to be just the contracting side of it, you know, it’s a lot. 

[00:29:58] Marc Gonyea: More then, you’re talking,

[00:30:00] you’re spending your time with people who own a business, who, you know, that is, that’s a different type of, I’m not saying this because I own a business, it’s just a different type of business person. Right? It’s a different take, it’s a different perspective, it’s just everything about it is different, and you’re just doing that all summer, every day,

[00:30:18] right? And, you learn to communicate a different way and you learn how to get to the point, how to have really interesting conversations and how to win some and lose some, right? 

[00:30:29] Jake Akin: Oh, there were losses. 

[00:30:30] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, of 

[00:30:30] course. 

[00:30:30] Jake Akin: Absolutely losses, but you know, it’s walking in and it’s, “I know you’re not expecting me. Is this a good time?” Mapping that out and, you know, at the back of your head, it’s like, “I’ve only got two more months to make this happen,” and, you know, trying to show as much value as you can. And there were, you know, there’s still some places that haunt me, honestly, to this day, where it’s like, “Oh, I know I could’ve, you know, I could have done something there,”

[00:30:50] but there’s, there’s also instances where it’s like, “I, I don’t know why you bought this, but.” Yeah. So 

[00:30:56] Marc Gonyea: we’re, so we’ll get into you bouncing out of AroundCampus, but what, how did we, we met him earlier, right? Or you tell that 

[00:31:05] story. 

[00:31:05] Chris Corcoran: Uh I’ll, I’ll, I’ll let Jake talk. 

[00:31:07] Jake Akin: So I was a rep, actually, AroundCampus Group, 2016 is when I met Kristen Wisdorf, and she was so articulate, and. 

[00:31:18] Chris Corcoran: Where’d you meet her? 

[00:31:19] Jake Akin: Chapel Hill. Okay. In the gym, memoryBlue booth. 

[00:31:22] Chris Corcoran: Oh, okay. Yeah. 

[00:31:23] Jake Akin: She was, she was one of three people that were there and I, there was a huge line, I’m sure you guys remember that. Oh, I do remember it. So is like 50 people team, I waited, like, 10 minutes just to get some visibility, shook her hand and said our hellos, I had a blue shirt on and then, like, a blue tie and, you know, she complimented that and I’m like, “All right, I’m going to remember this.”

[00:31:44] And, I found her later, we had, like, a group dinner and I singled her out and introduced myself again, and I just kind of kept in touch with her editor on LinkedIn, and then when I got hired as a regional manager, she was back, again, you know, working with the reps and then, then I, I started sitting down and I wanted to know her background.

[00:32:01] And, she’s actually from Wisconsin originally, too, she went through the same process where she was a rep at AroundCampus Group, she was from Toma, and so, you know, it’s like an hour and a half away from where I’m from, so I just, I felt this deep, deep, deep-seated, almost, companionship with who she was. I loved her career trajectory,

[00:32:20] and that, of course, everything happened with AroundCampus Group, and I, I didn’t know what to do. I mean, as you said, I’ve, you know, I’ve only been out of college now for, you know, four or five months and it was unexpected, I thought I was going to cut my teeth here for about a year, so I fell back on my profile and my connections and my network, you know, all you have is who you have,

[00:32:43] so I started talking to everybody and Kristen was one of the first people I reached out to. And, I mean, from the very first conversation she had, she was so receptive to, you know, what had happened and, you know, the situation, and honestly gave me the opportunity to at least get my foot in the door at memoryBlue and, you know, introduced me to Libby,

[00:33:06] and we had our first conversation and I started to dive into a little bit more about what memoryBlue did and then started looking at the different offices. But yeah, Kristen was the catalyst they opened my eyes to memoryBlue and, and, and got me here, and it was all the, all the little stuff in between, the money booth and the metaphors and taking the dollar 15 feet up,

[00:33:27] trying to find the ways to get it where I’m like, “Okay, this, this seems like a place that has a competitive edge.” So I kept it in my back pocket, and after the incident happened with AroundCampus, I interviewed at Federated Insurance, I interviewed at Gartner and I interviewed at memoryBlue and I received the memoryBlue offer before I finished that Federated,

[00:33:48] and that was the end. And I’m like, “I know that this is what I want. I stopped with Federated and jumped fully into memoryBlue. 

[00:33:54] Chris Corcoran: It was great. And, I remember it was big, it was important, but you still wanted to live in California? I 

[00:33:59] Jake Akin: did. I still do. Yeah. It’s, I mean, there’s, there’s so much opportunity here. Even talking to the, you know, the SDRs now, four years later, it’s, you know, all the different clients and you know, the text-based, you know, talking about Omar,

[00:34:14] it’s, it’s this is the place where, you know, innovation happens, where the pulses, you know, determine by everything, so I just, I wanted to be here, I wanted to be part of this and I wanted to be part of something bigger than what I had growing up. And, you know, in Wisconsin, there’s epic systems, there’s, you know, some organizations in Milwaukee, but that’s, that’s about it, you know. Out here it’s, there’s a new company every couple months,

[00:34:41] so I just, I knew that you know, to get the exposure, to get the visibility and get the experience that I needed, I had to go to a place where I could get as much exposure as possible. And, you know, I, I love the model of memoryBlue, where you have potentially numerous clients and it’s constantly changing,

[00:34:57] I’m like, “That’s like working 10 jobs in one,” so that’s, that’s why I chose to, to make that jump. And yeah, I know we had a couple of conversations about the difference between D6, there were three offices, then it was DC, Austin, and Silicon Valley. Yeah. I don’t know, I truly don’t know the exact reason why, but I knew I wanted to be in Silicon Valley, and so, I made that happen. 

[00:35:21] Chris Corcoran: Smart, smart. 

[00:36:26] And, I remember a kind of a precursor to this podcast, we used to, what was regularly, but occasionally we would bring back one of our alums and we’d have these fireside chats. Fireside chats. And, I recorded one with Ben Carlson, and when we were, when we were interviewing, I remember I said, “Hey, let me send it, send this to Jake, have him listen to it,

[00:36:47] and I’m going to want to talk to him about it.” And, because of those fireside chats, we said, “You know what? We’ve got all these interesting stories. We should start a podcast.” So it’s kind of come full circle where you listen to a precursor to this, and then now you’re appearing, on the podcast yourself.

[00:37:03] Jake Akin: I forgot that you shared that podcast with Ben Carlson. I was living in Dayton, Ohio at the time. With your girlfriend? She was a communications coordinator for American Airlines. I remember now. Yeah. So we had flight benefits, but non-revenue all over the place, so yeah, you and I, we had, like, a three-hour phone call after I’ve watched that pod, or listened to that podcast. A long time ago.

[00:37:25] Chris Corcoran: It was a long time ago. 

[00:37:27] So let’s talk about it. So you decided to move to Silicon Valley, you didn’t know anyone here? 

[00:37:31] I lived out of an Airbnb my first month. Yeah. Truly, I didn’t know a single soul, and Jackie started the same day as me. She was my day one, and Omar started a week after me. Okay. And so the three of us, you know, Omar’s from San Diego and Jackie’s from Oregon,

[00:37:53] Jake Akin: and, you know, I had, Tristan was my mentor and he was also from Milwaukee and scientist, and so we kind of all gravitated toward each other, and we all had similar energy, and I think that was, that was a key component of what made truly, all of us pretty successful, are we fed off each other. And, you know, “Omar, be here,” so ’cause yeah, it was an endoscope company. 

[00:38:16] Marc Gonyea: It was a PPM company. Yeah. Yeah. The PPM client. And,

[00:38:22] Chris Corcoran: not in scope or something. 

[00:38:25] Marc Gonyea: It’ll come to me. In hospitals, PPM, then revisit. Do you, you doing PPM, it sounds difficult. 

[00:38:31] Jake Akin: It was rough and he was here late, like, 7:30 at night, almost every day, but it got me fired up.

[00:38:37] He’s here doing this, you know, Omar’s good on the phone with, so, and I knew the sales process, but I didn’t have that phone confidence. I was an in-person kind of guy, I’m like, I wasn’t as comfortable in the shadows. And so

[00:38:55] picking up, “Okay, this is working for him and he’s got this hunger,” and so I’m like, “I can’t let him outwork me.” Yeah. that was the one thing. I’m like, “I’m not going to get outworked here. So he’s here late, I’m going to be here late, and if he’s late and I have to leave early, then I’m gonna come in on a Sunday.

[00:39:07] I’m gonna do whatever it takes.” And, you know, Jackie had that same hunger and, you know, Tristan was pushing us to keep doing everything possible, and so. 

[00:39:14] Excuse, your mentor, right? 

[00:39:15] Jake Akin: Yeah. He and Heidi. 

[00:39:17] Marc Gonyea: That’s right. 

[00:39:19] Those guys are great on scientists. Great. 

[00:39:22] Jake Akin: Chris runs their, uh, sales ops now. Crazy. But all of that coming together,

[00:39:29] { manny was} lit a fire under all of us, I think. And, if, if Jackie hadn’t started when I started, you know, I feel like my engagement went to Venice high and, you know, all of us having that partnership in that, you know, cohesive camaraderie and competition, I think made us all want to do everything possible to hit those numbers.

[00:39:51] And, you know, it was, it was fun. When we, when we joined, you know, we, we’d sit down in the morning and we go, we go over all of our goals and it was, it was a grind, you know. You start getting on the phones and you, you know, you’d say something that you probably shouldn’t have said, like, you’re three people, like, “Yeah, why did you say 

[00:40:05] Chris Corcoran: that?”

[00:40:07] Jake Akin: But that’s, that’s what I wanted. I didn’t have that type of exposure experienced before, it was all on my own, you know. It’s like I walked out of this conversation with some message, “Well, I think I did this well, or I think I should do this.” Yeah. memoryBlue was the exact opposite, where all of a sudden you have 20 other people who are hearing everything that you say,

[00:40:25] you get all this feedback and it’s, sometimes it can almost be overwhelming, it’s, “Okay. I’m going to take a little of this, a little of this. I’m going to stay true to who I am here.” But having that group of people that you can feed off of was, was everything, and it made all the difference. 

[00:40:39] Chris Corcoran: So, so talk a little to the listeners about what it was like moving from Wisconsin to Silicon Valley, everyone knows it’s pricey out here, and what that was like, and how you were able to kind of make it work. Because a lot of times these recent college graduates, don’t think it’s possible. 

[00:40:54] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. And, “This just seems so far away,” here, the experience of moving to South Cal, a little bit, but still like, even then you, you did it. 

[00:41:02] Jake Akin: I got to get Joe Reeves credit because before I even got hired here, he connected me with a couple of other new individuals, Tristan being one of them, to talk with them

[00:41:13] what did they do, what was their process. Most of the people here are, you know, from the Bay Area, they have family, so for me, I mean, it was, it was a big change. I mean, one, moving 1600 miles and not knowing a soul, I mean, that’s different, but two, you’re in a place where the culture is entirely different.

[00:41:28] I mean, people are, they’re more hungry, there’s an energy here that I hadn’t experienced before. And, you know, monetarily, yeah, there are big differences, but I also looked at, you know, I was making, like, 30 grand when I left AroundCampus Group on my base, and, you know, the comp at memoryBlue was, was higher,

[00:41:46] so, you know, I, I considered that. But it’s, it’s recognizing that this is that starting block, and if you want to make this happen, then you maybe need to make some sacrifices in your personal life or whatever that is. But rent, I mean, I, I moved out of the Air, I lived out of the Airbnb, as I said, and that was $250 a week,

[00:42:08] so a thousand dollars, you know. When I first started, I had a roommate and, you know, that was substantial, but then I got creative, I went on Facebook, I joined some housing groups, I, you know, I went on Craigslist, and old, and old Craigslist is actually how I found the roommates that I lived with for the next three years.

[00:42:24] Really? All of them were chiropractor students at Palmer College, which is one of the top ten chiropractor students, or chiropractor schools in the nation, and so I’m like, “Okay, these are professionals, they’re young, they’re hungry, they’re not screw-balls. I’ll be able to, actually, focus a little bit.” And, you know, I, I met these guys and one of them, you know, one of them like he, he didn’t use a microwave ’cause he thought it’d give you cancer,

[00:42:49] Jake Akin: and, you know, like, it was kind of out there a little bit, I come, you know, “I love the microwave.” So, okay, you know, that was a little bit different, but the rent was only 650 a month, and, you know, sharing a room with seven, or a bathroom with seven people was, you know, a sacrifice that I had to make, but it wasn’t that bad.

[00:43:05] And, there’s, I mean, it’s, it’s doable, but I had to, I had to be creative and, you know, look at it a little bit, I mean, if I just leased an apartment straight up, it’d be, you know, substantially more expensive than that. But there’s, I mean, so many people come here for the opportunity, whether it’s schooling or, you know, even just an engineer who has the skillset and they just want to get started,

[00:43:25] there are so many people that move here, I mean, that’s why Airbnb was started, in San Francisco, because people needed a spot to stay. So as long as you’re patient with it and you know, you don’t jump in and just make our hasty, rash decision, I do think that it is workable, and, I mean, once you know, my girlfriend Leah moved out here ’cause she got a job at LinkedIn, then you’re able to, you know, make a decision and move into our own apartment ourselves.

[00:43:50] So it took some time, but yeah, it was, it was fun. And, honestly, the experience of living with those chiropractic students, I mean, I got exposed to more Eastern medicine philosophy than I ever thought I’d know before, and now I go to the chiropractor every week, so, you know, meant to be. 

[00:44:05] Marc Gonyea: You go to one of those guys?

[00:44:07] I did. They all moved away now. 

[00:44:09] Marc Gonyea: Oh, okay. Okay. I’ll tell you what keeps coming up with Jake is that creativity thing, 

[00:44:12] right? 

[00:44:13] Chris Corcoran: Finding a way. A.k.a, being resourceful, right? 

[00:44:16] Marc Gonyea: When you’re resourceful, filling your creativity measures, so that’s testament to you. I always testament you too ’cause I definitely remember, like, because I didn’t know you as well,

[00:44:23] I wasn’t as involved with AroundCampus thing, I was more working on the delivery side once people started, and I definitely remember being, “Why is this kid from Wisconsin?” Like, I wasn’t fully aware of the AroundCampus thing, “Why is he out here?” Because it takes a special person to move away from home and come out here and you said the same shit

[00:44:41] then, it’s what you said now, it’s all true. And, Chris and I tell people, tell people that all the time, it’s the opportunity, it’s here. So much opportunity. It’s mad. Crazy opportunity. 

[00:44:51] Jake Akin: Yeah. I mean. Right? Where I’m at now, truly. I mean, I guess this is bragging, but I am guaranteed in the top 1% of earners in my graduating college class. Taking five years, only being out for four years.

[00:45:07] Right. If I had stayed in Wisconsin, I’d probably be a mid-level manager at QuikTrip. I’m serious. 

[00:45:14] Marc Gonyea: No. 

[00:45:14] Jake Akin: No, no. The career fairs, all of it, that’s the opportunity. It’s localized. It’s smaller organizations that don’t have the potential to give someone everything that they want. And so for me, I knew I was hungry and I knew that I wouldn’t be happy unless I had more on my plate than I could possibly juggle,

[00:45:34] and that’s who I am as a person, so I, I knew I had to make that move even though my, and my family and everyone else, you know, they, there were questions there, but I, it just, it made sense to me. 

[00:45:45] Marc Gonyea: While you were here I’d to go, I tried to get lunch with you, Jackie, and Manny, and I was, at least you get some high flyers in this office, and other people were busy or almost that Malwarebytes or what have you,

[00:45:57] but like, I was always impressed and it’s great to see you doing, doing so well. Now I’m not surprised. 

[00:46:03] Jake Akin: You have to. 

[00:46:04] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. You get no choice, right? 

[00:46:07] Jake Akin: Quarterly quota, you know, you gotta deliver it. 

[00:46:10] Marc Gonyea: So what, what clients were you on? 

[00:46:13] Jake Akin: I had a pile of them. I had a Denny, I had Scientists, I had, Mobile Aspects was Omar’s, I did PPM for them for a little bit. Right. I had Deepgram, which was the audio transcription AI. I remember that. It just actually just got another round of series funding. I saw Scott, who was the CEO there, posted on LinkedIn, like, last week. And then Risesmart became one of my clients in January of 2018. 

[00:46:42] Marc Gonyea: And, what did you get good at when you were in the shadows?

[00:46:45] Jake Akin: In the shadows? 

[00:46:45] Marc Gonyea: What did you need to that? W, what, your kind of superpower? 

[00:46:51] Jake Akin: That’s a great question. I don’t want to use the word patient, but I’d say temper is what was required of me. I, I’m an energy guy, I mean, I talk pretty quick and when I’m in person, it’s easy to read the non-verbals. You can see what that person is displaying, you can respond to it, you can mirror really, really well. On the phone,

[00:47:15] you’re trying to read all those non-verbal, and it’s not as obvious, and so I got what I like to call ‘commission breath’ when I first started. Commission breathe. Not even nicer, I have to actually give credit to Josh Braun of Florida, call him on LinkedIn, it’s his turn. 

[00:47:29] Marc Gonyea: That guy’s got great, got good LinkedIn game. I love 

[00:47:32] Josh. 

[00:47:33] Jake Akin: Commission breath. I hear the booking on the opportunity, and my voice would go away and start speaking faster, I’d get hungry, I could feel it, it’s on the tip of my toes, and I started salivating and my breath would reek of this commission, and prospects and the people you’re talking to, they can sense that, and it’s a huge turn-off.

[00:47:57] And so for me, it’s, it’s, it was tempering myself, speaking with the same tone, not getting too excited, and understanding that my solution is not for everybody. I mean, you go into 35 businesses a day that I’m targeting, and it’s a bar, and I know that college kids they’re going to go there, it’s a pretty easy sell,

[00:48:14] I mean, it’s spelled out. But when you’re talking to potentially 130 people a day and you know, you’re connecting with however many foresee whips and you know, you’re not really sure who they are as a person, and what they’re, you know, you look on LinkedIn a little bit and you get the grasp, but it required an entire reframing,

[00:48:34] and I really struggled with it initially. I mean, Evan Wells is someone else I have to give a big kudos to ’cause he took me to the site and, as well as Scott Reynolds, it kind of gave me the the crash course in how to make this work, like, “What you’re doing, Jake, it’s going to get you bookings, but you’re going to struggle.”

[00:48:51] Yeah. You’re, you’re talking too fast and you, you sound like you’re eight years old, slow it down, take a breath, wait two seconds, you know, just pump the brakes. And, it was taking a little bit of that, staying true to who I am, keeping the energy there, that’s, that’s all-important, but adopting a little bit,

[00:49:09] “Okay” of this, and a little bit of that, staying in the shadows still, that’s, that’s where I really made the most improvement. And now, I mean, everything that we do, I mean, the pandemic, last 22 months have been virtual, I mean, going onsite to a client is a thing of the past almost, so it is the first time I’ve been onsite in a long time.

[00:49:29] So figuring out how to do that was one of them, what we call it, pillars or building blocks, stepping stones that led me to be successful long-term when I started taking on more responsibility with other roles. But figuring out how to mirror that and meet people where they’re at and not be overly excited and understand that what I’m talking about might not make sense for this person,

[00:49:53] and that’s okay, that was the hardest thing for me to learn, is that it’s okay for that person not to be the perfect fit, and you don’t have to shove it down their throats. There are ways to be strategic and weed that out and help aluminate that, but also if it’s not a good fit and there’s no pain pushing and pushing that person isn’t going to get the outcome that you want.

[00:50:12] Right. Learning how to nurture, learning when to, you know, ease off the gas a little bit and keep them as a priority, but maybe not drown them as much, that was all, all stuff that I, I had no experience with before I started here. 

[00:50:27] Marc Gonyea: And, you know, Chris mentioned in an earlier podcast, the one we do it with your, your, your buddy, Omar, you know, he had you and Omar sit next to each other for a reason, and it kind of puts him in this game that you represent and your essence into the office, and you guys did “you-are-the-culture-code president,” Right? I was. What’s that? What was that, and why’d you do that, and what was that? 

[00:50:51] Jake Akin: I did it for a couple of reasons. One, I wanted to make sure that we had bagels every Thursday.

[00:50:57] I don’t want you to say that. Before I was gluten-free, so, oh my God, I’m all about the bagels. And, really, I wanted to make sure that people felt included. I mean, we were being on events and whatnot, but, you know, coming from somewhere that wasn’t here, I wanted to make sure that if there was someone else in my shoes or situation, that they felt the same reception that I felt.

[00:51:17] I mean, I got really lucky with Joe as my delivery manager ’cause, you know, my second week here it was Thanksgiving, and I was out of my Airbnb, I wasn’t going to fly home, I had just gotten here and I didn’t know anybody, and that was going to be a pretty lonely weekend. And, Joe just gave me a call, and like, “Hey man, I’m having some friends over.

[00:51:35] If you want to come for Thanksgiving, I’d love to have you.” And, you know, got to meet him in a different light and some of his friends and, really, for me, it’s like, “Okay, I feel good about this. I have a place here. There are people that, you know, actually, at least pretend to care about me.” 

[00:51:50] They 

[00:51:51] Chris Corcoran: care. 

[00:51:53] Jake Akin: This is good, but, you know, you don’t know that. Everyone’s new and it’s all-new.

[00:51:57] So, you know, Joe just extending that little bit of an olive branch made all the difference for me and I, I wanted to, you know, do whatever I could do as well to, to make this experience as good as possible for the people that were going to be coming on and I wanted to pass the torch and to keep it up,

[00:52:14] it was so fun here. I mean, I don’t know if you guys still do the kegs and all the rest of it, but it was a blast. I mean, we had coffee-drinking competitions during the first call blitz, you know, you’re weak if you have eight cups of coffee and, you know, if your hands weren’t shaking, you know, you were doing it wrong and. Coffee-drinking contest.

[00:52:32] Oh yeah, it was awesome. And, it was, you know, all of these different things that, you know, you, you, you bond together as a group, and, you know, a lot of times by lunch, I mean, we, we had booked three meetings each. It was, you know, it was, it was fun and there was a hungry-go-getter attitude, and I wanted to have a role in that.

[00:52:50] So I stepped into the culture club president position, and I was quite pleased with how it went. 

[00:52:57] Marc Gonyea: It was great. So you’re doing your thing, making it happen, and as, as it works, a client had their eye on you, right? 

[00:53:06] Jake Akin: Yeah. Lo and behold, uh, Ricesmart came in in January. I’ll never forget this, actually, I had a bow tie on when they came in 

[00:53:17] and some plaid golf pants and suspenders.

[00:53:23] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:53:24] Jake Akin: Karin Bootsma, Vince Lumagui, and Sherry Ren came in and Joe and I, we had never heard of outplacement, and, you know, we were trying to, you know, get caught up on who the organization was, and once they sat down, though, they told us, “We help people who’ve been laid off. That’s what our company does.

[00:53:43] We partner with organizations that are going through layoffs and we help all these people find that next chapter.” Cool smokes. I got laid off, you know, last August, I’m here as a product of this exact experience and something immediately clicked, I’m like this, “This is, this is a different type of relationship. I like what they do.” And, started going on-site,

[00:54:09] I mean, our headquarters was 55 Almaden and it was the whole four blocks away, and, you know, we were a pretty new startup, so I guess it kind of worked out, where I was longboarding and I’d longboard to the office. Dan, the CEO is like all about, he said, “Oh, this guy, you know, he’s bringing this young energy into this culture,” and whatnot. And, they hadn’t any SDRs,

[00:54:32] and, you know, I’d sit there and we, you know, make some dials and stuff, and at the time, I mean, outplacement was a high-demand product, and so set some pretty big meetings for the enterprise group and got the visibility that I needed. And, thankfully it was a small company, and if it had been a lot bigger, if I had other SDRs, I don’t know if I would have been given the chance, but it started making sense where it’s like, “Okay, we can maybe bring Jake on board and you’ll give him a little bit more responsibility.”

[00:54:58] So we started having those conversations and all of a sudden, in July, they opened up the full-time position, and everyone gave me my blessing here at memoryBlue to, you know, throw my hat in the ring there, and I interviewed for it and sure enough, they were like, “Jake, if you want to come on board as our first SDR, we’d love to have you.”

[00:55:17] And, it just, it, it worked out, and thankfully, thankfully, I’m still there to this day. 

[00:55:23] Marc Gonyea: What’d you do for them when you converted? 

[00:55:26] Jake Akin: So I was doing two different things. So I started out as the SDR, still setting appointments for the enterprise group. And, we also had launched a new line of service called “Risesmart Express”

[00:55:37] so it was an e-commerce outplacement solution that individuals or smaller-size companies could purchase per program with a credit card, and you wouldn’t need a contract or anything like that to get set up. And, I had a small quote, I think 150,000 for my first year and exceeded that pretty easily, and then I got elevated into a business development manager role where I started taking on a smaller territory and building out some accounts,

[00:56:04] and then I brought on and trained our next SDR to replace me, and then got moved up into the position I’m at now. Was that always your goal? That was always my goal. I wanted to carry a quota, I wanted to have that responsibility and thankfully, they made it happen for me. And, it was the individual steps at the time,

[00:56:23] I’m like, “Ah, I want it all at once,” you know. Everyone says that, especially here. 

[00:56:27] Marc Gonyea: Gosh, 

[00:56:27] I remember. 

[00:56:28] Jake Akin: Two weeks in and I want to get hired out. 

[00:56:31] Marc Gonyea: It was like a packer of badass hyenas, I give you some haters or wolfs, hungry wolfs in the wintertime. I come out here in, like, to a T, everybody was ready for the next thing. Right? And, a lot of games in this office,

[00:56:44] so I kind of get it, right? But that’s, that’s like a good in the bad. So we get these, these hungry wolves who want to move on to the next thing, we’re like, “Ah, not yet. Maybe not, just wait, 

[00:56:52] still hold on.” That doesn’t mean you weren’t all immensely talented ’cause you all obviously are, you’re great now. When you, when did that next role go, like, what were some of the muscles you had developed that you hadn’t developed quite yet?

[00:57:05] Because you had your, your experience or you had some time to think, but you had your experience from going door-to-door for AroundCampus and then you kind of get the shadow mastery of the phones. Shadow boxes. Yeah. Yeah. It was like, I think of like an agenda shadows, but you know, the dark arts.

[00:57:19] So, but then, you know, you’re going back to closing and you kind of learn, relearn some, maybe relearn a little bit, learn some new stuff, and I asked that too because we got SDRs, we got Jake Akins of 2021, 2022 working here now, and they’re like the hungry wolf. They want to go, then when I was, “Okay,” I mean, I can always listen to Chris and Mark ’cause we, but listening to some of the podcasts and these guys gals got stuff to say about it. 

[00:57:43] Jake Akin: The chops that were the hardest for me to build was learning how to incorporate more than one stakeholder. Interesting. Okay. When you’re at memoryBlue, you’re calling one person, you’re setting a meeting with that one person for your AE,

[00:57:56] and it’s, it’s pretty translated how that works. When you’re working on closing a deal, you have the first person that you start working with, then if you don’t know how to manage the process initially, all of a sudden the budget’s a little bit out of scope, and there’s, you know, different people involved than you expected,

[00:58:14] and, you know, “How do I control these timelines?” Because when it was the B2B, it was, you know, I only had 90 days, I mean, that was the entire cycle, and you had to push and push and push and push, and everyone kind of understood that. But working with businesses, especially HR teams, it’s entirely different.

[00:58:32] So one, if their timeline is different than what you’re selling, how to make that fit, how to incorporate more people, how to leverage, all of that was, were tools that I didn’t really have in my belt. And, truth be told, I, you know, had some bad experiences, had some, some good experiences, you know, and all of that kind of led to me understanding what it was going to take to succeed, working true enterprise-scope-size deals, but learning how to include more than one person in the conversation and balance those expectations and meet those delivery needs,

[00:59:08] that, that was a huge challenge for me at first, especially when you don’t know how to make those introductions or how to include it in here, you know, open that up. 

[00:59:16] Chris Corcoran: Interesting. So you’ve got, you’ve closed a lot of deals in your time? 

[00:59:20] Jake Akin: I have. 

[00:59:20] Chris Corcoran: Okay. What’s your favorite win?

[00:59:24] Jake Akin: I have favorite wins at every organization I’ve been a part of. I mean, there are the big wins that I have, you know, now enterprise-size organizations that I work with that I’m super happy about, but honestly, the biggest wins for me are the ones that came when I was younger, especially AroundCampus Group. Like,for instance where I drew that towing company ad on the back,

[00:59:46] I never thought that would work. I don’t, ho, honestly, I went in there kind of like, “I’m the sales team leader, I gotta, you know, set an example,” and then I go in and I’m like, “This, this doesn’t really make sense.” That’s one of, um, kind of a cliche story. Another, best sale I’ve ever made, was getting my girlfriend to go out with me

[01:00:02] now. 

[01:00:03] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, I 

[01:00:04] know, I. 

[01:00:05] Jake Akin: 38 asks. Get out of here. I’m not kidding. I got rejected 37 times. 

[01:00:10] Chris Corcoran: You bet. Thank goodness it wasn’t HR involved. Oh, I know. Nowadays it would never fly. Wow. Was this in college?

[01:00:18] Jake Akin: In college. I had a girl, my ex-girlfriend, almost seven years, and Leah had a boyfriend of six years, and we were both in the same Honor society for communications and I was working around campus.

[01:00:32] So I was at bars, you know, I came into the first Honor society meeting my super fifth year, smelling like cigarettes and Rican like beer ’cause I was hanging out with bar owners all day and you know, we were shooting the breeze, and showed up like 15 minutes late for an Honor society meeting, I’m kind of grungy,

[01:00:49] and she was gorgeous, she had this, like, beautiful necklace satch, looked super, super good, and I sat right in front of her and we’re setting up the future meetings that we’re going to have for this group, and they’re like, “Hey, can we meet on Wednesdays or Sundays?” And, Leah raised her hand, she’s like, “I work on Sundays and Wednesdays,” and I raised my hand and I’m like, “I work Sundays and Wednesdays too.”

[01:01:10] And, we kind of look at each other, like, that’s weird, and the guy who was running it, the professor’s like, “Well, where do you guys work?” And, Leah goes, “I work for the alumni foundation, our top seller.” I’m like, “That’s interesting because I work at the alumni and I’m our top seller.” She proceeds in front of everybody to say, “I am the top seller,

[01:01:30] and I’ve never seen this guy in my life,” in front of 30 people. A professor, the Dean are like, I mean, like, these are, like, I’m grungy, I have no recourse, I’m in the corner. And, she, had she never seen you? No, we never met. Because the semester I started, she was studying abroad in Spain. Okay. So I’m like, “Okay, this, this, I’m not going to take this land down.”

[01:01:53] So first meeting, the orientation then, I show up a little bit late, you know, time management wasn’t my strong suit at the time. Yeah, there she is. I’ll never forget her face was like, “Holy smokes. This guy’s actually here.” Like, “He wasn’t fooling me.” I singled around, like, “I’m gonna sit next to you and I’m going to crush you every day.”

[01:02:10] And I did. She never beat me, not one day. The first day I sold, like, four times than she did, I’m like, “It was a pleasure working with you.” I pat her on the head and I got out and left. Like, I was so condescending. And then I found out she had a boyfriend. I had a girlfriend, then me and my girlfriend broke up, and then a couple of weeks later, she and her boyfriend broke up, and I had a, not the most perfect reputation,

[01:02:33] and she wasn’t going to give me the time of day. I had to be so persistent that I had to kind of reinvent myself, clean myself up a little bit. Then all of a sudden it was the next January, so I, you know, we were on the same dodgeball team, so every Thursday and every Sunday I was asking her out, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no.”

[01:02:54] Finally, I got a call out of the blue, “Jake, if you want to take me out, today is your chance.” Really? “I will give you one chance today.” I had, like, another date plan, but I, you know, I had totally flipped the script, so I had to cancel that and make all this happen, and lo and behold, it went really well. And, here we are, now to this day, but oh, that first interaction, I never thought I could recover from that.

[01:03:15] Chris Corcoran: Wow. That’s amazing. That’s amazing. 

[01:03:18] Marc Gonyea: Okay. So those are the wins. What about, is there a loss that haunts you? 

[01:03:23] Jake Akin: Yes. Uh, health organization, not a Greensville, South Carolina, from last year. We had it, we, our solution fit their needs better, we just, we fell short on the demo, if I could have had a little bit more prep time with a few of the people on my group that were involved,

[01:03:44] I know that it would have been handled differently. It was the hardest executive presence learning of my entire life, and realizing that just because I’m 28 years old and I’ve only been doing this for, you know, 10 years or so, doesn’t mean that I don’t know what I’m doing. And, sometimes, always falling back on people that are twice your age with 10 times the experience, doesn’t lead to the success that you hoped it would.

[01:04:12] And so really focusing and having that introspective discussion with myself and realizing that “You had every tool there. You knew what you needed to do, you just didn’t push as hard as you should have to make it happen,” haunts me. The mistakes, I had it, I could have controlled it, I didn’t, and that’s on me.

[01:04:34] Chris Corcoran: Interesting. So it sounds like you let some other senior folks be more involved. 

[01:04:38] Jake Akin: I let my own insecurity drive that in induction where I should’ve been a little bit stronger in what I believe was the best practice. Yeah. Based on experience and everything else, I knew that that was what I thought the right process should be, but didn’t push as hard as I should’ve and it fell short,

[01:05:01] and so I will never let that happen again. That’s good. Not that I know everything, at least being upfront and saying, “This is what I think, and this is why,” and validating that, expressing myself openly is a tough lesson to learn, especially when it could have gone the other way and would have. 

[01:05:19] Marc Gonyea: It’s hard, right?

[01:05:19] Because you want to be respectful and defer to the folks, it’s supposed to be a team selling, like, getting that, the money so you can’t jump 15 feet, but there’s also a time you kind of need to, “Give me the ball,” or maybe they give the ball, give you the ball, but not, “You’re not ready, I don’t wanna give you the ball yet.”

[01:05:34] Right? question. So you’re out in the Valley, even work at memoryBlue, set a couple of classroom clients, Risesmart, and they got acquired, how do you, you definitely read and listen to things because I can talk to you like you have your chair, but you’re still like that now, how have you stayed focused on not getting distracted by all these companies, all of these opportunities and, you know what, I guess, what do you see some mistakes your peers make, you know, in terms of, like, the movement and resisting the urge to move? Somebody got funding and maybe they come at you with, like, a 15 to 20,000 or higher base.

[01:06:09] Jake Akin: I feel kind of a different perspective on this. I don’t necessarily think that one solution makes the most sense for everybody. I mean, there’s, there are people who are destined to be lifetime SDRs because they’re really, really good at it. The issue is a lot of companies don’t value the SDR to the degree that they should.

[01:06:32] Interesting. Personally, I think the SDR function’s harder than the AE function. Breaking in that initial outreach, the cold call conversation, I mean an inbound lead that gets sent to me 10 times easier to do something with than just reaching out and calling someone. Right. I think the mistake that a lot of people have is they don’t know what they want to do.

[01:06:54] They don’t have that mapped out where I want, or that confident and just saying, “I love being an SDR. It’s a great job, it’s a great career, I can do this forever.” I feel like a lot of people want that next step because they think that’s how you get the money. They think that “I need closing experience,” even if it’s not what makes the most sense for them.

[01:07:12] And, a lot of people get in this track where a year in, if they don’t see what that next step is, they just leave. They go to another SDR job thinking, “Okay, this is going to be better,” having no validation or real rationale scientific process for why they’re doing it, they just hope that it’s going to yield a different outcome.

[01:07:34] That hope is where I challenge a lot of people because if you like being an SDR and you like doing that process, there are organizations that absolutely will value that, and that you can do that long-term. It’s just finding the company that’s going to put that onus on you and let you do that. That’s where there’s a little bit of a gap right now.

[01:07:57] And so I don’t think that two years in everyone should be thinking about moving. I also don’t think that nine months in everyone should, you know, want to leave or be afraid to, I think it does depend on what you want. I mean, for me, I was a bottom-line-take-home person. I mean, from our first conversation, I was concerned about what I was going to be bringing home and how I could make that happen as quickly as possible, which required me to really take a step back and build up the foundations that are required to excel. Being an SDR for six months, then moving into a closing position, I would have failed, flat out,

[01:08:33] I know that with a hundred percent confidence because I would have thought that I had the bedrock, but it wasn’t enough to build up. You have to have every one of those painful learnings. You have to go through every one of those bad calls, get that feedback, to process it, to know how to do it better

[01:08:49] moving forward. I feel like a lot of people don’t give themselves the time that they need to get that full exposure. That’s where I’m so glad I spent all of my nine months here working on every client I did and didn’t get hired out a minute sooner because all of those different conversations gave me the context that I need to do what I do now.

[01:09:09] So if I wanted to be an SDR, there’s an opportunity to make really good money being an SDR. But a lot of people think the SDR is an entry-level job, they don’t see it as something to, you know, go home and write about, “Hey, I’m an SDR,” so they want to do something else just for that title or that logo, not really processing or analyzing, “Do I like what I’m doing?”

[01:09:35] And, I think a lot of companies, and I think what we’re going to see moving forward is a lot of companies start to increase the value of the SDR because it’s almost harder, I think, to get a really good outbound SDR than a good AE. 

[01:09:48] Marc Gonyea: Gave you a challenge. AE. Challenges, the conventional wasn’t there, which is good.

[01:09:53] I like the idea of you challenging.

[01:09:55] Jake Akin: If you follow Tito Bohrt on LinkedIn, his methodology about the SDR, I mean, if, if you give people a pathway to, I mean, and a lot of times it comes down to managers need to understand what the employees want, I mean, that’s, that’s the bedrock of any foundation of success. And, I think a lot of times, if people sat down, like, “What do you want?”

[01:10:15] It’s kind of, “How can we make that happen being an SDR?” Yeah. I mean, inbound and everything else is great, but a powerful outbound sales development engine is irreplaceable. Yeah, for sure. And, I feel like if companies may be offered, I mean, $20,000 more to an SDR to stay at that position, would give them more opportunity,

[01:10:39] give them more exposure to make an informed decision if they want to move to the AE role, or if they like doing what they’re doing and they’re really good at it, that company needs someone instead of letting them leave and then replace them with someone and, you know, there’s retention costs and recruiting costs and everything associated with. 

[01:10:56] Marc Gonyea: I, it’s interesting, that would give people the space to say, “It’s okay, actually I do want to keep being an SDR for a little while.” ‘Cause, there’s a lot of pressure to not want to do it for a while, so people are less likely to admit that in the open and the public because they don’t, partially because it’s not valued that way. Right? So that will be interesting to see. Right? 

[01:11:16] Jake Akin: A little bit slow shift, but I think we’ll start to see it. 

[01:11:19] Marc Gonyea: You got to get companies that want to pay up for that, and there are some out there, it’s hard to find them. 

[01:11:25] Jake Akin: You want to comp your AEs or, you know, people that are closing the business, and that’s what everyone’s focusing on, but how those opportunities come to fruition,

[01:11:34] I feel like it’s incredibly overlooked. Interesting. I mean, personally, if I got paid the same close as I do to be an SDR, I strongly would’ve considered staying in the SDR role. 

[01:11:46] Marc Gonyea: Interesting. So what does this mean for you, like, as you kind of progress with your career? Like, where do you want to take things, Mr. California? Okay. 

[01:11:56] Jake Akin: Where I want to take things is I want to build something on my own. Okay. Not necessarily start my own company, but I want to go to an organization that doesn’t have a vamped-out sales structure. I mean I’ve, at Risesmart, I’ve worked on the demand generation side, I’ve done some sales ops stuff,

[01:12:16] I’ve done, you know, the full cycle closing, so I’d love to get my hands in all of that because I feel like the biggest gap right now is in how leads are generated, how they’re passed over, how that’s translated, how they’re qualified, and then how they’re actually followed up with. And so if I can bridge that gap and create a cohesive process using all of my experience, that would give me so much energy.

[01:12:44] Marc Gonyea: And, you’d like to do that for, yeah, at some point, and what type of role? 

[01:12:48] Jake Akin: Create a scalable model, I mean, the title of my position wouldn’t, I mean, truly it’s not as relevant to me as what I’m actually able to produce and what I’m doing.

[01:12:58] Marc Gonyea: Nice. Interesting. 

[01:12:59] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, but you seem to get really passionate about what you sell.

[01:13:02] Jake Akin: I am. I love what we sell. In career coaching it’s everything, I mean, not just executive coaching, it’s development coaching for not even high-potential employees, for every person because everyone’s struggling with something. I mean, truly a lot of people right now are putting the, you know, the great resignation and you know, everything from the rectory shuffle that we’re seeing right now on compensation,

[01:13:26] and that’s, that’s the catalyst, that’s the onus, but it’s not everything. I mean, people maybe have had some discontent with their manager for two years, and now since the organization across the streets offered me more comp, I can take that jump, but we’re not really addressing what the actual issue is.

[01:13:46] And so by giving people the opportunity to work with someone who understands where they’re coming from and where they’re at, we can really get at the root of what makes individuals tick, how do we keep people engaged and give them the opportunity at the organization they’re already at so people don’t have to go through all of that change.

[01:14:04] You don’t have to start working with a recruiter and check out at the job, but still kind of phone it in to, you know, meet your KPIs, and you’ll be half in half out if what you want can potentially be built or available for that organization almost has a responsibility to deliver that for you. And so what we’re doing from a career coaching standpoint is helping individuals learn what the next iteration of their job might be before the company’s even prepared to make that happen,

[01:14:34] so we can start skilling people about what that next role is going to look like. By the time they have those skills then, we can work with that manager to build out that position so then they seamlessly roll into that, instead of being like, “Okay, now I’m upset. I don’t have any more opportunities here. I don’t know what I’m gonna do next.

[01:14:52] I’m going to rip the cord out and I’m going to, you know, entirely start over again.” It’s not successful for the individual, and most of the time it’s not successful for the organization. So we’re bridging that, and it started with outplacement by providing career coaching, but everyone needs some, some career coaching, even if it’s, you know, from a mining development standpoint or it’s, “How do I get really, really good at what I’m already doing?”

[01:15:14] There are benefits there. 

[01:15:16] Chris Corcoran: So, Jake, you obviously are in the knowledge and self-improvement, or gathering knowledge. What are some things you do listen to read? 

[01:15:25] Jake Akin: I try to read different sales books. I’m terrible at remembering what the actual titles are. The one that I’m looking at right now, was written by a lead FBI hostage negotiator. 

[01:15:35] Marc Gonyea: Never split the difference. 

[01:15:36] Jake Akin: Never split the difference. 

[01:15:38] Marc Gonyea: So he’s a memoryBlue, a former memoryBlue client.

[01:15:41] Jake Akin: No way. 

[01:15:41] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. We do work with them on each of the houses. 

[01:15:44] Jake Akin: Oh, you got to give everybody that book. 

[01:15:46] Marc Gonyea: We could outsource the book. I think they converted to SDR, I can’t remember. And then we do H, and then we do the entire workflow. But anyway, yeah. So keep going.

[01:15:55] Jake Akin: Just, yeah, I mean, I try to pick up, I read one book a quarter, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but. It’s a lot. It’s better than a lot of people. It’s a little bit, it’s a little bit. And, I mean, I mentioned a couple of different LinkedIn leaders, you know, I try to, I’m a digestible guy, I mean, I majored in rhetoric and writing,

[01:16:12] I love literature, I love my books, but I can’t sit down and read an 80-page research article, so, you know, I follow some pretty prominent thought leaders and I try to pick up a few things here and there, and honestly, it’s, it’s taking sales training. ‘Cause I mean, I just finished the Gartner Challenger sales training course and I, I love that.

[01:16:32] I mean, it kind of revamps the way that I’ve been thinking about, you know, talking about conflict and creating that constructive tension, and it’s, it’s forced me to get a little uncomfortable with the sales process, but it’s also the way people are buying now. I mean, there are so many solutions, everyone can do their own research,

[01:16:51] you know. Then, the need for a credible, knowledgeable salesperson is more important than ever because everyone has the knowledge, everyone has information, so how you distinguish that is really where we differentiate ourselves. So understanding how to leverage those data points and make people aware of the pains and feel that pain and get down there with them and then start painting the solution is a little bit uncomfortable and requires a little bit of time to adjust to, but it’s been working so far, so I’m pleased with it, but yeah.

[01:17:27] It’s just being open to new ideas, I mean, the ways that I was prospecting in 2017 when I started here are, are different now. I mean, leveraging LinkedIn, and constantly knowing where people are spending their time and meeting them there, I mean, it used to be email, now people don’t really email anymore, so now you can text people.

[01:17:48] I mean, I, I, I’ve texted and gotten meetings with decision-makers, so being comfortable though, with taking out the phone and actually texting someone and saying, “Hey, this is Jake. I added you on LinkedIn. I totally understand if this isn’t it if you don’t want to chat this way, but this is why I’m reaching out,”

[01:18:04] it’s a little bit different from when I first started here. And so it’s constantly finding those ways to make an impact, deliver the value that people need. It’s gotta be the value that people need. If you’re illuminating things that don’t make sense, or it doesn’t resonate, it’s not going to go anywhere,

[01:18:19] especially when I have a problem, I can just get online and look it up myself. 

[01:18:23] Marc Gonyea: And, they don’t have to come to the salesperson for knowledge anymore. 

[01:18:26] Jake Akin: No. 

[01:18:26] Marc Gonyea: Right? It’s much easier to get that. 

[01:18:29] And, they’ll contact you later in the cycle. 

[01:18:31] Jake Akin: And, if you want to be credible, you have to have more knowledge than they do, which is impossible about their business.

[01:18:39] So what you can do is talk about similar situations, what else you can help with, other things that you’ve addressed, maybe different ways of presenting it that they hadn’t considered before. That’s how you establish credibility. Right. And, it’s that constant hunger to try to find those ways and uncover them and make it happen that I think separates successful people from complacent people. 

[01:19:01] Chris Corcoran: Agreed.

[01:19:02] Marc Gonyea: So as we close, close things out, if you could look back to, you know, where you are now and where you were the night before you started at memoryBlue, what advice would you have for yourself?

[01:19:13] Jake Akin: Sponge, sponge it up. I mean, ’cause there’s so much here, there are so many clients, I mean, even in, there are so many people that have great skills, I mean, your delivery managers, you guys coming in, I mean, we, there’s so much to pick up on, but like a sponge, you can’t hold everything, you got to let a little bit seatbelt when you’re oversaturated and you got to let something go.

[01:19:38] And, I feel like some people struggle with that because, you know, I don’t know if you still do the cost again in the Sandler sales training, and you know, all of that right off the bat when you start, “It’s okay, I’m on the PIP,” not the pit plan, but, “the ramp-up plan,” and, “Okay, how do I make this work?” and, you know, you’re trying to hit these numbers, then focus on the sales training and that, or you’re still trying to get hired out and make that happen.

[01:20:01] It can be a lot, and it’s important to pick up right away, but also stay true to who you are, what got you here. And, you got hired for a reason, you have something that people saw that has value and that’s a little bit different, so don’t lose sight of that, but also be willing to grow. I mean, it’s sad, but I mean, there were some people who, you know, a few months in, they were like, “I know everything

[01:20:25] I need to know. I’m ready. I’m ready to start that next chapter.” And, it’s like, that’s such a sad outlook because even if you know everything on paper, if you think you do just listening to another conversation and, “Okay, this worked for this individual,” and then taking that time to do role-plays, I mean, that, that’s the difference.

[01:20:42] I should’ve brought this up earlier, the role-plays. I had never done a role-play before I started here. I mean, like, we had, you know, the fake-mock situations and when I went AroundCampus and it ended a win, “You want to buy this? Yeah, I want to buy it. All right, great.” You know, handshake, done deal. Sitting down and having Tristen and Chris give me seven nos, and it’s like, “Okay, how do I, how do I back this up?

[01:21:04] How do I uncover again?” That was a situation I’d never been in before and sitting down with, I mean, even Dalton France. Oh, wow. You know, he was another guy who had a, you know, he’s, I think, at Facebook as a recruiter right now. So, you know, just all these perspectives that all these different people had given me everything that I needed,

[01:21:25] but if I wasn’t willing to sit down, if I wasn’t willing to listen, if I wasn’t receptive to it, it would have fallen on deaf ears. And, I think that’s, that’s what this place is all about. It’s, it’s all available for the taking if you are open to it. You just have to be 

[01:21:39] Chris Corcoran: able. 

[01:21:39] It’s all available for the taking. All are available for taking the taking. 

[01:21:43] Jake Akin: Hundred percent. I took. 

[01:21:45] Chris Corcoran: You took? That’s great. That’s great. 

[01:21:48] Marc Gonyea: You took us down. That was a lot. 

[01:21:51] Chris Corcoran: You have a lot of good wisdom there. 

[01:21:55] Marc Gonyea: Okay. We can’t wait to see where you go with all of this.

[01:21:57] Chris Corcoran: We’ll see. We’re only getting started.

[01:21:59] Marc Gonyea: I know, dude. You’re still young, right? It’s fun. 

[01:22:02] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. It’s fun.

[01:22:04] Marc Gonyea: It’s fun. Thanks for coming back to your old stomping grounds. 

[01:22:06] Jake Akin: Thanks for reaching out. This is where it all started. 

[01:22:11] Marc Gonyea: Always. 

[01:22:11] Jake Akin: This is where it all started. 

[01:22:13] Chris Corcoran: Very good. Well, thanks, Jake. We appreciate the time. 

[01:22:15] Jake Akin: Wish you guys happy today. Great pleasure.