Three Things I Learned In SaaS, Sports, Tech & Live Events 6.23.23
What I learned about selling out, why beating people proves - and changes- nothing, a big change in enterprise SaaS markets, and when self-promotion is necessary - as it was for Isaac Newton
Three Things I Learned In SaaS, Sports, Tech and Live Events
Selling out is bad advice. There are a number of gurus out there, led recently by one I admire a lot, Scott Galloway, offering the advice that chasing your passion is an outlier game for billionaires which means we're better off pursuing what we're good at. It is an important topic for me as I once had to make the decision to keep doing what I was good at, and safe in at a big stable company (News Corp), or jump ship to take a big risk on a short term job in sports (thanks Jerry Maguire for debuting at just the right time in my life). More on that here in “How I Got My First Sports Job: A Cold Call, A Beer, and the 9/11 Tragedy.” As I've gotten more blessings and 'things of this world,' I've had the chance to spend time with very "successful" people. Too many are miserable and stuck in the fuzzy handcuffs. They 'did what they were supposed to' and once they caught the rabbit, they realized they don't want the rabbit. Scott is so impressive. I really admire his content. Personally, I think he's very wrong on this one. I really do love my job. A lot. If he had put that content out and I had come across it in my 20's, I may not be here. I only get to go around this carousel once and I'm glad I'm doing it on the pony I chose and not the path of least resistance. Work is so much of our lives - I'd like to spend it on something I really care about - and by that, I mean something I'll do for the rest of my life even when it's not for money.
We all missed the point in the Karate Kid (At least Mr. Miyagi didn't). "Beating" someone proves nothing, changes nothing, and actually makes us all worse. Talking to some parents this week gave me a revelation I'm ashamed I didn't see earlier. We were discussing when a kid talks crap or tears down our boys and both dads advice to their sons in that situation was "well then go beat them and shut them up." Advice I've heard a lot and seems common. Heck, that's the entire premise of the movie (You're alright LaRusso!- forget how we've tortured you for months let's just move on). But what does that achieve? So we beat them in sports or business. Does that make us right? Better? Does it justify anything? Does that make us loving or help change the world for the better like I assume we want? Or does it just make us feel better personally while the vanquished change nothing about what they're doing? Michael Jordan beat everyone. Does that make him better? I watched his documentary and I can say with certainty I don't want to be 'like mike' at all. Or like Steve Jobs. Or, or, or. All it does is take us from "asshole" to "asshole who won at X." Trust me, I know. I won a lot when I was an asshole as a kid - and I'm very ashamed of all of it. I've never once seen someone change their feelings about someone or their actions after they lost to them. IME, when the 'good guy' beats the 'bad' guy, the 'bad' guy just comes back more intense. Try spending time with high schoolers these days - they ramp up the venom in ways that would make William Golding blush. Winning is great. I really like it. But not at all costs and it improves just about nothing. Just about everyone who change the world for Christ was murdered. 10 of the disciples, Paul, and on and on. The world "beat" them. But who changed it more? Work in progress for me.
SaaS is hurting and the buyers are flexing. We do multi-year deals for our software. We do this because, like most SaaS orgs, we lose quite a bit of money on a new customer for quite awhile before we get paid back and turn a profit (GMPP = X). Never before has there been more insistence on 1-year deals. I believe there are two reasons: 1) SaaS is hurting so badly, that many of these smaller/newer firms will cede and do the one year deal - which is bad for everyone and 2) As vendors get more desperate in the face of heavy churn, they'll do just about anything. The SaaS crunch hasn't hit us (thank you Lord), but we are seeing a change out there. Don't do bad deals. They're worse than no deals.
Self-promotion is necessary. Last week I shared that LinkedIn has gotten pretty cringy. In reading "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson, the author highlights a number of super impressive people who didn't get accolades due to a total lack of self-promotion. Isaac Newton sat on breakthroughs for 20+ years. Reminds me of Jeff Clark finding, and surfing, Mavericks for 10 years before telling anyone else. It may be cringy, but there seems to be a need for it to a certain extent.