Don’t Believe LinkedIn. Do This Instead.

If you're feeling anxious about AI. If LinkedIn's making you doubt your GTM. You need this episode.

We break down what’s real, what’s hype, and why boring execution still wins.

• (00:00) - Introduction
• (02:51) - Don't believe the LinkedIn echo chamber
• (06:42) - Understanding Business Fundamentals
• (12:09) - Stop comparing yourself to AI companies
• (14:28) - Growing without outside capital
• (17:15) - The Importance of First Principles Thinking
• (24:13) -  Focus on your team
• (30:08) -  Conclusion

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Creators and Guests

Host

Raul Porojan

Voice of Reason in Revenue / Former Director Sales & CS at Project A

Host

Toni Hohlbein

2x exited CRO | 1x Founder | Podcast Host

What is The Revenue Formula?

This podcast is about scaling tech startups.

Hosted by Toni Hohlbein & Raul Porojan, together they look at the full funnel.

With a combined 20 years of experience in B2B SaaS and 3 exits, they discuss growing pains, challenges and opportunities they’ve faced. Whether you're working in RevOps, sales, operations, finance or marketing - if you care about revenue, you'll care about this podcast.

If there’s one thing they hate, it’s talk. We know, it’s a bit of an oxymoron. But execution and focus is the key - that’s why each episode is designed to give 1-2 very concrete takeaways.

TRF - Don't listen to LinkedIn
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Introduction
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[00:00:00]

Raul: People are really harping the anxiety. It's really easy to fall into that being very anxious about everything that's happening nowadays

Toni: in actual companies. None of this stuff actually happens. What really happens in those organizations, in those, you know, companies outside of the LinkedIn feed is actually very little in terms of ai.

Raul: Let's assume that all that is correct and lovable is doing all that with that little headcount and all that. Why are they doing that magic growth? How exactly does that look? And should that concern you really look at your business? And if that's doing well, if your basics are not correct, that is when you should be alarmed.

Become good at understanding the basics of how revenue is created. Read the revenue architecture from Jacco. Listen to podcasts like this, and really figure out how things belong together.

Toni: Hi everyone. I'm here today with Mr. Raul. Nice, nice to have you here, Raul. Very happy

Raul: to be here. Different, different setting, but same as usual.

Toni: Yeah, that's true. I mean, we've been doing, what, 50, 50 episodes of the Revenue Brothers? Mm-hmm. So if you haven't followed us there, kind of, you can still check it out. But what we will [00:01:00] actually be doing is, uh, rule and I will now continue full-time here on the revenue formula actually. And the reason for that is that our other wonderful friend Mickel, uh, the one with the least amount of hair, he now has a full-time job and he has a full-time family with like three kids.

And you will probably kind of scale down his, uh, his working in the revenue formula just a little bit. So Raul will be our new, uh, full-time host next to, next to me, obviously, and let's see how that's gonna turn out. Um, but Ru thanks, thanks so much for being here, man.

Raul: Thanks man. And, uh, also excited for the first topic today, which I think is a little bit of a rehash, but an update to what's actually going on this year.

Uh, we started off on the Revenue Brothers with that in 2023. So lead us into the topic for 2025, Tony.

Toni: So the thing is, right, so, uh, rule with your, with your history, with your past is, you know, VC operator and kind of very much in the go-to market space and so forth. Um, me with my history in revenue operations, CRO and [00:02:00] building companies and so forth.

One of the topics that kind of, uh, floated around two years ago was like, Hey, what is the top stuff that revenue leaders should know in 2023 or whenever we started this thing? And, and I think, you know, while probably not being the exact title of the episode, we were thinking about, well, what is it today like 2025 with all of these things that changed?

What is it today that should be top of mind, uh, for revenue leaders? And we're talking kind of. CROs and, and so forth. Uh, but I mean, role, you and I were also kind of talking, um, and consulting and advising, you know, CEOs and founders and people that are kind of not yet in the 10, 20 million range, but kind of on their way there and they kind of have, you know, they kind of have similar topics that they're kind of obsessing about right now, which is really what we wanted to dive into today.

Right.

Don't believe the LinkedIn echo chamber
---

Toni: The first thing you know, that we're kind of seeing on those anxiety levels is really that. Well, at least I think, um, the [00:03:00] LinkedIn bubble mm-hmm. The LinkedIn eco Chamber is kind of driving a lot of that stuff. Right. I think what. What teenage girls on Instagram are experiencing is NUS and cos on LinkedIn.

Mm-hmm. You know? Yep. Right. And, um, I don't know, what's your, what's your take on, um, on all the LinkedIn driven anxiety that's being hammered into us?

Raul: I, I like your analogy there. I do think that if you're a parent and you're telling your kids or your, you hope your kids stay off Instagram, maybe you should do the same with LinkedIn, but, um.

So, no, I think LinkedIn is a unnecessary evil, and it also has some ups and ups and downs for you. But, um, it's probably a good idea to, to curate actually. What you do and what you read and what you do with it, uh, a lot more. Which is funny because, uh, Instagram works differently. Instagram, you also have a feed, but you also have to connect to certain people, and then those are shown a lot more.

But on LinkedIn you just have random stuff thrown at you all day from, from people all over the world. For

Toni: example, for me, you know. Yeah. Or for me,

Raul: or if I ever choose to [00:04:00] decide to, to write something, I think it's a good idea to, uh, curate a little bit. Like what are you really paying attention to and what are those people trying to achieve?

Everyone who, who goes through the trouble of ma writing down something for an hour and making an actual post, um, is, is trying to achieve something with it. That's not the problem, but like, is that actually helping you? What's in there? Like, is that well thought out? Like is, or is it just another chat GPT thing?

And a lot of it, what, what's happening right now is. People are really harping the anxiety, uh, uh, harp. Like, uh, they're really playing that tune a lot and it's really easy to fall into that, uh, being very anxious about everything that's happening nowadays.

Toni: And I think, I mean, when you there, there's obviously the whole this is dead this is dead and everything is dead, kind of SaaS is dead outbound is dead and so forth.

Right? And so what, what I'm seeing a lot, which is kind of, you know, funny and annoying is like, I see all of those innate and make.com, you know, those flow charts, but it's like, hey, just, just uh, just comment. I don't know. [00:05:00] Yes, please. Mm. And, and, and we'll build this for you. And it's like. What I think is really funny is, yes, while this sounds really cool, um, in actual companies, none of this stuff actually happens.

Like, I think this is kind of the flip side of all of this anxiety that's being pushed down is, um, what really happens in those organizations, in those, you know, companies outside of the LinkedIn feed is actually very little in terms of ai, right? Yeah. And you can, you can take the position and be like.

Well, that's an opportunity for me or like, Hey, okay, let's chill a little bit. But, um, uh, you know, I think the LinkedIn Echo Chamber is very different from the reality that actually happens, especially in terms of, of AI adoption.

Raul: A hundred percent. And also in, in general terms, like if I compare the work I do with all the ventures I've worked with, and right now I'm working with over half a dozen ventures, uh, uh, weekly, um, the, the stuff that I do.

Is is working a lot of it, most of it and, and ventures are proving that, [00:06:00] but um, it's quite boring. Like if I were to actually write that down and not think very much about how to package it and make it in a very sensational manner, um, it wouldn't get a lot of attention on LinkedIn. The stuff that gets attention on LinkedIn, like it's very easy to get attention and get views and, and get all kinds of attention for.

Um, whatever the world's going down. This is about to end, that's about to end. Uh, but the stuff that's actually going well is, is typically not that and, and has very little to do with that. It's boring stuff. It's execution. Hiring people, doing well, doing sales calls and then how to do that well, yeah,

Toni: and it's details and tweaking and tuning and uh, and, and then that obviously doesn't kind of grab attention.

Understanding Business Fundamentals
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Toni: But to be fair, to be fair, I think. Some things are changing. Um, yeah, and, and I think that's, you know, just kind of, you know, washing over this and acting like there's nothing going on. I think that's also not the right thing. There's certainly stuff that's changing, right. So I think [00:07:00] number one, AI has the potential, it hasn't proven to do it yet, but has the potential to, um, change some of the fundamentals that we are building.

Our go-to market, you know, around one of those fundamentals has been previously and it's now. You know, it, it was declared debt too, but it's kind of coming back. Uh, it is actually growth at all costs. Mm-hmm. Right. Growth at all costs. That was kind of the hype time, 2020 to 2023 or 24. I don't know when the cutoff really was.

Um, and then I was like, Hey, this is over and now it's something else. Profitable, efficient, whatever. Um, and while it's true that it's not the, um, the default anymore, I. There are some companies that are still deploying this and are being extremely successful with it, right? So why is it correct for them and not for others, right?

Kind of why is that actually right? Kind of. Um, and you know around that, what I'm kind of seeing, and it kind of comes through a couple of different areas too, [00:08:00] is people don't fully understand their fundamentals, the fundamentals of the business. Which is then sometimes leading to poor decisions on top of that, right?

Yeah. And, and the growth at all costs. You know, if, if you have the right fundamentals, for example, tons of growth, tons of investor that wanna throw money at you, maybe actually having a real shot at getting to a hundred, 200, 300 million in a, you should totally do that. Those are the fundamentals where kind of growth at all costs is actually the right thing to execute versus trying to do something else, right.

However, if you're a service business or if you, if you kind of are not growing that much, then growth at all costs. Yeah, that's totally kind of the mistake to do. And having a good understanding of what the fundamentals are in order to, you know, make the right decision. I think people are, people are kind of seeing some of these things are changing, but not understanding what the, what the output might actually be.

And the same thing actually with the, um, you know, I wanna say kind of this, this outbound stuff, right? Kind of, you, you [00:09:00] mentioned this. I, I mean, it's. A lot of people think like, oh, you know, outbound doesn't work anymore. But guess what? I mean, I see it in company after company after company. Outbound works ex extremely well.

It doesn't work for everyone totally granted. Um, but if you have the right fundamentals in place, outbound can absolutely work right? And kind of, and that, that lack of connection, I think, um, that, that shifting kind of this. Deteriorating of, uh, rules of thumb of like easy advice. You kind of get, I think that's what's causing some of the trouble out there.

Raul: And you have to be very careful for sure. I mean, I, I actually kind of welcomed the, uh, growth at all costs is dead thing. Um, because I did hope that that would kind of lead a little bit back to the basics. I don't see that necessarily happening. What I see happening is that especially a little more. Um, maybe inexperienced founders, not, not necessarily younger, but more inexperienced, found people as founders, um, have tried of like flipped the coin now to, okay, it used to be growth at all [00:10:00] costs.

Now it's no cost, but no growth. And actually some companies are even turning no cost and, uh, unfortunately no more revenue either. Um, yeah, which is even worse 'cause okay, you don't grow, but you don't have a lot of revenue either. Um, and it's like you can't ignore that. Uh, you just need to spend money to make money and you can also not ignore.

Um, you need activity for that. And that's not necessarily cold calling, although that might be, but there are things that need to be input there and it's kind of like maybe wishful thinking that, that your whole go-to market is just gonna sort itself out and, and I don't know what GPT you built is just gonna do that for you, but we're just not there yet.

And especially even nowadays, like it's, it still costs a lot to do all that, even if you are using AI and, and you're still not getting rid of all people. So. Just be careful to not turn it into no cost, no revenue.

Toni: But then you have on the flip side, right, um, you see those examples on LinkedIn right now with, um, cursor and Bold and [00:11:00] Lovable, and, you know, all of those companies with, let's just say two, three handful of employees just bursting to 2034.

You know, lovable, I think this month reached 40 million in revenue. Like, you know, I think they did this in six months or something like this is absolutely or less, um, you know, you see those examples and you're thinking like, Hey, wait a minute, what's wrong with me? Right? Why, why am I not growing this fast?

And, um, how are they doing this without, you know, adding all of those headcounts? Has the playbook changed that fundamentally? Right. Kind of, that's almost the, the opposite kind of piece here. It's not necessarily growth at all cost or, or profitable efficient growth. It's like. Magic growth. Like that's, that's kind of what I'm seeing when I'm hearing those stories.

And again, right. I think this is attacking kind of the, uh, the heuristics, the pattern recognition that, you know, US revenue leaders have about how things work. It's attacking it from a different angle of like, Hey, it actually should, you should just [00:12:00] be able to grow effortlessly. Uh, right. And kind of, I think all of these things are tearing at each other right now, making it really difficult for people to, to navigate.

Stop comparing yourself to AI companies
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Raul: Yeah. Which is another point for stay off the fucking LinkedIn or at least focus on, on what, what is good value because so, so let's, let's dissect that a little bit. Yeah. So number one, they say, what is it, what do they say? Comparison is the root of all bad feelings or, or whatever. Yeah. Um, let's assume that all that is correct and lovable is doing all that with that little headcount and all that.

Like whatever, like, okay, that's all true. They're doing magic growth. Um. Why are they doing that? Magic growth, how exactly does that look? And should that concern you? Really, uh, you have your business that you chose for a multitude of different reasons to build. Um, maybe because you actually believed in that vision.

Maybe because you actually believe that that business needs to be built. You had some traction, now you keep having some traction. Um. What does it matter? That lovable is doing all that at 40 million, uh, a month with, with, with no effort. Like good on them. If that's, if that's [00:13:00] true. Right? Great. Uh, look at your business and if that's doing well, if your basics are not correct, that's when you start to, or are going to be not correct anymore.

Um, meaning the, the CAC payback for the sauce that you're having. Yeah, the, uh, general revenue numbers, the revenue formula in itself is kind of like trending to a bad direction. That is when you should be alarmed, not because someone is doing, achieving the same with less result, less, less input. 'cause part of the reason that they're doing that is just because they're in this field, which maybe you're not in.

That is ai that is just receiving funding left and right and also receiving customer attention left and right and budgets from corporates left and right and um, that's good on, that's good for them. I mean, that was good timing there. It maybe it's a bubble, maybe it, it's not, whatever. Your climate tech startup that was funded in 2018 that's doing really well and going towards a nice exit.

It's is still okay? Yeah. Um, so I think like, just, just chill on that a little bit is probably a good thing to do. And then also realize that like. [00:14:00] Maybe you want to do the same thing and just build a random AI startup. I don't know if that's the right way to go. 'cause everyone's doing it, but then it's back to the execution.

Do it well and apparently lovable was either first or they did it really well or are continuing to do it really well. So it's not like there, there's no cost or no skill to it at all. But they, they were there first. They did it at the right time. They had the right idea and they're executing on it.

Toni: And I think kind of, you mentioned kind of the last thing that I wanted to bring up and the kind of whether tectonic plates are shifting on our feet a little bit.

Growing without outside capital
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Toni: Um, we're seeing more and more teams that are basically saying like, Hey, we don't wanna raise venture capital. And I think, you know, on the one hand side, that's fine and dandy and cool, but then on the, the other side, some of these guys are just blowing through the roof and it's like growing like crazy, right?

Again, like, how does, how does that actually work? You know, why, why are these guys, you know, without venture capital, without board reporting, without all of that other stuff. How are they able, um, to grow revenues to 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 20 million? [00:15:00] Um, you know, without any outside capital. Right. And, and I think, so number one, and I think we said this now a couple of times, but it's like there's a bit of a rock star effect out there where you only see the, the, the, the 0.001% that is super successful that you shouldn't be using as a, as a template necessarily.

But I think all of these things are affecting us right now and kind of there's, there's some of that. Maybe it's more of a psychology episode here, but there's some of that anxiety, I think, or that that uncertainty. Are we doing the right things? Is it the right stuff that we're kind of executing on kind of where this is arising.

Raul: And, and also just to add one more story here, realize that this has a lot to do with the, the, the hype that is around ai. Like I remember I was there, I was, however you want to interpret it. Part of like the early days of 11 x um, in the early days of 11 x Hassan, the founder. I saw his calendar and, uh, that was maybe two, three months after they, they first pivoted to what 11 X 10 became, and Alice came out, which is their first bot.

His calendar was unlike any I've ever [00:16:00] seen in my life at a company in that stage. Anything ever comparable at all. Uh, where he had basically from nine to. 8:00 PM the whole day filled out in 15 minute slots of people coming in and being interested in, in, in what they're doing. And, and that was with almost no marketing budget or, or anything.

Just like the fact alone that they did what they did and AI was hyping and, and out of all these 7 billion people in the world, a bunch of them are interested in that. That alone got them to that point already. And then obviously it was execution and all that, but like. You cannot compare your, as I said, climate tech startup with a 500 corporate customer base in, in Europe that you are trying to get, uh, and could be a nice business.

You can't compare yourself to that. Um, yeah, so don't do it. Don't, you're gonna make yourself unhappy and, and obviously, uh, AI has its own problems, but maybe it's just a different business. So if you wanna join that game, it's a different game.

Toni: So now we kind of laid out the problem a little bit, right?

Kind of. There's lots of stuff happening, lots of [00:17:00] things, lots of signals we are seeing where we kind of need to question kind of. You know, are we still doing the right things, the business actually moving in the right direction with the right kind of approach? What would we kind of give those, those revenue leaders, those founders, um, what would be the advice here for their go to market?

The Importance of First Principles Thinking
---

Toni: So for

Raul: me, starting off a little bit in un concrete, but then becoming very concrete, um, I think. Not necessarily the old playbooks are dead. 'cause some of them maybe you can still reuse and, and, and retool parts of that. But, um, maybe rely a lot less on just like rules of thumb and, and just some random playbooks that you see from somewhere.

And, um, that's a good idea, especially if the world around us is changing. And it is, even despite what I said, there is changes happening, a lot of them. Um. The people who win are the first principle thinkers because they are able to not just take a random playbook and, and then execute it, hopefully, but, uh, they're able to create their own on the fly and, and adjust what's what's actually happening out there.

And especially when change is happening fast [00:18:00] and times are insecure, those are the people who are quick on their feet and, and able to come up with what is maybe a good idea to do now, like. Rather than just downloading a PLG growth playbook, they, they kind of do their own mixture of p and g and like sales led onboarding and, and whatever kind of motion that they wanna do.

But they do so because they have a very solid understanding of first principles. And this is what I would really encourage people to do is, is more than ever, and I know I've been saying that for a while, but more than ever. Become good at understanding the basics of how revenue is created. Read the revenue architecture from Jocko.

Read whatever sales acceleration formula from Mark Rob, or whatever book we're gonna write at some point. Eventually listen to podcasts like this and, and really figure out how things belong together. Become financially ed, uh, educated, uh, and, and also talk to the CFO, why things are important and why things are not important.

And that will give you a better idea of why a CAC should be cac. Payback should be a certain amount in your, uh, venture, so. Sure it's important to get [00:19:00] all that input out there, but become your own judge of the physics of your own company.

Toni: Yeah, and I, I also wanna say like stuff is changing, um, and AI is driving lots of this change.

Um, and I think that's undisputed. I, I, you know, we can be believer or doubter or whatever, but I, I think kind of this is starting to show, it's like, no, this is, this is a new chapter here that we are kind of writing, but that doesn't mean that every single book or insight that was created before is now useless.

Right. Kind of, that's, that's actually kind of pretty key to keep in mind, kind of sales acceleration formula. This is 10 years old now, kind of for microbe and HubSpot time. Um. Does it apply? Yeah. Yeah. Large parts of it. Large parts of it applies. Some of them don't apply, kind of don't have a team of 10 people that are looking for leads.

You buy clay for this now or kind of there, there are other things now, obviously, but just because, um, it was written previously doesn't mean it's completely outdated now. Right. Same thing I was, I, I forgot with whom it was, [00:20:00] but I had a conversation and they were selling to, uh, German Middleton, something boring.

I was like. First of all, yeah, outbound works because these guys are not sitting on LinkedIn and seeing all the newest plays, and they're like, oh, I've seen this before, therefore I'm not gonna reply to this email. That's Baz. They kind of use their phone, but then the other thing that I was discussing there was like, well, I.

What about, um, what about radio? These people that you're talking about, they're like 50, 60 years old. They're sitting, you know, in their kitchen or in their workshop or whatever, and they're kind of listening to the radio. They're not listening to Spotify, they're not on Instagram. They're just listening to the radio.

Have you thought about radio actually as a channel? And again, right. Kind of. This has nothing to do with the newest AI hack. This is simply something to do with like, whom do I wanna reach and what tactic is most likely to work with them in a given budget that I have. Right. And again, that is, you know, uh, maybe you disagree with it, but this, this is what I see as, you know, start with the fundamentals, right?

Yeah. Kind of what is it, you [00:21:00] know, who is it you wanna reach? Kind of what are the tactics you're gonna apply? How much money can you pay for this? And then kind of how do you convert them throughout the rest of the funnel? Those are the fundamentals you need to think about. Um, and, uh, and not kind of what's the next AI hack you can apply?

Right.

Raul: And focus on the execution of those. Mm-hmm. It's what I said earlier, before the, but the stuff that works in execution is the boring stuff. It, it always is. The stuff that, and that's why these services are so hard to sell sometimes because founders are looking for the hack the pill that gets them better right now, immediately, and then maybe slowly they understand a bit more than that's not what, what it is, but.

Basically every single time, unless you're doing magic like, uh, lovable is doing, which I don't know how to do, but maybe I have some ideas, but I don't know if it will work out. So that's a gamble. Um. Unless you're doing that kind of magic, the stuff that works is boring execution. Like think about the basics, think about what your business is with those basics, and then execute on a daily, make sure your people are doing right.

Make sure you have the right people, you're having the right meetings, the right [00:22:00] processes, and the right tool set up for that. And then you do that over a certain amount of time, you'll have a solid business. Yeah, that has not changed and it probably won't change for a while. I would, I would go out on a limb there.

Toni: So this is kind of really the, Hey, you need to stand on your own feet with your brain in order to navigate the current times. Don't just rely on some rules of thumbs that have been out there. They're getting challenged, but some of the logic there, how we got to those rules of thumb, they still apply, right?

Kind of. That's one thing. I think another thing is. Especially, you know, when we are kind of discussing this show and we're kind of thinking kinda what, what are the tools people should be using? Um, and avid listeners of the show obviously know that, you know, uh, I, I built and then sunsetted Roblox, which is basically kind of the growth model kind of thing, guys, you know, don't, don't buy grow blocks, you know, that doesn't exist.

But, um, think about, um, having a growth model that you use, right? And a growth model. What this really is, it's. It's in, let's just say an [00:23:00] Excel representation, an Excel model of how your funnel works, what you should be expecting, where you could maybe be improving, what the output of this might be. You know, this can be part of a budget.

It can be just, you know, sit in some draw from some rev ops guy. It is a model to help you make decisions using fundamentals, right? And fundamentals for us is things like leads coming in, opportunities being booked, they're converting to sold, uh, customers, and then you have upsell insured on top of this, right?

Those are the fundamentals. Um, and, um, you know, at a certain size of the business, those fundamental become more and more complex. Having all of this in your hat is difficult. It can be done. It's difficult though, right? And having kind of a, I call it like a, like a clutch or something, kind of to help you think through the fundamentals with some of that math behind it, it will enable you to just make better decisions, right?

Again, this is nothing kind of that, you know, should be [00:24:00] outsourced to AI or whatever, or kind of that, that you know, doesn't apply anymore. Now that there's a ride around, it's really just a calculator. It's a pocket calculator for you. To use and place for scenarios and make the right, the right calls around that.

 Focus on your team
---

Raul: You just mentioned the word clutch. I think this, this leads us to, to the last thing. We actually previously talked about this at one point, so let, let me, let me introduce the analogy here, right? Um, the, the point here is, is you have to refocus on your team. And, uh, in times of AI when people are actually maybe moving away from that, I think that you should do the opposite and people are becoming more important.

I don't know if this is a hundred percent fitting, but here's the analogy we talked about once. So I don't know if you're an, uh, a Formula One fan or a racing fan, but if you think about Formula One in the whatever, thirties, forties, uh, fifties, sixties, cars used to drive. A certain speed, and they were a certain kind of complexity and they could do a certain kind of things.

Then, uh, as racing became more and more intense, the, uh, opposing teams became smarter, engineers became better. The machines could do more and more, [00:25:00] and this just accelerated itself until like 2025. You have basically flying rocket ships, uh, on the streets, right. This kind of is a, is an analogy to, to what's happening, obviously, and, and AI is taking off completely to the speed that it can take.

But as environments become. And tools become more sophisticated and faster and more powerful. And as that happened in Formula One, did the drivers become dumber and, and lazier and slower? No, the drivers are fucking super humans by now. They're like crazy athletes that are doing like crazy conditioning for their body and perfect nutrition and cryo chambers and, and all that stuff.

And like blood transfusions of like virgin kids from Kobocha. I don't know what's happening with them, but like. The, the, the, the tech is growing with the people, so the people can actually lead that tech even better because it's becoming more powerful and more dangerous.

Toni: Yeah. And I think this is, you know, kind of taking, taking, you know, one, one more go around around the problem here, which is like, oh, as AI is getting stronger and [00:26:00] stronger, um, you know, we humans need to do less and less, right?

Canal. That's, that's the logic. And then if you apply the whole formula one analogy on top. You kind of realize, oh wow, I think we got this backwards. Right? It's not like, you know, in the fifties. And see, I mean, I wasn't around that time, but you know, people, you know, those drivers were smoking on the track and maybe even smoking in the car and like, you know, having a drink before the, you know, that, that that isn't what's happening.

Kind of. People didn't get more lazy and fat and, you know, uh, less trained. As they're driving around those cars, as tools got more sophisticated and AI is just a really sophisticated tool. Also the humans, you know, kind of navigating that stuff got better and better. And crazier. And crazier. Right. Which is then actually kind of the, the next leap around really around like, well, you know, as those teams probably get smaller, right?

Kind of, we are seeing this happening right now. Teams, you know, I mentioned previously, and maybe they're outliers, but less [00:27:00] funding required, um, more growth with fewer people. You know, some tools are actually really good at taking over some of the human work. I mentioned clay, you mentioned 11 x. You can have a debate how well or how poorly they're doing it.

Um, but they are some clear indicators that go, go-to market. Teams potentially don't need as need to be as big anymore. Right. So you're basically having. Fewer people around being enabled by stronger and stronger technology. And what is so weird, and at least kind of took us a couple of turns around, is the realization that now is actually the time to become an even better leader.

Mm-hmm. And become an even better mentor and kind of really make sure that the team that you have in place think about it as like, you know, this is, this is the stuff that's being leveraged like 10 XA hundred x now. Um, that part that you're leveraging, that needs to become even better than it has been before.

Right. And your job as a leader, as a manager is [00:28:00] actually to make that team fantastic. Right. And the next thing, kind of another way to think about this is almost like. You have a team of let's say 20, 30, 40, 50 people, um, and they're now doing the work that previously used to, you know, be a team of a hundred or 200 people, which is really not that super uncommon anymore.

Um, they're thinking then there's like, well, you know, every additional hire, everyone that you place, um, especially if you are already in a, you know, revenue per FTE kind of mindset, like every additional hire becomes a very, you know. It has a very high bar to jump over to justify their spot on the team.

Right. So not only is the requirement higher for you now to manage the team better, but it's also even higher now to find the right people and kind of get them onto the team to begin with. Right, and it's so funny how there's AI technology that's threatening to a degree, but also doing it kind of take over some of the jobs.

How it's actually [00:29:00] creating an an increased refocus. You know, you and I believe on actually making sure your team really works out extremely well. Then puts an extra bonus and premium on you as a leader to be really strong in that part, which I think is absolutely crazy actually. But I love it.

Raul: So I, I think that actually out there, not between you and me, um, people are, have it backwards and they will be quite surprised with me by prediction, by the fact that people are actually gonna become much more important.

So this is something that is maybe a bit of a hot take here. Um, while you and I agree on this independently from each other by the way, we had to start, um, I actually think that this is not common knowledge yet, and, and you would probably be do very well to actually become a good recruiter and a good leader right now, where, as I said previously, many times, um, 50% of founders I work with believe that they're a top 10% leader and the top 10% hiring manager.

[00:30:00] Obviously can't be true, but maybe now is the time to actually become that and be quite ahead of the pack, um, in, in, in realizing how important that is gonna be.

 Conclusion
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Toni: And maybe that's a good point to close out the episode here. Rob, uh, thank you so much. We talked about the LinkedIn bubble and how it's driving anxiety, but also about, you know, three main takeaways I think in order to manage it.

One is like, you know, make sure you're thinking, again, stay on your, you know, stay on your own two feet and kind of look at the fundamentals. You can use something like a growth model to help you with some parts of those fundamentals to be figured out. And then the last piece, which is a bit weird, controversial, the, you know, the other way around is like, yeah, actually focusing on the team is even more important than it has been previously.

Thanks everyone for listening. If you haven't already, hit subscribe, like, or whatever. Um, and then see you next time. Thanks. See you.