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Be where your business is
- shaburn 4y agoHasn't Steve Blank been debunked in the last decade.
- bsima 4y ago> Erin’s VP of sales had just bought a condo in Miami to be next to her aging parents […] > > Her VP of Sales might be wonderful, but with the all the travel the company is only getting her half-time. Erin needs a full-time head of sales in New York. Time to have a difficult conversation. Hustle culture nonsense. Family is important https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html IMO there’s always a way to do both. If there really isn’t, choose family.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- arolihas 4y agoI am surprised those lines were in there. The point could have easily been made without an anecdote about the author recommending to fire an employee who is taking care of their family. Seems needlessly cruel and detracts from the message.
- adasdasdas 4y agoBeing an exec is choice to commit an exorbitant amount of your time/energy on your job. You can always settle for an easier/lower paying job. You don't see the president complaining the job is stressful.
- tacheiordache 4y agoBut your payback is enormously larger.
- munificent 4y ago...sometimes.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> the author recommending to fire an employee who is taking care of their family Not sure why fired versus put on different comp and maybe asked to vacate the VP of Sales role.
- klyrs 4y ago> Seems needlessly cruel and detracts from the message. I'm not so sure. I mean, yes it's needlessly cruel, but that's the message that I get from a lot of people who subscribe to hustle culture. You are worth the value of your output plus nepotism minus your comp. People with families are ghosts, don't talk to them.
- eloff 4y agoI agree that you should choose family, but I disagree that it’s nonsense. It’s a simple tradeoff of money/success versus what actually matters. Assuming there isn’t some win-win compromise being overlooked. Usually there’s no free lunch. But focus on the important stuff in life, you’ll be happier and have fewer regrets.
- scyzoryk_xyz 4y agoYou are absolutely right, that’s what makes it a difficult conversation. It’s not motivational hustle crap though - that CEO must make a decision around allocating resources there.
- jacobsenscott 4y agoSome positions require a full time employee. I'm sure many of the employees have families, and you're putting them all at risk if you allow a critical full time position to work half time. That isn't hustle culture.
- bsima 4y agoCommuting 4 days a week to NYC is not half time. (Presumably those 4 days are spent working ~12-16h.)
- jacobsenscott 4y agoLol. 2 days a week is not half time (presumably those 2 days are spent working ~20h)
- mjrbrennan 4y ago> commuting to NY four days a week How on earth do people do this? This is 3 hours of flight time each way 4 days a week...do they do something like fly 6am-9am, work 10am-5pm, fly 6pm-9pm, then do it all again the next day (this is also giving woefully small buffer times)? Or am I misunderstanding? Sounds awful.
- ido 4y agoFly in Monday morning and back Thursday evening.
- mjrbrennan 4y agoOh I see, it was just worded kind of awkwardly. Thanks for clarifying.
- hammock 4y agoUsually it means one round trip a week
- chadash 4y agoThis doesn’t even strike me as a good example. In management consulting, flying out to a customer site from Monday to Thursday is the norm. I’ve heard plenty of criticism about McKinsey. I’ve never heard anyone say they don’t work hard. In fact, that way of life might mean you work more hours if anything. If you live in Miami and work four days a week in NYC, you are likely working very long days. You are not near your friends or family or your chores… that could be four days devoted exclusively to work, say 12-14 hours a day, followed by a Friday working remotely. I can see why a salesperson might need to be in person 4 days a week. But I have a hard time imagining that five days is necessary. VP of Sales has plenty of administrative work to do, and many meetings can be over the phone anyway. To call this employee “half time” is insane.
- geodel 4y ago> IMO there’s always a way to do both. If there really isn’t, choose family. Huh, this choosing family is a kind of luxury not everyone can afford. Otherwise we would not have mass migration of working people across cities, states, countries and continents leaving families behind. Unless of course they are all stupid enough to not know the value of family.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mahathu 4y agoTitle is peak workism
- tacheiordache 4y agoYeah, just look who Steve Blank is...
- jameshart 4y agoSounds like a somewhat uniquely New York problem, rather than a generally applicable lesson. An equally valid position is: don’t cap the size of your addressable market to just people who live in the place you work.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> a somewhat uniquely New York problem, rather than a generally applicable lesson An oil & gas start-up in San Francisco is going to have a tougher time than one in Houston. You don’t see those much. But you do see e.g. agtech in the Bay Area flying out weekly salespeople to Iowa. It’s trivial for a competitor to undercut them on credibility alone. That said, I think this is more pertinent to sales than other fields. And for some businesses, proximity to capital trumps proximity to customers.
- jacobr1 4y agoIt is very common for B2B business to have local sale people in-region, regardless of headquarters.
- verisimilidude 4y agoNot to get too pedantic, but California does have a massive agriculture industry. UC Davis is one of the best schools in the field. It’s not much of a stretch at all for agtech businesses to grow and thrive here, locally. I guess you could argue those businesses should be in Sacramento instead of San Jose. But example aside, I do agree with your overall point.
- JumpCrisscross 4y agoTotally! Which doubled my Iowan buddy’s confusion. A Central Valley, Davis or Irvine-based company would have credibility a San Francisco-based on doesn’t. That “won’t even open the door” effect is huge, and part of what the author is getting at. (The other being org chart discrepancies.)
- 4y ago
- zerr 4y ago"Investors" part seems like the main issue here - buy out their shares and continue doing a small/medium business.
- notthedr 4y agoWhere would the cash come from?
- zerr 4y agoDetails are missing of course. I'm saying that there are many 20-50 person small businesses which are doing well for many decades.
- notthedr 4y agoTrue, but this company has taken on equity ( almost certainly with preferred shares ) investors. To buy them out, you would need cash. If you don’t have the cash, you need new investors. If the business is cash flowing and/or has assets, it may be possible to issue debt, effectively swapping equity investors for debt investors. The debt investor won’t care as much about growth as it does about you repaying your loan, but you are still stuck with an investor who has pre-negotiated rights ( and now the ability to liquidate the company if you don’t pay them ). Either way, you still have investors. There are loads of 20-50 person small businesses who raised money in many different ways ( from personal savings to bank loans to customer prepays ). Many of those likely started with a small number of people, growing over many decades one paying customer at a time.
- motoxpro 4y agoWhere do you get the money to buy them out to become a 20-50 person business?
- rizky05 4y ago[dead]
- molsongolden 4y agoSteve's example is financial services companies in New York but this applies to the digital realm too, especially if your customers are less geographically-concentrated. Be where your customers are: forums, slacks, discords, social media bubbles, etc. Cultivate real relationships and build authentically from within a community. Live alongside your customers instead of selling into a community from the outside. Interact with the community regularly instead of relying on a handful of periodic outreach responses to gather customer feedback.
- cobertos 4y agoAre there really online communities that are so welcoming to salespeople? How can one authentically exist in a community while taking money to do so? It feels inauthentic, a lie by omission, astroturfing. I'm genuinely curious if there's a way to exist "authentically" when money is attached. That said, there are great examples of ways to do it right. Sponsoring events, sharing cool things from your position of corporate authority (factory yours?), solving on-the-ground problems as a passionate management person (not because of the money but because you like it).
- nisegami 4y agoI think most tech/tech-adjacent communities are welcoming of reps once they behave well. I can think of quite a few, including at least one who made a lasting impression on me (Tony from Amazon on the CAG forums).
- Gigachad 4y agoI think they are as long as the interactions are good. When someone posts “I wish this product did x” and a salesperson posts “hey we are actually working on that now and it should be available next month link-to-info”, that’s a good interaction. When salespeople link to their product whenever a related topic comes up. Or they start a war arguing with all criticism, that’s bad.
- sarchertech 4y agoYou also need to engage with the community independently of the product you're selling. You can't be there just as a sales guy, no matter how tactful, if you're going to "live in" the community.
- millhouse_ams 4y ago‘In a high-dollar B-to-B business, building and scaling sales can’t be done remotely’ This is provably incorrect
- JumpCrisscross 4y agoI wouldn’t state it that unequivocally. But any high-dollar B2B operation relying entirely on remote sales either doesn’t need a sales team, or is begging for an aggressive competitor to take their lunch.
- FredPret 4y agoI think this is a generational thing. I do B2B consulting, remote only, and it's all about the relationship of trust. Building that over voice and video with a digital-native CEO is no problem at all. I will add that my most recent client is remote-only and in their thirties. No competitor can beat me by going "on-site" because there is no site and never will be.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> this is a generational thing I’d wager it’s deeper than that. Economies of scale force proximity in subtle ways. Finance shouldn’t need to be concentrated, but for a host of reasons most of it is, and a start-up looking to sell to it benefits from proximity. Even crypto largely retread those old paths. That said, there are business which do not benefit from this sort of scaling. They will be dispersed. If the supplier similarly doesn’t have scaling economies, something I’d argue most non-Fortune 500 consulting does not, then yes, remote-remote will win. For what it’s worth, I work 90% remote. And I’m in a sales-type capacity. But the only people I work with almost entirely remotely are those who are themselves remote. And even then, in-person meetings usually add value.
- geodel 4y agoGreat! Now, where do I get to see the proof?
- 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- quickthrower2 4y agoOr: business where you want to be: create a business that takes you into account (or join a business based on compatibility)
- rdl 4y ago"On the Internet".
- cramjabsyn 4y agoNo thanks, I’ll be where my family and friends are instead
- hammock 4y agoIf your business is good move your family Edit: why the downvotes?
- cramjabsyn 4y agoBecause moving your family should be a last resort, not something people do to get a bonus.
- zippergz 4y agoMaybe I haven't found the right thing yet, but I have never had any job or business that had a bigger impact on my quality of life than where I live does. I will never move for a job or business unless I truly can't make enough to survive where I'm living.
- jollofricepeas 4y agoThe HN community can be a little elitist. You shouldn’t be receiving downvotes for stating something that people choose to do everyday which is move their families for better opportunities.
- DoreenMichele 4y agoI didn't downvote you, but I feel it's inappropriate to tell a random internet stranger how to live their life. So if I had downvoted you, that would have been my reason.
- FlyingSnake 4y agoDidn't downvote you either, but humans aren't saplings that can be uprooted and planted elsewhere without issues. I've moved countries thrice and I would not recommend that to the general public, especially if they have support from family and friends.
- jameshush 4y agoI think the moral of this story is to spend time thinking about what you _actually_ want and do _that_. I agree with Steve's advice here. If you don't want to be in New York/SF/Wherever... don't. But accept choices have pros and cons. E.g. I spent 7ish years in Los Angeles. Now I live in Asia. I'm having a great time here, but it _does_ mean there are certain California opportunities I have to say no to, and that's fine! In this example, if the founder _really_ doesn't want to be in New York, make the decision one way or the other now, and commit to it. Trying to do multiple things at once will never be as efficient as focusing on one thing. You'll always be beaten by the person/team who has laser focus. You can have anything you want in life, just not all at the same time. A great example I see of people trying to have everything at the same time is buying a house. They'll want a house they love that's ALSO an excellent investment. Usually what they end up with is a house they kinda like that's a mediocre investment.
- esel2k 4y agoAnd how about area where your business is but your best developpers are somewhere else. For example if you work with certain industries here in Europe (Luxury, Pharma, Automative) but your development team is - due to shortage of talents in europe - in the US. Where shall you be?
- dgudkov 4y agoWhat I read is she would have much less pressure if she didn't take VC money.
- motoxpro 4y agoI didn’t get the sense that she wanted less pressure.