I Was Two Months From Failure

This is the Unbreakable Business newsletter - created just for founders and operators who want to build a software company that won’t fall apart.

Today’s issue is about changing people’s behavior.

It’s basically the hardest thing in the world.

And as leaders, it’s frequently the ONLY way to get the outcomes we need.

I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve on this one…let’s get after it!!

🚢 🔥 Burn The Boats

When I left the fire department and went all-in on my first company UpLaunch, I gave myself a ticking time bomb. On purpose.

I told my wife and my co-founders that we were putting 12 months on the clock.

And at the end of those 12 months, if the business wasn't at least paying us a minimum-wage salary...I'd hang it up and go get a job.

I’m allergic to failure. So you can imagine how much that looming deadline motivated me.

Like many young companies, everything was super inconsistent in those days.

Some weeks we felt like champs…some weeks we felt like chumps 😂 

But every single week mattered. It was about survival of our company. It was about survival of my dream and the dreams of my co-founders. And winning was non-negotiable.

💰️ We Needed Sales…

…and we needed them CONSISTENTLY.

We were pretty boring as far as our funnel was concerned:

Marketing would get leads by running ads and working with partners. The leads would book demo calls. The sales team would do the demo, snag a credit card, and we’d have a new customer.

The thing is, marketing makes a great scapegoat. As soon as ad performance decreases, everyone blames the fact that there are "not enough leads".

We missed numbers because there "weren't enough leads".

We could have done it if the ads were better, partners were better, blah blah blah excuses excuses.

It doesn't really feel like ownership, does it?

I needed our sales team to OWN SALES.

And I realized that I had created the problem that I now wanted to fix.

There were two months left on my self-imposed time bomb. So it was time to put up or shut up.

🤝 It Was All About Ownership

If you need a result out of someone, they have to know that they own the outcome. And you’ve gotta be specific.

Consider the difference between these two statements:

I know which one I like better. And it wasn’t the one that I’d been working with.

I realized, at that moment…two months away from having to hang it all up…that our numbers were the tool I needed to save our business.

Not because I didn’t have them already, or because I needed to track data in some fancy way.

I needed to use the numbers to get my team to change their behaviors.

And here’s how I pulled it off:

📙 Your Team Meeting Isn’t Story Time…So Stop Reading Out Loud

I realized that I was showing up to our team calls and literally reading out the results. Every number came from my mouth. None of them came from my team.

And what that meant was that psychologically, I was giving them a report card. They were owning the work…I was owning it and telling THEM how THEY performed.

Shouldn’t THEY be telling ME?

🤔

If you bring the numbers, they’re YOUR problem. And when you ask someone to fix it, you’re handing them a problem.

Nobody wants to be handed a problem.

So if you’re a founder and you’ve realized that you’re reading out all the data at your team calls…please stop. Like never do it again. Please.

I’m not saying this because I care about your team meeting. I’m saying this because you’re taking away the best tool your people have to fix their own problems:

🫵 It’s All About Proximity

Look at this from your team’s point of view.

When they know THEY have to present the numbers…they’ll be ready. They’ll double-check the numbers to make sure they’re right. They’ll think about the questions you’re gonna ask them. They’ll have a few sentences prepped on what they’re doing about it if things are off track.

In short…they’ll OWN IT.

Sounds awesome, right?

Here’s a quick set of rules about how we should talk about numbers in a meeting. Read ‘em, steal ‘em, use ‘em next week:

I usually skip the greens (outside of looking for things to celebrate). But if it’s red or yellow, the owner must show up ready to talk about it - bring a plan, add it to the discussion list, and stand tall for the results.

🔗 There’s Still A Missing Link

Here’s an uncomfortable truth - you can do everything I wrote out so far, perfectly, and still not see the improvements you want.

Because there’s one thing we haven’t overcome yet - our natural tendency to be “rule followers”.

If you’re a founder, this sounds insane to you. But that’s because you’re a “rule breaker” by nature. You decided you didn’t want a job and instead wanted to manifest a company out of thin air.

You’re already a little crazy.

But most team members aren’t like that (which is a good thing). Most people want to follow rules, do a good job, and create value in the world.

So if you want your team to get creative…you need to explicitly give them permission to do it.

I literally had to tell my team members that they had my permission to innovate. To reinvent how we did things. To run experiments, measure the results, and run new ones.

They had permission to achieve the goal by any means necessary (for the most part, haha)

🌊 The Dam Finally Broke

Giving my team permission to get creative changed everything.

➡️ They shot 1:1 videos for prospects who they thought they could help

➡️ They asked the customers they’d worked with for referrals

➡️ They built an audit process to diagnose how much revenue we could generate for each potential customer

And about a thousand other improvements.

And most of those ideas worked. Fast.

With a few new people helping to generate pipeline and taking true ownership of the results, our weekly sales increased by over 40% in less than a month.

And that two-month deadline?

We never had to think about it again.

It wasn’t some fancy funnel, ad strategy, or sales tactic that broke it open.

It was good ole-fashioned data-driven leadership.

Assign ownership. Push decision-making down to the teams. Give permission to innovate. And coach to success.

✌️ MV

📽️ This Week On The SaaS Academy Pod

I mostly wanted to include this episode because it’s got a picture of Johnny saying one of his favorite phrases:

“That’s the fruit, not the root”

He always busts that out when we’re chasing a symptom of a problem instead of the real problem - which is VERY common when you’re trying to diagnose churn (which is what this episode is really about)

Give it a listen - I’d love to know what you think of it!