Hey, listeners.
Welcome back to another episode of Two Dads and Tech talking about things that you think about but don't want to talk about or maybe don't have anyone to talk to about, sometimes loudly while drinking coffee: the podcast.
I'm Troy Monson. I'm the CEO and founder over here at Demo. We are a place to evaluate software without being forced into sales cycles.
And I'm Daniel Burke, husband, dad to two incredible boys, sales leader, LinkedIn lunatic, and Beehiiv newsletter evangelist. Thanks for tuning in for the next 45 minutes. We hope you enjoy this episode.
Daniel, how about you say we go ahead and get into it? Let's do it. Hey, happy birthday, Troy. How you doing, man? Daniel, good to see you again. Happy birthday, but more importantly, happy New Year, man.
Happy birthday to the United States of America. This is when it was born, what, I think it was 47 years ago. Uh, somewhere between 40 and 60 years. I, I forget the exact day, but, uh, yeah, I have a history degree.
I learned all about the large and decades-long history of the United States. But sometimes in the 1900s is when it was founded, I believe. And that's how you know their birthday.
So question, do you have any, any resolutions? A lot of people are like, "Screw resolutions. Start today. You're better today- Yeah. Yeah... you're better today." Yeah. I'm one of those people. Whatever.
I'm one of those people. Okay. Okay. Well, then I'm not gonna talk crap about them, but I was going to. So I'm not going to now because I do think that you should always start today.
I don't think you should wait till January 1st, and, and realistically, I think, like, 90% of people don't continue their resolution after the second week in January. So all that to say,
I know we talk a lot about running here, but outside of running, do you have any other resolutions? Yeah. Uh, I would say the...
Resolutions, I don't love that word either, but I do think we should always be constantly trying to become better versions of ourselves. So I would say the health kick, transforming a bit in 2025.
What I did really well in '24, I, I lost a ton of weight, I started eating better, I started running. Um, '25, I wanna get back into the gym. I don't go to the gym. I go to the gym very infrequently.
Like, I run, I just go outside and I just start running, and then I get home and I'm done.
But strength training is very important and vital, not only for running better, but just for longevity and exercise health and all that stuff, and so I'm getting back into the gym.
I'm one of those guys, for all those who are gym rats already, I'm one of those guys that's gonna show up this week, January 1st, a- and you're gonna know he has not been in the gym in a long time.
I'm gonna be very noticeably out of shape, and that's okay. I'm okay with that. We all have to start somewhere. That's right.
If you want, by the way, I have a, on my notes in my phone, I have essentially, like, a diet plan, cheat meals, so how to pretty much eat, like, an, a very healthy pizza that tastes like unhealthy pizza that's really good.
Love it. Macros, all this stuff. Love it. And I know that I think your wife is gluten-free and dairy-free, and, uh- Yes... this is- Yes... I belie- uh, yeah, you use almond flour.
But anywho, all that to say- We use almond flour... I can send this to you. It's, like, workouts, it's diets, it's cheat meals. It's all that stuff. Please do. If you want it. If you don't want it, don't worry about it.
Please do. I do want it. I actually require it now. All right. I'm dying to have it. I, [laughs] I think I can collaborate with you on the notes, so I'll send it to you. Please do. Don't change anything, please.
[laughs] I'll just jack it all up. It'd be like, it'd be like, this has, uh, 25 grams of protein. I'll just add, like, 250 grams of protein. [laughs] Your macros will be all jacked up for the whole 2025 calendar year.
And it's gonna say the weight that I do on, on bench press, and yours is gonna be bench press, 35 pounds.
[laughs] Hey, I'll say I, I bench pressed the first and only time in maybe 10 years recently, and I almost put up 200. I have some college muscle memory, all right? So- Nice... I'm a big guy just as it is.
Now, 200's not t- anything to call home about, but I don't bench press anymore, and that's not nothing, okay? I know some of y'all out there are not putting up 200 by- [laughs]... not going to the gym in 10 years, so.
Yeah. Yeah, no, that is actually, that is really good. I, fun fact, I don't bench press. But back to your question- Oh, yeah... real quick. Yes. On the resolution, I feel like I have,
I have business resolutions for sure, but when it comes to personal life, I don't know, man.
I, I feel like I, I go in this wave of wanting to run more, but then I start losing more muscle 'cause I, I work out, I go to the gym five days a week. Right. And so- Yeah...
I lose too much muscle, and then I get pissed off that I'm losing muscle, so I'm like, "Okay, I'm gonna run less," but then I get mad that I'm not running as much.
So I think maybe finding a, a good balance of what I want to do, but at the end of the day,
for about seven years, I would get up to around 200 pounds in the winter, and I'd cut down to 185 in the summer, and I did that every single year. Yeah. But I'm getting older.
At some point, getting up to 200, I'm gonna end up sticking around 200, and it'll be harder- Yeah... to lose that weight. So now I'm just maintaining- How tall are you?... it like this.
I'm 6'0", 5'11" and a half, but I say I'm 6'0", so yeah. There you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's a healthy BMI. No, I'm just curious. I, I'm a very tall person, so 200 is like a twig for me. Yeah.
How tall are you? I'm 205. Uh, 6'5", so- Okay, yeah... 200 is... I'm, I'm resting around 200, 205 right now and, and you can tell that I don't go to the gym [laughs] 'cause I'm very- Yeah. [laughs]...
I'm skinny, and I don't have big muscles, but I, I'm, I'm a runner's build officially, so need to, need to shape up a little bit in '25. Hey, muscle density is very important as you get older, but- It is. It is...
uh, but yeah, man Very much so So I don't know. At the end of the day, I just wanna be healthy, and I wanna continue- Cool... to be healthy.
If there was anything, actually, it would be have a healthier diet when it comes to processed foods, but other than that, I think- It's huge... I think I'm doing all right. I think I'm doing okay.
A lot of people are talking about seed oils right now- Mm... and it's, like, the, the new thing. I mean, it's not that new, but it's, like, a very hot topic about, oh, don't- They cause cancer?... touch seed oils. Yeah.
Like, to be honest, I don't know what that means. I eat fairly healthy. [laughs] I actually asked my wife the other day. She's very educated about all the different diet restrictions and stuff.
I was like, "Babe, do we consume seed oils?" She's like, "Ugh, are, are you talking about all the people that are just, like, freaking out about seed oils?" I was like, "Yeah.
Apparently it's, like, bad and it's, like, gonna kill us." She's like-We don't consume seed oils. You're fine. I was like, "Okay, cool." [laughs] I'm like, I don't even know what...
I open the cabinet and I look for oil for anything, and it's, it's brands that no one sees when they go to the grocery store because we buy our stuff online from Thrive and Grove- Mm...
and all that stuff, and we get the bougie stuff. Yeah. Yeah, we don't get the bougie stuff, which we probably should do that, but whatever. I don't think it's that expensive. It is healthier though. It is healthier.
Yeah. I think, um, seed oils, we don't buy any seed oils. But I, I think Gary Brecka was a big person that started- Sure...
that movement, or at least highlighted that movement of all these seed oils that we take in that causes, you know, cancer, can cause cancer, and all this stuff. But then there's the other argument- Yeah...
where it's so much healthier and whatever. I- There was this meme- I don't know. I think if [laughs]... that went viral.
There was this meme that went viral about, uh, plastics, like micros- micro- microplastics from a cutting board, and there was this cutting board that just was completely trashed.
It was someone at their parents' house, uh, over a holiday break, and they said, "I saw this cutting board that's been around since I was born and it is officially time to go.
So I threw it away and I bought my parents a new one." And someone said, "Have you been outside recently? The things that you die from just in the world are unavoidable."
And I think there is an interesting dichotomy happening where people are doing everything they can not to consume microplastics, not to consume seed oils, not to consume processed sugars, cut out alcohol, cut out dairy, cut out gluten.
And I'm like, what about, like, breathing oxygen and the things in the atmosphere that are [laughs] carcinogenic that are probably killing us right now? And I don't know.
It's, it's sort of like a doomsday type of mentality where it's like, well, even if I eat really healthy, I'm still just gonna die from something. Yeah. And it's unavoidable. It is unavoidable.
My mother-in-law's like this. She eats very, very healthy. Very, very healthy. Mm-hmm. Um, and everything- Yeah... is pretty much organic.
And really big into, like, recycling and making sure that when you do recycle something, you wash out the peanut butter that's in the plastic jar versus- Yeah...
throwing it away with peanut butter that's still inside of it, things like that. Yeah. And her whole mindset is, I know just me won't make a difference, but at the end of the day- Yeah...
like, I'm not harming, you know, the world or I'm not harming my body by doing this. I know there's other things out there, but at least I're mitigating the amount of risk that I take in. So- Yeah...
I guess there's that devil's advocate play to it. But, um, yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, I, I eat decently healthy. I eat a lot of meat. I'm a big meat person, for sure.
Yogurt, granola every single morning with some fruit in it. Um- Love it. And yeah, so it's, it's somewhat healthy, but have you seen that TikTok game where it's put a finger down and you just- Yes...
name some things and you throw a finger down? Yes. I thought it'd be fun if maybe we incorporated some sort of TikTok style games. We're big TikTokers ourselves. We love it. Yes.
Um, so what do you say we do put a finger down sales edition? Okay, let's do it. All right. Beautiful. So yeah, I don't know if you can... Can you see my frame?
Um, I asked ChatGPT to- I'll just put it in front of my face... yeah, I think maybe just cover up your face.
[laughs] Um, I asked ChatGPT to give me 15 questions 'cause I couldn't think of any, and it gave me some good ones. Yeah. And I'm going to actually shuffle this list around a little bit and just ask- Got it...
from, you know, number seven, number three, et cetera. So let's go ahead and get started. I'm not even gonna look at which one- Okay... I'm asking first. I'm just looking over here. So- All right...
for all of you listening and not watching, Daniel and I have our hands up in front of our face with five fingers up. The idea here is we ask a question, and if we've done it, we've got to put a finger down.
Let's start with... Actually, I'll start with number one right here. Put a finger down if you have ever taken a demo just to get the gift card or incentive, which- Oh, absolutely. Oh, for sure.
I've written posts on LinkedIn vocalizing that I will be your demo to meet quota if you give me $150 gift card to Nike or Amazon. That's just, I'll be that guy.
If you're, if you're short a quota, give me a gift card and I'll demo your product. [laughs] And he will make sure that it's qualified. He, he might not buy- Absolutely...
but he'll, he'll qualify- I'll be so engaged in your product demo, it'll be insane. Is it true that you actually fed your family for three weeks off of gift cards from demos? That's right.
Actually, still feeding them to this day. To this day. [laughs] All right. So we both have a finger down here. And [laughs] let's see.
Put a finger down if you've had to Google what your prospect's company does during the call. Absolutely. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I Google you before these calls every time. Like, who's this Troy guy? I can't remember.
Who...? Why does he keep throwing- What's he like? [laughs]... these one-hour call blocks on my calendar, dude? Um, I, uh, I definitely did that literally last week. So for sure. Oh, 100%.
Sometimes, you know, it's like- Early days at Beehive, there were, no joke, I was taking 50 demos a week, and I mean, l- it was back to back, sometimes eight back to back, 12 back to back, no time. And I just- Yeah...
showing up and listening and engage and eye to eye con- but really, I'm just Googling them while they talk, and this was before ChatGPT, so I was actually Googling this person, trying to figure out who I was talking to, but been there, done that.
With those back to backs, have you ever looked up afterwards, what does that company even do? Or has that always just been during?
So none, none come to, none are top of mind right now, but there have been times where I've been talking to someone that's just, like, a really big deal, and in the moment I haven't realized that they're that big of a deal.
And so I'll, like, do my due diligence. Now, I mean, I have some buffer time and I'm doing more deep dives on my prospects before these re- or before these demos. But yeah, I mean, you feel kinda bad.
You're like, "Oh, geez, I maybe would've rolled out the red carpet a little bit differently if I had known this person was, like, a mega big deal before talking to them."
I didn't do that with Arnold Schwarzenegger and his team. The red carpet was rolled out profoundly with them, but, uh- Yeah... it's a nice memory.
I'm offended that I do not get that treatment, even though you still have to Google me. You do. Um, but- No, no, no, no, no, no, no. [laughs] Troy Monson, don't let Troy Monson lie to you folks listening to this podcast.
The red carpet is out. It has been unrolled. I'm honored. So let's see, we both have three fingers up I think, right? I can't see you right now. Yep. Yep.
We got threeAll right, put a finger down if you've ever closed a deal on a Friday and told your spouse that you deserve a steak dinner. Yes. My finger's going down. Of course. Yeah. Of course.
You gotta celebrate the wins. You have to celebrate the wins. And I don't think I've ever gone out for steak specifically, but I'm like, "I'm gonna go indulge tonight, for sure." Oh yeah.
I went to Hall's Chophouse for one celebration. It was a delicious steakhouse in Charleston area. Very much worth it. Ooh, it sounds great. Have you been to Ops & A Daughter? No. Is that in Charleston?
Yeah, I think it's on, uh, St. James, I believe. Um- Okay... check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Um- Yeah, I will. I will...
anywho, put a finger down if you've ever known that a deal wasn't going to close, but to keep the pipeline healthy, you push it out to next quarter. Definitely. I mean, it's in a... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We're, we're starting a new quarter right now, and I didn't do that this quarter, but I'm proud of myself for not doing it this quarter. I can't say the same for Q3 to Q4.
But, uh, yeah, there's, to my knowledge, no knowing deals have been pushed to Q1 that I know for a fact- Yeah... aren't gonna close. Are there ever deals that you know for a fact aren't going to close?
Like, they have said, "Hey, I'm going with your competitor," but you keep it open, or do you close those?
Early days, early days, probably maybe would've kept them, tried to finesse a little bit longer than I should have. Naivety plus ambition plus, you know, sell to everyone that breathes mentality.
Nowadays, I'm closing lost or closing won as fast as possible. Yeah. A clean pipeline is more effective than having all the baggage. Yep.
Put a finger down if you have ever taken a call while going to the bathroom, number one or number two. I don't know. I don't, I- I don't think I have. I don't think... Like, a call, like a demo?
Oh, I def- Like a sales call? I've definitely, I've definitely peed mid- mid-call, for sure. While, like, my sales engineer was giving a demo. [laughs] I've definitely muted myself, and I've gone to pee, for sure.
That's funny. And I bring the laptop with me, so to make sure I don't miss anything. That's... Oh, what? Yeah. You're like camera on- No [laughs]... and you're like totally, there's like a toilet in your background.
Like, the toilet lid is right behind you. No, I don't think- No, like-... I've done that... they're like, "Troy, are you going pee?" And I'm like, "No, I muted myself." They're like, "We can see you." I'm like, "No, no."
[laughs] "It's muted, trust me." Man, no, no. All right, let's do- Put a finger up... you still have one finger up. I have one finger up. I- I'm out, for sure. Yeah. I'm gonna ask you one more here. Okay. Um, let's see.
Let's see. Let's see. Oh, I know you've done this. I feel like you do this all the time. Put a finger down if you've sent an important email to the wrong person. Absolutely. Sometimes on purpose.
It's a great clickbait to say someone's name wrong. If they're ghosting you, hear this, SDRs, BDRs, and junior salesmen and salespeople.
If someone is ghosting you and there is no reason why, and I'm gonna get so much flack for this, I can't wait. I hope this is on TikTok later. Call them by the wrong name and they will respond.
99% of the time, I can make this guarantee, 99% of the time you'll get a response. They might not be a good response- [laughs]... and you might get in trouble, and you might get fired.
[laughs] So, so don't, don't say Daniel told me to. And if you're on my team at Beehive and you're watching this, don't do this on purpose, but you'll get a, you'll get a response.
Oh, Jacob, that is the best advice you've given us so far. That's right. That's right. [laughs] Thank you so much. Thank you so much, David. [laughs] All right, cool. Well, that's all we have.
I, I think there's like six more questions. Daniel and I are both out. Um, if you're listening, comment. Let us know if you've done any of these- Yes... or let us know if you think we're stupid for doing these.
Please, please. [laughs] I love when people call me stupid. Someone called me stupid today on LinkedIn. It was great. For what post? Probably some stupid post. Um, it was a post about the...
So there's bots on LinkedIn right now that- Mm-hmm... you know, there's all these AI engagement tools and engagement software that people are connecting their LinkedIn accounts to.
And what it's doing is it's liking not just people's posts who you tell it to like, "Hey, go like Troy's post every time he says anything," but it's saying, "Go like everything Troy does on his own posts, in comments, in replies to comments."
Mm-hmm. And so there's these bots going and liking dozens of replies at, at a time.
Like, if I go and reply to Troy's post and Brian Lamana's post and Darren McKee's post and a dozen other people, the same person will like all my replies on all those posts.
Anyways, this guy, he didn't actually call me stupid, but he basically was like, "Oh, like when I scroll on LinkedIn and these newsletter pros are telling me what to do and I take their advice," and I was like, "What is bro even saying?"
And he got like offended. [laughs] Like he was like trying to jab me for who knows what. Anyways, when you start talking about bots on LinkedIn, someone's gonna get offended. Mm-hmm. And it was funny, and I laughed.
And the people that do get offended are typically the ones that are running those bots or some sort of service that goes out there. For sure. Also, he didn't have a profile picture. You know? If you don't have- I-...
a profile picture- [laughs] Yeah, you don't, you don't belong on LinkedIn. Delete your account. If you don't have a profile picture, delete your account.
You know what's funny is on episode two or three, I don't know what episode this is, but on episode two or three, whatever the last episode was, we were just talking about how somebody commented saying the only reason why salespeople are successful is because they are lucky, and that guy did not have a profile picture.
The trolls. Trolls don't have profile pictures. If you had a profile picture, maybe you'd be lucky. I know. I know. I know. Quick question. All right, hit me. What is your favorite tool as a seller?
On our last episode, we did talk about how you can get away with having a minimalistic tech stack, but I do wanna know, what do you use the most today as you're sitting in the sales seat?
There are a lot of tools that I've tried, and I think there are a lot of tools that I get outreach from, as I'm sure you do, as I'm sure many of the people listening here do or maybe are outreaching to others with their tools.
I think the, the most invaluable tool in my stack right now is Gong. And- Mm... for those listening, a lot of you are probably using Gong, have heard of Gong, or are using something similar to Gong.
But in, in 2025, there's really just no place for Zoom selling or internet virtual sales without some type of recording software.
But-Here's what Gong does really well that I think goes way above and beyond recording software.
I've used a lot of recording softwares, and y- like Google Meets has a native recording software that just, like bare bones terrible, but it's free if you use Google.
Gong gives me such accurate recaps of my sales calls, each sales call after the fact, and then obviously like a pre-written email to follow up with people that is like, you know, 75% of the way there. I don't always...
I n- I never use exactly what it gave me, but it gives me a template to configure.
But what it does really well, now that my sales team is growing, now that Beehive is growing, now that we have people who are on the sales team and on the solutions team, on the implementations team, on the talent team, people all using Gong, I can listen for specific themes, specific keywords over 2,000 calls to date that we've used Gong, and 10 people, I think, and, and growing, we're considering more seats, where you can actually find patterns in your sales process, and then figure out where someone needs to be coached based on those patterns, their own cadences, their own keywords, their pauses, their talk tracks.
I mean, it, it's such a beautifully helpful tool. And so right now I'm like, if Gong was stripped out of my sales process, I'd have to think really long and hard about how do I get something to replace Gong.
Gong is very- Yeah... very good for us. Yeah. Gong is an incredible tool, and I don't use it at Demo just 'cause we're so small.
It's literally just me taking sales calls, so it doesn't make sense now, but I definitely used it at my last two or three companies.
And another thing that I love is the correlation between the amount of touch points and talking that you're doing with that prospect. Like, it can pretty much tell you if a deal is gonna close or not gonna close.
If you haven't talked to somebody in two weeks and it's end of quarter and your VP of sales or something like that is asking you if this is going to close, no, it's not going to close, and they know that.
They're not dumb. They're like, "Dude, you haven't talked to this person in two weeks. I know this isn't going to close. Why are you telling me, 'Oh, they're interested. They're talking internally.'"
Like, you gotta have those touch points more often.
So I always saw a correlation between the amount of times you talk to the person on the other end that, you know, the prospect, versus if that deal will or will not close.
But also, like, being able to highlight the deal risk and things like that. It's, it's a really good tool, and they're only getting more- Yeah... and more powerful.
Yeah, I mean, you look at the best salespeople and how many sales touches they have, sales activities in their pre-sales process and, you know, you see these gurus, oh, if you don't have X amount of sales processes or activities, you're...
The likelihood goes from 85% to 50 to 40 to 30%. I look at my most, the deals I'm most proud of over 10 years, and there are hundreds of sales activities, not dozens, not 50, hundreds. It's DMs, it's phone calls- Yeah...
it's text messages, it's onsites, it's multithreading with all of those things with five to 10 plus people, and all of those different interactions, those are what Gong, I think, really surfaces and, and illuminates for the seller and then for the coaches on the team as well.
It's a great tool. Yeah. Absolutely. I have a question for you, Troy. Hit me, man. Hit me. Have you ever noticed how many billboards there are?
Tons, especially when I'm driving down the street in, in Texas, and I see all the Buc-ee's ones and things like that. Yeah, I've seen a lot of them. I see, I see so many Buc-ee's ones.
I went to Fayetteville a few months ago and I saw a Buc-ee's one. It was like 75 miles out. But somehow those are working. And so my question to you is, have you ever bought ad space on a billboard?
I haven't, and I've, I've thought about it, but I don't know where to start. And also it's like for the B2B space, even though I see a lot of companies doing it really well, I don't...
Like Brex and Ramp, I see them using billboard space and things like that, but I have no idea, like who even runs that at a company and h- I don't know. No, I, I never have done it.
I've thought about it, but I'm like, "Ah, I d- I don't know how well they work." Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, and I, I wouldn't know where to start either.
But I just discovered this company that apparently makes it super, super easy to buy physical ad space and measure actual success. They're modernizing what is called OOH advertising.
It stands for out of home advertising. And they're not just making billboards easy either. They make it easy to buy and measure ads on buses, kiosks, transit shelters, pretty much anywhere you're out and about.
And the best part is OOH ads work because they're impossible to ignore.
Like with Buc-ee's, like with the ones that you see in Texas, you're driving, you got the windshield time, it's impossible to ignore these billboards.
They grab attention, they reach a huge audience, and they stick in your mind long after you've seen them.
So this out of home advertising company, which is today's Two Dads and Tech sponsor, who makes OOH advertising very easy, is called Adquick.
They've made it super simple to get your message onto billboards, buses, and kiosks without headaches. Plus, they don't just stop at putting your ad up.
Adquick gives you tools to actually sh- to actually track how well your ad is performing with real data and real results. Do you wanna get a billboard for Two Dads and Tech? I do.
I want it with our Danson Trowbridge picture. I think that's a great idea.
The, the Danson Trowbridge picture, for those who are tuning in for the first time, is an AI-generated photo of Troy and my face put together into one beautiful Danson Trowbridge. It...
We should do a Danson Trowbridge picture with just a QR code and that's it. You scan it, it goes directly to, who knows, Apple Podcasts, Spotify podcasts, or our YouTube channel. I don't know. That'd be sick.
No, I, I, I'd love that. I think, I think right in Times Square we should have Danson Trowbridge, like, like a 60 to 120-second ad slot on the biggest digital billboard we can find in Times Square.
Without even, without even a QR code, actually no context, just his face. Like, drives us zero traffic, but it's his face.That would be so stupid. That would be, that would be very dumb.
But I have always wondered, because I do see, I, I think I saw Copy.ai do a pretty good billboard recently- Yes... and there was another company I saw too. Always wondered how, like how do you know if that works?
I always thought that maybe there's some sort of geolocation thing going on, and you can kinda contribute the traffic that comes in and the tr- who knows. But- Yeah...
that is pretty cool that it allows you to actually see- It is... if it's working. It is. No, a- and to those listening, if you've ever thought about getting yourself or your company a billboard, check out adquick.com.
It's smart, simple, and honestly a pretty awesome and creative way to get noticed. That's adquick.com. Yeah. A-D-Q-U-I-C-K.com. Go check it out, let us know what you think.
Uh, we're gonna check it out, and hopefully Danson Troberg makes his debut in Times Square soon.
Oh, we will soon, and that is an amazing pivot to the next topic I wanna bring up, which is, da da da da, HubSpot versus Salesforce. What are your- HubSpot. HubSpot. Have to say HubSpot on this one.
I know I'm gonna get some flack. Uh, we use Heroku and some other Salesforce tools. Uh, I actually love our customer success team at Salesforce. Uh, there's some great people. I have friends at Salesforce.
I also have friends at HubSpot, so there's n- really no, no balancing the two based on friends at each. But here's what I love about HubSpot.
HubSpot is what I believe is a modernized CRM that cuts out a lot of the noise of what Salesforce built to optimize in early days through the 20-teens. Salesforce is bulky.
It's bulky, and requires consistent maintenance and engineering and like hands-on internal tooling to make sure it doesn't break, to make sure it operates seamlessly.
I think Salesforce obviously is an incredibly powerful tool, which is why so many people use it, which is why they have so much money and so much success to date, but I think HubSpot wins for me. What about you? Yeah.
Yeah, so little bit of a different take, but I agree with how bulky it is and how many things you can do. And a lot of times, especially as you scale, you need Salesforce admins, which they're not cheap either.
Like, it's an expensive tool to s- not only stand up, but maintain as well. For me, since I've gotten into sales about seven to eight years ago, every single company that I was at uses Salesforce, so I'm used to it.
It's, and I think it's one of those things where I'm just stubborn to change. So when I started Demo, Salesforce didn't make sense, so we're on HubSpot and I don't, I, I don't know how to use it.
Like, with H- with Salesforce, I can go in there, run a report, know exactly what's going on in my territory. Mm. Create a report, like quarterly deals and, you know, my, my deals for three quarters out, all that stuff.
I can run really any report that I, I needed to in Salesforce by myself. Not with HubSpot. I, I don't know that yet. Yeah. And I haven't even given the time to try, so it's a little bit on me as well.
But that's why I like Salesforce. Now, what I will say is there's a ton of emerging CRMs coming out. Like, there's a ton, and I see them all over LinkedIn, I see them all over Demo.
I think we have like 15 different CRMs on Demo right now. And I mean, some of them are, have a little bit bigger of a name, like Pipedrive. I see that they're kind of coming out of the woodworks here and there.
But then there's a lot like Adio and Folk and things like this. There's like smaller CRMs. But my big thing
is when you look at every company that does the decent amount of revenue, they're all either on HubSpot or Salesforce, right? Like, they're the two- Yeah... behemoths, so you're not gonna...
It's gonna be very hard to replace them entirely when you start to scale up, and I don't... I think the reason for that is, is the integration aspect.
Like, so many things integrate to those two CRMs, and I tried to standardize on one of these emerging CRMs with Demo, but it just didn't have the, the integrations we needed, and it didn't allow us to pipe our website traffic into the CRM directly.
There was all these like work about or roundabout ways to do it. So I don't know. It's like a, it's a really interesting place to play in, because there's really two clear winners right now. Yeah. Yeah.
I think Salesforce is amazing as you scale up and you become an enterprise, 'cause you do need a little bit more of a robust reporting engine.
But my question back to you is do you think HubSpot is becoming more like Salesforce?
You know, I recently saw something about, I, I don't know if this is true, but maybe there's like a, like non-disparagement between HubSpot and Salesforce where employees like can't actively sell against the other.
Where there's li- I don't know. This is the top of my legal understanding with even the word I just used, but does anyone out there know?
If you're listening and you're like a HubSpot partner or a Salesforce partner, give me the deets. I want the juice. But as far as to your question, I think there's two ways HubSpot can go.
I think they can go and absolutely own and steal 100% market share of S&B and mid-market companies under, let's call it 500 employees. They can own 99% of that, and I think everyone's happy.
HubSpot's happy. They're a multi-billion dollar company at that point.
Right now, I kn- I think last I look at NASDAQ, they're sitting at like 900 million, and I'm sure they've been above the one billion market cap before. They, they would probably 10X just owning 99% of that market share.
And then Salesforce owns everyone above 500-ish, definitely 1,000-plus employees, and Salesforce is happy as well. They're building for them, and, and HubSpot- Yep... and I think there's some overlap, but not much.
I think HubSpot could- Yeah... the second, the second route is HubSpot could optimize to own as much of any company who uses a CRM.
But I almost feel like you'd have to further distinguish between their current enterprise product. Like sales enterprise, support enterprise, they have all these enterprise tools. There's still limitations.
I consider myself a HubSpot expert. I've used HubSpot-... deeply. I understand how it works. I can build anything that HubSpot can do. I have built it, and I could do it again.
But there's a lot of very common things you'd expect HubSpot to be able to do that I still find myself going to a Google Sheet or Excel doc just to make sense of data, that I'm like, "Why, why can't I do this in here?"
I think that's, even to your point earlier, what Salesforce optimizes for, is those really, really nuanced data points and reports that Salesforce is like, "Oh, dude, we got this. We've been doing this for 10 years."
Yeah. "We have- we can do exactly what you're trying to do."
So I think there needs to be, like, an enterprise, like, true enterprise, 10,000-plus employee type of HubSpot instance for them to compete with all of the market share that Salesforce has. Yeah, yeah. But who am I?
I mean, I don't know. Yeah. What do you think? You're just Daniel Burke. I'm half of Dansen Trowbridge. [laughs] Yeah. No, I agree with that. Like, literally just go after all of us and be a mid-market right now.
I think that that's the easiest way to take market share, and then slowly creep up into those enterprises. Yeah.
At the end of the day, I think they'll be the two that people choose from, and that you'll have to- I guess so... decide on as you scale upwards. Did you hear about Bench Accounting? Dude, I did. Dude.
[laughs] Can w- I commented... Doug Boneparth has bonafide wealth or finance. He has his own financial firm in New York.
He- we're internet friends on Twitter X, and I replied to his hot take on it, and I said, "I would find it hard to believe that something incredibly illegal isn't happening for them to pull the plug as fast and swiftly as they did."
Now, I don't know.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist, and I'm not even throwing shade here, but you can't just make a $100 million company with thousands of customers disappear like that, but Bench did, I think December 27th.
Like, just- Yeah... all of a sudden, "Hey, we don't exist anymore." What? I- I- like, did they file all 13,000 of their customers' taxes wrong for the last several years and they don't know?
Like, is there- I don't know... I don't know. Like, is someone going to prison? That's where my mind went. Like, 30 minutes after the email was sent, it goes viral on Reddit and X, and I spend- Yeah...
so much time on Twitter, I feel like the moment anything happens that is going to go viral, I know about it 12 minutes after. So it was all over Twitter. Like- Yeah... Bench is shutting down.
All of the people I know that use Bench or used Bench for their own accounting software, they're like, "Uh, what do I do?" Yeah. And my first thought was, like, "What person is going to prison?"
[laughs] 'Cause, like- [laughs]... this does not happen- Yeah... and it just gets swept under the rug for 10 years. Like, it can't. And, and they had so many customers, so many customers. And so- Insane...
I also saw a pretty hot take, and it makes me wonder about the future of AP and all these autonomous tax software that's coming out, where it's like there's no human behind it.
It's just software running your taxes and doing your bookkeeping and things like that. And it's, there was like this whole hot t- I don't know if it was a hot take.
It was really just, to my understanding, it was more so, like, a this is why it shouldn't be 100% automated, and this is why you need- Yeah... humans in the loop when it comes to, you know, automating all of this stuff.
But yeah, I, I don't know. I- it's three days before the year ends, and it's like, "By the way, go find somebody to do your taxes." There's a lot of business opportunity out there now for all these other softwares. Dude.
But now that I, I'm running demo and we have to do taxes and all this fun stuff, I was like, I could not imagine if the rug was just pulled out from under me three days before.
And so we use Pilot over here, which- Yeah... huge fan, by the way. Shout out, Pilot. You should sponsor us. And it's a human that does everything, and really all they use software for is to make the numbers look pretty.
It's, like, just a pretty dashboard- Yeah... to look at, and then the humans go out there and do all the bookkeeping for us. But- Yeah... um, yeah. Crazy.
No, I have no issue with even what I've seen AI do with my own eyes. I think 95% of accounting can be, in certain cases, done by AI, but I hire an accountant every year for my own taxes. Yeah.
I started doing that four years ago, maybe five years ago. I did my own taxes my entire adult life, and then one year I was juggling a W-2, a 1099, my own company, my wife's own company, a new house, a house sale.
Like, so many things- Yeah. Yeah, yeah... all happened in a 12-month span. I was like, "TurboTax can't handle this." [laughs] Like, I tried. Yeah.
Like, I went through TurboTax, and it just didn't handle it, so I was like... I called a guy. I pay him, like, I don't know, 750 bucks a year, and he just does it all. And I'm like- Yeah...
"I will never, ever, ever do my own taxes again." Because I just forward him every single tax document I get all year. Forward, forward, forward, forward, forward, forward.
And then he gives me, like, this 500-page printout [laughs] every year of it just being done, and I'm like, "Thank you. Done." Like, put it in a file cabinet that I never look at again.
But yeah, I think, uh, AI will help accountants be better accountants. I think people who- Yeah...
rely on AI fully without human intervention at any point will probably see some maybe even unintentional laws being broken because someone leaned too heavily on AI and, you know- Yeah...
when millions of dollars are changing hands, IRS is eventually gonna audit someone, and there's gonna be some issues. Hey, maybe that's what happened with Bench. I'm, I'm really excited- It could've been...
to see how this story unfolds, man, 'cause it, it is- Same... it, it blew me away when I saw that. Real quick question. We talked about AI- Yeah...
eliminating SDRs, and it might be SDRs might be the first position to go bye-bye with AI.
There was an interesting comment on my post about it that said sales managers, or BDR managers specifically, will be let go before BDRs, and I wanted to get your take on that.
And it, it was really interesting, 'cause at first I was like, "No chance." And then I thought about it and I was like, "Well, maybe this guy's got a point." So I wanted to hear- Yeah... what you thought. Yeah. I think,
uh, w- with really big organizations where middle managers are only people managing, and weren't in that specific organization ever an individual contributor-There's gonna be a magnifying glass on them because they're making more money than ICs in many cases.
They're making more money than the people on their team that they're managing, and if they can't pull their weight on a specific task or series of projects that are directly correlated to MRR, their own output, not their team's output, then calculations start to show this m- middle manager is not outputting, specifically them themselves, outputting enough to actually lead to a greater return on their MRR.
And so their people are, sure, and a lot of that obviously can be, you know, can, can lead back to the middle manager doing a successful management position. But I think we're gonna see a lot of changes made in 2025.
I think mistakes will be made.
I think middle managers who actually are vital to a process will probably be let go at some point because all of these different AI tools that are enabling the ICs will maybe eliminate some need for management.
But yeah, honestly, I think that's a hot take. I think- Yeah... I think we're gonna see a lot of...
We're already seeing it with the Amazons and the Apples and the Microsofts of the world is like return to office is almost like a excuse to fire middle managers. At the end of the day, like, "Hey, we're doing R- RTO.
Well, actually we just wanna do a layoff, and that's kind of our segue to a layoff." I don't know. It's a good question. What do you think? As a, as the founder of Demo and the manager of two employees, right?
No, you have a co-founder and one employee. How do you feel? I have two... Yeah, two co-founders, one employee. Um- Two co-founders, one employee. There it is.
A- and back on real quickly on the, the companies laying people off, I just saw last week Google laid off tons of VPs, so a lot of upper management, which a lot of money gets sunk into those positions, man. And so- A lot
... I, I agree with you, and I, like you said, it is a hot take.
It's a very interesting take, and it's, I feel like it's a take that I'd love to have some sort of like live conversation with somebody else that might be an SDR manager.
Be like, "Hey, tell us why you think otherwise," and things like that.
I mean, at the end of the day, I think that people are trying to figure out how to get the most for their money and get the most output they possibly can from each individual.
And a manager who is just essentially like managing people but not also producing results will be very hard to prove their ROI because at the end of the day, their, their salaries are pretty high, right?
Like let's hypothetically say an SDR manager is 150K salary, and then they have a little bit of an OTE on top of that, but then their BDR is like a 60K salary.
But that BDR is driving 3 million in pipeline, and the manager's just like- Yeah... looking at their emails- Managing... looking at their cold calls and doing good, good job. Yeah.
Like, I'm keeping that BDR 10 times out of 10 saying, [laughs] "Hey, you're driving the heartbeat." So really interesting take, really interesting conversation. It is. And I love thinking about things like that. Yeah.
I think 2025 is...
I mean, with how fast AI is changing the workplace and the way we think about P&L and being in the black and hiring and raising money even, I think we're gonna see a lot, we're gonna see a lot of changes in the workplace.
Which actually brings me to a question with the future of education. So we're talking about the future of the workplace. We're talking about AI changing the workplace, employees, managers. Future of education,
what do you think college will look like in 15 years? We both have three-year-olds. You have a baby on the way. I have an eight-month-old. How is college gonna look when these kiddos of ours are 18 years old? Yeah.
I love this question. And if you're listening to this on January 1st, today, my baby, we, we have to be at the hospital tomorrow at 5:00 AM January 2nd to get the baby out.
So I'll be there, and so yeah, you'll be like the first to kind of know. This is interesting. I think it's going to be...
This isn't about college right now, but I think it's going to be easier than ever for a kid, call it a kid 8, 9, 10 years old, 15 years old, to build a business and make just as much money as we are making today as, as sales reps.
And I would guess that you make a decent amount of money, and it's gonna be easy for a kid to just go and probably build something from a tech perspective and go find [laughs] a way to make money from it. Yeah.
And I bring that up because we were talking to our financial advisor about 529s and putting money into like a school account, but it, you get taxed pretty heavily if you don't use it on school, but then you can always pass it down to like a grandchild, all this stuff, right?
But I was like, what if my son's similar to me where he just wants to build, or one of my sons is similar to me and they just wanna build businesses like I do? Like I love the whole entrepreneurship stuff. Yeah.
And what if I instead of having like 200K, 300K, whatever it is in a bank account that just grows over time, what if I just gave him that to go build a business and something like that that he wants?
'Cause it'll be easier than ever to do so. I think that, one, college is not needed for many professions. Now, there are professions out there where I think I'd feel more comfortable if somebody had a college degree.
Call it pharma, doctors, surgeons, et ce- e- education, professors, things like that. But this is tough.
Like I loved, loved my college years, and anybody you talk to that went to college, not anybody, but most people will talk about how much they love college. Like you do learn a lot- Yeah...
about life, less about like education and stuff. But I don't know. I think that it'll be... Ah, dude, this is tough. Like what do you... I, it's not gonna go away. It's been a thing forever. It's a hard one.
It's not g- Yeah. It's not gonna go away. Yeah. But it, there will be much more opportunity in the world than ever without having to go to college. Yeah. That's my outlook on it. I agree. Yeah.
I think there's a few, there's a few things that are gonna change. I think the, the way that we perceive and really elevate Ivy League status is going to completely be a level playing field.
I mean, if you go to a public school and got a four-year degree and you paid nothing because you got a scholarship and you were in state,
you have the same chance of getting hired against the Yale, Stanford, Harvard in most cases.
Of course, there's the exceptions, which I'm aware of.But accolades of where you went to college don't matter anymore like they used to in- Yep... 2000, 2005, 2010.
Because what employers care about more than anything is what can you actually do? What have you actually done? Have you built something?
I think this is going, in software more than anywhere, this is going to be the case. So much so that I think in software for most cases, for most jobs, people won't even care if you went to school.
People won't even care if you graduated high school. If you can build a piece of software or some component of our product faster, better, with less errors than anyone else from anywhere else, you're gonna get the job.
Yeah. At the end of the day, software runs the world. If you look at big tech, they're all software companies.
Software runs the world, and I think that's what's going to really change the dynamic in the way that we look at schooling in general. Now, I will say, I'm gonna say this really fast.
I was thinking about the 529 thing with both of my two sons. I don't have a system to save for their college right now.
I save money and, like, at some point hopefully will have some to give them for college and for a business they wanna start, whatever. Mm-hmm.
But when I did the math on what it's going to cost in 15 years for my kids to go to college, I said, "Okay, let's assume it costs $150,000 right now."
I looked at future college costs inflated at 5% annually, and the total that it came out to 15 years from now was 300 to $350,000, which is totally emphatically unsustainable, and also means I'd have to save almost $2,000 a month right now for the next 15 years to give them what they need to go to college, which is insane.
Like, no, no one can do that- Yeah... unless they're already super wealthy. That is- What?... nuts. That is absolutely- Insane... insane. Yeah. I can't... I mean,
you would have to think that there's, that something's gotta change. I'm not sure what it is. Um- Something has to break... wild. Something has to break. Wild, man. Um, real quickly, I heard that
Brian Lamana once beat Tiger Woods at a round of, uh, 18 holes, just your normal 18 holes of golf, at TPC Scottsdale and beat him by four strokes. That's insane.
I thought you were gonna talk about the time that he went head-to-head with LeBron James in his rookie year, and LeBron James didn't score a single point in a game of 21. No.
No, I wasn't gonna talk about that, [laughs] but when you brought that up it also made me think about that time. [laughs] I'm trying to figure out something to say. [laughs] I didn't know what to say.
I heard, I heard that Brian Lamana once stared down a baby with their candy for so long that the baby was 18 years old by the time Brian stopped staring at him. [laughs] No, you can cut that one out. But that's funny.
That doesn't even make sense. I also heard that Brian Lamana could hold his breath 34 times longer than David Blaine has ever been able to hold his breath.
I heard that one time Brian Lamana went to the Olympics to observe athletes in their prime and somehow ended up on the pedestal for first place in every single category. That is insane.
That's almost like the time where he closed that deal and the, the VP of sales when he was trying to close it said, "Sorry, the CRO has passed away," but the CRO still signed after he passed away because he wanted Brian to get that deal done.
I heard that Brian's first round of interviews when he got his job at Gong, that Brian Lamana actually was offered the position of CRO, and he said, "No, no, no.
To keep grinding and growing in my career, I refuse this offer of CRO. I will outsell every single person in the company, and I will steal the CRO position myself before 2026." That is so nice of him to not- I know...
have somebody lose their position. I know. He's a humble and noble man. That, that al- Fucking love Brian Lamana. That, that makes me think about topic roulette.
Really makes me think about topic roulette, so I wanted to bring up a quick topic. I'm gonna say one word, give me your thoughts on it, real short thoughts. Okay. The word I'm gonna say is Limewire. Limewire.
Great product in 2003 or 1999 or however old I was when I was using it. I had an iPod Classic 80 gig, and for- Mm... reasons beyond my understanding, greatest product in the history of mankind, by the way.
But- You were so rich... whatever- Wow. I was so... Dude, that was... Look, that was a great gift. That was a Christmas present. I know my parents were hustling to give me that.
I was grateful, but I did not need 10,000 illegally downloaded songs on that mess. Like, who here, raise your hand, put a finger down if you'd listened- [laughs]... to 10,000 songs on any iPod. No.
Maybe over a course of a year, but I'm usually, like, discover weekly on Spotify and just, like, listening to whatever happens, and then I have my go-to playlists, obviously. But- Yeah... yeah. Um- Good times...
Limewire, great tool. Great- Great product... great sec, great sec. Wish they were still here. What about you? Give me a topic. So, here's my question for you, Troy. What do you think about college athletes getting paid?
Ooh. Um, so we have the NIL now. I think the contracts are massive, [laughs] especially if you're a, a big name, but, like Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter, I'm sure they're getting a pretty, pretty paycheck. Mm. Mm.
Mm. Now, I've always thought, like, you're getting hundreds of thousands of dollars as a scholarship to go to this school, a- and maybe it's not every single athlete, right?
So, then I have to think about the athletes that are devoting just as much time and working just as hard, but maybe they're just not as good and they don't get a scholarship. Do they get paid? I, I don't know.
Are they contributing to people coming to the game and spending money on that game? The, it's this weird thing. It's tough. Maybe, like, a-So maybe like a small amount, like a livable amount. But I also...
I'm not a college athlete, I don't know, like do they get their housing- Right... paid for? Do they get their food paid for and all that stuff? Like if they get everything paid for,
I don't know, like all I needed was to live in college, right? Just eat food and- I know, yeah... and go to school. But inter- I don't know. I don't know. I think that the NIL obviously is trying to change that.
They're giving away fat, fat, fat, uh, whatever you wanna call it. Fat paychecks. What is it? Yeah, paycheck. Yeah, that's right. That's right. I don't know. Yeah, crazy. Uh, yeah, sponsorship for sure.
What about- I don't, I don't exactly know- Yeah... how it works, to be honest. You think they should get, get paid? I think, uh, there's a lot to say. There's a lot to say.
I think the people that are absolutely gonna make it pro are gonna make hundreds of millions of dollars anyways, uh, at least millions of dollars.
And there's a lot to say about just going to college, doing what you love, and not having to pay for any of it, even if you're working super, super hard, waking up early, staying up late.
Like, again, it's not easy to be a college athlete, but also like most people are out here grinding on their student debt for 30 years, and you don't have to do that.
So that's like very privileged, even if you didn't get paid. But, uh, it is a job. Like, it's hard to get around that.
I mean, you're working at least 40 hours a week on top of being a full-time student to be the best of the best in college, and that's hard. Yeah. I mean, that's hard.
You can't get a job because you're an athlete, so you technically can't make money. You don't have the time. Yep. I don't know. I, I don't know. It's tough. I could see it both ways. Yep. Yeah.
And that's the argument both ways. Awesome. Well, that's all I have for you today. I don't know, do you have anything else to talk about? No. I think this is a great episode. I need to go pee. Yeah. All that fun stuff.
Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to the United States of America. Some people think it's July 4th. It's actually January 1st. It's actually January 1st. It's never been, it's never been July 4th. But, uh- Exactly...
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everyone, thanks for listening. Daniel, it's always great to chat with you, man. You too. Take care, Troy.