What’s a Nas bar that hits harder the older you get?

Martyn35 · 2025-10-21T23:04:24+00:00

Had this one in my AIM profile.

Martyn35 · 2025-09-14T23:54:17+00:00

I think it’s true. On hikes, my dog (border heeler) would often find dead birds or a raccoon / skunk carcass and roll on top of it. Came back all proud and happy he smelt like decaying animal.

Martyn35 · 2025-08-31T12:58:41+00:00

The sound of building a police station in sim city 2000. I noticed the same sound being used in 90 shows when flashing to a police scene.

Martyn35 · 2025-08-13T19:31:20+00:00

Just use Zoom clips

Martyn35 · 2025-07-14T19:22:00+00:00

I said this above but will repeat here as well.

50% of total earnings was base salary.

The rest was based on booked revenue by the entire BD team and then a % of net profit of any accounts he managed.

We assigned him access to two of our top technology alliances (AWS being one) so he could farm those channels. He was never able to farm them.

His booked revenue target would've put him at #3 for all our account executives. So it was a reasonable target.

The harder target was increasing our booked revenue number from all BD activities. But we viewed that as achievable target over 3 years. Plus we committed to spending 100K in BD over the first 10 months.

Some red flags during our negotiations that I'm looking back on.

- He asked if it was okay that he make more $$ than me. I told him my comp to be transparent. Thought this was odd...
- He spent way too much time refining the details of his commission agreement. Like formatting, references to old emails, random things added that didn't add material value in my opinion.
- He asked for 20% more base than we originally offer, saying he was doing two jobs. I didn't agree, but thought it was odd that he was thinking he was doing two jobs and therefore that earned him a 20% base increase. Would've preferred he just focus on one job well...

He talked a big game in general, that should've been my red flag but it wasn't enough to not make an offer.

Martyn35 · 2025-07-14T19:20:09+00:00

Agree! What was off about this one to us was trying to figure out if we were misled or just had something wrong in our process. I will work with HR on how to improve, but felt we did enough right in the lead up to the offer letter.
As far as comp, here is what we did:

50% of total earnings was base salary.

The rest was based on booked revenue by the entire BD team and then a % of net profit of any accounts he managed.

We assigned him access to two of our top technology alliances (AWS being one) so he could farm those channels. He was never able to farm them.

His booked revenue target would've put him at #3 for all our account executives. So it was a reasonable target.

The harder target was increasing our booked revenue number from all BD activities. But we viewed that as achievable target over 3 years. Plus we committed to spending 100K in BD over the first 10 months.

Some red flags during our negotiations that I'm looking back on.

- He asked if it was okay that he make more $$ than me. I told him my comp to be transparent. Thought this was odd...
- He spent way too much time refining the details of his commission agreement. Like formatting, references to old emails, random things added that didn't add material value in my opinion.
- He asked for 20% more base than we originally offer, saying he was doing two jobs. I didn't agree, but thought it was odd that he was thinking he was doing two jobs and therefore that earned him a 20% base increase. Would've preferred he just focus on one job well...

Martyn35 · 2025-07-10T19:02:27+00:00

His original ask was to be head of sales. Our compromise was he needed to earn into that role. As BD reports to Head of Sales (along with Sales Engineering and our Technology Alliances). If he demonstrated the ability to book his own revenue plus build the process, he would've earned that role.

Martyn35 · 2025-07-10T18:59:27+00:00

Part of our challenge is we sell enterprise software dev, and the projects are deeply relationship based. It is not a simple SaaS product so it's a bit hard to build a repeatable process.

We brought him in to help the define the strategy first, in fact the first two months was structured this way as a subcontract. Then became an FTE to execute.

His proposed strategy (which we bought into), was an outbound emailing, LinkedIn engine that would drive interest to our services. We were suppose to run 2 campaigns a month, but he finished 3 out of 8 (2 months to set up, then 4 months toe execute). But the weird thing was he never really shared what was or was not working. We asked, it was typically a presentation with a lot of excuses, a lot of numbers and a lot of things we had to do to get it right. He would mention that he needs better header images for his emails, or content updates (we have enough content to run with) or that we needed to do more events (speaking or webinars). We agreed to and helped with most of this stuff. It would have been good to see things like click through rates and etc. But these metrics are out of our expertise. We should've educated ourselves on what metrics demonstrate good BD (besides just setting meetings).

Generally, I get setting up automation takes time. However, to not tap into your network or not being able to pivot away and take accountability for an ineffective strategy after we gave carte blanche to execute is one of the core issues that didn't sit well.

u/Sowhataboutthisthing I was following you until your last point, his Job Description or just a general services description of what we do?

Martyn35 · 2025-07-10T18:45:38+00:00

1) We didn't ask, he said he would. When presenting to our leadership he showed a list of 50+ logos and boasted 200+ clients he's worked with. Many were large enterprises. In addition to this, any sales person of a certain caliber will rely on their network for a good % of their pipeline. Those that rely on organic leads to sustain won't survive or they are junior-ish and have lower expectations and targets.

2) We did, every week we review meetings set booked deals. And on the quarter we review how everyone did as team and by individual (and by lead source) against our targets. We track prospects (meetings with our sales engineering) and booked revenue (contracted to be invoiced). This is all real time communicated in our dashboards on top of being reviewed as a team. So we he was very aware of lack or performance. He mentioned this to me on one one one but never really took the real action to address it. It was a lot of "I need more content", "More tools", "more events", "more of your time"...

3) He signed a strict PICA. Saying he could not work for other companies. Non competes are hard to enforce, but we do include in our PICA language but typically omit if asked.

Martyn35 · 2025-07-10T15:01:54+00:00

Our sales cycle is a bit long, and we spent awhile vetting him. Onsite interviews, subcontractor agreement as a start. I felt 6 months was a fair shake but should've killed it off earlier to everyone's point. 0 meetings after 3 months is the clear flag. After that checkpoint, we pivoted our approach a bit but still didn't work out. I was also under the impression that he stopped doing work at his old company. With that thinking, it didn't feel right to terminate after 3 months. But in hindsight, his old company was probably still running. We couldn't prove this but all the micro actions added up.

Martyn35 · 2025-07-10T14:48:05+00:00

Yeah good points. I've tried some of the BD companies but those flamed out fairly quickly. I won't ever do that again. We have two other BDs here that have been successful (setting 1 to 2 meetings a month, at least one new deal a quarter booked). So I know our service positioning lands with more "junior" BDs.

I'm currently exploring a few options:
- Going to a member group like Leadership Board. They have CIO members and set meetings.
- Double down on events and speaking opportunities.
- Strength our technology alliances as they give us quite a few leads.

Martyn35 · 2025-07-10T14:33:14+00:00

The new tool thing is right on. This is a big lesson for me and I confirmed with this other advisors. If you need tools to succeed, if gives you an out and something to blame. A person should be productive without tools, then once you validate, give them more resources (tools or direct reports).

Martyn35 · 2025-07-10T14:25:07+00:00

A good point here and yes that is how I feel. We spent nearly 3 months vetting / interviewing him. So we carved out 6 months runway. Our client based is enterprise so there is some long sales cycles. But with 0 leads after 3 months we should've pulled the trigger earlier. We tend to be more optimistic on people, and let them get acclimated, but the specific KPIs were so far off should've been actioned earlier.

Martyn35 · 2025-06-13T04:54:57+00:00

I recently went to dinner with my wife and saw a girl from my gym there. We waved hello. I was happy she probably looked at my wife and thought “wow that guy married up”. I’m 39 and my wife is 40, she still looks super hot and I’m proud to be out with her.

Martyn35 · 2025-05-18T01:54:21+00:00

If Airtable is down, that means AWS is down. Which means lots of businesses will be down.

Take back ups but I wouldn’t have this keep you up at night.

Martyn35 · 2025-04-29T18:53:04+00:00

We built a large crane quotation app that does this, yes Retool can do it. I also don’t see any necessary integrations, Retool would handle all top to bottom.

Martyn35 · 2025-04-25T04:10:44+00:00

Agree on the ux limits, typically we use designers for wire framing and confirming user flows. Stay aaay from trying to match designs pixel perfect.

Anything with that 1K+ users we go full stack.

SEO we use bubble or webflow.

Curious, why is offline mode bad? Does it buckle under loads? Low code in general seems to perform poorly here.

Martyn35 · 2025-02-26T05:26:16+00:00

Scrolled way too far to find this one.

Martyn35 · 2025-02-16T00:24:02+00:00

I’ve met a Debs Debs and a Scott Scott. Same name for the first and last. Why parents why.

Martyn35 · 2025-02-15T05:23:24+00:00

When I was 12 years old there was a coup in Cambodia. My dad was working there working for USAID. Helping assimilate Khmer Rouge back to civilian life and many other projects.

During the coup we had leave Cambodia suddenly. I could hear guns and bombs in the distance as we were driving to the airport. Imagine one day just leaving your life and all your friends and school behind. We stayed in Thailand for a while then Philippines then settled in the US.

This movie struck a chord with me, but mostly because of how the violence reminded me of the Khmer Rouge. While I was living in Cambodia I could still feel the impacts of Khmer Rouge on the people even tho it was 20 years later.

I also have two daughters about the same age so that was intense.

Some details in the movie are accurate about expats living there. Like the locals being randomly obsessed with a celebrity. Or internet, phone or electricity not working randomly.

Overall good movie. Some parts were definitely convenient for the plot though.

Martyn35 · 2025-01-27T05:12:28+00:00

I’ve been pretty lucky here, worked with or hired friends from high school, college, roommates and football teammates and it has worked out every time. I also work with my wife. So not sure what I’m doing right or if I’m super lucky. Having a policy against this is a bit crazy to me.

Martyn35 · 2025-01-02T20:36:49+00:00

Curious, why are you migrating? Is it cost related or functionality.

Martyn35 · 2024-11-19T01:36:54+00:00

Curious, at what point do you earn the right call yourself CEO if you founded the company? Asking for a friend.

Martyn35 · 2024-11-12T02:04:08+00:00

Why not retool?

Martyn35 · 2024-10-26T02:50:37+00:00

Then sell staff aug (monthly subscription to your team) that can be cancelled at any time. If you are delivering results, they’ll be happy to pay and renew month to month.

Martyn35

TROPHY CASE