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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
You don't have to be ruthless to get ahead--kindness will get you there faster From the CEO of the Pavilion community, Sam Jacobs, Kind Folks Finish First weaves practical business lessons with fresh perspectives on how you can achieve success. The ideas in this book are backed by the author's personal experience building a nearly $200-million business rooted in kindness, reciprocity, and deeply held values. More than that, they're proven principles that have helped thousands reach their goals in every arena. In business, we've been told to never leave money on the table. Don't split the difference. You need to be ruthless in order to make it to the top. Kind Folks Finish First shows you that isn't the only path. Being a good person and earning money aren't mutually exclusive. Helping others isn't a sacrifice; it's a long-term strategy that can spur your success if only you're willing to take the exit ramp, reset your destination, and fuel your future with generosity. * Walk through a proven process to discover what you really stand for * Learn how to assume control of your life and how to leverage reciprocity to drive professional success. * Align your personal life with your professional life * Unlock your highest potential to create true happiness Anyone looking for a kinder, gentler, more values-driven and authentic way to succeed will love this book. The secret is finally getting out--kind people really do get ahead faster.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Story of Pavilion
Chapter 1:
Fired at the Rest Stop
The Power of Failure
Getting Fired Still Sucks
The Lessons of Failure
Emerging from Failure
Reframing Your Narrative
The Path Forward
Chapter 1 Tactics: Negotiating Severance
Chapter 2:
The Exit Ramp
Turning Failure into Opportunity
The Power of Experience
The Power of Documenting Your Expertise
The Power of Maintaining Your Network
Playing for the Long Term
The Exit Ramp
Reflect on Your Joy
You Are Not a Victim
Release the Pressure
Chapter 2 Tactics: Lessons of Consulting
Chapter 3:
Reset Your Destination
The Elusive Struggle for Money
What Do I Stand For?
How to Reset Your Destination
Foundational Myths
Resetting Is a Process, Not an Act
A Sense of Becoming
Chapter 3 Tactics: Build Your “About You” Deck
Chapter 4:
Powered by Generosity
The Origins of Generosity
Be Big, Don't Be Small
Building a New Kind of Community
The Problem with Most Communities
Love for Customers: The Missing Piece of the Equation
Generosity Can Be a Competitive Advantage
Putting Generosity into Practice
Chapter 4 Tactics: Find Someone to Help
Chapter 5:
The Next Right Step
Making Our First Hire
Pulling the Thread
Mapping Your Core Values into Decision Making
What's Next
Chapter 5 Tactics: What Are Your Values?
Chapter 6:
Listen Closely, Act Quickly
Listening Is the Key
The Right Way to Scale
Phases of Growth
The Importance of Unit Economics
Rules of Thumb
Common Mistakes to Avoid
The Wrong Way to Scale
Chapter 6 Tactics
Chapter 7:
Every Crisis Is an Opportunity
Doubling Down on Values
Taking the Next Right Step
Rising to the Next Challenge
Rules of Compensation and Negotiation
Principles of Executive Compensation: Alignment
The Two Ways to Get Rich
Cash Compensation versus Ownership in a Company
Rules of Negotiation
Take Yes for an Answer
Chapter 7 Tactics: Understanding Equity: Terms You Should Know
Chapter 8:
The Last Piece of the Puzzle: Leading with Love
Breaking the Cycle of Self‐Loathing
Framing Your Future
Embracing Positivity
Love Is a Leap of Faith
The House in the Hamptons
Chapter 8 Tactics
Chapter 9:
Arriving at Happiness
Validating Our Work
Looking to the Future
About the Author
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
About the Author
Index
Wiley End User License Agreement
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KIND FOLKS FINISH FIRST
THE CONSIDERATE PATH TO SUCCESS IN BUSINESS AND LIFE
SAM JACOBSWITH KERRI LINSENBIGLER
Copyright © 2023 by Sam Jacobs. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per‐copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750‐8400, fax (978) 750‐4470, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748‐6011, fax (201) 748‐6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permission.
Trademarks: Wiley and the Wiley logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Further, readers should be aware that websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read. Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
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Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic formats. For more information about Wiley products, visit our web site at www.wiley.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data
Names: Jacobs, Sam (Chief Executive Officer), author.
Title: Kind folks finish first : the considerate path to success in business and life / Sam Jacobs.
Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : Wiley, [2023] | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022035660 (print) | LCCN 2022035661 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119983002 (hardback) | ISBN 9781119983026 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119983019 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Success in business. | Kindness.
Classification: LCC HF5386 .J3123 2023 (print) | LCC HF5386 (ebook) | DDC 650.1—dc23/eng/20220907
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022035660
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022035661
Cover Design: Wiley
Cover Image: © Julia August/Getty Images
For those who believe in a better way to do business.
Acknowledgments
There are too many people to properly thank for the community we've all built together over the past eight years. But a few that come to mind include Fred Mather, one of our earliest and most vocal supporters, Anne Juceam, our very first full‐time employee, and all the original Members of the New York Revenue Collective.
We wouldn't be here without the support of Max Altschuler, Founder and CEO of Sales Hacker, who launched the podcast with me and who introduced me to Wiley in the first place.
The first seven Chapter Heads played a critical role in our growth including Tom Glason, Rich Gardner, Butch Langlois, André Bressel, Kyle Lacy, Nicole Smith, and Joshua Amrani.
None of this would have happened without the support of my wife, Camille, who has stuck with me through thick and thin from my penniless days post‐Axial to today over close to 13 amazing years and helped bring so many beautiful animals into our lives, especially my beloved Walter.
Thanks also to my amazing family, including my mom, Ambassador Susan Jacobs, my dad, Barry Jacobs, my brother and sister, Josh and Wendy, my nieces and nephews, and especially Buster.
Special thanks to Kerri Linsenbigler for helping me finish the book, to Jared Rosen for being our first book coach, and the entire team at Wiley, including Shannon Vargo, Sally Baker, and Julie Kerr for their support.
And, of course, thanks to our thousands and thousands of Members who live our values every day and, in so doing, help demonstrate that kind folks really can finish first.
Introduction: The Story of Pavilion
There is a fallacy in the business world that to succeed you have to be ruthless. There is one way to get rich and have truly global impact and that is to screw the other person before they screw you. Lots of people have succeeded based on that philosophy.
I'm here to tell you there is a different way. Being a jerk, focusing on the short term, emphasizing “the art of the deal” above long‐term relationships—perhaps that is one path.
But within the world, there are many paths to success. The path I will lay out for you offers the same things—wealth, impact, a legacy. But it does so in a way that will make you feel good. That will put positive energy into the universe. That will uplift you and those around you.
And to begin your journey, you don't need a wild stroke of luck. You don't need a trust fund. And you don't need to be a perennially upbeat happy person oblivious to the reality of the world around you. In fact, I'm pretty much the opposite of that. I'm grumpy. I'm moody.
But the lessons I articulate in this book are about a deeper sense of compassion and kindness. They are not about your mood. They are about a way of behaving in the world. A way that aligns you with positivity.
Some of it may seem hokey. And some of it may seem naive. There's a certain power and sense of superiority in cynicism. That's certainly true. It's up to you how you choose to lead your life. And this is just one way. But it's a way that I've found to work.
If you take that leap with me and go with me on this journey, I'm confident you'll come out on the other side with a deeper connection to success. We'll work through some of the challenges and objections you might naturally raise, and I'll share with you deeply personal information about my decades‐long struggles with the right sense of self, with depression, and with my near perpetual frustration with my station and place in life and with my career.
But, on the other side of all of that, you'll also discover what I've learned to truly change my life. To finally discover happiness. To build the tools I use almost every day to nurture that happiness. And to work through how that happiness and peace has transcended my professional life and impacted my life at home with my wife and my personal relationships.
This is a book about the company I started now called Pavilion, originally called Revenue Collective. I did not intend to start a big company. I only intended to help my friends find jobs and to create a group of people committed to supporting each other. But somehow, years later that company is worth more than $200 million and doubling while barely burning any capital.
This is also a book about how I saved my marriage, discovered true happiness for the first time in my life, and achieved almost everything I'd dreamed, and more, since I started working back in 1999.
Prior to starting Pavilion, I'd been a vice president of sales at venture‐capital backed companies in New York City beginning in 2003 when I started at Gerson Lehrman Group. I'd risen up through the ranks quickly at GLG, which became a big company while I was there.
I left in 2010 to set out on my journey of becoming a C‐level executive. I'd always harbored big dreams and ambitions, but the next eight years were a series of false starts and frustrations that created a terrifying sense of repetition. That I wasn't making actual progress. That I wouldn't become wealthy and that I wouldn't realize the sense of potential I felt inside myself and have felt since I was a young child.
Beginning in 2014, I started bringing my friends together for dinner every quarter in New York. These were other people in similar situations. People in their thirties and forties working at high‐growth companies and struggling to see the light at the end of the rainbow, struggling to see how all the toil and hard work would ultimately end in some kind of big payday, some kind of recognition.
So we started having dinner together every quarter. Then we started emailing each other with questions about work, how we had approached different challenges and obstacles, how we'd solved different problems. What email subject lines were working. What the ratio of salespeople to sales managers was and how to motivate and retain great talent and develop them.
These were all questions that were too real and too recent to have studied in a book and the book would have been out of date if it had offered answers anyway.
From those email threads and those dinners, something began to emerge and take hold. Now, a dinner club is not the hardest thing in the world to copy. And an email distribution is not a hard thing to copy either.
I never thought what we were doing could be a big business because I thought, “There must be a sales executive meetup in every city in the world. I don't know why there doesn't seem to be one in New York, but New York is a big place and I'll just do the one in New York.”
My thought process was intentionally modest. I didn't give myself permission to think what I was working on was a venture‐scale business—something that could become a unicorn or decacorn or change thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people's lives. I just thought I enjoyed helping people. It gave me a sense of purpose and accomplishment. It filled me up with a sense of satisfaction.
In fact, when I first left my last full‐time job to work on Pavilion full‐time in December of 2018, I only hoped I could get it to 2,000 paying Members.
Now, I'm writing these words in 2022. What started off as a dinner club in New York with me and a few of my friends has become a global community of over 10,000. In April of 2021, just a few years after launching, we received a $25 million investment from Elephant Ventures, valuing the company at north of $100 million and we've grown threefold since that investment. Not only that, but in the course of that investment, I was able to sell some of my ownership in Pavilion and achieve actual wealth—a goal that had seemed forever beyond my grasp as I came of age in New York beginning in 2003.
This book is that story of the change in me that occurred over the past five years, beginning in 2017. A change that proved transformational and helped me build a global company at scale, impact the lives of thousands, and achieve nearly all of my professional goals.
I had sensed the possibilities of the ideas espoused in this book for a long time. In fact, I'd practiced them subconsciously and unintentionally. But it was beginning in 2017 that I was finally able to start getting a sense of how to put these principles into some kind of framework.
I often joke that so many business books are really just articles turned into books to convey gravity or spurious sincerity. And perhaps I'm guilty of that over the next 200 pages. But the framework is indeed simple and straight‐forward.
That framework is also not new. It's been promulgated by everyone from Oprah to Tony Robbins to Adam Grant to Dan Pink and on and on.
Condensed into its essence it is simple and straight‐forward:
Look to help others before you help yourself. Do as much as you can for other people and ask nothing in return. Try as hard as you can to stop keeping score. Play a long big game instead of a short small game. Build relationships not transactions. And try to use the power of love, optimism, and gratitude to power as much of your decision making as possible.
It's that simple. It's not easy. But it's simple.
The point of the book is that doing these things—embracing kindness, consideration, reciprocity, and a sense of spirituality powered by love is not just something you do because it makes you feel good. Of course, it does make you feel good.
But these are practices you can embrace not just to feel good but to achieve the things you want to achieve in your professional life. You can use these practices to get rich and make a lot of money. You can use these practices to get a promotion. You can use these practices to rise to the top of your profession.
There is an old adage: Nice guys finish last.
That adage is wrong. It's wrong not just because it conjures up some notion that “guys” are the only people that participate in business. Of course that's false. But it's wrong too because at its essence it implies that business is zero‐sum, that the only way for you to win is for someone else to lose. That the world is implicitly dog eat dog.
I don't believe that, and in the times when I have believed that nothing has gone right for me.
My life changed when I realized that the beauty of regulated capitalism is that in order to achieve the things you want you have to build things other people want. At its essence, it is a deeply humane system and the most efficient allocator of resources in human history. (Side note: Let's make sure we emphasize I am using the word “regulated.” I am aware that unfettered capitalism has inherent flaws baked into it. But that's a story for another book.)
My life changed when I realized that helping other people without asking for anything in return, that playing a game so long I didn't have to keep track of it, that helping for helping's sake, was itself a competitive advantage. Because so few people do it. So few people truly practice it and embrace these ideas and these philosophies. So when you do, you stand out. You look different.
My life changed when I realized that the universe is far more malleable than we realize. That thoughts become actions. And that the underlying power driving all of it is or can be love and generosity.
That's what this book is about. That's what these subsequent chapters are about.
The journey of building a company now worth over $200 million and doing it in a profitable sustainable way. The principles that led me here. And the simple easy practices you can implement in your life that can transform not just how you feel and approach your professional life but that can actually help you achieve your goals.
The book begins by reframing your perspective on yourself and your life, and resolving to change. That's Chapter 1. From there, we dive into some tools you can use to discover your true passion and to align your passion and your skills with possibilities for success. Because this is also the story of building a company, we'll layer in some practical business concepts that can help you if you're running your own company or working on someone else's. And finally, we'll go deep on the underlying principles that can transform the foundation you've laid. Those principles are fundamentally rooted in spirituality. And that spirituality is fundamentally powered by love. By a sense of gratitude and appreciation. And that, through love, compassion, gratitude, and appreciation, you can work to manifest the world you want to live in. One where kindness is rewarded. Where love and openness creates the possibility of transformation. And maybe, just maybe, a world that you can get the things you most desire.
I hope you enjoy it.
Chapter 1Fired at the Rest Stop
The Power of Failure
“I'm about to get fired again.”
I was on the New Jersey Turnpike, a long industrial stretch of road connecting cloverleaves in Delaware to my home in New York City. Along the way are rest stops named after people you've sort of heard of. Clara Barton. Vince Lombardi. Richard Fenwick.
My wife, my dog, and I pulled over at the Richard Fenwick Rest Area. I'd just received one of those emails that puts a pit in your stomach. My wife Camille watched me scroll through the email in dead silence. After an eternal minute I glanced up with a deadened look in my eyes. She waited patiently, but quizzically.
It was Friday the 13th, October 2017.
My track record as a startup executive was discouraging. I'd now worked at four companies over the past 14 years and this would be the third time I was fired. My self‐esteem plummeted as I read the message. How fitting to be at a rest stop when my career was in the toilet. Again.
“I'm about to get fired again.”
I thought back on the 18 years since I graduated from the University of Virginia—failure seemed to be a constant theme.
I'd started a record label, moved to a farm in rural Virginia, and tried to become some kind of hipster media mogul. That didn't work.
I'd followed a girl back to New York. We got married. Then the marriage fell apart.
I somehow found myself in the world of high‐tech venture capital–backed startups. I'd thought getting into the C‐suite and working hand‐in‐hand with the CEO might translate to job security. What an oxymoron.
“I'm about to get fired again.”
What was the root of all my failures? I worked for incredibly successful companies, filled with incredibly smart, talented people. Yet, I was left with a sickness inside myself that created a sense of transactional competition and insecurity that I tried to cover up with the money I was making.
“I'm about to get fired again.”
On the New Jersey Turnpike, the email itself was seemingly innocuous. A note from my CEO saying “I hadn't realized you'd be out today. Can we meet first thing Monday morning?”
She wasn't a morning person.
“I'm about to get fired again.”
I was at an inflection point. My adult life up to this point was marred by struggle and dissatisfaction. I never felt I could get my feet under me. I never felt I was doing what I was meant to do. I always felt I was at someone else's whim.
There and then, in that rest stop parking lot, I resolved that this firing would be different. I can't quite describe the resolve I had. The determination that suddenly formed inside of me. But I had a certainty. A certainty that this was going to be the last time this type of situation happened to me. I wasn't going to wallow. I wasn't going to feel sorry for myself. I was sick of letting life happen to me.
I was going to take control and use this moment to transform. To rise above the chop and the froth and the turbulence that kept upending my life and find a new path forward. To catapult myself into the life I wanted to live. I was going to leap into the unknown and simply trust that I'd figure it out. Figure out how to support myself on my own terms. And figure out how to finally achieve true independence.
Getting Fired Still Sucks
Despite this parking lot revelation, getting fired sucks. That's obvious, and yet still surprising to so many of us.
As a child, I always viewed myself with nearly limitless potential. I had been good at school and gotten good grades. I got where I wanted to go.
The first time I was fired was back in 2010. I was sitting in an office discussing leaving Gerson Lehrman Group, realizing this wasn't really a choice, but an order. I was getting fired—and I was stunned.
The truth was that I was treated well in my departure from GLG. Alexander Saint‐Amand, the CEO at the time, was honest and direct while still being caring. He told me as much as he wanted me to stay at the company, there wasn't a department head that wanted me on their team. I was too surly. Too disgruntled. Always complaining. So there was literally nothing much he could do, and he was right. I had pushed myself out of the company somehow.
Each time you get fired you can lose a little piece of yourself if you're not careful. Even if you use the firing to reframe the next chapter of your life, it still sucks.
The second time I got fired was not as nice.
When I was asked to leave GLG, I found myself at another startup, with a big pay cut and in the throes of a divorce.
I worked there a long time and built it from nothing into something. Me and a bunch of other folks. But I was disgruntled again. Thinking I had contributed too much and controlled too little. And I'd lost respect for the CEO. So I tried to get him fired. I secretly met with an investor and shared my frustration. They said they'd look into it and then followed up to let me know they didn't think it was a good idea and they were going to stick with the current leader. Months went by.
So much time had passed, I thought I was in the clear. I thought I'd somehow avoided discovery. I even got promoted to Senior Vice President. I'd been at the company for four and a half years at that point and had an inflated sense of my own importance to the company and my job security. There's that oxymoron again.
Then one day, the CEO and I went for one of our typical Monday walks, but there was a notable difference in his tone of voice. About halfway through, I realized I was getting fired. And this time it was not a graceful exit, but the kind where they turn off your email and lock you out of every system and then tell you that you can't go back to the office and please return the laptop. The most embarrassing and painful way to get fired. I had a team of close to 60 but wasn't permitted to say goodbye to any of them, many of whom I'd personally hired and developed and who I thought of almost as family. I still remember the head of HR, a very nice person and still the best marathon coach I've ever had, meeting me at the Grey Dog Cafe so that I could give back the company laptop. It's hard to put into words the level of shame and embarrassment I felt. A deep darkness came over me back then and lodged itself somewhere in my psyche.
That time I did wallow. I smoked a joint and drove out to Jones Beach to look at the Venetian tower and lie on the sand and listen to “Let It Bleed” by the Rolling Stones. Trying to figure out where to go from there. And how to pick myself back up.
Those painful experiences prepared me for the signals I needed to look out for when I got fired from The Muse two jobs later. The shift in tone. The abrupt meeting. The “pack your shit and go” vibe.
So before we dive too deep into all the self‐help talk about how all this is just fuel for the fire and, in hindsight, how lucky you are to have all these terrible things happen to you, let's just acknowledge that it's a deeply shitty experience.
And if it has happened to you, I want you to know that you're not alone. And it doesn't mean you're a failure. In fact, getting fired is both a deeply educational experience and one you can draw on in future years. And it's much more common than you think.
We've run numerous studies within the Pavilion Executive community evaluating how long most startup executives last in their role. We looked at various social media profiles and worked to ascertain how long each person held their position. The results were astounding. In fact, most startup executives last less than 18 months in their job, and that number has been steadily shrinking over the previous years, particularly during the COVID pandemic.
Various other companies have supported the data with Gong, the well‐known revenue intelligence and call‐recording company, revealing a study showing that vice presidents of sales at startups last just 19 months.
This information is a big deal. It means there is far less stability than there ever has been. Greater opportunity for sure. But far less stability. I remember growing up and hearing about people who worked on the assembly line at the Ford Motor Company. There was a pension and a clear retirement plan. They even gave you a gold watch after 20 years. You'd start working right out of college or even high school, put in your two decades, and be in a position to think about what came next in your forties and fifties.
All that is gone now. People are changing jobs more than ever before, and the reality is that, particularly in the world of fast‐growth startups, and especially in sales and marketing, every day you set foot in the office or log onto a Zoom call, you are taking on great risk.
There are a variety of factors why. There's so much capital out there, and the pressure is high for every company to become the next unicorn, the next multibillion‐dollar valuation. Startups go through phases of growth faster than normal companies by design, so your skills might be relevant for one stage and not another.
And as we've seen from the COVID pandemic, people's tolerances for working in inflexible, overworked, unappreciated environments are low. So maybe our own patience wears thin quicker.
But again, none of those realities matter in the moment when you realize you're about to be fired. You just feel loss and shame and anger. But, if you're like me, you will learn to understand these feelings. You will learn that these feelings are temporary, and you will grow from these setbacks. You really will. I promise.
You can use this experience to emerge better, stronger, and more powerful. Throughout this book, I'll show you how I did it.
In fact, you may just end up where I am, with gratitude. Gratitude for all the people that fired me. Gratitude for the lessons they tried to share with me that I was too stubborn to hear. Gratitude that every single experience and failure led me here, to a place where I can truly enjoy my life and where I'm still relatively young enough to do so.
The Lessons of Failure
Failure had been such a constant presence in my adult life that it was worth breaking down some of the root causes. Something about my moment at the rest stop triggered a breakthrough for me. But why? What was it about?
I imagine if you're reading this, you can identify with this feeling of failure. This feeling of not living up to your potential. That something inside of you was trapped. And the frustration that things aren't turning out the way they were supposed to.
I've been there so many times. Pivotal inflection points in my life that were seared into my brain as representations of missed opportunity and unrealized potential. It started when I didn't get into Thomas Jefferson, the magnet school in Fairfax County, Virginia, for the best and brightest. Then, I didn't get into Princeton. I remember the thin envelope sitting in the mailbox and the breakdown it triggered. The feeling of being passed up. Passed over.
That feeling followed me to one of my bigger failures, my record label. What were the lessons? What were the reasons?
Failure of Pride
I failed at the record label because I had no idea what I was doing.
There were so many ill‐fated decisions, made from pride and ego. I thought I knew it all. I leapt from investment banking into the music industry with no contacts, no network, and no experience in the industry.
