#481 Go-to-Market Clarity in a Noisy World: Jan van Schuppen’s GTM Wisdom

Episode 481

[00:00:00] 

Mehmet: Hello, and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO Show With Mehmet today. I'm very pleased. Joining me from Amsterdam, Jan van Schuppen. Jan, thank you very much for being here with me today. Uh, the way I love to do it is I keep to my guests, you know, to introduce themselves, but I give [00:01:00] a teaser to the audience.

We're gonna talk a about a lot of topics related to startups. We're gonna touch on ai, we're gonna touch also about, uh, Jan's work with, you know, working with. Startups and CTOs and so on. So without further ado, ya, the floor is yours. 

Jan: Thank you so much Mehmet for, uh, having me and, uh, uh, welcome everybody. Uh, so my name is Jan van Schuppen.

I'm a sales entrepreneur. I've been leading global sales teams for the last 30 years, especially in, uh, business to business, uh, and with a near focus on learning and development and SA services. Uh, I exited, uh, a company two years ago and since then I've been building my own learning platform, uh, mainly through the usage of di Digital avatars.

Uh, and I'm coaching startup founders, uh, to find the revenue faster, uh, because everybody's always really stuck on their, but there's actually really good ways to, uh, to go to [00:02:00] market faster and find revenue. So that's what I'm trying to help them. 

Mehmet: Great, and thank you again for being here with me today, Jan.

Now, you mentioned something and you called yourself or described yourself as a sales entrepreneur. I loved it. Right? So from mindset perspective, what did you know? How is it different? Because you know, there's a common thing that they tell a founder that they need to have, but when you say, I'm a sales entrepreneur, so how this different from, from being a traditional entrepreneur.

Or farm? 

Jan: Uh, first of all, all all the ideas that boil up in my head always start with how, uh, with the revenue model, usually, uh, I see, uh, a chance. Um, usually I sell first and then try and produce the product later. Um, let's see where is the opportunities? Move fast on that. And then, uh, get into creative mode on do we have the right solutions?

Do we know the right people? Maybe it's somebody we need to refer in our network. Uh, or [00:03:00] something that we wanna start off, uh, ourselves. So the sales entrepreneur is really always, I, I'm on the sales part of it. I would never build any products myself. Uh, so I'm, I'm always gathering a team, uh, from the start.

Somebody on the tech side, somebody on the finance side. I'm really bad in finance. Uh, so I'm the, the sales part of the, of the entrepreneur side. 

Mehmet: Great. Now I gotta ask you two questions, one by one, right? Uh, and. They might contradict to these others. Okay. Okay. So the first thing, like you just told me about, you know, all your career, you've been in, into the sales game, right?

And, uh, you just exit the company. Now if, if you look back, what, what do you think like one of the core principles in sales that have never changed? 

Jan: Uh, well, one of the things that was taught to me when I was a kid co coming up in sales is, uh, you have two ears and one mouth, meaning you need to [00:04:00] listen twice as much as you speak.

Um, a lot of people think that if you're verbally strong or if you can convince people or if you're a great storyteller, you must be a great salesperson. Um, but a a, a good listener is often a better salesperson. 

Mehmet: Great. And now I gotta ask you what is, you know, the, the world is changing very fast, right?

And everything around us is changing. And I know, like you have said, because when I was preparing, I, I've seen like, you know, some of the things you've said, like sales might never fundamentally change yet. You know, everything around it change, right? So, um. What, what can you know, or let's say people who differentiate themselves in the marketplace.

And I'm talking about like people who are in sales specifically, and let's focus also on people who works on, on startups. Right? Right. Um, so what is the, you know, the main thing that they also, you know, they need to, to change, to [00:05:00] evolve, you know, and, and be up to speed to everything around them. Well, 

Jan: uh, I would almost say it's, it's, it's always been like this.

Uh, we always had to get used to, uh, all of a sudden, uh, for example, during COVID, a lot of people that used to do client visits had to get used to doing, uh, the, uh. The 50 zoom calls a week. Uh, so the, the adjustment has always been there. It's just the technology is jumping so fast at the moment, uh, and the developments are going really fast.

Um, it almost pushes us that we need to rethink our own position and, and, and think, does the job that I have in the current setting, will that be the same in two, three years from now? And most likely the answer is no, not really. Um, so we, we need to start changing there and, and getting used to, uh, new technology.

I mean, I just turned , 51, uh, two weeks ago. [00:06:00] Um, but I, I still have the feeling I need to reinvent myself 'cause I have 20 years of career in me still. So, uh, I need to prepare. 

Mehmet: Absolutely. And happy belated birthday, by the way. Yeah. Thank you so much. But I love this. You, you know, like, uh, people ask me sometimes what's your biggest, uh, or let's say, what's the thing that keeps you up at night?

Uh, and I always tell them one thing I managed, I'm 45. Almost. I tell them, you know, I always manage to keep myself up to date with everything around me. Right? And my biggest. You know, uh, fear, let's say, is that technology accelerate more than what my brain can take. Because if I'm not up to speed, if I, and I do this for the same reason, y you just mentioned, you know, I want also to be relevant, right?

It's not like because I'm afraid to lose a job or [00:07:00] no, but because. I am curious by nature and I need to understand what's going around me. Yeah. Yeah. So this is the reason why. Now I'm gonna come back to the, to, to the more the technology and you know, what you've done with the digital, uh, avatars. But before this, just also because we need to clarify something.

So Jan, today you help fellow, uh, entrepreneurs and, uh, mainly CTOs and other like, uh, leaders and. You are the founder of Ideas in Spades. What I'm curious about, like when people come to Jan, like when day they reach out and they say, Jan, we need your help. And what kind of help usually you provide them.

Jan: Right. So, um, we do have a a, a fairly standardized six months training program for startup founders. And the, the generic learning points are usually fairly. Applicable for most of them. Uh, but of course we do a long onboarding and [00:08:00] intake to see where we need to adjust or for which parts we need to put more focus on.

Some founders just really have no idea that they could call an old client and ask them to test their product. Uh, and other founders, uh, are camera shy. They don't wanna be on LinkedIn saying how they got to this position, so we're gonna fine tune a little bit, whereas the, uh, the pain points and whereas the quick wins, uh, but always all of it has to lead to qualified leads and good sales conversations.

Mehmet: Cool. You came to a point, which I want to ask you about, and, uh, for the sake of, uh, transparency, we're recording this on 16th of May. Probably you are watching it at beginning of June. Uh, for the audience I just shared today something, and I want, as someone who's, who's. With that experience, like you Jan uh, I always talk that now.

Time changed a lot and especially if you are a founder, you need to be in front [00:09:00] of your customers in a sense. Not only going and meeting them also on social presence, like you need to get these proofs. Uh, how do you find, you know. Founders who might come and say, Jan, look, I understand. I can see like other entrepreneurs are doing it.

Um, but does it make me any results? I have a great product, you know, uh, I will build and people will follow. Right. What do you tell these people, Jan? 

Jan: Well, the, the, the, the beautiful quote, uh, I, I, I, if we build it today, will come, uh, it, it, it is the, uh, the, the classic startup thing. No matter how good your product is, if you have no marketing and no sales, then you can turn the lights off.

Um, and over the last few years, uh, founder branding has been quite crucial in social media. Um, [00:10:00] the problem that I see, and I also see that we're kind of at the end of that period locally enough, uh, but the problem was, is that there, uh, became existed all of a sudden a new profession, which was content creators.

I. And the only thing they did was produce a million videos on how to produce videos. And if you are a founder of an accountancy startup, or if you are a personal trainer and you wanna be in the gym and looking at all these videos on these professional content creators. It's just gonna make you nervous.

It is going to, you know, dis encourage you, or you try it five times and then you have 10 views and then you go like, well, this is not for me. It doesn't work. So the, the, the misconception that entrepreneurs must become content creators, I, I hope we're at the end of that because that is not the case. Um, what is the case, however, is that [00:11:00] sales is still fundamentally built on trust and it is very easy nowadays to build trust on a platform that doesn't cost any money.

That with the new technology, shouldn't cost you too much time and you can start building a small group of fans that will start paying you money. Um, but again, circling back at these content creators, every entrepreneur that doesn't get. A thousand followers thinks that they failed on social media, which is not true.

If you have 500 followers and 80 of them pay you good money, why would you need more followers? Um, so getting away from that content creation, uh, uh, yes, it is still important to do good branding and people trust founders more than they trust the actual company. So it, it's, I'm not saying you shouldn't do it.

I'm just saying, just stick to your own profession. Be an accountant, be a fitness coach. 

Mehmet: I love this. Um, [00:12:00] so, you know, some people, uh, I, I, I cannot blame by the way, sometime the founders, because the amount of noise that is outside there is really confusing now. I like to behave, or let's say to react based on, uh, empathy more than, you know, just rationally.

Mm-hmm. And so I try to understand both sides, but I'm, I want, I'm always on the, on the entrepreneur side. So the entrepreneur might, might be, you know, opening he or she, they will open their feeds. And they'll see two points of views. Right. Even maybe three. But let's take two. So the first point that what you just mentioned, yeah.

Right. And there's a second one that say, Hey, forget everything. Build a outbound machine that, you know, follow 1, 2, 3, and your business will be on steroid. Hmm. [00:13:00] Um. I don't like to say, you know, or like, I'm not big fan of these big, uh, title that say, okay, like x, uh, thing is dying because of ai, or like, the next generation of marketing will be X.

No, because in, in fact, no one knows. But to be like little bit reasonable and to be also getting the experience, how do you see. From marketing perspective, uh, is it like more the founders who are gonna be showing themselves online? And again, I like when you said it's not about the number of followers, not even about the number of impressions and likes.

It's important who seeing you, I'm paying you, but is it like, or is it more like, no, I gotta hire someone, do outreach for me and. You know, uh, I will, I'm, I'm, I, I know like this is an old strategy that used to work. Maybe it's still working. People called it, uh, uh, [00:14:00] spray and pray and let's see what happens.

So from your perspective, is it like a com still? We need to do a combination of all these things because people would see different of these content creators. Pushing for their own methodologies. Me as a founder, imagine me as a founder, I came to Y and ask Jan, okay, how do I choose which one is the right approach for me?

What do you tell me? 

Jan: Perfect. So actually, I had a conversation this morning with a co-founder from a company here in the Netherlands. They created two really cool HR products ready to go, plug and play, and I said, oh, great, how many clients you have, or zero. Okay, so why did you build these products and, and, and based on what?

And so my first thing would always go like, are you sure there is an audience for this? Did people tell you yes, we need this by this and this day? Is there urgency? Is there, uh, uh, an indication that they will actually pay you money for it? Um, because you can come up [00:15:00] with a beautiful solution and say, my startup is gonna do A, B, C, and you're gonna get a hundred thousand people saying, wow, that's really cool.

But that's something different than when you've actually built it, that they will sign a, uh, order confirmation. So, um, I must admit, most of my own expertise is in business to business and, and sales, SaaS and enterprise sales. Perfect. So if you would have a, uh, a one off consumer, uh, uh, uh, e-commerce website and you're selling t-shirts online, that's not really, uh, where, where my advice would go.

Um, but if you have a business to business, uh, startup, um, what we would do first is look at what are all the potential channels. Because sales is, is not just about one person having a conversation with another. Because yes, there could be a leading strategy, but there could be sales, uh, partner channels that you would have.

You could have affiliate partners. Uh, you could work with an influencer that gets you [00:16:00] qualified leads. Uh, so, so there's a, a whole scale of, um, possibilities to feed that machine that you were uh, mentioning. Um, but what most people underestimate is that there is a huge phase before that. Um, you have a go to market point, but what you want is you want potential end users already test casing the product.

Mm-hmm. And this is, uh, what I usually teach the startups that I work with. It is a perfect way of creating a pilot phase, uh, approaching your low hanging fruit. People that you've known for years, people that would actually have this problem that you're trying to solve and explain them. Say, listen, we are in a startup, uh, phase, but we're looking for people to test our products.

Why don't you test our product for a while? If you like it, these are the conditions to keep it afterwards. And if you don't like it, then at least we got some good feedback to work with so nobody loses. Um, it gets you [00:17:00] off the train station right away. You get real use of feedback. These people feel really special 'cause you involve them.

So they'll feel like brand ambassadors. They'll always almost feel morally obligated to continue to work with you. Um, and you're already able to set out future conditions and pricing based on the promises you make before the pilot starts. Um, so you, you can, you can start today. But people have the feeling that first I need five months to build my HubSpot funnels and qualify and then do this and do, it's great.

All that technology exists, but if you are a startup, what you need is speak with clients today. Uh, and I wanna speed that up for people. 

Mehmet: Again, I love this. Yeah. You know, like, um, this is wisdom, uh, for founders, I would say because it, I've seen people over complicated things or completely, uh, and [00:18:00] blindly, uh, following, um, certain playbook without even.

Understanding, you know, when to use this playbook. Yes. So, and this is, you know, I'm happy because, you know, there are like, uh, experts like yourself where they can guide the, the founders because. I refer to multiple things. So of course, you know, you have first the idea, I liked your way. So when you even come back, come with the idea, even before building the product, it's good to see how you're gonna sell it, right?

So, so map, you know, the business model and the distribution. So if you have that clear, I think when you build the product, that makes it easy. And then. I always refer to him. I hope one day I would have him on the podcast. So there is one figure very well known, Steve Black, he's one of my idols, right? In the startup world, right?

So he talks about going out of the building and I tell people like, yeah, you can sit in your garage, whatever you want to call it, and build the best tech ever. [00:19:00] But you go out and you figure out that no one wants it. And the reason is because you didn't go out of the building and now you can actually go out of the.

Zoom meeting or teams meeting. Yeah. And then try to talk to people and Yeah, like to your point, Ian, you can start with people you know, people who you think they might have, and start validating your idea and see actually they later start validating the product. Are they willing to pay for it? And just for people to know, and you know this because I've been in B2B also all my career, right?

So the way we, so, the way we do it is we give trials, uh, and actually if the company is very, very still early stage, these trials might go for one year, by the way, because you need continuous feedback on. The hope that first the product works. Second, they like it. Third, I loved also what you said, because today I summarized all this in my post.

So it's this like we, we had like this, uh, like same mind, uh, and just you, you mentioned this, and then you build a community and then the community will, [00:20:00] will start to, to refer to you if you're doing something good. So absolutely. On that Jan. Now here I want to come. Little bit to the tech and, uh, you know, about the, the scalability.

Um, so how do you train, you know, sales teams to, because everyone want to scale, you need, you need to reach as much as possible. So AI comes to mind. So how, how you train, you know, uh, sales team to blend, you know, the power of these tools, uh, the automation, but at the same time keep the authenticity. And we know there's a lot of.

Debate, let's call it in, in, um, between people I would say about, yeah, AI messages and yeah, that not authentic and all the, so. How, how you train, um, you know, salespeople to, to take care of these authenticity issues. 

Jan: Well, personally, I, I find, uh, all tools, [00:21:00] the, uh, ones used properly can be great. And even if, uh, uh, somebody on the other hand knows it is, uh, automated or AI assisted, but it is delivered well.

Then people won't notice. Um, if it is delivered sloppy, then you will get an extra annoJance because then you know it is AI that was sloppy. And then you think it was sloppy first, the person didn't wanna do it himself, and then the AI output was sloppy. Um, so therefore, if you do something with ai, make sure that the.

Um, compared with the old days, you would get an email newsletter, um, from the, uh, the, the, the newsletter database from the startup hero who probably has his own newsletter. You get it still every morning, Monday morning, you still read it, but it's an automated newsletter. You didn't complain then, but now all of a sudden you see that a text has 15 emojis [00:22:00] in it.

You go like, oh, that wrote that, and, and then you don't take it serious. So what I teach people is use it, make sure that you use it properly so that your receiving partner always have the feeling that you still paid attention to. Now, I, I call it the five ninety five method. Mm-hmm. Um, everything that you put into your tech, the first 5% you need to hyper focus.

We need to make sure the parameters are right, the prompts are perfect, the training files are good, everything is done right. But after that, you can kinda let go. Uh, whether it's the automations, whether it's agents working together, or even if it's just your team members, uh, your design department needs to call your, uh, your cybersecurity department and all of it.

So leave it be, and in the end. When they say, well, we're almost done, focus [00:23:00] again for another 5% and fine tune and find the things that you still wanna tweak. Uh, but that means that overall in a, in a project, whether it's an AI or an internal project, your only required focus time is 10%. Yeah. 

Mehmet: Yeah. Uh, this is why we need more people like, like yourself and I, I believe because, um.

People are not understanding one thing, so I think they are looking at one, one corner, I would say, of the whole thing, which is, yeah, as you said, it's full of emojis and Yeah, like look at the dash now. They're talking about the dash. Oh, yes. Yeah. And, and I tell people look like, you know, we know why the dash is used, so it's like a longer pose.

Mm-hmm. Like it's the right, I said like look like we can't blame Chad GPT because it's written by Chad, GPT. And I'm very transparent. I said, guys, I need to rely on [00:24:00] chat, GPT, especially, you know, when I started to have like the podcast and I have kind of a presence online, right? Of course I'm not a native English speaker, so I go to, to charge GPT and say, Hey, like, can you proofread this same for me?

Yeah. And by now, cha GPT more or less knows my style. And sometime, you know, it suggests you think and say, Hey, no, no, no, no, you're, you're not putting my style. This is not me. Right. So I see. So actually, but you know, uh, if I think about it, you know, the automation and uh, the power of ai, it helped me a lot.

And I tell people, look, but you can see me because I am it, it's me. And again, I relate this to the next question. It's me who was on the podcast. Right? You know, it's not an ai, but not yet. But, but here I'm gonna ask you something because you're doing some work on the digital avatars also. Yes. And, and, you know, you, you partner with the Hi.

Um, so tell me where is the opportunity here and [00:25:00] the intersection between AI sales and content? 

Jan: Uh, I, I think it's limitless. Um, I, I ran across the technology already in 2022, um, through a, a client I had from Hewlett Packard. Uh, we kind of were done with the meeting and then he said, oh, young, by the way, look at this tool.

We're using it internally. It's like a. He was a management trainee group in, uh, in Washington and he shared his screen and all of a sudden there was this lady and she started speaking to me and I was like, okay. Um, so, uh, I dove into it right away. And ever since 2022, I've been, uh, doing my call outreach emails, uh, with digital avatars.

Uh, after a client meeting, if I'm, uh, sending the follow up, everybody is used to sending the nice PDF slides. 

Mehmet: Yeah. 

Jan: Dear Mame, thank you for the meeting attached other PDF slides. Please share them with your boss so we can look [00:26:00] at the pricing. You know, we all type this meeting, this, this email a thousand times, right?

Yes. Nowadays I only send videos. Then it'll be exactly the same slides, but it will have me as an avatar next to the slides explaining with my voice clone what the slides are about. And now all of a sudden the contact person who receives the video thinks, Hey, this is cool. Let me share this with my boss.

I've never seen this before. So not only does my current proposal get more attention. Right away can position yourself as being innovative and creative and different than others. So it's, it's been really, uh, doing a lot of, uh, 

Mehmet: um, 

Jan: great work for polishing up my sales routine. 

Mehmet: Cool. And what kind of partnership, like, uh, you, you've got, like, do you, do you help other companies to.

To, I mean, let's say founders or executives to create their avatars and start to create their content. If you can like shed [00:27:00] some light on this. Uh, yeah. 

Jan: Yes, of course. So, uh, I started building my own learning academy based on my own 30 years of experience, uh, to, to help some people out, but also to train my own sales teams.

Um, but I, I, I don't wanna spend that much time recording all these training videos. So of course, we're using also my own avatar for product creation in this case. Um, and for that we use Hagen, uh, uh, American Company. And they were so impressed with the progress that we made that I, I, I got to meet the CEO.

Um, we had a great conversation. He said, oh, we're looking for creative agents. But I'm a salesperson by origin, so we got to talk about his enterprise sales goals. So, um, now we are a reseller of Agen, uh, because that's where my specialty comes in. I, I helps SA startups even if they're already funded like Agen.

Uh, so we do a lot of enterprise sales for [00:28:00] them. And then once these clients are onboarded by Hagen, they might have operational questions. They might need inspiration or they might need, uh, technical assistance. And that's where my company ideas in Spades com comes in. 'cause they are really avatar driven.

They do all the creative work, they do the YouTube shorts and uh, and all of it. Uh, so, so that's really to help the clients get the most out of the hey gen technology. 

Mehmet: That's great and good to know. Now, one thing, because we're talking about sharing content and, uh, sharing knowledge. Another debate if you want, or another, uh, uh, thing that I talk personally about it also as well is, um, the algorithm of, of this platform mainly, you know, if you are in into B2B, you're gonna be on LinkedIn mainly, right?

Mm-hmm. Um. And we see sometime, you know, change in algorithms and you [00:29:00] know, the same founders. I see them like complaining. By the way, I do runs sometimes also as well. Mm-hmm. Because I believe, you know, but of course I gotta tell you what, how I, you know, think about it or the mindset I have. Right. Of course.

I need to hear your point of view. So algorithms and I had like a guest, Tim or uh, or uh, or on the, on the show a couple of weeks ago, and he explained to me actually how these algorithms are designed. Yeah. Right, right. Um, so. How to have the right mindset to ignore the algorithm and just focus on the content.

And again, as someone who trains and coach and mentor startups, Ian. Mm-hmm. What do you tell people who also you work with? 

Jan: Well, um, one of the main things that a lot of people have forgotten about, but it's really gold that, that most companies and even [00:30:00] startups already have. Um, and if you don't have it, there's tools like Clay and Apollo to get you up to speed.

Um, but building a good email list, and we talked about it earlier, the newsletter that you receive every Monday morning. Um, but an email list doesn't need a hundred thousand subscribers. It needs 25 subscribers that are in your. Interest. I, I don't like the word so much, but everybody understands it. Um, so, um, getting good content, I.

If you can send it out to a hundred people that know you, trust you and like you and might eventually buy a product, that is gonna be much more efficient than posting it online. Uh, on Monday morning at nine o'clock when $19,000 people are posting content as well, you know, it's, it's one out of 19,000 or it is you versus your a hundred email receivers.

The chance of conversion is [00:31:00] much bigger on your own small network, if you will. Right. And so getting people to subscribe and making sure you share on different platforms, uh, and sometimes even if you have a really interesting piece of content that you think is relevant for a prospect, that is another great moment for you to reach out to them.

And say, Hey, by the way, my company just made this little video. I had to think of you, uh, because you told me last time you also have this challenge. Uh, here's the link to the video. Please let me know what you think. So even if this was a cold email, it would already sound friendly and, and it is out. By the way, you can automate this and you can do like 10 every 15 minutes.

But I'm guessing that if you have a small group of people that you personally know, um, creating content can be a, a laser tool rather than aspiring for a hundred thousand likes. [00:32:00] 

Mehmet: Yes, absolutely. Uh. So I'll tell you my mindset on this. So first thing, uh, people forget that content is evergreen, right? Mm-hmm.

So every evergreen in sense, not in the content itself, but I mean, it's on the internet, right? So if you try to put some love in what you do 

Jan: mm-hmm 

Mehmet: people will find you somehow. Uh, and trust me on this. You know, I've been doing the podcast now for almost two years and have, trust me on this, I tell the audience, right, if you, if so, this is first, second, consistency.

And to your point, Jan not giving up fast. Right. And the third mindset, which is like kind of, I would call it philosophical mm-hmm. Is I go, because you know, for me, the podcast, let's say, or like whatever I share, of course I have something that I want to promote. But the way I think about it, especially in the sense of, uh, LinkedIn [00:33:00] mainly, which is my main channel, right?

I say, okay, listen, if I put a piece of content, so maybe. Let's say instead of hundreds of thousands of people seeing it, maybe a group of 10 people will see that. Mm-hmm. And out of 10 people, two people will get inspired by what I shared. Right? Right. And I say, you know what? Bingo. This is what I aimed for.

Mm-hmm. If I'm managed to, and think about from business perspective, so your point, if you managed to get like out of, I don't know, thousands of, you know, contacts to have like 10 people to reach out and then you convert from these 10 people, maybe three or four to be prospects and possible clients, here you go.

Right. So you don't, don't over complicate. And I think the name of the game is also being. Having the patient to, to wait and, which I think, yeah, I can understand young founders, they are in rush. They want to see results quick. It doesn't happen overnight. And even AI and automation can, [00:34:00] of course it can help you to spread it more, but it doesn't help to get results faster.

So sometime you need to, uh, to, to, to just wait. And again, think about that. You're trying to help someone and if you are a startup founder, you're solving a real pain. Actually people would need also you to, to help them salting out the Spain. So think about the bigger goal, the bigger aim, the purpose, why you're doing this.

So this is my 2 cents on this, but I loved also your approach. Uh, yeah. You want to add something? 

Jan: No, no, no, no. I agree. I I, I do agree with the sentiment for, from founders that the algorithms on LinkedIn. Uh, it feels like they're changing overnight. Uh, some people that I know really well never see my content, uh, unless they literally go to my profile.

Yeah, so there is a few of these. Uh, but at the same time, uh, let's not pretend that we cannot have a business without LinkedIn. Uh, you have a telephone in your pocket, you can call [00:35:00] people. Or like you mentioned earlier, you can go outside the building and you can meet people and tell them about your great startup.

Mehmet: Absolutely. Absolutely. A hundred percent. Now, if I want to, you know, ask you y to have of course, like no one, no one can predict a hundred percent, you know? Mm-hmm. The future. But how do you see, you know, um. Like this sales, uh, motion, uh, being shaped in the future. So, so of course we are seeing great things now.

Uh, we are seeing, you know, AI used to automate the whole outreach process. You talked about what you do also with the avatars and, you know, personalizing, um, the follow up and even also the outreach, also the content creation for getting the inbounds. How do you envision, you know, the sales to be in the future with [00:36:00] more AI coming out?

Mm-hmm. And I'm curious to know from your experience, we talk about us, I mean, the ones who are trying to sell a service product, whatever, right? What's happening on the other side of the table? What. The buyers are doing in that space, right? 

Jan: Oh yeah. That, that's always an, uh, an interesting one. And, well, first and foremost, more pool, more, more tools.

And uh, if you have smart tools and you, you use some Smartsheet always increase output. Um, so everybody who's scared, uh, that's great, but then you aren't using it. Um, give you a great example. Uh, I have a designer, uh, and. I train her a lot on using the custom gpt that we made internally, how to make our own planning, but also how to find new clients for themselves.

And so it has all these commercial elements and then she's in discussion with other designers in her [00:37:00] network and all of them go, oh my God, we're gonna be without a job. AI is gonna take over the world. She goes like, no, actually I've gotten much better because of it. And I see the same in sales. There's a lot of people that have been used to monitoring inbound sales requests and then forwarding it to another department and then high fiving with the other department during coffee, you are gonna be out of a job in six months, and that's a lot of people and there's no way to make that sound any nicer.

But people that now pick up and start, Hey, you know what? Let me use these things to become better in what I do and to amplify what I do. Uh, those will be on top of the barrel and drifting up. I don't know, there's a Dutch expression for it. We have a lot of water here, as you know. Um, but, but, um, that's not only for sales, that's it's gonna be in, in, in, in [00:38:00] medicine, that's in graphic design.

That's in, um. I saw that Audible. Uh, I listen to a lot of podcasts and, uh, well, uh, audible is now offering a service where you can fully use, it's probably with 11 Labs done. You can just pick and choose whoever you want to read your audio book. You don't need to do it yourself. You don't need to render a voice, uh, actor anymore.

Uh, so whoever was calling themselves a voice actor. Two out of 10 will still have a job. You're gonna be hired by Universal Media and by uh, and by the BBC, uh, the other eight will not be hired anymore because 11 Labs can do it. Right? 

Mehmet: Absolutely. Absolutely. So the classic 

Jan: 80 20 rule, I think 20% will become very good in what they do, and the other 80% will need to reinvent themselves.

Mehmet: Absolutely. And you know. [00:39:00] While people see this sometimes, uh, negative. Right. And, you know, in a sense they, oh, afraid of it and so on. Mm-hmm. I see it very positive because, you know, this is, and I wa I was hearing something I think if not today, yesterday I was listening, you know, on my way in the morning for the drop off, um, on the radio, someone saying like.

I think in, in accountant or something like this. So more of, more of these folks, uh, they want to be in the entrepreneurship game. Mm-hmm. And I think, you know, AI is facilitating this. I don't think we're gonna see job loss in the sense of people losing their source of income. It's like maybe people will be more.

Uh, ready to go and start their own business, and of course mm-hmm. It's not run a hundred percent by ai because always you're gonna need people like Jan who comes and. Coach you on, on the performance, on the sales, you know, and you know, the [00:40:00] go-to market and content. You're gonna need someone who's good in training, engineering, for example, and how to manage engineers and so on and so forth.

So we, we will end up by having more entrepreneurs. And this is to your point, Ian, I'm not worried about AI taking any job. Mm-hmm. Yeah, of course. But we have something to do is to elevate our game and try to Yeah. To, to, to, to learn it. And it's a fact, like it's here, we, it's, it's the, um, I remember this term, I used it a lot with my guests.

Like, the gen is out of the bottle, we cannot get it back. Mm-hmm. So, so no, no way we can go back. Um. This is really fascinating discussion with Yuan today. So before we we come to an end, any final words of advice you want to give fellow founders and of course, my classic questions where people can find more about you and learn about what you do more.

Jan: Perfect. Well, let's get that out of the way first. Uh, you could either find me on yon [00:41:00] stripper.com and from there on you can find links to my companies, uh, or on LinkedIn. Um, so that, that would be, um. Straightforward ideas in spades.com is online as well if, if that's your go-to. Um, so yeah, no, I, I think the last two things that you touched upon are quite crucial.

Uh, the, the way that people work will change drastically and not as much that we don't need people anymore, uh, to be involved in the work. But, uh, if, um. I, I saw a really interesting, uh, discussion. I think it was, um, uh, what's his name? Uh, Batman, uh, the, the, the most recent Batman actor. Um, so he explained the threat of AI to the movie industry, um, and he was very honest.

He said, well, maybe it shouldn't take thousands people to render a movie. So if you are in technically movement making, it's horrible, your job is going to change, [00:42:00] but maybe it's good. Maybe we can use technology for these things. Um, so it's not necessarily always a bad thing. Maybe some things are obvious to do.

And you mentioned the accountant before. There has been some really big scandals that have caused KPMG and ey. Parts of their reputation, their stock prices dropped all of it because five guys on a golf course, you know, said, you know, we'll do it like this and AI won't do it like that. It'll control and it'll be checked and all of that within 15 seconds approximately.

So there's a lot of oxide, but, uh, uh, like you mentioned, we, we do need to realize that whatever work we're. Um, not all of us will have the luxury of staying in the same position. 

Mehmet: Absolutely. And, um, this is also something to to, to the audience to get inspired by it, I would say. Right. So don't get afraid of the, uh, [00:43:00] embrace it.

I would say. Um, Jan, really, I appreciate, you know, the discussion today and all the insights and all the information you shared with the audience today. For the audience, you don't need to go and search. I'm gonna make the life easier. I'm gonna put all the links that Ian mentioned so you can find his LinkedIn profile, you know, his website and the company.

Um, also in the show notes, if you're listening on your favorite podcasting app, if you're watching this on YouTube, you'll find in this description session section, sorry. And, uh, this is usually how I end my episodes. This is for the audience. If you just discovered us by luck. Thank you for passing by. I hope you enjoyed if you did, so I need a small favor from you.

Please subscribe and share it with your friends and colleagues. We're trying to, you know, share knowledge with as many people as we can. And if you are, if you are one of the people who keep coming again and again, you are one of the fans. Thank you very, very much for your support. Thank you for everything you do for this show.

[00:44:00] To stay alive and I'm motivated by what you do. The reason I'm saying this, because I'm repeating at the end of each episode, maybe since the past two or three months, as this year is phenomenal for the podcast because of you, we are able to be ranking in the top 200 charts in multiple countries in Apple Podcast, in the entrepreneurship and business, uh, category.

This is not because of me, it's because of you. And of course, thanks also to all my guests, including you, Jan, because without this I couldn't do this. And also the podcast is being selected as one of the top a hundred global tech startup podcast by a hundred million. Um, podcasts.com. And also. I've been chosen very luckily as top 40 most listened podcasts in Dubai in the business category.

Again, this cannot happen. It's not me. It's you, the audience. Thank you very much. Keep your question suggestion coming and I like also to read [00:45:00] your feedback. Thank you very much for tuning again, and as you say, always we'll be again in a new episode very soon. Thank you. Bye-bye.