Ryan Hanley

And I was a CMO and I got to sit in a lot of rooms that maybe technically on paper shouldn't have been sitting in those rooms, but I got to listen in and be part of these conversations.

And what the CEO at that time, he was kind of a slippery son of a gun, but he was very good at what he did.

And he would start...

certain meetings like here's what this looks like if it doesn't work right like here's how if this doesn't work we do what we're about to do we came to sit at this table to talk about here's what it looks like if everything falls apart if after six months we hate each other yeah here's how we get out of this and you literally start by talking about the end and at first I was like

you know, it just didn't make any sense to me.

I just didn't have enough life experience at that time or business experience to understand what he was doing.

But then he explained to me what you're talking about.

He's like, I don't, if they hate what this looks like, what this could potentially look like in six months, I want to know now.

He goes, he goes, also it's a backdoor sales tactic.

Cause it shows that it kind of shows that you don't need them or that you're willing to talk about the end.

And it's almost like an assumed sale.

Like we're going to do business together, but if it goes bad, here's how we get out.

Right.

And that's where I kind of came up with this, I called it, I go, you're eight-miling them, right?

Where Eminem at the end is like, here's all the bad things about me, now tell them something they don't know, you know?

That's kind of where I got that from.

But it's a wonderful, I mean, one, I think it does create healthy relationships, absolutely, and it sets that filter up front.

It also is a sneaky, really good way to create that assumed sale or urgency mindset of like, oh my gosh, these guys like they're sophisticated enough to think about the end first.

Like, okay.

And that, you know, it was a whole different kind of conversation.