SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
EP 118: 12 Kids, Took Salesforce to $100m ARR, 50,000 Books Sold
19 Nov 2015
Chapter 1: What is the main focus of The Top podcast?
This is The Top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base. You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have. I'm now at $20,000 per top. Five and six million. He is hell-bent on global domination. We just broke our 100,000-unit soul mark.
And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. Okay, top tribe. Every Monday, I give one of you 100 bucks to invest in your idea and get to the top. To enter, subscribe to the podcast right now on iTunes and then text the word Nathan to 33444 to prove it. This week's winner was Jesse from up in Chicago.
Coming up tomorrow morning, we speak with James Swanwick, who went from fat to 14k per month with his 30 day challenge. Okay, Top Tribe, good morning, good morning. I'm tucked down here in the Appalachian Mountains in Southwest Virginia, as you know, with my tea, and I'm really excited for you to meet our guest today. His name is Aaron Ross.
He's the number one best-selling author of Predictable Revenue. Turn your business into a sales machine with the $100 million. bestpracticesofsalesforce.com. The book is called The Sales Bible of Silicon Valley. Now, Aaron is also married with seven going on 12. Count that, 12 children.
His next book with Jason Lemkin is called From Impossible to Inevitable, How Hyper-Growth Companies Create Predictable Revenue. Okay, Aaron, are you ready to take us to the top? I think so. Well, listen, your story is so long, and we have 15 minutes, so I want to really focus it. Guys, Top Tribe, here's where you want to listen to the full episode.
Aaron took Salesforce and prospected it all the way up to basically $100 million in revenue back in early 2002 to about 2006. And before that, he ran a company that he actually raised capital on. He was, I think, 26 years old, Aaron. You shut it down after raising $5 million.
I want to start there because a lot of the top tribe listening in are these companies that have raised venture capital, and they realize they're never going to grow into the valuation that they raised at. So walk me through the liquidation process of the first business.
Well, first, I'm going to say, I think when you're young and you haven't done it, or maybe a new entrepreneur, raising money sounds really cool. And then you do it, and you're like, fuck. This sucks. This can't. But I think raising money can be fantastic for the right companies at the right time for the right reason.
But a lot of people raise it for the wrong reasons, just because it's cool, because they think that's what will make their company successful. Anyway, lots of wrong reasons. But in terms of shutting the company down, it was very painful. It was like losing. Later, I got divorced. So that's the only thing I can compare it to is one of the most painful experiences in my life.
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Chapter 2: How did Aaron Ross contribute to Salesforce's growth?
It went from being CEO of an internet company to the most junior spot at a new company. But the first day was exciting. The first week or two weeks or three weeks or a month was exciting because it's all new, new people. After about five, six weeks or two months, it started to drag because I was answering the 100 line, responding to inbound leads, It didn't take me very long to figure it out.
Aaron, I'm going to ask you what your salary was, but let me tell you why. I think there's so much value to giving up and just pushing through things you think are really shitty for the value of learning. I think if you share what your salary was when you went in there and you checked your ego, it's going to encourage listeners to also take the same learning-based approach.
What was your salary there when you first started?
You know, it's probably, my total compensation was, I think, around $45,000. Okay. So Sally would have been maybe $35,000.
And that was back again, give me the year, 2002? 2002.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Aaron face while shutting down his first business?
Okay, 2002. And I got almost no equity.
No equity. It was tiny. Okay. It was very little.
Yeah. So what's the next step? Walk us through how you then go from where you started to director of sales and building, basically adding $100 million, I assume in annual recurring revenue?
Yeah. So... Actually, the point you said about people sort of sticking out through tough situations. I mean, I do feel like a lot of people end up as whiners when they don't get what they want when they want it. You know, my job isn't... I don't like my job. My manager doesn't support me. My company's not interesting. Well... God, you know, your company's not your mommy or your daddy.
Like it's half the responsibility is you to figure out how to make things interesting for yourself.
Aaron, I feel like you're talking to us millennials. I can just feel it hitting me right upside the top of the head.
Yeah, read chapter seven of the new book, so.
Well, I wanna get, and I wanna, we'll get into that in a bit too. I wanna ask some questions about that. But how'd you get to the director of sales and how'd you grow the business at Salesforce?
So along the same lines, all right, so I'm in this really low sales job. I just wanted to learn, you know, because learning is more important
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Chapter 4: What strategies did Aaron implement to improve sales at Salesforce?
Top Tribe, there's a lot of great books like the ones just mentioned. One of my favorites is How to Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. As I'm driving in the car, I use Audible to listen to the book. It's great. I can just listen in and I've teamed up with Audible. So I appreciate them for supporting the show. And I've guaranteed a 30-day free trial for you guys. Totally free.
Go ahead and get it now by going to audible.com forward slash Nathan. Again, that's audible.com forward slash Nathan for your free 30-day trial. Number two, is there a CEO that you're following or studying right now? No. Okay. Not really. Number three, favorite online tool?
I do love Evernote. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I think that's just called Evernote. Although it irritates me too sometimes, but it doesn't.
Yeah, who knows. Okay, so here's the one that you had the issue with. I'm curious. Seven kids, adopting five more, you'll be 12. How many hours of sleep are you getting per night?
Actually, I probably get like six to seven most nights. That's not so bad. Yeah, it's not that bad. My wife doesn't get that much because she's still breastfeeding at night. I don't know what she gets, but it's not enough.
There you go. Okay, last one here, number five. Take us back, you said you're 43 now? Yeah. Take us back 23 years. What do you wish your 20-year-old self knew?
You know, so let's talk about this. I think I wrote parts of the new book for that person, but it's just think bigger and sort of just go for it. Don't beat around the bush. What do you want from life? And just instead of planning for it or talking about it or dreaming about it, just try to just do it. Just do it. Nike said it best. Just fucking do it.
There you go. Well, guys, there you have Aaron Ross from liquidating his lease exchange business back in 2001 to starting off at the bottom at Salesforce, adding $100 million in annual contract value. Now he's a bestseller launching his new book. You want to check it out. Aaron, thank you so much for taking us to the top.
Thanks, Nathan.
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