Sam Jacobs - Founder & CEO of Pavilion: Taking Control of Your Life, Managing Hypergrowth, and Mindset

Sam Jacobs  00:00

If all you're doing is not being present, if all you're doing is filled with anxiety, and your stomach is churning, and you can't think straight, and you're frantic and nervous, I don't think you're going to make good decisions. And I don't think good outcomes are going to come to you. I think if you want to sell your business for a billion dollars, it's probably going to be because a lot of things are going well, not because you're you're just white knuckling it, you're hoping to cash out as quickly as possible.

Callan Harrington  00:26

You're listening to That Worked, a show that breaks down the careers of top founders and executives and pulls out those key items that led to their success. I'm your host, Callan Harrington, founder of Flashgrowth, and I couldn't be more excited that you're here. Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of That Worked. This week I'm joined by Sam Jacobs. Sam is the founder and CEO of Pavilion. Pavilion is the essential community powered learning platform for CEOs, go-to-market leaders, and their teams. Today, over 10,000 people are paid subscribers to the Pavilion community. Prior to Pavilion, Sam spent fifteen years as a senior revenue leader at VC backed companies in the New York area. He is also one of my most recommended followers on LinkedIn, where he has over 80,000 followers as of this recording. This was a really fun conversation. Sam is an open book, and we covered some great topics. Right out of the gate, Sam shared the story of how he took control of his career when he started Pavilion. I thought it was both an excellent story, and one that I think a lot of people will benefit from hearing. We talked about the hypergrowth they've experienced at Pavilion and how he's adapted his leadership style to serve the business in its current state. And they have really experienced tremendous growth, and I love the insights that he shared on this. Now the part of the conversation that I loved the most was talking about mindset. I personally believe it's so easy to put things like your health on the backburner when things get really busy. As a founder, you just so often just feel that you need to do it all. Sam broke all this down. And he gave really good advice on what you need to do to change your mindset and what he does to keep a healthy mindset. And I thought it was excellent. So with that, let's get to the show. Sam, welcome to the show.

Sam Jacobs  02:41

Thanks for having me, Callan. Great to be here.

Callan Harrington  02:43

I've been looking forward to this one. So one of the areas that I'd love to kick it off with is if you could tell me about a time that was really kind of the inspiration to kick off just Pavilion just in general.

Sam Jacobs  02:56

I'll tell you, this is also the part of my book. I wrote a book called Kind Folks Finish First, and this is sort of where it begins. And it begins Friday the 13th, of all days, October 2017. So just about six years ago. Six years less two months, five years and ten months ago. The scene is just driving down the New Jersey Turnpike. So I've been in New York since 2003. I was driving down the New Jersey Turnpike with my wife and my dog Walter, and I was using- this was before Apple AirPlay was included in most cars, so you still had to use your phone as the GPS. And so I was using Waze. I had one of those things where you attach it to the air conditioner, and it's holding it up, and I'm using that to figure out, you know, traffic, because we're heading down to DC. And I got an email from my CEO at the time. And she said- it was because, you know, my backstory is that I've been fired a lot. And I have been working in high growth companies for a very long time. And they're very volatile. I sort of have come to know, these types of emails. That email said, "hey, didn't"- very terse, right? "Hey, didn't realize you weren't in the office today. If we can catch up first thing Monday morning, that would be great." And I knew kind of right away what it meant was probably that I was going to be fired. And this would have been, I was parted ways, this will be three out of the last four jobs, that ended up being four out of the last five, because of the next job. But I kind of knew what it meant, particularly because, you know, this particular CEO, frankly, like me today, we're not particularly early risers. And so when she says "first thing in the morning," I know that she's not trying to discuss pipeline, but that something else was going on. And sure enough, you know, we went to a wedding that weekend. And then we got back into the New York area, I went in first thing Monday morning, I was there all of you know, forty-five minutes, got my stuff, came back. I told my wife, I will probably see you before lunchtime. Indeed, I did see her before lunchtime. But, you know, the reason I'm sharing this story now is not just to say woe is me, but because I, really in that moment, I resolved. I resolved to use it as an opportunity to build something and to take more control and greater have control of my life. And particularly now, which is, you know, a period of time when I think we're about three quarters of the way through, effectively, like an economic downturn, slash tech recession, we're almost done, but not quite. And the last quarter tends to be the most painful, because everybody assumes it's almost over, and it's not quite over. So particularly now, I think it's a resonant message to share with people, which is that it's never too late or too early, to try and take control of your destiny and of your life. And so what did I do in that moment? And I write about it in the book, I decided to start a few of my own businesses. I started a consulting business at that moment. I decided I was going to start charging for Pavilion. It had been free up to that point, and I said, January 1st, 2018, we're going to start charging dues. And I'd sold my first sponsorship, at that time. It was to SalesLoft for a $10,000 sponsorship of Pavilion to my friend, Kevin O'Malley, who was the VP of marketing, at SalesLoft at the time. And so all of those things kind of happened. And really, the point is that that was a moment when I sort of chose to move from victimhood, and from sort of a self identifying as somebody on whom things happen and to whom things happen, and moving from that perspective of more of a back foot perspective, to a front foot perspective, where I decided to take control, and I decided to try and teach other people how to take control. And that was really where Pavilion came from, now six years ago. And it's been- a lot can happen in six years, we've been through a lot of ups, and a lot of downs, and a lot of great stories and challenges.

Callan Harrington  02:56

It has such a big impact on your mindset. And for me, I was a revenue VP of sales four times. And I eventually had to take the mindset of, I'm a mercenary. I'm coming in here to be a complete mercenary, do my job, that way if I got laid off, if I was fired, whatever that may be, it gave me some semblance of control. It wasn't really the way that I wanted to be. I didn't actually switch to being more of kind of a missionary mindset until I started my own business. But it was for those similar reasons in that we know the tenure is going to be sure. One of the things I'm curious about is, as I understand it Pavilion started out as just kind of a dinner group. Is that correct?

Sam Jacobs  06:36

Yeah, that is correct.

Callan Harrington  06:38

What are those look like?

Sam Jacobs  06:40

You know, they look very similar to the dinners we host today. So the very, very first- so there, you know, I decided, I was hosting a thing, I was in New York City, I was hosting a thing called the Brooklyn Sales Meetup. I was working at Livestream, and Livestream had an office in Bushwick. And so there was an enterprise sales meetup that that my friend Mark Burch used to run. And I decided to start the Brooklyn Sales Meetup. And so we started, and funny enough, two of the people that were regular attendees at our meetups were Nicholas and Alina Vandenberghe, who went on to, and they were formulating the ideas for Chili Piper at the time. And from there, I decided, you know, I really want to keep going and build a more regular community. And I had a bunch of friends, Dave Greenberger, and Rob Lopez, and Adam Liebman, and Brian Kaplan, and Marc Jacobs, all of whom in the New York kind of sales ecosystem. So first, we met at Mighty Quinn's Barbeque, right around the corner from my old apartment on the West Village. Then we met at Rosie's, not Rosa Mexicana, but Rosie's, which is on the east side. And then pretty soon it became a regular thing. We created a Google listserv, we said, hey, you can email this group discussion thread to ask questions to get difficult answers to common challenges. And within the context of the dinner, we had a very specific format. It was one conversation, no crosstalk. We really tried to set rules and establish guidelines for how we were going to run these dinners. And the reason that we did that was because we didn't want them to feel like every other dinner. We really wanted them to feel productive. Again, no idea that this was going to be a company or a business. No idea about a P&L. This was just, I wanted to help bring people together because it was enjoyable and fun. And because it gave me an opportunity to meet new and new people and develop meaningful new relationships. And from there, that's what was happening when I got fired from the news. And I said, okay, well, maybe this can be a business. And so I sent an email to everybody. I said, hey, everybody, we're going to start charging dues, let me know if you're not in. It was fifty bucks a month, you know, everybody, but two people decided they were they were going to participate, and then you know, I don't know that the rest was history. But the playbook and the North Star has never been about the medium. It's not been about Slack or email or dinners. It's about the mission. And the mission is to empower people to lead more fulfilling lives, to give people the information, the insights, the clues they need to be better stewards of their own destiny. And that's really what the purpose of Pavilion is.

Callan Harrington  09:43

Were these based off of like a Jeffersonian dinner, these original ones?

Sam Jacobs  09:46

I had never been to a Jefferson- I went to my first quote unquote Jeffersonian dinner, you know, probably three months ago or four months ago, but it's the same idea. You know, it's also the same idea as a mastermind. It's basically, hey, structured conversation is better than unstructured conversation, right? Like, let's all- and then the main part of it again, for those of us that have been at unstructured dinner parties, is that moment when you realize you happen to sit next to somebody you don't really enjoy that much. And you're going to be stuck talking to them for the rest of the evening, until you leave. And so the idea, and I still think this to this day, is let's all have one conversation, one conversation is a lot more fun, everybody can be involved, and instead of just leaving things up completely to chance.

Callan Harrington  10:31

One of the things that I'm super curious about is, and I was a member back when it was Revenue Collective, and one of the things that I was always super impressed with is the level of engagement that people- you know, I can't tell you how many other communities I've joined, and just really didn't- you'd have a couple of people that answered a lot of the questions, and then that was kind of it. And you'd go, you'd post something, if you didn't get the answer you needed, you turn the membership. But with Revenue Collective, and now Pavilion, I didn't have that experience. And one of the things that I noticed in the early days is you were pretty involved. I remember a handful of the questions, if you didn't answer it directly, you looped somebody in. Was that- I'm assuming that was intentional. How do you maintain that still, as you've grown to thousands of members?

Sam Jacobs  11:19

I'm still pretty involved. And I still try to chime in with answers, and tag people, and I try to ask my own questions and participate. I'm a user of Pavilion as much as I am a manager of Pavilion. Now I use it more in the CEO community, because that's what I am. And so I'm dealing with challenges every day, just like my friends. And I'm trying to stimulate discussion and get interesting answers. I just had a great conversation about kind of aligning the HR slash people department with the overall business objective of the company. And I used the CEO Pavilion to get a discussion going about that topic, because it was really interesting to me. So I think first of all, you just have to try and lead from the front, you have to try and you know, in the back of my mind, I always wonder, am I not- am I not like a big company CEO? Because I am so- because my instinct is to get personally involved. My instinct is, hey, if we need to sign up more members in a week, I'll go and try and sign up more members. If there needs to be more conversation happening, I'll go and try and stimulate the conversation. That's just sort of my nature. And again, I think it probably relates to my relationship as a founder of this community, as somebody that takes a lot of personal care and interest in making sure that it works. And at the same time, I think the other part of it is, and frankly, with our new onboarding, and with some of the changes that we've made as we've grown, I do worry that we lose a little bit of that special human touch. But at the beginning, the onboarding was really about, hey, we expect you to be active, we expect you to be- to participate. Yeah, you're paying. And that's great. But it doesn't really do any good unless you're actually engaging. And so that's something that we always have to try and maintain. And candidly, I think we're still one of the most active communities and the most engaged, but it's far less than it was, that's for sure. You know, it used to be that 40, 45, 50% of the entire community was active in a given week, active and creating, answering questions, posting questions, and now it's closer to 15%. But we're also 10,000 people now. And you know, and we're in a different stage of our evolution, the most challenging one, I would say. Bbecause we've moved from a pet project, and from a niche community, and from, you know, people's secret weapon, to a more broadly recognized and acknowledged platform. And at that point, you really have to be more intentional about what you're going to build, who you're going to be, and what you're not going to be, and what you're not going to do, and what things that people might have been used to in the past that you're no longer going to support, because you want to build it in such a way that it can serve 100,000 people, not just 10,000.

Callan Harrington  13:54

How does that change to be able to do that? Is it doing more of what got you here? Or how do you have to change in order to support that?

Sam Jacobs  14:03

Well, I have to change personally, because I have to be less impulsive and more intentional. I used to make changes spur the moment, because it was basically just me. It was me and Anne Juceam, now my VP of people, that were doing everything. And now there's 10,000 people, and there's forty Pavilion HQ members, and you can't just change something when you feel like doing it. So part of it is just being more deliberate. And in fact, you know, we're looking at our values. And one of the values I was proudest of for a very long time was this value that I'd coined called "listen closely, act quickly," which means listen to the members, and then build what they asked you to build. We're probably going to get rid of that as a value of the company. Why? Because we've made too many impulsive decisions that were relying on act quickly. And when you get to a certain size, you still want to be quick, but you want to be much more deliberate, and you're going to act much more intentionally than maybe you had in the past. So that's one of the ways that it changes, is that I have to slow down to speed up. I think the other thing that you have to do is because when you're word of mouth to people that you're one degree of separation from, you don't really have to define the value proposition as clearly. And you don't, you know, you don't need product marketing as much, you don't need to say here is exactly what you will get out of it, and here's what you can expect. We've also raised prices over the last six years. And so the price point, some would argue is probably too high right now, given that we're in a tech downturn, but the point is, it's expensive. And so when it's expensive, and you're not just relying on word of mouth, you have to be much more defined. And this is exactly what you will get. And so that's led us to, you know, the most interesting product development over the last couple of years has really been Pavilion University, and building out a learning platform that structures- because nobody really knows what community is, but everybody knows what it means to take a class and get a certificate, which is, by the way, a path that many elearning and edtech businesses have discovered, which is you come for the tools, you come for the class, you come to take care of school, and hopefully you stay for the community and the relationships that you've built. And, you know, you hopefully also stay- and this is something again, that, were I to do this again, I would be much more intentional about: you stay for the status, you stay for the recognition that you are one of the older members, that you are recognized and celebrated for your contribution and for you know, for how long you've been a member. So long story long is, from less defined to more defined, from more impromptu and ad hoc to structured, deliberate, and intentional.

Callan Harrington  16:34

On that last part, in particular, how do you do that? How are you- almost from like, is that kind of a gamification perspective? Is that public awareness?

Sam Jacobs  16:41

It's gamification, and it's saying, hey, these are the people that have been members for five years, these are people that have been members for four years, you know, these are the people that were the top participants in CRO school, these are the people that got the best grades, you know, and just really trying to bring more people to the front and to the awareness of the community so that they can be celebrated. You know, there's playbooks for this stuff. We're not the first community. There's this great book Belonging to the Brand by Mark Schaefer. There's this book The Forever Transaction by a woman named Robbie, I forget her last name. But the point is, status recognition has been a key part of how people think about maintaining engagement in communities over time.

Callan Harrington  17:21

Why is that? Just human nature in general? I mean, have you seen that correlate with, like, for example, if you've got someone that's a sleeper, but they've been a member for a long time, and they get publicly recognized, do you see a rise in engagement out of that member?

Sam Jacobs  17:38

100%. And I think it is human nature. I think these are very deep psychological motivations. People crave status. I just read this great book called The Status Game, all about how, you know, status relative to our peer set, so not even like status in an absolute sense, which is why it's always very interesting, right? I'm a runner. I was always competitive, before he became much faster than me, with a very close friend of mine. You know, if he beat me in a race, even though both of us, neither of us were competing in the Olympics, it doesn't matter that there's millions of people that were faster than us. It just matters that the person next to you is not faster than you. And I think people crave status and recognition, but especially within these peer groups. So communities like Pavilion can create a lot of longevity and a lot of engagement by celebrating and recognizing the people that are contributing and participating.

Callan Harrington  18:28

When you look at the phases of Pavilion, so you had the, I'll say the dinner party phase, and I know that's still a piece of it, you started charging. Was everybody on board with that? Did you have some attrition? What did that look like?

Sam Jacobs  18:44

Yeah, people were pretty on board with it. As I mentioned, there was about twenty-two people originally on Jan. 1, 2018. And twenty of them paid, and two of them didn't. So that was pretty high conversion, and none of those- and then the other two that didn't eventually did end up paying. All of those people are still members, right? And there's a price point below which you have members for life, you've just got to figure out what is the cost of service? Turns out, for us it's like sixty, seventy, eighty bucks per member per month. So we're probably losing money on those fifty bucks per month people. But there's probably a price point at around 125, 150 bucks a month where people would just never cancel, or cancel at a very- at a far different rate. Right now we're 275 a month. And we see much higher churn because of that high price point. In terms of the phases, you know, there's that first phase, that kind of forming phase. Then there was the COVID phase, when we grew and we became really a powerful virtual community. And then there was the phase that we're digging our way out of right now, which is kind of, I don't know that it's lost in the wilderness, but it's world conquering ambition phase. And that's really from when we raised money in 2021 through probably last December, right. So and what is that phase? That's the phase where I said, okay, we're going to change the name to Pavilion. We're going to start communities for HR people, and legal professionals, and engineers. We're going to create the non executive communities for associates and analysts. We're going to be everything to all people. And we're going to invest against that idea. That was a product of the times, right, a product of this massive tech boom, a product of people writing massive checks, you know, companies like big companies raising $100 million on no product and little revenue, and then cutting us a $250,000 sponsorship check, just to maintain some level of market share. And that was a period of excess and a period of diffusion, a lack of focus. And we made a bunch of massive mistakes over the course of that period, again, from really like early 2021, through the end of 2022. So basically, like a year and a half, we saw growth, but we made a bunch of mistakes, just as you know, the economy is contracting, and we're laden with the with the legacy, the debt of those mistakes. And this is a period of, we call it the chrysalis, you know, in the company, because we are reforming as a more focused tighter, better operational business. I think we'll be out of the chrysalis, but I think it's going to be April of 2024. So that period will be about a year and a half. And then what I would expect from April 2024 on is just steady, consistent focus. The biggest mistake I've made as a CEO over the last couple of years, is my impulsiveness and my boredom, leading me to want to do too many different things. If I could go back and change anything, it would have been to just stay the course forever and ever and ever, and be bored. And be really, really bored with just being exactly the same thing for a very long period of time.

Callan Harrington  21:42

One of the things that I'm super curious about is if you stayed focused, and I've heard you've talked about this in some other interviews, but if you stayed focus on the executive side, executive revenue leaders, would you have still raised capital?

Sam Jacobs  21:58

Sure I would have raised capital, the deal was too good to pass up. I just wish I hadn't gotten distracted by the capital.

Callan Harrington  22:04

So if what I'm hearing you say is you raised capital, and if we have all this money, we might as well go after these other pieces, because we can do it. Is that right? Am I hearing you correctly?

Sam Jacobs  22:14

Yeah, it was. And everybody, everybody had these- I mean, we weren't the only ones. You know, we had, everybody had these world conquering ambitions. And what I wish I had done is just done a simple TAM analysis and said, how many revenue executives are there? How many do we have? Great, let's just go get more.

Callan Harrington  22:34

As you make this change back to this hyperfocus, from, you know, you had a broad approach, now you're taking a much more narrow approach. How do you do that? And has there been some growing pains as you've done that? Or I should say, some change management pains? Or what does that look like?

Sam Jacobs  22:50

There's been lots of change management, you know, a lot of pain, because the brand of Pavilion slash Revenue Collective was really about being the cool club, you know, and we've done a lot of great things. By the way, you know, we were partnered up with Insight Partners, and Winning by Design, and GTM Partners, and Arbinger Institute. And so we've been able to establish like really strong partnerships and relationships and establish ourselves as really the premier brand, you know, in our ecosystem. But it's hard work. It's hard work, because there's revenue attached to some of these other business lines, just enough to make it to make it difficult to turn away from. There's brand implications. There's product design implications. And that's why it takes a long time. You know, that's why it's we're trying to be deliberate about it. We're trying not to do what we did last year, which was sort of be a little bit too reactive.

Callan Harrington  23:41

I hear you talk a lot about the mistakes that you made. And I totally appreciate that. But you guys have had significant growth. I mean, if correct me if I'm wrong, what from four to sixteen million or something like that. Is that correct?

Sam Jacobs  23:52

Yeah, exactly.

Callan Harrington  23:54

How do you manage that significant of growth? How does that change the business just as a whole? And how do you- you talk a lot about capital efficiency, just as a whole. How do you do it in a capital efficient manner?

Sam Jacobs  24:07

Well, you have to be willing to sacrifice growth. That's the- there's a tension, there's no free lunch, you can't grow- it's very hard to grow at 200% and be completely capital efficient, by definition. So how do you manage it? This is me managing it, right? This is like I'm trying to learn. I'm trying to learn about mindset. I'm trying to learn about focus. I'm trying to learn about capital efficiency. I'm trying to learn about cash flow forecasting, and really having a tight handle on expenses, and then getting much better at predicting and understanding revenue growth and revenue generation. So you handle it, hopefully, by learning, by being open minded, by being flexible, and by being patient. And by not needing everything to happen overnight. And you also handle it, frankly, by having the right mindset, because sometimes you're gonna get data points that are that are not the ones that you want, you know, you're going to open up your dashboards and they're not going to be pointing in the right direction. And when that happens, you have to- you can freak out for a little bit, but at some point, you got to come back to being clear, calm headed, optimistic, and resolved. And so those are the lessons that I've learned. You know, that's- the challenge is as a community grows, it becomes, if it was an exclusive community before, it becomes less exclusive. And then you have to scale without predicating it on exclusivity, but predicated on the value that you deliver. Nobody worries that, you know, McDonald's isn't exclusive. People worry that they're going to get food that they understand how it tastes, not that we're McDonald's, or any any large brand. At some point you move from nobody knows about it to I don't care if everybody knows about it, they deliver high quality experiences that I value. That's kind of where we're at.

Callan Harrington  25:44

You've hit on mindset a few times. Is mindset, more long term vision, working on the essential items, focus? Or is it also on the side of what do I need to do: exercise, sleep, eat well? Is it the whole picture? Or what does that look like to you when you think of mindset?

Sam Jacobs  26:01

When I think of mindset, it starts with, is it a storm inside your head? Or is it a calm, beautiful, sunny day? That's kind of where it starts and ends.

Callan Harrington  26:12

Always a storm! (laughs) I'm just kidding.

Sam Jacobs  26:16

Well, but that's the point. The point is that you can't white knuckle it for the entire- you can't need to sell the company because you're working fifteen hours a day, you're sleepless, you're exhausted, you're not paying attention to people that care about you. You're not exercising, you're not eating right, you're not having fun, you're not laughing, right. To he who hath much or she who hath much, more shall be given, right? Abundance is created from acceptance, from gratitude, from optimism, and your ability to solve problems and to navigate your life in your day. If you are not present, if you are not there on your skin. There is no- you know, Eckhart Tolle will tell us, right, there's no moment other than right now. No moment other than right now has ever or will ever exist. And if all you're doing is not being present, if all you're doing is filled with anxiety, and your stomach is churning, and you're- you can't think straight, and you're you're frantic and nervous, I don't think you're going to make good decisions. And I don't think good outcomes are going to come to you. I think if you want to sell your business for a billion dollars, it's probably going to be because a lot of things are going well, not because you're just white knuckling it, you're hoping you're hoping to cash out as quickly as possible. And so for me, and that's very, very hard because so much of our identities, as founders, and CEOs, and operators is wrapped up in the performance of the company. And there's going to be down years and down quarters. And I even, you know, I looked at a presentation that my friend, Jocko, gave me from a bunch of investment bankers showing how all these different companies not just had down quarters, but had down years, where their revenue contracted, some of them for two years in a row before ultimately, they started growing again and achieved an exit. So my point is that these are long journeys. And you have to be enjoying the present moment, more than looking constantly ahead to a different moment that is not now, in hopes that it would come and absolve you of your pain and absolve you of your uncertainty and anxiety. And that's where mindset for me comes from. That's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the ability to be calm, content, present; to practice rituals that help you stay grounded, and stay happy and optimistic, and not freak out, you know. And handle the storm as it comes, and understand, almost in a stoic way, this challenge is something for me to learn from. This is an opportunity for me to learn.

Callan Harrington  28:38

What are some of the things you do? For me: journal, meditate, make sure I exercise, and get good good sleep, is pretty much what I do. If I don't, if I'm not consistent on that, the storm will take over, no question. Do you have anything that you're like, if I don't do this, like if I don't consistently do this, if you miss a day, you're going to have things that happen of course, but what does that look like for you?

Sam Jacobs  28:59

Same thing as you: journal, meditate, exercise. The most important thing is exercise. I exercise so that I- you know today, I've been going since eight in the morning, woke up at seven, haven't had an opportunity to have breakfast, haven't- I've eaten pretzels. That's mainly what I've had. So, not awesome, but I did manage to get a run in. I did manage to give my dogs a hug. It's a beautiful day here in New York where I'm based. But for me, the number one thing is exercise. Everything else falls from that. The other thing that me and my friends just started is a gratitude group, it's basically a group of, every morning we wake up and we text each other, what are you grateful for, because we're all founders, and we're all freaked out. And at any given time any one of us is going through something pretty tough. And again, it's a practice, and it really is practice for daily happiness, daily gratitude.

Callan Harrington  29:53

I love that idea of the group. I do write a couple down, gratitudes on a on a journal, every morning. The stream of conscious journaling is really the one that clears out my head. But doing it as a group with peers, I think is such a good idea. Because it's really hard. But other people that are going through it, it's one of the things, it's probably the most consistent thing with founders on this, is getting a support system as fast as you can. And I knew, for me, I just remember the first time that I felt kind of that, what I'll say the loneliness of it was a small issue. And it just, it just stressed me out ten times more than it ever should. Called a friend that's also a founder, cleared it up within two seconds, but I didn't know. I had no idea. So I think that's such a good idea.

Sam Jacobs  30:39

I mean, that's why that's why Pavilion exists, you know, and there's other groups, but I think human connection, you know, a sense of the idea that you're not alone, that it's okay. And and also people to help. I mean, to the point of you know, your comment, hey, you talk a lot about your failures, and yet you've grown 4x since you've raised money, you know, why aren't you feeling better. And it's, you need friends, you need people to remind you, hey, dude, this could end tomorrow, and you will have served thousands of people. You have ten thousand members. It's way- my original goals were I just want to build a company that can provide health insurance to its employees. Literally, that was my only goal. Because I've seen people without health insurance really, really suffer. So this is all way beyond the original idea, but now I'm here, you know. How many more people can be helped by the right message, by the right group of connections and peers? How many more people can feel like there's a different way to exist in the world that isn't so cutthroat, that still provides meaningful and fulfilling success? Way more than ten thousand. You know, there's a billion people on the planet. So can we get to a hundred thousand, a million? We still wouldn't touch the vast majority of people. That's the goal.

Callan Harrington  31:51

You've got 10,000 people, that number is going to continue to grow. It's an excellent group. The universities have been rock solid. I told you when we spoke before that I did the CRO school and it was excellent. So university's cooking. What's kind of that next piece? What is that next piece that you're bringing to this where you've leveled the game a few times? You've, as you've mentioned, you've made some setbacks along the way. What is that next thing that's going to separate, continue to separate Pavilion from their peers?

Sam Jacobs  32:20

I think there's three things. The first is local community. We made a mistake, another mistake that where we got rid of local communities last year. Huge mistake. We're bringing them back, and we're gonna make them better than ever. Callan, were are you based, by the way?

Callan Harrington  32:35

Columbus?

Sam Jacobs  32:36

Oh, all right. Well, we don't have a chapter in Columbus, but we need one. You have a terrible university in Columbus, full of a bunch of people that unfortunately don't know how to spell and cheat at football. (laughs)

Callan Harrington  32:47

Unfortunately, we win. That's the only thing that sucks. We just win all the time. (laughs)

Sam Jacobs  32:51

Except for the last two years against Michigan.

Callan Harrington  32:53

Okay.

Sam Jacobs  32:54

Other than that...

Callan Harrington  32:55

Okay, okay, alright. I knew your parents worked at Ford, so I was very curious about this. (laughs)

Sam Jacobs  33:02

So the first thing is a sense of local connection, so that you feel like it's not just online, and that there's real human beings that are there for you. And that there's interesting things happening. Particularly, Columbus is a pretty good template, because it's sort of like probably three, two steps behind Indianapolis, which is like two steps behind Atlanta in terms of, there's probably some incubators that are developing, there's probably some investors, there's probably activity happening in the high growth slash startup ecosystem. Let's make sure that people have a forum to connect in person in those cities. So that's thing number one, and we're bringing those back. We're starting with London, but we want to bring it back in a new and interesting way, and make these really almost like franchises, where if you are part of the Columbus Pavilion chapter, you really feel like you can make money from it. You can sell sponsorships, you can land, you can be part of the CEO Columbus group, and go find other founders, and enroll them. And you receive a portion of the proceeds from signing them up to become members, and really become a meaningful part of the Columbus ecosystem through Pavilion or through your local community, whatever it may be. The second thing is Pavilion digital is building a consolidated platform that connects not just our learning programs, but the member directory, and all of our events, and provides and creates new opportunities for people to connect with each other, and then creates gamification to celebrate all of the people against different vectors, so that different people become more prominent. You can see who are the most active communities, who are the most active members, all of that kind of thing.

Callan Harrington  34:31

I'm super interested in this franchise. I've never heard of that, like with a community before, I was pretty involved with AAISP before. For those who don't know, the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals was really probably one of the better groups that was out there within the sales space. I've never heard this, franchise is a really intriguing idea that I have not heard before. Where did that come from? Did you base this just off of franchise models just in general, look and say, hey, no one's done thi?

Sam Jacobs  34:59

Well, this was the original idea, the original chapters were effectively like that. But I put so many restrictions on them, and I'm trying to unlock the restrictions. So for example, in the original incarnation, chapter heads, which is what they were, they couldn't sell sponsorships. They had to refer all the sponsorships to us. And what I want to do now, because chapters, you want to do a salon style dinner of the kind that I just described earlier in the show, in Columbus? Well, I don't have $4,000 to just host a quarterly dinner in Columbus with, if people are paying, you know, if you've got twenty members. But what if you could go to the local incubator, local accelerator in Columbus and say, hey, can you sponsor a dinner for us? And I'm sure they would, and it would give them some brand recognition, and maybe they send a partner to the dinner. I want to enable that. I want to make it, and in in those instances, you could keep 80% of the money and you'd send 20% back to us. I want to make it so that you feel like there's a meaningful opportunity, again, status, yes, status, but also compensation, so that you feel like if we can get Columbus to 200 people, you know, maybe you make a couple thousand bucks a month on retainer, and maybe you make a percentage of all the different ways that you help the community grow. And maybe that puts you at the center in the same way that being president of the local AAISP chapter might make you more status, more recognized, give you better stature. So franchises, and basically, compensation has always been part of Pavilion. It's a group of sales leaders, and there's always been the idea, let's share in the proceeds, let's make sure that the constituents get to participate in the upside. It's always been sort of key to it.

Callan Harrington  36:32

That's excellent. I cut you off when we're going for the third thing, but I knew that like it wasn't gonna leave my head. It was already stuck in there.

Sam Jacobs  36:40

The only the only last thing I'll say so you know, the first thing is chapters. The second is Pavilion digital, and really our digital platform, and synthesizing some of these offline interactions online. And with a heavy emphasis, I hope on gamification. And then the third is really making us the Harvard of go-to-market, unless my friend Mark Roberge makes Harvard the Harvard of go-to-market, in which case we'll be the Yale or the Stanford of go-to-market. But nevertheless, and that's where, that's why we're aligning with Insight Partners. That's why we're aligning with Winning by Design. That's why we're aligning with GTM Partners. That's why in Nashville, we're announcing a new go-to-market consortium, that will be publishing an open operating standard for businesses, against which they can take these principles to run their business. But if they want to get certified in the standard, they'll take courses through Pavilion that will help them get certified with with a corresponding degree. So the third is really just making ours a premium brand for go-to-market training, and education, and enablement. So that again, that's the thing that draws you in. And then once you're in, you find local connection and community that makes it really fulfilling.

Callan Harrington  37:43

I love that! I'm excited for all three of those things. And that's not me just saying that, like I don't I don't typically just say that. But that's that's super interesting, as a whole. And of course, right, there's gonna be bumps along the road as you get there. But that's pretty solid. The last question I have for you, Sam, if you can have a conversation with your younger self, age totally up to you, what would that conversation be? What advice would you give them?

Sam Jacobs  38:08

The younger self would be Sam Jacobs, February 2021, when he's signing the term sheet with Elephant Ventures. So that's, that's the younger self that I would go back to. And I would say, my advice would be, it's okay to be bored. You don't- just stay focused on executives, stay focused on serving the existing market that you're serving, and keep doing what you're doing.

Callan Harrington  38:36

I love it. Sam, this this has been a blast. I think that's such a good reminder. And so many people, myself included, I added 500 services to the business, and I should have just stuck with one, and I've went back to one, so I love that. I appreciate you coming on. This has been a blast.

Sam Jacobs  38:52

Thanks for having me, Callan, and yeah, I'm actually probably not kidding about the Columbus chapter. So if you're there for- if you're if you're a Columbus stalwart, and you're going to be there for a while, maybe let's connect some other time we can talk about building a community in Columbus.

Callan Harrington  39:07

100%, and you put it on air. So now I'm going to have people to hold me accountable to it. (laughs)

Sam Jacobs  39:10

Exactly. (laughs)

Callan Harrington  39:16

I hope you enjoyed Sam and I's conversation. Having a healthy mindset is critical. Without one it is incredibly easy to burn out. If you want to learn more about Sam, you could find him on LinkedIn in the show notes. Also, if you liked this episode, you could find me on LinkedIn to let me know. And if you really want to support the show, a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify is very much appreciated. Thanks for listening, everybody, and I'll see you next week.