Farlan Dowell from Rainforest QA: Strengths in Action #01
Welcome to the first episode of the Strengths in Action podcast!
In this episode, I chat to Farlan Dowell, the VP of Sales at Rainforest QA and learn:
- Farlan’s path to becoming the VP Sales at one of the fastest growing SaaS companies in Silicon Valley
- how to start a sales process from scratch, including the distractions you should avoid
- the books he reads to keep on top of his game
If you find typos in the transcript, please let me know in the comments 🙂
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Nils Vinje:
Welcome to the show. I’m joined here with Farlan Dowell, VP of Sales at Rainforest QA. Farlan, welcome.
Farlan Dowell:
Thanks a lot. It’s a pretty fancy title isn’t it?
Nils Vinje:
It is a fancy title man. You know we’ve known each other …
Farlan Dowell:
That’s silly.
Nils Vinje:
… It’s been an absolute blast to be able to get to know you and know you through the rise in the ranks that you’ve done in sales, and product, and other areas. You’re VP of sales at one of the fastest growing companies in the valley. That’s a pretty enviable spot to be. Maybe you could share with us a little bit about how you got there, what were some of the key things that happen along the way?
Farlan Dowell:
Yeah. First of all, thanks for having me. What a pleasure to be with you on a lovely Friday afternoon here. I am indeed at Rainforest QA and have been lucky enough to grow in to the “VP of sales role.” Very quickly Rainforest QA is a first of its kind SaaS QA platform where much like Uber on demand rides, we do on demand QA testing for your web app. We have a crowd of about 50,000 pester spread throughout the world they can descend on your web app in seconds and get your manual regressions done.
It’s been a phenomenal product to sell mostly because they’re on their real head to head comps in the market which is in the place to be. The founders have done an incredible job of the last four years of building this out. We work with companies of all walks from the books down in SoCal, to Intuit to America’s test kitchen and of up over a hundred now.
Nils Vinje:
My goodness. Wow. Everybody needs QA right? The way it’s done and an automated way as a service?
Farlan Dowell:
That’s a beautiful thing. Nobody does QA well. Everybody by and large sucks at QA and it is something that VPA and the CTOs who love our product need a lot of help with. It’s just been really cool. We’ve hit the right stride at the right time. I joined last year in April, since then I was number one on the sales team and really the business team in general.
A year later we’re 15, we grew revenue or we grew ARR 900% last year, and raised 12 million led by Bessemer for a Series A in the last year or so. Everyone was really happy, things have couldn’t have gone better up into this point. There’s always a lot of challenges with startup but we’re on a nice trajectory, let’s put it that way.
Nils Vinje:
That kind of growth this pretty phenomenal. Now, you said you joined as the first sales rep. Tell us a little bit about that and how did you end up being the one who became VP?
Farlan Dowell:
Yeah, good question. The founders were looking for a VP of sales when I had joined or somebody that could be roomed into VP sales. They’re really looking for somebody to lead sales team. I just said like, “Don’t hire me as a VP of sales, hire me as a sales exec and let’s see if we can sell this thing.”
Nils Vinje:
Hang on. What cause to go to them that you knew they were looking for that VP level? You also knew that you probably had the ability to do that and then you told them, “No. Don’t hire me as a VP of sales, hire me as an individual contributor.” What drove you to make that suggestion to them?
Farlan Dowell:
I wanted to start it the right way. I wanted to do with the right way, and I wanted to have the right expectation set. This thing about the relationship with the founders is that I’m here to help them with sales and with the business side of things in general and so far is revenue. That was my first recommendation was they’ll hire me as a VP of sales. I’ll be a VP of sales like they’re six or eight on the team when their staff for actual VP to do which isn’t exactly what happened interestingly enough.
I came in and I just said, “Let’s see if we can sell this,” and did things like a get a road map to success together when I saw the customers needed to be properly on-boarded, ship to customer success tips. Anointed, Fred was our lovely CEO and co-founder, I anointed him our first customer’s success manager. He and I, I tagged him deals and got moved up stream a little bit more in terms of how we sold Rainforest into organizations.
At first, we’re selling into developers and that was not the right approach. The bottoms of approach did not work. We needed to do a taught down where we actually got buy-in from the business for the project to be successful. We turned how we were doing sales on its set. We were doing free trials but those were just spending, and spending, and spending. We’re spending resources internally and just not setting the proper expectation.
There are a lot of things and we came in indeed and it was really interesting. The lesson for me there was when you’ve got a good opportunity when preparation meets opportunity. There’s a certain feeling there, there’s a certain thing that you can feel, you’re like “Wow, this is different. This is working.” It did. I was hired on, I was there for 20 days in April and we hit our 20% growth metric crossed over a 100K or whatever it was in ARR, and we’re off to the raises from there.
It was interesting to see how trickily things started working. Last year, from April to December we grew 20% month on month. It helped of with pretty incredible year in terms of …
Nils Vinje:
That’s pretty amazing. Now, before you joined what was Rainforest doing for sales prior to that where they just wasn’t just leads that came in and people would sign up in a free plan or what not, or what was happening? You turned it on its head but what was going on there beforehand?
Farlan Dowell:
There were a lot of things that we’re going before. There were many price points, and there were many different plans, and packages, and different ways to get on-boarded, and use the product. They were doing a lot of early stage companies do which is they were trying new things. In some cases they were very much “engineering a sales process.” One of my big things is don’t engineer the sales process. Simple as possible.
Nils Vinje:
Can you give me an example of keeping it simple versus engineering a sales process?
Farlan Dowell:
Yes. When you’re looking at when in the early days, when you’re trying to get initial traction, don’t worry about how quickly deals go through the pipe. Don’t worry about the velocity at each stage. Tuning that so you can get the machine to spit out a million of them. Have fun and close deals.
Nils Vinje:
Those are Farlan’s only two requirements in the early days for fast business is have fun and close deals.
Farlan Dowell:
How do you structure the comp plan? You can do kicker when the rep hits this or you can do a commission on that, and a payment when this happens, and a bunch of fancy things in payments for monthly and payments for annual, how about 20%?
Nils Vinje:
Sounds very good to me.
Farlan Dowell:
It saves you days. Not only days of decision making about what to do but use of like operational …
Nils Vinje:
Overhead?
Farlan Dowell:
Yeah of actually tuning it up at the end of the month. The most important thing is figure out what the price point is, figure out how to on-board customers, how to get them successful, how to take out friction out of the sales cycle as much as you possibly can, and just get deals closed and iterate. Some of the deals are going to go badly, and some of them aren’t going to work out, and some you may have been able to get more money for that’s fine. You need volume and you need to start to look for patterns at that stage.
Nils Vinje:
That’s fascinating. Wonderful advice for the early stage. Now, there must have come a time you have a team of 15 at this point right? The just doing 20% and keeping it simple, probably isn’t going to work given that you have an entire group of people now focused on various parts of the process and find tuning that. What was the inflection point wherein you had to switch from the keeping it simple to actually spending the time doing the nuts, and bolts and the fundamentals, and the structure?
Farlan Dowell:
Yeah, we’re still getting there interestingly enough. We’ve done that fairly slowly or methodically in terms of the nuts and bolts of this structure. My personal approach to it is feel some of the pain, be proactive about your business, but feel some of the pain before you really make a change to “scale.” You’ll see a lot of folks that come and say, “This isn’t going to be scalable.” This won’t scale.
Why worry because guess what? You don’t have to worry about scaling if you’re not closing business, right?
Nils Vinje:
That’s right.
Farlan Dowell:
Don’t worry about putting in a 30 point checklist on sales force that you’re going to be able to run a scalable report on at the end of the month, and also let’s get contracts be in the sales force or just ask to enter two product code and it will automatically send an MSA to the client. Of course, we’ll get there when we’re like 30 reps. For now, let’s close the business.
I’ll tell you what you need to do at the early stage, so two examples. One, you have to definitely have focus. When I hired around month three, I made a methodical decision not hire sales execs. I said, “Let’s hire SDRs to go out and get meetings to get leads …”
Nils Vinje:
SDRs are sales development reps right?
Farlan Dowell:
Sales development representatives, exactly right. They do outbound e-mails, outbound calling. Let’s put some food on the table here. Because what’s the point of tuning a bunch of dials to scale the business if frankly we don’t know if we can ever get more if we qualified leads in a month. I said, “Okay, cool.” We’ve got a nice triple coming in from inbound, I was able to convert those, pat yourself on the back, not really but I did.
What if we can go out and get some outbound coverage and see if we can turn those 20 qualified leads in the 60. We got something. In terms of focused though, the biggest thing was getting those sales development representatives focus. I said, “Go after companies that are 50 to 200 employees employees.” Only 50 to 200 or more, CTO or VP Engs, they have to have a cross browser SaaS product. They were like three or four very solid criteria. With that focus, they actually went out and got qualified meetings and we started to close business from out on.
I was astonished. I was like, “Holy shit, is this working?” It works and I was just like, “It’s amazing.” It’s so uncertain, it’s so embryonic, it sounds so easy now looking back and if it wasn’t. That’s a really good example of that you want to fine tune, that you want to razor in on. Now, how did I come to that decision?
Nils Vinje:
That was going to be my next question.
Farlan Dowell:
It took me 15 years to come to that decision.
Nils Vinje:
That is awesome.
Farlan Dowell:
That was just experience. Like I said like, “Preparation met opportunity.” Do I have all the answers? No, but I’ve seen enough. What I did was when I came in close for a couple of months, I was able to see companies under 50 employees are kind of a waste of time. I shouldn’t say that but it wasn’t quite a fit. Companies over 200 employees, we weren’t quite sure what the used case was, how to envoy them, could we go to the sales? I was just trying to see let’s see how this works. I think it could.
It started to. Interestingly enough today, most of our customers are around a hundred person mark. That’s a really good example there. You’ve also got to let folks come on and give them latitude to try things as well. That’s the beautiful thing that I’ve learned from SDRs and I’ve learned other things from “tried experiment.” That’s a long winded answer but there’s certain things you need to raise your focusing on. Pick the right ones.
Nils Vinje:
Awesome. Wonderful. Coming back to the preparation and the 15 years to get to that point and to get to this position of VP of sales. Give me a sense of what was your plan as you progress through your career? How did you chart your path from where you started out to getting to VP of sales on one of the fastest growing companies?
Farlan Dowell:
Here’s what propelled my career. We need to pay rent. I remember being in college and I did take school that seriously until I got to college. I said to myself, “Holy shit, I’m going to get out of here in four years and I can’t go back home.” I didn’t want to go back home because my parents made just unenjoyable enough to which I wouldn’t want to go back home. They were very strategic in that way.
My university career like, “Holy shit.” I tried to get as best marks as I could, I was a library rock as they would call it. I got jobs in the student union, and a bartender. I did whatever I could to get experience. It was interesting because coming out of that, I had done really well in college and I had done so many different things that I couldn’t go in so many different directions. That was interesting. A bit debilitating because I didn’t actually know what to do when I got out of college.
Nils Vinje:
There’s almost too many choices.
Farlan Dowell:
Yeah. I wish I was one of those kids that wakes up when they’re seven and they’re like asked being a fireman. I want to be an accountant. They never look back. I went through 10 years and I still ask myself a question sometimes. I’ve read it all in terms of finding your passion and career path and I have no idea. I get out of college and I was like as business. I don’t want to spend all my time in an office. I got a degree and I was like, “Is that all the risk to life?”
I did stand up comedy, I did acting, I was in some independent films and I was a blast in Montreal. I did that for a bit and I was like, “I got to like the lifestyle.” I’m passionate about what it is but I’m not passionate about everything around. My body and mind keep up, this is going to be something about life in terms of like an opportunity will present itself. I was always good at sales but I’d always kind of like, “God, I don’t want to risk in sales. I don’t want to have that,” like pressure my life, and the sales guy mentality.
A buddy of mine was just like, “Hey, I work in this mobile entertainment company. We need a creative producer.” I was like, “This will be a 9 to 5 job.” I don’t know what mobile is. It ended up being like the … This is 2004. They’ve let me know I was stepping on this title. This is a mobile revolution right. I’ll tell you what I did, I was very committed to building my career at that point. I hopped around a bunch, it did a bunch of fun stuff, I did call center stuff. I was even a bills collector which is a whole crazy thing in itself.
I sold chip door to door, I sold expose tickets door to door. I mean you name it but I was like, “Okay, cool. I’m going to focus.” I was a front manager for about three years.
Nils Vinje:
Hang on one sec. You went through all those various experiences and tried all that stuff, and then you said, “I’m going to focus.” What was the driver behind that switch. What happened that caused you to say, “This is the time now where I’m going to focus. I’m ready to do this. This is what I want?”
Farlan Dowell:
I needed accountability.
Nils Vinje:
You needed accountability. Okay, tell me more.
Farlan Dowell:
I needed accountability. I was this enterprise of one and Farlan Dowell Inc. Actor at large, stand up comedian at large, debt collector at large, production assistant at large, serving tables at large. I just said like some people would thrive doing that. I know guys that just hassle in San Francisco a little bit more infrastructure. I need some pads on the wall in the crazy room. I need some accountability and I need some structure.
I found that, that was something that really worked for me. I also found that we could talk about this later that I really thrive in a team environment, in a team setting. I decided at that point like I was, “Okay, I’m going to just focus on this.” That was hard because I was like, “I will just stand up at night and I’ll do this and do that.” I was like, “No.” When I finally got down to it, I was actually really good at my job. I was passionate about what I did. I work nights, I work weekends, I was able to push things forward, I was able to take initiative, I was able to just get shift on.
I was awesome. I did that for three years and then I moved to LA and I was working in product as a director of products at a larger online media company for a few years. I came to an en-pass, this is six years of product. I was like, “Okay, I’m feeling good at this but I don’t think I’m ever going to be the best in the world at it.”
Nils Vinje:
Was that a question you had pondered before? Because that’s a very interesting question being the best in the world or something.
Farlan Dowell:
Yeah. Where did I lift that from because nothing, there’s no new material here. It’s all lifted from books. Who said that? It was Lynn dyer, it was Steven Cabi, it was … Who’s the millionaire mind guy? A millionaire mind is what a cheesy title that is. I will tell you, pick up the millionaire mind, man it’s a key heart of metric. It made me today better. What a great book and I think that’s one of the insights.
It’s all about it’s your ladder against the right wall. You can have all the passion in the world, you can have all the training and education. If you’re not really intrinsically aligned towards that, you’re not going to be the best of the world. I’ll tell you, that was interesting to me and in sales it was always there. I’d always gravitate towards sales. I never chose sales, sales chose me.
Nils Vinje:
How so?
Farlan Dowell:
I finally just said like it was only something that I was good at and had always been lurking in the background. An opportunity was presented to me in late 2009, early 2010 to work with Google selling Google apps. We were Avar, it was a company we had started up and it was amazing selling Google apps to all these businesses ripping out their exchange server and selling them SaaS. This so-called SaaS and it was in the cloud. Putting your data in the cloud, it was crazy.
I was like, “Huh, cool. I kind of like this.” I was good at it and then I moved up to San Francisco and took a gig selling enterprise analytics and I was good at that and moved into a management role there. Although I’ve done management before from a product perspective, so that helped. That proven to a VP sales role at Contagion which we branded in the up site. I’ve also have this body of experience of five start ups.
That five start ups, some had gone public, some had been bought and had great exits. Some had done terribly where had less than positive outcomes. I said, “Who said that?” It was body of experience and I was like, “Cool. Sweet.” I went off to Europe for three months and traveled after I got a lot of experience. It’s the fun too, but anyways …
Nils Vinje:
We’ll come back to that.
Farlan Dowell:
Yeah, that’s a long winded story but I mean yeah, I was always pretty serious about wanting to do something well.
Nils Vinje:
If you had to bottom line that experience level into themes. I heard a couple of there like the constant education number one in school undergrad but then after you got, constantly reading books and constantly pushing yourself in order to learn more. Every time that happened or some notable thinking out, opportunity presented itself to you which is fascinating in itself.
What other high level pieces that people listening to this and who are trying to figure out their course in their professional career might be thinking like, “I got to have this plan. I need to know where I’m going to be in five years. Everybody ask this in every interview.” How do you respond to that? What advice would you give people thinking about how to figure out where the heck you fit in the world and define what chooses them just like sales chose you?
Farlan Dowell:
Yeah. You’ve touched on the interview piece, how do I do that X, Y, Z in an interview. My advice for folks that are getting out of school is try some things. Try some stuff. One of the things that I did was I just said, “I don’t want to go to this grave saying what if.” If you have an itch, scratch it.
Nils Vinje:
Regardless of what demand direction or what occupation or whatever it takes you?
Farlan Dowell:
Yeah. Try some stuff. Try some different things. First and foremost, I would ask this advice is only going to be so helpful to those that really care. If you get together with buddies on the weekend and you’re just drinking all weekend, and you’re like, “Oh yeah, I go to work but I have this stupid boss who I don’t like. I’m just not into this company. I don’t care about this and whatever. I’m just going to slough my way or slack my way to this and whatever man. Let’s just have a good time. It’s all good. It’s all just a game.”
You did it, you’re already out of the game. Look in the mirror and look at what your attitude is and look at like are you really in this thing to do something awesome? Because reading a book or listening to a podcast and thinking it’s going to get you out of that crappy situation that you’re in. It starts with your mindset. I would just personally discount 50% of folks that just are full of shit to be quite honest. Just trying to get one over on the world and thinking, “They’re so smart but I’m just going to be a lazy asshole.”
You’re not going to do anything, just subvert yourself to being mediocre, have fun, don’t take yourself too seriously because when you’re like 40 and haven’t done anything it will be way less that they hit to your ego. The other half of folks that are super serious about making an impact or positive like good people who care about their career, and care about like actually growth, and mental growth, and helping people. Just try things, give a shit, care about where you’re going to go. Have some anxiety about it.
I had an acting coach once who said if you’re not nervous, get nervous. If you’re not nervous, that’s a cause to be nervous. Do you care? Do you think that the world owes you something? If you think the world owes you something, bullshit. If you care, and you’re going after it, and you’re reading the literature, and you’re doing the push ups, and day in and day out you give a shit, and you think the world owes you something, that’s cool. I’m down with a little bit of entitlement. I probably could use a bigger dose of it.
Be concern, be scared about like “What is it that I’m going to do? What is it that I want to do? Where is it that I’m going to make an impact?” Go after it and try things and apply yourself and read the literature like watch the TED Talks. Don’t read ventured beat articles, don’t read online blog post about some dude, read books. Read full books on paper, mark them up, create lists, have actions of things you’re going to do. Try to write whatever. I journaled for years, I still journal. I have volumes of journals. If anybody ever got a hold of them, it would just be like crazy crap.
Nils Vinje:
You call that the vault.
Farlan Dowell:
Yeah. Give a shit. Find mentors, go and talk to people. Go to meet ups like really investing it. It’s crazy. Read books about how to read books about how to shape up careers. Read books of how to take your career seriously, or whatever. It’s been an awesome thing you should … My book collection, I had to leave all of them in Montreal and start over. It’s just hundreds and I can get everything from like Lee Iacocca, to Warren Buffet’s biography, to Wayne Dyer, or Eckhart Tolle, and “The Elements” by, who is that? Great book on finding your passion.
Nils Vinje:
What are some of the recent ones that you’ve read?
Farlan Dowell:
Here’s one I’m reading today. I’m reading Donald Trump, “The Art of a Deal.” A lot of people say, “Read Donald Trump? How would you read that? This is crazy. This is ridiculous. He’s running for president. He should made this far. This guy is a joke.” I’ll tell you what, if you discount everybody you think is a joke and you don’t learn at least one thing from them, you are cutting yourself off an immense about the knowledge. Because just how many people you could think their jokes out there, in fact they are jokers a lot of them.
If you learn something from there, you better believe it. Do not discount that. I’ve read a couple of Trump’s book. I learned a ton and it helped me a lot in business by the way. 2004, I read one of his books out of cheesy titles like “Winning,” by Donald Trump. Maybe that was Jack Welch. That was an awesome book too “Winning” by Jack Welch. He’s awesome. Donald Trump, he said, “If you don’t love what you do, you’re never really going to be great at it.” It’s so effin true. He’s a passionate guy. There’s a lot you’ll learn from him.
I’m also reading “Team of Teams” by General McCrystal. I’m reading a book by a very good friend of mine called “The Magnificent Mistake, Learning from Mistakes” and actually defining how to do that. Getting “From Impossible to Inevitable” by Jason Lemkin. He’s one of our VC’s. Yeah, kind of like four on the go which is not good but read the most successful people in the world, read four books a month, read as much as you can. CEOs all they do is read and it is food for your mind.
Everything I read it connects dots, it gives me room for strategy, there’s a bunch of great things. Hopefully some of that helps.
Nils Vinje:
Absolutely. That’s awesome. I know they’re some wonderful books, Trump “The Art of the Deal, Team of Teams, Predictable Revenue,” I think you and I had talked about before too right. We’re talking books that have things to do with your profession like in your case “Predictable Revenue” is a wonderful one by Marylou Tyler and Aaron Ross, right? Also talking about completely outside of the box things that have nothing to do with your world but there’s something that you can take away and learn from those and apply it into your world. That’s a fascinating piece, so that’s really excellent advice to just focus on the books.
Farlan Dowell:
Yes. Reading is key. Look yourself in the mirror and say like, “Do I really give a shit about this? Am I thinking I’m going to listen to a podcast and this is going to change the trajectory of my career?” It’s not.
Nils Vinje:
Let’s talk about that. Do I really love this or how people can go about discovering this? You’ve been very fortunate and been blessed with the drive and the hunger and the push to go and educate yourself to read, to find, to connect the dots, to get to where you are today. Whether you’re in the beginning of your career, the middle of your career, the end of your career, people still say, “I don’t have a freaking clue what I want to do or where I want to go.”
How do you think about like help? How would you help someone else to think about answering that question. What am I most talented to do? Which really being applying myself to make the biggest impact I possibly can?
Farlan Dowell:
Yeah. There are different folks that are going to be aligned with doing different things in making different types of impacts. From my point of view I have never had a five year plan. I have never had a long-term career plan. I’ve taken every opportunity, it has presented itself that made sense for me at that time. I have done everything in my power to knock that opportunity out of the park.
Once I committed to that opportunity, I figured out reasons why I should, and how I could do the absolutely best and kill it. I didn’t trick myself up and figure out why I couldn’t. The difference between winners and losers is they will take the opportunity that is presented or win or will. They will kill it and then you know what will happen? Another opportunity will present itself. Every position that I have had, I’ve been promoted at least three times in every job that I’ve … In three or four of the major jobs that I’ve had in my career.
As these opportunities present themselves, a lot of times they naturally correlate to strengths in which you have shown and exhibited. Although, the expression you usually get promoted to the point of incompetence is true but sometimes you just screwed even way over your head. Other times, you can actually figure it out and maybe it could happen and do a much better job then somebody who knows how to do it. I can talk about that in a minute, but I’ll just say like, “Don’t worry about the five year plan in the interview especially now.” Have some sort of direction, have a general path.
I’m telling you, going there and do the job. There are folks on my team today, they’re here until 10 at night prospecting and they’re doing well. One of our number one reps in Q1 was selling during the day and prospecting at night. Did he want it? Yes. Does he want to be in sales in 20 years? I don’t know but by absolutely crushing this opportunity to use a clichĂ© sales word. Yeah, he’s going to have a much bigger options, much better options for that next go round. Really, give a shit in what you’re doing today or get out of there. Opt out, get out of there, and do something that better alliance with what’s going to be a better fit for you.
Nils Vinje:
You mentioned strengths there. Digging a little bit of that in you personally, and you’ve been through lots of different experiences, lots of different roles, lots of different companies. How would you sum up your strength in terms of what are you most talented to do?
Farlan Dowell:
I found that my strengths really came out when I was around the team and I was working with a team. You should think a lot about that. Are you independent lone wolf that’s going to get dragged down by a team, or are they going to energize you? I’ve found that I’m really good at driving the car, but you might say, “Okay, great. I know I can drive the car too and I can lead too. I’m not going to be able to do that right out at a school.” That’s okay, you can still drive the car, the thing that you’re doing at your job, or at your company, or with those around you. You can still do that.
Nils Vinje:
In any project right?
Farlan Dowell:
Yeah. You can step up and drive the car and see how that feels.
Nils Vinje:
What is it about the team? Tell me more about, you said the streets around grabbing energy and being fueled by the team? You said about the team that does that for you?
Farlan Dowell:
One of the things that I’ve learned. I had a really tough gig where I joined an embryonic startup and it was really small, we were like five people, couple of them were remote. I’m going to the office everyday and if the product was too early, the market was too early, that product market fit was too early. There were a bunch of things that just didn’t aligned. It was a miserable experience and actually we got acquired and then they opted not to take me on.
I was like, “Damn. What happened there?” It really helped me with the last two gigs that I had in doing the due diligence and figuring out what is going through line with my strengths and what do I need to be successful? I went in to the job that I took when I came up to San Francisco at Contagion. I went in there with a list I was like, “I need a leader. I want a word from the best in sales.” I want to join an A plus team with an A plus product that has over 80 members on the team or over 50 members on the team that’s been sold, that has reached to certain point in revenue.
I had this whole list of things that were going to be important to me that I knew align with my strengths rather than some bad experience that I’ve had. Have those bad experiences and go through them. It was tough, like I would never want to do that again but I would never not want to do it and not understand what work for me. Because the reaction is visceral. You wake up at 3 at night, when you’re at a job that doesn’t in line with you and you’re like, “Oh shit, where is this going? I know this isn’t going anywhere good. I don’t believe in it. I’m totally unmotivated.”
You’re like, “I’m going to be a barista at Starbucks?” You start to catastrophize, it’s really hard when you go through experiences like that. I empathize with anybody else out there, but you will, you’re going to go through some shit, learn from it, adjust course, and figure out what the next gig is that’s going to better align with your strengths.
Nils Vinje:
During those low times when you catastrophize your future and think that you’re just not really sure where you’re going to end up. You start dreaming of the worst case scenario is going to happen, right. In your specific situation when those times happened, how did you pull yourself out of that? How did you pick your head up and recognize it as an opportunity learned when you’re so consumed with being drowned in the dams about what the reality of your life is right now?
Farlan Dowell:
Yeah, totally. When you’re in it, you don’t know what’s happening. You probably won’t know what’s happening. It’s just going to be shitty and maybe you couldn’t say like, “Hey, wow. This is shitty.” You’re probably saying like, “I’m going to make this work and you’re grinding.” You’re like, “Okay, this is going to get better and you’re grinding. We’re going to get …”
Nils Vinje:
Next order will be better, next year.
Farlan Dowell:
Yeah, whatever right? You’ll have to be out of it to get some clarity.
Nils Vinje:
If you’re in it like in some of those cases where you were in it. How did you pull yourself out or was it only after it had passed that you’re reflect and understand how deep you were in it? How did you course correct?
Farlan Dowell:
I was lucky or unlucky enough to have not opted out. It was in opt out that was chosen for me which also sucks. This will happen right? There’s lots of folks out there that are just join embryonic startups that for whatever reason there’s a corner that’s turned and all of a sudden you’re out on the street.
Nils Vinje:
Yup. It happens everyday.
Farlan Dowell:
Do the best while you’re in it and give it enough time, and maybe you’ll grind for too long. Hopefully you only grind for six months, you don’t grind for three years. Everyone’s situation is going to be different but I would say figure out if you’re just unnecessarily grinding if this is going anywhere. If it’s not, take the hit and get into something else like not as soon as possible but take the time, readjust. The big thing for me is that was my things have come to an end in no way.
That is intellectually stimulating as I would have liked near at the end, if I’m in technology which I am ground zero San Francisco and that end was actually a decision to say, “Okay. I’m going to move up to San Francisco.” San Francisco super charge my career. There is no better place to be in the world if you’re working in the cloud, and in SaaS, and in tech in general. I don’t know, it’s going to be different for folks. Some will opt out and find something, some will have the gumption to go and just quit and move somewhere. Some, a decision we made for them and then they will make a tough decision themselves so it’s going to depend.
Nils Vinje:
The key there that I heard from you is really checking yourself for a passion. If you don’t have the passion, get out and find something else that will, or develop a plan, or focus on something. Because grinding it out regardless of how great that care it is that is infamous within the tech community that is called equity, right?
Farlan Dowell:
Yeah.
Nils Vinje:
This will be worth a lot and this will be a lot of money, and that’s great. It is completely useless if you are miserable all the time where you don’t enjoy your work or you’re not growing right?
Farlan Dowell:
Yeah, exactly.
Nils Vinje:
There is nothing that’s worth your personal sacrifice in those cases and I see that clearly in your experience and what you’ve seen and done.
Farlan Dowell:
Yeah, exactly.
Nils Vinje:
In your work today, where do you get … You’re leading a team now of 15 strong and growing almost exponentially. Where do you get the most satisfaction from work? Where is your passion really come through?
Farlan Dowell:
Yeah. It’s interesting. I’ve had three different jobs since I joined this company. At every stage if you grow with the company particularly in the role that I’m in, you’re going to have to say, “Okay, what does the organization need now that will bring it to the next level?” I’m doing way different activities today than I was doing a year ago. A year ago, I was helping the founders little bit of strategy, shaping a few things, but really hitting the phones and selling.
Today, I’m more helping folks sell, enabling folks to sell, setting high level strategy, hiring, and basically making sure that I’m the most paranoid conservative guy in terms of making sure this jet can go to the next level and beyond. I get it off on a bunch of different things in terms of the business today and what motivates me today. I just want to say, some mornings I’m walking to work and I’ll jump up and click my hills together. Other mornings like, “Yeah, it’s hard to get out of the bed.” I’m not going to say I jump out of bed everyday and like you can’t wait to attack the day.
For a leader, consistency is very important but don’t try to be a stonewall and super human, and not have little ups and flows. You can have little ups and downs on a daily and weekly basis but you should be pretty steady. Don’t be afraid to have an off day or a bad day, but I will tell you that this is by far the most amazing opportunity I have ever had. To be able to hire and hand pick a team of folks that I know what they need to do to get to the next level, just see those folks grow from the four SDRs that I hired last year, three of them are account executives and really doing awesome selling. I mean really.
One of them was or is I think the number one rep in Q1. Maybe there might have been another rep but I mean they’re just doing great. The other one CRN, CSR manager now. To see folks growing their career is awesome. To see everybody be a part of a story where when I joined this company I was number 7 in San Francisco. To see the company be 48 people today a year later, and have raised $12 million and to be in a new office and to be this family like. That’s really cool to see and you do that with revenue.
It starts with revenue, with product but you also need revenue. Then I get to do my things that are fun for me to make that’s fun. Best that I make are on being methodical with the business and building a platform and infrastructure that we can grow from so that when we get to 10 million, everyone is not huffing and puffing saying, “Oh, we did it.” They’re rather saying, “Hoo, we hit ten.” I totally can see how we can get it through. That is the juice for me because I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly in my career. I think I knew enough. Not to much, because too much knowledge can hurt you.
You think you know what the right answer is and then you really fought. I know just enough to make some bets on how can we get the 30 million. All of that just really energizes me. By the way, all of that is going to be different when we get to 10 million and have to do totally different things and we’ll see if I can do it or not.
Nils Vinje:
That’s awesome. I mean I can hear the passion in your voice and if anybody out there listening to this and trying to understand what passion and work means not being a VP, not being part of a great startup. Just passion in what you’re doing, listen to Farlan’s voice because he can clearly hear exactly where it comes out and that is just absolutely wonderful. I know that is a 100% genuine and your time reap the benefits of that passion and they have grown tremendously over the last year that since you brought it one.
Farlan Dowell:
For full disclosure I’ve had three shots of alcohol while we’re doing this podcast. Other than that, this is pure passion and …
Nils Vinje:
He’s got a temper his passion booze just to balance it out. Yeah, there you go.
Farlan Dowell:
I’m going to turn the tables on the interviewer to the … Interviewer becomes interviewee. What have you observed, we worked together a lot and you’ve worked with other VP of sales in an awesome customers best capacity. The folks that are in VP of sales roles or one of VPs of sales, what have you seen that are defining characteristics’ strengths that you see really good VPs of sales?
Nils Vinje:
I think the highest level piece, I’ll say the general and then I’ll say your specific piece based on our relationship and how well I know you. The high level piece that defining characteristic is that their drive is off the charts. The drive to do whatever is necessary as you said to close business, to close revenue and that is a good and a bad thing. It’s double head short. Because sometimes it works well and sometimes it doesn’t.
They’re willing to try lots of different things in order to meet a specific goal. Sometimes those things work out really well for the company and sometimes they don’t. In a heart of the nature of it and those of us in the customer success world have to understand that and appreciate what they are going through to try and meet their objectives just like we do the same thing when we’re trying to hit a goal on retention and satisfaction and up-sell and cross-selling stuff. The ramifications are much different because we have a whole different with the customer.
I do truly admire the VP of sales out there who have that drive and passion and have the ability to inspire people because sales is hard. Being told no a million times and getting one yes is really, really ridiculously difficult right?
Farlan Dowell:
Yeah.
Nils Vinje:
It is hard. That takes a very specific set of strengths and for those who are aligned perfectly with their strengths in their role much like you, that is where the magic happens. It doesn’t matter if you’re in CS, or in product, or in sales, or in accounting, or you’re freaking office administrator, it does not matter. What matters is the passion that they see there from you. With you specifically, yeah so we’ve worked together both as an individual contributors when you were sales rep and I was CS, we’ve partnered up and accomplish some of the most massive renewals and expansions that …
Farlan Dowell:
The glory days.
Nils Vinje:
Glory days indeed, it was. I learned so much about negotiation and the relationships that happened and have to happen, and holding the line, and doing deals, and getting things done. I learned so much of that from you because I could immediately always see that the passion inside of you like the term, its term book’s name the art of the deal I could tell was of extreme intellectual curiosity for you.
If you love thinking about all the permutations, and how to do things, and how to do this, and how to do that and how to get somebody from here to there. Seeing how you work like in that capacity and then going and apply that at Rainforest is just absolutely phenomenal.
Farlan Dowell:
Yeah. I appreciate you saying that. I think it highlights a very interesting transition that a lot of folks will need to make if they want to go into management or if they want to get into a strategic level in an organization. That is the more curious. I was very curious about how deals get done. What does the deal look like? What’s going on this side? What’s going on, on that size? Is this guy trying to hedge or is this guy being serious? Really as you said that passionately look at deals, and be in it, and learn from it.
Now I’m passionate about growing the business and just the same way that I would deconstruct the deal. Now I’m deconstructing what does the sales team look like? What does the sales team need to do at different iterations of a company in different sizes of ARR, or different iterations of the product, or different markets that we’re in? You want to talk about deconstructing a deal, deconstructing sales team and where to grow, and how to grow it, and when to grow it, how to scale it is incredible.
Again, if you’re in sales and you’re like, “Closing, sucks. It’s totally boring.” What I want to do is I want to get into this strategy piece when if I get into the hallowed holes of strategy then all be X. It’s no, no, no, never. If you need something to happen for you then to be happy, or engaged, or satisfied or whatever, you’re left. Murder it in what you’re doing right now unless you’re selling dead bodies then you can’t murder it or flush it. That doesn’t work if you work at a Corie.
Nils Vinje:
There’s very interesting point you made there about if you need something to happen in order for you to feel passion, it ain’t going to happen right?
Farlan Dowell:
Yeah.
Nils Vinje:
That’s the element of control. Because there’s only one person and my favorite line in professional development thinking is that in every individual as the CEO of his or her career. There’s only one chief, there’s only one person who can make the call on what is good, and what is bad, and what not. What can happen is that people can fall into the trap of saying, “Once the company does this for me, then I will enjoy my work.” No, it’s not going to happen. It’s myth right?
Once I get into that product management role, once I get into that account exec role, I won’t be doing BDR stuff, I’ll be so much happier. Reality is it will and it will a little bit because that’s new, right?
Farlan Dowell:
Yeah.
Nils Vinje:
Something new and was like, “Oh that’s cool.” You’re going to end up back in the same place within a couple of months.
Farlan Dowell:
I have had ups and downs where I’ve had to take somebody in upper management for a walk and talk. We’ve thrown each other up against the wall, and we’ve ground and sorted things out, and then we move forward. That’s what you got to do. You’re going to have to grind on certain relationships, you’re going to have to make certain things happen. It ain’t going to be roses, it’s definitely not all going to be roses, so you’ll have those times.
By and large, I mean you shouldn’t be waiting for this next thing to happen for you to feel good. It’s BS, I meet people all the time where they’ve been at three different startups for six months each. This startup was shit because of this, and this startup didn’t work because of this, and this startup because of this. When I sit there and I say, “Oh man, that really sucks. That’s kind of be tough. Okay, next candidate.” What I’m really sitting there thinking is like, “Shit attracts shit.” If you have three shitty gigs where you didn’t get what you need, oh man.
Nils Vinje:
Time to take a new look at what was actually wrong.
Farlan Dowell:
Yeah. It’s like that relationship and everybody has been in that relationship with that girl, with that guy, where it’s like, “Okay, when he or she does this then we’re going to be great. When we move on together and we’re totally committed then it’s going to be great. When I get the ring and this will be great. When we have kids, this will be great.” No, it’s not going to be great. It’s going to be great now. Crying on some things but better be great right now or it’s not going to get great.
Nils Vinje:
Exactly. You have always, have full control to make it great. If you can’t that’s okay. Take a step back. Figure out a way, go talk to some intern and go find the coach. Go search for the answers because you have all the answers within you, just trick ourselves out of that right?
Farlan Dowell:
Yeah, exactly.
Nils Vinje:
Farlan, last question here. If you could change … We’ve talked a lot about personal development, driving change in yourself, and your organization. I’m curious if you could change something about yourself, what would it be and why?
Farlan Dowell:
This is the interview question that I hate asking you …
Nils Vinje:
Let me tell you where I got this one.
Farlan Dowell:
Where did you get it?
Nils Vinje:
When I was a senior in college. I was interviewing with I had first semester senior and I had lined up a bunch of interviews at a job fair, I went down to Denver. I was in Boulder at the time, went down to Denver in the morning super early had an all day interviews thing setup. This is the last interview of the day. It was a very nice casual conversation as somebody real easy.
In the interview were asked me this question, and I had been like 20 or 30 interviews by that time going through the process. It stomps me so bad that it is burned into my memory of that. Every interview I’ve ever done as a manager, I’ve always ask this question because it’s always very revealing to how people think about their own professional development and themselves. How they reflect on themselves, even how they talk about themselves? That’s why I love this question because it’s straight to the point.
Farlan Dowell:
Yeah, I wouldn’t even know where to begin.
Nils Vinje:
Just one thing.
Farlan Dowell:
There are so many thing …
Nils Vinje:
No, no, no, I’m going to hold you to this just one, just what do you say?
Farlan Dowell:
One of the things and I think there’s lots of things by the way that I work on in terms of getting defensive about the sames team, or being too stuck to an idea. There’s this lots of things professionally but one of the things that I’ve really been working on lately is there’s this. I knew a lot of the Buddhist teachings but I do this Dharma Night in the mission. One of the things I’ve really been trying to work on is like reading from the heart not as much from the head.
There’s this Dharmic teaching that says like soften the mind and because everybody’s mind, everyone’s head stopped. Everyone’s in their head, everybody’s thinking about they’re very serious. One of the things for me is from the heart like trying to have that sensing, the caring, just be joyful, just have fun. It’s something that I really try to do because I am the guy who can be super serious, super conservative, super paranoid because it pays to be in sales and sales management.
It’s also stressful and people need hope and people want to have a good time. Soften the hart, inject more positivity. Don’t let it be blind, stupid, exuberant positivity that’s literally going to lead you and your team off of a cliff but soften the mind and open the heart a little bit is something for me. Is that a business teaching? Yeah, totally. Stuff that you read in the off hours that may have nothing like a Dharma meditation. I’m telling you you’re going to have make new wonders for you.
Nils Vinje:
That’s awesome, that’s really wonderful to hear. Yeah the difference between the head, and the heart, and having the ability to connect with both of those especially as a leader. Definitely as an individual but especially as a leader, there are so much that people will take away and I know your team follows you like that. Because you have the ability to live with that, and because you’ve done that work to try to open that up and recognize, and be aware that sometimes you need to be that ultimate conservative close based presence. Sometimes you need to be a bit more open and there’s different times when those come out. That’s really awesome.
Farlan Dowell:
The most difficult thing in life to get right is timing. Timing of your career, timing of an opportunity, timing of product market fit, and timing of when to be light and when to be serious, timing, timing, timing. It is the biggest thing. That will take years to do but yeah, that’s exactly right.
Nils Vinje:
Awesome. Passion and timing. If you get those two things right, the world is your oyster and you do literally whatever the hell you want and you could enjoy it. If you got those two wrong, then you can slug it out and feel like you’re just going to not making any progress, not in treadmill forever. That’s just not fun.
Farlan Dowell:
Make sure your career and the seriousness that you have for it and making an impact is not a top track. Make sure that it is deadly serious and from the heart and you’ll be just fine.
Nils Vinje:
Awesome. Incredible advice from Farlan. It’s been a wonderful pleasure to talk with you today. Thank you so much for being on. Again Farlan Dowell, VP sales at Rainforest, talking about professional development, personal development, transitions, struggles, education, read the books, find your passion, have the control within you to do this today. Do not wait another day to take a look at this seriously. Farlan, thank you so much for being on.
Farlan Dowell:
Thanks for listening to all my long winded answers.
Nils Vinje:
Cheers man.
Farlan Dowell:
All right, dude.
Nils Vinje:
Take care.
Farlan Dowell:
Yeah.