[00:00:27] Jay: Hi everyone. Welcome to The First Customer podcast. My name is Jay Aigner. Today, I am super excited. This is a very special guest. I've been chasing AJ around because he's the busiest man on earth. he's the founder and CEO of Quotapath, limited partner at Stage 2 Capital, host of the Topline podcast, serial entrepreneur, commercial pilot, dad, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
AJ. How are you, my friend?
[00:00:48] AJ: cetera, et cetera. There's a lot of acceptance there. I know we talked to, I mean, Jay, you and I had dinner a couple weeks ago and we're talking about our day to day. There's a bunch of CEOs and like, what do CEOs do? And I find it interesting is there is a lot that is going on in our lives. I say our lives, my wife and I with our three kids, but I don't know, I feel like I have more time and energy these days than I've ever had.
So I'll take that for right now. And then tomorrow Fall apart. It's going to be a mess.
[00:01:15] Jay: But I
think, and we'll get to we'll get to this, but I think it's because you've spent some time, reflecting and figuring out, how to recharge your batteries. And I think that's like a big part of being able to do all this stuff. You know, you bang yourself into a wall long enough and not take care of yourself. you know, it catches up with you, but it sounds like you've got a
[00:01:35] AJ: think we'll talk a little bit about that during this episode.
[00:01:38] Jay: I think so. all right. I did not know this until before the show. We talked a little bit, but where did you grow up and do you think that had any impact on you being an entrepreneur?
[00:01:48] AJ: well, that's funny. You mentioned that cause you were so excited to talk to an Eagles fan on this call.
[00:01:52] Jay: I was so pumped
[00:01:53] AJ: And then it turns out
I'm from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania home of the Pittsburgh Steelers. the yeah, six times Superbowl
[00:02:00] Jay: Oh, you had to do it, didn't you?
Yeah.
[00:02:02] AJ: I apologize for that. But, yeah, to answer your question, 100 percent had a huge impact on me personally from an entrepreneur.
And there's two really big things. Jay, you've had this conversation with many founders and entrepreneurs. And just like many founders and entrepreneurs, they typically learn from one of their parents. And in this case, my dad was huge influence on two fronts. One growing up, he was a pilot. so my commercial pilot tism comes, stems from family.
My dad was a pilot. My mom was actually a flight attendant, both for US Air. Yes, that's how they met originally, but growing up in the nineties in Pittsburgh where, US Air was based was actually kind of a scary time. My dad's really good friend, unfortunately perished in an accident, a plane accident in 1994, a US airplane crashed in Pittsburgh.
and that had a huge influence on him because he wasn't sure if he was going to have a stable job there. Their airlines, American airlines are not what they were today. There were six crashes in a row for US Air. And so he started a side gig. He actually started a video production company when I was, five, four or five years old.
And he did a lot of training videos, a lot of local commercials to start. And I actually would just happen to be a cute little kid. I had strawberry blonde hair and they're like, why don't you just likeput myself in front of the camera. And so I did that when I was four or five. and that.started to evolve in two fronts.
One seeing my dad having the side gig and being an entrepreneur himself, but the other was actually acting itself. So I did a lot of stage when I was a kid. Yeah. Pittsburgh Public Theater. I, performed. So for the entire year of eighth grade, I had to get a tutor and I was Puck from Midsummer Night's Dream.
"If we shadows have offended anyone. Think but this and all is mended." Won't do the whole monologue, but I did eight shows a week for, wow, it was like four or five months. And, it was a pretty, pretty long time. Got paid professionally, had to join the union and, I loved it. I loved every bit of it. So that was really where I got my entrepreneurial genes from in the very, very early days in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
I can feel it a little bit when I talk to you and I like when we talk one on one and then I think, See you talk in front of a group or maybe on the show where we both know you got to turn it on a little bit. it's always on day. It's
[00:04:26] Jay: I mean, I can feel you have some practice, with that. One thing I want to ask you,the crash thing is crazy. And like, you know, the head instructor at Doylestown, which I'm not sure if you knew or not, but like, Died in an accident a few years ago. And like, that's where I was flying out of. And it was very scary and impactful. What does your wife think about you flying so much?
Does she, you know, stay up at night when you fly? does she fly with you guys and let you fly the kids around? Like, what's kind of like the entrepreneurial founder life as a pilot with three kids?
[00:04:53] AJ: You're picking up on a pretty dangerous topic here because I can talk about aviation all
[00:04:57] Jay: I know we won't. but we won't. I'm just want to know how does she feel about it?
[00:05:01] AJ: We so when we first started dating, I was already flying and we started dating in high school. So I've been flying since I was 14 years old,
and it's always been in my blood and something that I've communicated with her that I at some point and going to fly more.
I think. Flying, if you don't know, it takes a lot of money. It takes time, money and passion. And I always had the passion, but having the funds to do so was a little bit of a challenging. So she knew that to be the case. I started my career in sales and we'll talk about this a little bit later, but I actually started my first company TrendKite because I wanted to own an airplane and I didn't know how else to do that.
And I was like, I'm going to go do it. And I'd only had my private license and barely had just gotten it. I ran out of, money in my twenties to continue on. So my late twenties, I picked it back up, and have since completed my instrument rating and my commercial license as we talked about. But, to answer your question, she's been very positive.
I think the thing that's very different, I don't say different from any other pilots because it can happen to anyone. And you mentioned instructors have a lot of hours. and unfortunately, there's been some people even recently in general aviation that have perished that are, the director of the air safety institute, unfortunately passed away, over the winter.
So it's not for the faint of heart, but the thing that you can think about is that. There's redundancy and airplanes and there's a lot of, opportunities to catch failures along the way. I mean, even my plane has 2 engines and has 2 batteries and 2 alternators. And so there's 2 of everything along the way to help, but at the end, it's usually on the pilot and pilot error is the cause of 99 percent of all accidents that are up there.
And it can be as simple as shouldn't have gone flying in that weather system or. Should have waited. This didn't feel right. So a lot of the chain of. A chain reaction that can cause these failures is well studied, but just not understood by all pilots. Unfortunately.
[00:07:01] Jay: yeah, the 99 percent being pilot air is definitely like a thing you learn as you're getting your license that it's, you know, it's rarely just like the airplane falling apart. It's usually you doing something that's not right. so let's, I'm going to, one last question, kind of aviation related. And I don't know if you've, I haven't seen every episode of value props, but just a very cool show. And like, I love, you know, your thoughts and how you put that together. But, How's a founder like a pilot? I mean, what are kind of some of the common things, you know, I mean, how do you see the two things together?
does it make sense? Cause you see a lot of pilots that are CEOs and founders. Like, I don't know if it's like you said, maybe it's the money thing. Maybe it's just like the freedom thing. I don't know what it is, but like how are those two things connected so, so often.
[00:07:39] AJ: I mean, I think we both know Jay, like there's a lot, you could on the 30, 000 foot view, we're talking about flying. There's a lot on the surface that's like has overlap between these two. And so if you think about it or flying, you, it's not about flying the airplane. And in fact, my daughters were 11 and twins that are nine.
Fly my airplane and I have friends that go up and fly my airplane, but it's everything else around the flying of the airplane that actually matters. You have the systems, you have the weather, you have air traffic control, you have navigation as a piece of this. And so keeping all of these things in mind.
things in balance and constantly monitoring them is just like running a business where you have different parts of the business. You have marketing your product, you have engineering, you have customer success, you have sales and making sure that there is a balance between those two and you're constantly doing your scan.
I think that's kind of the same thing. We all have our dashboard and.in our world in the cockpit, there's a full suite of avionics where we're constantly doing that scan. That same thing happens now. That's one side of the other side of it is just from a freedom standpoint. And flying is definitely a hobby where it allows me to clear my mind.
I'm a runner as well. So run and can clear my mind. But, on a Friday afternoon, you might find me on a nice day up in the clouds. So that's the other side of it as well. I do think that my parents who live in the outer banks,they drive up now and they still work in Philadelphia.
We fly down and it's an hour and 15 minute flight with the girls in the back. that ability to travel has been really helpful. I've done trips to Boston for events and conferences. I fly usually Austin to Philadelphia once a year. I have a whole other story where I got stuck in Tunica, Mississippi with a colleague of mine, my director of brand and because an alternator wouldn't come back on.
So we didn't fly. We had to drive to Memphis and then fly to Atlanta. And so sometimes it's a little bit challenging, but at the same time, there's always something to learn and grow from. And that's what it's really all about. Being a founder, CEO is learning and growing every day too.
[00:09:47] Jay: I said that was my last one, but I lied. There's one more. what is your six pack?
[00:09:52] AJ: Oh, so
[00:09:53] Jay: a business,
[00:09:53] AJ: for everyone that doesn't know is these six instruments that are key to flying. and I have a, a Garmin 500 TXI, so it's a touch screen as, there, and then a GTN seven 50 as my, xxi as my navigator also, it's all integrated. The coolest thing I had for a while is I had a Garmin watch.
That was connected to my phone and my phone was connected to my avionics. And so I would literally change the direction of my plane with my watch from time, which is so James Bond, but so ridiculous and not useful in any practical way, but
cool for people out there to see you like your chain. That's so stupid, but it was fun.
The
[00:10:31] Jay: I mean, sometimes it's just about doing cool stuff, you know? all right. So what was the first business you started?
[00:10:37] AJ: first business I started was a company in college called Control The Buzz com. So I'll paint a picture here for you. This is 2005, 2006. And there was a, Australian entrepreneur who created a company called Million Dollar Homepage, and he made all the news. It went viral. And that founder made this site where you could go on the site.
And for a dollar by pixel on the screen, and he would keep the website for like 10 years. I actually think it still exists today. A million dollar homepage. And that pixel was bought by advertisers that could create links, but you had to buy these thousand dollars, a hundred by a hundred squares or whatever.
And so he had, All of the squares and in a week he made a million dollars. And I was like, what, if it's that easy, there's got to be a play here that I could do. So this is before Twitter. It was 2005. So I thought of this idea where it was, instead of like having all these pixels and whatever, it was actually a blank screen.
And there was just one text box. And on that text box, you could write anything you wanted to. You could like, Jay is the best founder. He's awesome. Or Jay sucks. He's not awesome. Whatever you wanted to do. Just had to pay a dollar. to do it. And so I had a dollar and so I'd be controlling the buzz. And, I was just like, loved this idea.
Then we went so many different ways with it and thought about, the idea of like it freezes after a hundred for 10 minutes and a thousand for an hour and so on and so forth. Built the website, got payment processing through Wachovia at the time.
[00:12:11] Jay: Which
is they've been still around more. I don't know if they are
[00:12:14] AJ: Argo bought
[00:12:15] Jay: right. That's right.
[00:12:16] AJ: 2010, but yeah, Wachovia or first national or whatever it was at the bank.
and, we had, you could put in your credit card online in 2005 and we built the site. and I, to promote it, I was at Penn state at the time and I went around to all of the different buildings in between classes. There's this really well known guy who's, I don't know if he's still there, the Willard preacher.
And he was preaching outside the Willard building and I like interrupted him. And I was in Shakespearean garb. That's why I had it from all the Shakespeare contests I had done in Pittsburgh. and I did this whole monologue and then I threw Control The Buzz, like pamphlets up in the air and like ran to another one.
And I think it got written about in the collegian as well, to do this. So, we started it. And then, and the next question you're gonna ask me is about the first customer of control the buzz. I assume Jay. So my first customer was my wife. And so she controlled the buzz and it was just, I don't know, even remember what she put, but then my dad, controlled the buzz and had back and forth.
And I think the total for the site that we made in that month was like 36 dollars. So not because and ultimately. Monetizing it was our downfall. So I learned a lot of things. Like one was focus, try to do too much with the website and the other was monetizing it too early. and I ultimately ran out of time because I went and studied abroad in Italy the next semester and shut it down after that.
But it was technically my first business.
[00:13:45] Jay: And then you went into sales after that, when you came back.
[00:13:49] AJ: Yeah, when I came back, and graduated from Smeal with a degree in economics, I had a lot of different option. I think to your point earlier, you said you did some research just enough to pass. I think that was my call. That's a great. I'm going to use that line. I was like a three, two GPA.
So I wasn't like internships were banging down my door, but I did have a couple different options. I had interned at NFL films, this summer before, which was a really great experience and like fit into the production. But I knew I didn't want to do anything in media or at least on that side of it.
and so I asked an uncle. And my father who were both successful in business, like what type of discipline should I get into? And they both had the same answer, which. Sales, like sales, no one wants to be in sales, right? No one wants to be in sales. And so I thought about that and I was like, well, I don't, it's just the used car salesman.
Like, no. You'll learn everything you need about a business, about revenue, about what drives the top line and the bottom line through sale. And I was like, oh, okay. That makes sense. So I interviewed in the first interview I had was with this company in meltwater in 2007, and it was a group interview, and it was strange.
It felt a little weird. It was a Norwegian company, Swedish, Nordic company, and I got the offer and I took it right away. And that took me on a 5. 5 year journey in cold call sales, through cold Different parts of the country, but also different leadership roles and opportunities.
[00:15:26] Jay: That's a great intro to business. Like you said, founders who don't have that experience or don't have sales training. You know, myself included in this question.what would you recommend they do later? You know, you've got a business you've been running for a couple of years. You don't have like that super strong sales back and you made some sales.
You've, you know, you've got a couple of channels, you're doing a couple of things, but to elevate yourself, which you kind of came into running a business with, how would you recommend somebody kind of catch up or, you know, maybe get some of those skills that maybe they missed out on before they started running that business?
[00:16:00] AJ: Yeah. I mean, first off Jay and you know, this as well as I do the first sale of first few cells, dozen cells, maybe a hundred cells, even our founder led. And that as business owners that like, Has to come through you. No matter what. I think that's something that we all know. Maybe we forget. So your question is like, well, if you have a business that's 10 12 years old and it's changed and you had a sales leader, you yourself haven't been doing the sales.
That's fine. But I think at the end of the day, we all still have to be customer obsessed. And still have to have those connections with our customers and understand them. I myself have 3 to 4 customer conversations a week with our customers. And I think that's still really important. I don't lead our sales team today.
but that's 1st and foremost. Are you doing the customer work and start there? Secondly, I, Wouldn't necessarily say that you have to understand the sales methodology and the process. 100%. You carry the bag, so to speak, similar to, like, for myself and my CTO, Eric, I'm not in their shortcut tickets and or Jira tickets and trying to understand all of the work breakdown that needs to happen for those things.
But I am there as a support. So I think the Okay. Other part of it is just making sure you understand it and that you can talk. intelligently to anyone on the team about any of their deals or opportunities. So one, do you know what opportunities, do you know what CRM you're using? Do you know how they use the CRM?
do you know what marketing automation tool you all are using? How do leads flow from the marketing automation? To that CRM, how does your outbound motion work? How does your SEO work? What tools are you using? Is your content changed? Are you in any communities? Are you on any podcasts? Like these are just the general questions that you should be asking yourself around that because it's a big world out there and a lot's changed in the last couple of years.
So staying up to date and. I mentioned this before, learning and growing is something that I love about entrepreneurship. And that's true today. So even for sales, yeah, I had a sales background in 2007. I ran large sales teams, 150 people for my previous company, 2012, which we'll get to 2018. But those teams were so radically different than what's needed.
Today to win. And that's the important part of what I think is changed in this journey for entrepreneurs and where if you're feeling behind the game and you haven't done any of this, it's okay. It's never too late to jump in and get customer obsessed.
[00:18:36] Jay: Love that answer. So let's get into it. I want to hear, I think TrendKite is next. I want to hear obviously where that came from, but how did you make that pivot to handing sales off to somebody else? I mean, I think that's a huge thing. I mean, I'm going through it now. I mean, you know, we have a. Much smaller company than you did at the end of that.
And that you have now, but it's a big shift for us. And I'm curious how you made that and how you finally pulled the trigger. And like, I'm not going to be the sales guy. I can't scale myself infinitely. I need to hire one person and then a team and then et cetera. So talking about TrendKite, what was it, where'd it come from? and then let's go from there.
[00:19:15] AJ: Yeah, well, first off, I will say that I actually was the sales leader all the way through right up until almost our cell. So I had a bigger team and I had her hired underneath me and I'll talk about that, but I definitely got, earned my keep by being that VP of sales, never having that title, but running all of growth throughout the entire tenure, of my time at.
Quotapath or a TrendKite. Now I've always been afraid to say where I would say Quotapath. Now I just did the opposite. That's hilarious. that's great that happened.my
[00:19:48] Jay: made the switch.
[00:19:49] AJ: So as far as the idea that really stemmed from my experience At Meltwater, the company I was at previously, I was a sales leader on the West coast, kind of like a little tired of what I was doing.
but I had a boss that didn't work super well with, but he did do something that was fundamentally impactful, almost more than any other person has done for me in my entire life. And that was, he took Us to go see Tony Robbins took us as in leaders. I didn't know Tony Robbins was I knew like the movie Shallow Hal I don't know if you've seen that movie with Jack Black and
[00:20:23] Jay: What a reference to Tony Robbins. Yes.
[00:20:26] AJ: That was the only Tony Robbins reference that I could have named at the time. Maybe I could have done the commercials like the telecommercials
that he did for his, like, financial freedom or whatever. But, we went to this event, UPW, Unleash the Power Within. And I went in with like, all right, if I'm going to go, I'll at least like upset, like I'll say that I'm going and actually embrace it as much as I possibly can.
So there's four day event, 12 hour, 12, 15 hour days. You're just on the whole time. And Tony himself is on. He's a huge presence, like six, seven. And the guy has a huge presence. If you haven't seen him speak live, it is a sight to behold, but. It really was the right time. I needed to hear the things that he said, things about limiting beliefs that, Oh, you want to go start your own company, but you don't, you know, you don't have enough money.
You don't have enough education, whatever it is that's holding you back. You want to own an airplane. How are you going to go do that? And I left there just having this like state change. That's literally what he calls it. Having a change of state where I took the tools and said, okay, I'm going to go just do this thing.
And I did the thing that I shouldn't have done, but I did it anyway, which was, I told everyone after leaving that I was going to start a company. And I'm like, what are you going to start on? It doesn't matter. I'm going to go do it. I'm going to own an airplane three years. by the way, it's also one of the goals that I wrote down in a book that I still have in reference back to.
And, I left it and I was just so jazzed up. So when I thought about the things that I knew, well, I knew Meltwater and the thing that was being asked and discussed by our customers was more of these reports, these BI reports that everyone else in the organization was doing all of these type of operational reports through the domos of the world at that time.
And, this was like the first iteration of it. I think Kiss Metrics was like one of the first versions of this, again, dating myself here a little bit. And so I was like, well, I can probably do something on the BI front. Marketing is having its renaissance here. PR could have the same and PR attribution.
So I found the first guy that was also obsessed with, Tony Robbins and I had worked with Matt Allison. So we became co founders immediately. And I said like, look, these, all these clients are asking me for this type of reporting. Let's go do it. So We basically faked it before we made it. We built these reports by hand of like, what journalists should you, be talking to?
It's actually kind of funny. Cause Jenny, I does a lot of this today. And my co founder from, TrendKite, who was, I worked with at Meltwater is now started a company hand raised that does it with Jenny. so basically Taking the reports that we're building by hand and now automating them fully. But we did that at a level with the metrics of like share of voice metrics and impressions and attribution.
And the thing that we, differentiated on is we're able to connect your website to all of your press coverage. So we could tell where all your traffic. So the Nike's Hershey's of the world were like, Oh, loving this because they could be as PR leaders now. Have a seat at the table. so my first customer there was a organization called Open Stack Foundation.
There was a $3, 000 deal. I didn't even mention my Meltwater first deal. I was a 21 year old kid for sure. Kid and my like second cold call. I spoke to this woman, Lori Weintrob. Lori, if you're out there, thank you. I've actually, she's my first customer and funny enough, I still have a relationship with her every few years.
I like, We'll message her. So I messaged her right before this conversation, diabetes research, junior diabetes research Institute of Miami university. and that was my first customer. It was $3, 000 and she was awesome because she helped give me the confidence that I could do this as a first time seller.
And then fast forward. six, seven years to TrendKite, my first customer was another $3, 000 contract. And that was, Lauren was, Lauren Sal, that was the name of the contact, the VP of marketing. And,she was just fantastic. It was great to, to go in person. She was based in Austin. We went through the reports and she loved it.
And then that group team. And company grew from 0 to 25, 000, 000 in five years, four or five years, a lot of ups and downs through that time, but it was an awesome experience leading and building that team.
[00:24:44] Jay: I had, the guy, did you guys do the fire walk or the coal
[00:24:48] AJ: No, yeah. Oh, yeah. I didn't burn my feet for sure.
[00:24:51] Jay: I met the guy who ran those. He was on this, he was on our podcast. He was the guy who like orchestrated
[00:24:55] AJ: well, if you.
[00:24:56] Jay: his own show. He has his own company now that just does firewalks.
[00:25:00] AJ: You should introduce us because if he did this, he would remember the upw I was at. It was San Jose in 2012 because it made the press because a ton of people got their feet burned. I was not one of them
because I followed directions.
[00:25:14] Jay: Yes, I know. Dave, I think is his name. and you may have been one of the scared folks that he was talking about having to course,onto the
[00:25:21] AJ: no, I like running on that. I was. Stoked to do it. I got so excited about it. Like day one, I was all in from the moment Tony started speaking on that first day.
[00:25:33] Jay: I love that. So very, you seem like that kind of guy. You seem like you just dive in headfirst. I.
[00:25:37] AJ: I'm an all or nothing. Like, as my wife says, like, Oh, she'll roll her eyes
at me because I'm very much an all or nothing guy.
[00:25:44] Jay: Well, I think that's a very common characteristic,
right? I mean, you don't go very far in business by like dipping your toe in and like doing it halfway. So, well, let's go to Quotapath, my friend. I want to talk a little bit about the exit of Trendkite, but I mean, I know you had a nice sale there.
[00:26:02] AJ: You started Quotapath, like what was that end of the journey, like a trend path leading into Quotapath? Trend path. You just created a new,
[00:26:10] Jay: I just
did both of them together. It's TrendKite into QuotaPath, man. It's, I don't know if, I think they're just great names. I like both of them. I put them
[00:26:16] AJ: there's a truck. It was always the tougher one because that K in there was a little harder for folks. 2018, we had moved back to Philadelphia from Austin. My wife had gotten tired of the hot, the heat. She'd always we had planned on moving back day one. She actually promised that we'd move back in 2 years and 5 years later.
She was like, Hey. AJ, you can whatever you stay down here in startup land and do your little fun thing, but I'm going back. so she went back and I was commuting every week for eight months and then we got an LOI from Cision PR Newswire in 2018. And that was a good opportunity to exit, stage left.
And I had already really started Quotapath honestly, at that point in time, based off of the challenges of compensation. So we're a sales compensation management platform. we help, thousands of companies, SMBs in mid markets, companies, even like masterclass or seat geek, recorded future and we help them with their sales comp management and understanding what their sales comp should look like.
But we also do the actual commission tracking for the reps to have visibility into this and then all the way to the payouts side of the process. And we have some. Exciting announcements there. so I jumped in pretty quickly. I've raised funds. I've actually done 10 fundraising rounds in 10 years over that time.
I haven't raised in two years and I don't plan on raising anytime soon, but I had gone through a lot of fundraising and a lot of different variations of that, which they themselves, as you know, Jay, that's its own type of cell. that takes a special skill set and is nuanced and every single round I've done has been a little bit different.
I actually wasn't planning on doing a venture institutional round in my, pre seed or seed for that matter. And in 2018, I got a call on my cell phone as I was working on this from a VC, Chris Shonk, his partner at ATX Venture Partners. And he said, AJ, I've heard so much about you in Austin. Like, I know you're working on something new.
It's in go to market. We had a company that exited too early in my opinion in this and space. And I'm like, want to go all in like, and do this with you. I'm like, Chris, this first time we're talking, I don't know you like. So come on by, come by the office. I'll chat with you. We had a great conversation.
And two hours later, he's like, I'm going to send you a term sheet tomorrow morning. Heard that story before. Sure. And no, he did. He sent me a term sheet. Actually, I think it was that night. He sent me a term sheet. It was just so we were just so excited. And away we went. And in 2018, I think the world was Very different.
It was still very much inside sales teams. Teams were still working through the phones. It wasn't as much boiler room. I would say. I think marketing helped find like finding the right buyer and your ideal customer profile and product market fit. All those things were top of mind for founders. So it wasn't just about building the like the best sales team because you cared about the customer on the retention and the renewal front.
And, that was something that I thought a lot about with, QuotaPath and but we wanted to build a bottom up approach. So we start with the sales rep and then move our way up. and that's changed. I mean, it's changed a lot. Our buyers rev ops and finance, but we've built an end to end platform.
and it's been awesome. And I think we were talking about before this chain. I honestly couldn't remember my first customer. We say customer here. That is one thing that I will actually call out. there's a difference between client and customer and a trend kind of probably didn't care. It was a client or customer or whatever quote about that care a lot about that word.
Customer is someone from a platform that uses your tool over client. And there's like a whole. Level of services, just different expectations around it versus I wanted to build something that was scalable that anyone could come and see themselves using in some way without feeling like you have to have human interaction,
that's a quote or an idea from, built to sell, I think. I remember that from, I've reread that recently and it, got me thinking about hiring two salespeople instead of one, but I love that distinction. It is very important. I will call out if you're ever hiring sales teams, always hire. This is a practical piece of advice. Always hire them in groups of at least two hundred percent. That's still something that I
[00:30:29] Jay: is it still relevant? I mean, even in
today and like remote world and like all this, you still think
[00:30:33] AJ: I mean, maybe there's an enterprise seller with specialty. That's a little bit different that I think that's different. But if you're in the more of a transactional, even with remote work or mid market, I am still very much on the, like you want to hire, two people that like, I've seen this over and over again with, companies that I advise or friends, companies, it doesn't matter.
It's one data point that I could point to and say, like, I know it anecdotally, this is definitely true, but I've looked at it and researched it. Yeah. I believe it still holds true today and I can have a debate with any of you out there that disagree with me on that.
[00:31:07] Jay: it makes sense. I don't have an opinion on it yet. like I said, we're still working on our 1st. So I think that's a fair, I mean, considering you created and run so many sales teams, I'll take your word for it.
[00:31:19] AJ: I'm still learning and growing. If someone out there is like, wants to hard disagree with me on this, please reach out to me. You can find me on LinkedIn. It's easy
[00:31:27] Jay: It
is very easy to find you, you are all
over the place. You're on all sorts of podcasts and you have your own and, you know, I even found you a dinner, which was very, I did not expect to see you walking in, which is a great surprise for me. I was very happy to see you. Any advice for somebody who's starting a product company in 2024?
[00:31:47] AJ: well, this is a conversation I had on a recent episode of Topline. I would not actually start a software company today, like right now in this moment. and I think there's a lot of eagerness around what AI is going to become. I just don't think the early adopters as founders are ultimately going to be the windows, unless you're in that like core infrastructure.
In the, like, certainly open AI and Microsoft error, but even like the core weaves of the world, NVIDIA, I think that there's a lot there. They're all doing really well and we're really early. But if you're building software on top of any of these, you really have to understand your use case. And something that Mark Roberge, a partner at stage 2 said really recently, is that there's He's talked a lot of founders recently, and there's not enough founders that are really thinking about customer problems solved in the future.
They're not enough future scaping of this, someone like Mike Maples, Mike Mcconnell's junior floodgate partner, also first investor in like every Valley company out there. He has said this where he looks for that greatness, starting greatness is the name of his podcast, and he looks for that greatness and that mental model of who's out there and thinking in this way.
Peter Teal talks about this in the contrarian point of view. Josh Koppelman here in Philadelphia. I think that's something that I'm not seeing enough of either. Mark said that, but I agree with that. So the other side of it is that each of these departments, marketing, I Totally changing sales changing. and that's just really challenging to work when you already have an unknown unknowns in startup world, you want to control and de risk as much of it as you possibly can.
And I think there's just too much out there to, de risk that makes it, fraught with execution risk across the board. So I will say that. however, and I'm going to bring it back to where we started this conversation in like the wellness health aspect of it. There is so much opportunity in today.
There's never been more opportunity to disrupt than there ever has been. So I'm saying, you know, Don't start it today because I think you'll go through a lot of headache and challenges and sure you'll learn. I think you'll just learn a lot faster if closer to the end of this year, beginning of next year to start a company.
and I say that because I have all the time in the world to evaluate what's going on.
[00:34:09] Jay: you have a little bit of a different vantage point, I think now,to wait. but I mean, I think it's great advice and it's very choppy. You know, that's what it feels like. It feels just very choppy and
[00:34:18] AJ: been, I mean, we've gone to Jay, you know, this, like we, this startup, the ups and downs and rollercoasters I've gone through versus TrendKite is just night and day. I mean, I have some stories, certainly from training. I have lots of stories where two weeks of running out of money at one point.
And I had a large, we had 20 people on the payroll, like it was a pretty big deal, and had to find the funds. I've had those stories. Quote about it. And like just the amount of challenges with the pandemic, with remote work, with, interest rates, with buyer behavior, with marketing, with venture funding, with.
A. I. Like a lot of those things have just like, we'll just hit you and you're just like you take them and you're like, okay, we're gonna move on. But if you're a founder and you're like coming into this and you don't have that armor plated, it's nothing against you. If you're like gung ho on starting, I'm not going to stop anyone from starting their own company.
Certainly not me. I'm just saying from my vantage point, I don't believe that today is the best time to start a company, but I do believe that will change by the end of the year.
[00:35:16] Jay: fair enough. All right. I do want to hit on health because, you have probably one of the most intense. Health regimens, that I've heard of recently. definitely a throwback, to, you know, just like, I think I mentioned Jack Dorsey in our conversation, you know, and then the Nicole pledge thing.
first of all, and I told this to my wife the other day too. I said, do you know how AJ found out about some of his health stuff? And she's like, what are you talking about? AJ? And I was like the guy I've been raving about for the past week and a half since dinner. I said his Apple Watch and she's, you know, then she was hooked and she wanted to know about it and I told her the whole thing.
So give me the CliffsNotes version. how, you know, what happened? What changes did you make and kind of where are you at today?
[00:35:57] AJ: Yeah, I mean, health is one of those things that we, this is an all or nothing thing and conversation and today I'm in a great spot, but I just set the stage. I've always had this, relationship. We all have relationships with health. My relationship was started when I was eight years old and I found out that.
I thought I had a heart murmur, but it was actually, I only have one working lung. I have two lungs, but only one works. and so I'm a runner and I ran across country. It's never stopped me from anything. Obviously I fly planes, but it's always like I see a cardiologist every other year. It was every six months at that time, just to make sure there weren't any issues.
And with my heart, and when you found a company that the amount of stress that it hits all of us in different ways. So I've had multiple trips to the E. R. over the years. Not I've never had a panic attack. Interestingly enough, my first one was, stress with the ulcer and taking an antibiotic that my body reacted very poorly to.
And I thought I had rheumatoid arthritis, which actually had reactive arthritis. So I would wake up every morning with a different not just soreness, but just like pain where I couldn't think about anything but the pain and then hives all over my body. And that happened for six weeks. Then most recently, last summer, I was at Shore House with my kids and I was working and met them for dinner.
I sat down and like, I, Told you Jay and the other CEOs. I, just didn't feel right. My heart felt like it was literally going to pound out of my chest. It did feel like a little bit of a panic attack at that time. and my watch went off for atrial fibrillation for a fib. It was 150 beats per minute. I had to go to the hospital, went to the ER because of my condition.
And yeah, I was there for a few days and it was not fun. And like, okay, we're going to shock you back in to, rhythm at this point. We'll give you beta blockers, do all of these things. And ultimately like left there with holy cow, this is not good. So it's been a long journey since then. I didn't do make a million different changes overnight.
I've added things along the way. Okay. ice plunge is one of those. I do 12 minute meditation a day in 42 degree weather. I run. I just did a 10 mile run on Saturday, but I do work out. I do a peloton hit with my wife in the morning or strength chain training. and then I will do a run in the afternoon.
So like right after this, I'm going to go for a nice. 30 minute run, just a short run will be a three mile run. and eating and also intermittent fast, which I've never, I've done intermittent fasting over the years as well. and yeah, there's a lot of people like Peter T that I've listened to that kind of talk about some of the benefits of some of these things.
It's not for everyone. Ultimately, the big change to me was confidence and confidence has changed. A lot of things has changed my outlook that, you know, exercises led to energy. Energy has led to sleeping well has led to more present in conversations and more proactive, that aside, I have a phenomenal management team and I'm very lucky and blessed with my management team to be able to go out and do all these things that we're doing and I'm doing and, you know, still find time to hang out with the family.
[00:39:06] Jay: I love it. I love it very much. and we'll have to, add each other on Peloton cause I'm a Peloton
[00:39:12] AJ: What's my wife's peloton account? She's coming up on a thousand. So I
[00:39:16] Jay: Is she,
[00:39:16] AJ: got to do a live event. We
[00:39:18] Jay: I try to make, you know, everybody does it. And then you go on there. And then like, you know, it doesn't, they don't say anything. You're like, God, come on, Ben. You know, I'm Ben's my guy, Ben Aldous.
He's
[00:39:27] AJ: Ben out. Yeah. And he's British, right? Ben
[00:39:30] Jay: Yes. Yes. Ben's
[00:39:31] AJ: Is that,
[00:39:31] Jay: like,
yeah,
that's actually on my list. I'm going to go to the
[00:39:34] AJ: let's say the phrase is awesome stuff. Awesome stuff, guys.
[00:39:37] Jay: But yeah, and, belters and bangers. He always has belters and bangers that are playing. So he's a lot of fun. All right. last question for the man who's done lots of awesome things in his life. if you do anything on earth and you knew you couldn't fail, would it be?
[00:39:50] AJ: I heard this. you said on earth, but I'm going to cheat on this.
[00:39:53] Jay: I like where this is going. I like where this is going. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:39:56] AJ: Yeah. So I've recently like almost finished Three Body Problem, which is a series and it just will take you to a whole different world. but like, I've loved, I was an astronomy major in college for half of my, I'm not, I wasn't, I didn't finish my degree.
There got to the math. It was a little too difficult. I just love, space. I went to space camp when I was a kid and science. so the idea of colonizing another planet. So I'll say the moon for now. And I didn't colonize the moon because everyone called colonize them colonize Mars.
but yeah, I've, the, what's the show that's on apple TV that is also awesome.
That talks about colonizing. It says if Russia had won the space race, it's four seasons. It's fantastic.
But anyway, I would colonize the moon.
[00:40:40] Jay: Love
it. Nobody's ever said colonize the moon. So that's a great one. I knew we had some connection beyond all this other stuff. We just love space. Yeah.
[00:40:47] AJ: love space.
[00:40:48] Jay: love it so much. We have a, I
create,
[00:40:50] AJ: a stars all day long
[00:40:52] Jay: it's just, you know, it's a very, and astrophotography is like such a, like an
[00:40:56] AJ: that I have to get it because I'm getting more into it. As you can see, with the setup of the studio, I'm getting more into, film on the other side of it. And I
[00:41:04] Jay: Well, I have, yeah, there's 115 millimeter, telescope on my table behind me. So if you ever want to, learn more about it, feel free. we'll, chase some stars together. AJ, just a pleasure, my friend, by far one of the coolest, most accomplished, just. And I don't look, I don't gush or like fanboy over many people that I have on the show, but you are, like just a level above.
And I can't thank you enough for your time today. People wanna reach out to you directly. How do they do that?
[00:41:32] AJ: I think, I mean, I still, my LinkedIn inbox has gotten tough, so I'm actually going to switch over. If you want to email me, aj@quotapath.Com reference this episode and I promise you I'll respond. I had a couple of questions in there, so if you reference those, you get bonus points for
Went in there. All right. And I'll, I'm gonna connect you with the Fire Walker guy, after this. done. Matt, you said his name was. I
Dave.
[00:41:52] Jay: I'll, yeah. we'll get you guys connected. All right. Well, AJ, you're the best man. people check out QuotaPath. Check out AJ, send 'em an email, and enjoy your run, this afternoon.
All right, buddy. Thanks for being on.
[00:42:01] AJ: Thanks, Jay.
[00:42:02] Jay: See you brother