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How TOPO Became a Dominant Player in the B2B Space
In this episode, host Shahin Hoda welcomes Craig Rosenberg, Co-Founder of TOPO for a candid chat about the early days and how the team built the organisation from the ground up.
Join them for a discussion about starting a B2B business, how they broke through and became a dominate player in B2B. Craig also unveils the secret sauce that made his company what it is today while providing a masterclass on personal branding.
This episode’s guest:
How TOPO Became a Dominant Player in the B2B Space
Craig Rosenberg, Co-Founder and Chief Analyst at TOPO
Craig combines 20+ years of sales and marketing experience with TOPO’s high-growth dataset to provide specific, actionable recommendations that drive predictable, scalable growth. He and his team support over 200 companies, ranging from the largest technology companies in the world to early-stage startups.
He helps B2B companies grow revenue by enabling sales, marketing, and sales development excellence.
Connect with Craig on LinkedIn
- [00:23] About TOPO's business and origins
- [07:25] Taking from the innovators to give to the people who want to innovate
- [10:57] How TOPO succeeded in researching big names
- [18:59] How Craig built his personal brand
- [27:57] It's hard to work hard
Resources mentioned on this episode:
- About TOPO
- Some articles by Craig:
The "No Top Ramen" Rule (or 4 things we did when we started TOPO)
Predicting the Future in Marketing, Sales, and Sales Development
Market Trends Drive Sales Technology Investments - About Tippit’s acquisition
- The Gartner Business Value Model
- About Dreamforce
- Optimizely' current site
- The funnelholic blog
- Dan Waldschmidt
About the Growth Colony Podcast:
On this podcast, you'll be hearing from B2B founders, CMOs, marketing & sales leaders about their successes, failures, what is working for them today in the B2B marketing world and everything in between.
Hosted by Shahin Hoda & Alexander Hipwell, from xGrowth
Get in touch!
We would love to get your questions, ideas and feedback about Growth Colony, email podcast@xgrowth.com.au
Episode Full Transcript:
[00:23] Shahin Hoda Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode. I'm Shahin Hoda with xGrowth. And today I'm talking to Craig Rosenberg, Co-Founder and Chief Analyst at TOPO. Now, who is TOPO you asked, TOPO's team researches the fastest-growing B2B organisations in the world across their sales and marketing strategy, people, process, technology, and tactics. And then they turn this data into actionable insights for their customers. Also they go about and share all this information, well, like place a lot of it for the larger community. Today, we're talking about how TOPO became a dominant player in the B2B space, and an advisor to some of the giants in our world like AWS, Microsoft, Adobe, and the list keeps going on. Craig, thanks for joining us.
[01:09] Craig Rosenberg Yeah, thanks for having me. That was the best intro, I couldn't have given. So I'll just leave it at that.
[01:19] Shahin Hoda It's an absolute pleasure having you. And I'm very excited. Now Craig, you have an enormous amount of experience, both in sales and marketing. I mean, before TOPO, you did years of consulting, and sales development, processes. You sold previous businesses of your own, held big positions, VP of Marketing, and so on and so forth. It goes on, where did TOPO come from?
[01:47] Craig Rosenberg Well, I appreciate you bringing up the experience. I think you're ready to hear the TOPO story. So, Scott Albro, who's our CEO and Founder and I had worked together at a previous company that was sold to Ziff Davis. It was a business media company called Tippit. And we had, we were trying to figure out what we wanted to do next. We both had backgrounds in sales and marketing, I mean, across the revenue process. And so to figure out what we wanted to do, and we just started consulting. Anything, sales and marketing. I mean, if you wanted to pay us, we would try it.
[02:30] Craig Rosenberg And so let's just say over the course of like a five-month window, maybe we did cash sales, field sales, the inside sales, SDR content marketing, demand gen, I mean, the gamut. And, and we were just doing freestyling consulting and whatever. And we were trying to figure out what we wanted to do next. And what we noticed was no matter what type of project we did, everyone wanted to know, what are the best companies doing? So like, for example, if we're doing inside sales, this is great, but what does Salesforce do? Or we're doing demand-gen, they say this is great, but what does Marketo do? What does Maria Pergolino do?
[03:15] Craig Rosenberg We started to realise that there was this common thread, which was this realisation that massive innovation had happened in B2B sales and marketing. And there was a craving to understand what that looked like. And so we said, okay, well, maybe there's a business here. And so, we went to our colleagues in the space, we said, look, we have this great idea. We're gonna go, and we're going to study the amazing things happening in the world's fastest-growing companies. And we're going to figure it out across their marketing and sales, we're going to package it up in research, is that a good idea? And everyone said yes.
[03:51] Craig Rosenberg And we had this one nine-question, which was, okay, we agree but like, information so easy to get. Like, why would anybody buy anything from us? And people said, well, there's one thing that's missing is, you know, you can go to a blog post and get tips, you know, or, you know, like a set of tips, you know, those are easy to write there. You can go to more expensive places, get frameworks, but nobody tells you how to do it. So we had the second part of TOPO, which was what we say our mantra specificity wins. Could we take the studies we do have the world's fastest-growing companies and of course, study their strategy, people, process, technology, but could we double click into the tactics, figure out what they actually did?
[04:42] Craig Rosenberg So instead of saying, if you're an SDR, send emails and voicemails, we'd say the best companies send 13 emails and voicemails. And they customise them and it looks like this: Could we take it down to the level where people could actually operationalise it? And that was that second piece. And then we use that to launch TOPO, frankly, is bootstrapped. We made a couple bets as founders together. One was we would pay ourselves what we are worth from the get go. And that meant hitting monthly numbers together out the gate.
[05:18] Shahin Hoda That's hard.
[05:19] Craig Rosenberg That's hard. But it was what we decided to do. And the second thing was, could we sleep at night, doing what we're doing? And I think that meant a lot, right? We were passionate. And so we weren't making anything up, we were actually doing something we really like to do. And as long as it kept like that, then we'd be good. And whatever happens happens. And so that was the beginning of TOPO. There was one other thing I would add to that, that I think was a really good lesson for me. I don't know what it is. It's this very simple thing that Scott did, who's the CEO, when we're trying to figure out what business we wanted to run, and we ended up where we ended up.
[06:00] Craig Rosenberg But like, imagine being back in the middle of trying to figure that out. We had a bunch of ideas. So I make it sound so simple, right? Then we had this great idea. And then we ran with it, we had like 30, okay? And Scott, you know, when we're trying to figure it, it takes me out to breakfast and he says like, I want to tell you something, I want to ask you a question. So we don't even have to order or whatever, so this is what he said, "we really have two choices." Choice number one is to strive for disruption, that means we invent something and try to convince everyone they need it. Or we copy a business model that works and try and do it better.
[06:38] Craig Rosenberg And I looked at him and I said, I'm old, man. I'm going number two. And that was the other thing. So you know, we really were, you know, Scott, that was brilliant by him. He said, okay, great. We're gonna, let's model this business after the kings, right? We'll model this after Gartner. And there's a lot of public business information about what they did. And it was great, because we had a model to work off of, you know, we did a couple other startups before, and it was like, you know, we were experienced, but we were still sort of figuring out what models look like. And this one, we took a blueprint that we knew worked and just tried to execute it. And that was very early on. And that was a really good piece of advice by him.
[07:25] Shahin Hoda That's so cool. That's so cool. I mean, yeah, I totally understand what you mean by figuring out a model. Because I mean, we, you know, we try to do that and it just constantly is, like, are so what do we do here? And how do we optimise that? And let's, let's get insights and consultants and and talk to them and figure out, you know, is this the right thing to do? Is this not the right thing to do? That is, that's really cool, that you picked that model and made it better. And I mean, I love that. I love that. Now, at the beginning, one of the things that you had in mind was to take from the rich and gifts to the poor, right? What did you find there?
[08:08] Craig Rosenberg Gosh, you put it that way, man, I would say we would take from the innovators and give to the people who desire to innovate. Actually, that was probably, that's what we knew we had a business was that we were studying these high growth companies that were doing amazing things. And what we learned is they, more than anybody else, wanted to know what the other people were doing. So whereas we thought, as you said, we would take the stuff we were learning and call it you know, San Francisco, look, let's face it, B2B SaaS was innovating like crazy. In everything, from their products to their sales and marketing.
[08:48] Craig Rosenberg So we spent a lot of time studying, you know, these companies that these software companies. So we thought, you know, look, we'll take it from San Francisco, New York, we will bring it to, you know, these areas where they're still sort of picking, you know, in our case might be the Midwest and the manufacturers or whatever, so we could teach them what we've learned from these folks. And that's still the case by, I mean, they still want to know, it just ended up to be very efficient for us, which was, you know, the best companies want to know what the best companies are doing. And so, a target research base became the target customer base.
[09:24] Craig Rosenberg And that was, I mean, that was pleasantly surprising. It was very efficient. I mean, shoot, we spent three and a half years selling basically driving up and down the freeway. And that was but that, you know, look, that's a lesson for all of us is that people that become great, don't just make it up. I mean, they're not Albert Einstein. They are similar to the story I told about how we modeled ourselves after someone else. And you should take in as much information about different models that are working in different best practices and to continue to optimise yourself. It's funny, I got to tell you this. There's once this company, the CEO said, well, we don't believe in best practices we make our own. I said, that's great most companies do.
[10:09] Craig Rosenberg But they start by understanding what the best practices are. Because you could spend a lot of time inventing the ones that were already out there. And in that, I think, is a recognition of what a lot of these companies were doing. I mean, they were doing, we had companies that were at the top of the data set of people that were doing the most amazing things that well, you know, that bought a full slate of all the information that they could, so that they could know, everything that was happening out there. And so it was both great for the business, but it was also, you know, eye opening about, you know, what these, you know, operations that are at peak excellence, you know, how they keep remaining peak, right, is, they want to know, they have a insatiable thirst for learning of what's happening out there and stay on top of the game.
[10:57] Shahin Hoda And how would you get to these companies? I mean, you know, we're talking some big names, massive organisations, you know, very complex sales in order to be able to penetrate these, these accounts, with these some of the people that you know, from before, was it some of the existing brand that you had, or how would you get into some of these, the Googles and the AWS and the Adobe's in the Salesforce of the space where you were starting,
[11:26] Craig Rosenberg There's a two sided part of the business model, which is to do. We were able, there was a safe play, which was we wanted to research them. And I think you'll find that if you get the right people, they want you to research them. So that was one track in. But the go-to market was very raw and very basic. Scott and I made an agreement, because remember, we wanted to make our salaries out of the gate. That's really hard. I mean, we're old, so like, our salaries are in a good range. And to get there, we'd have to hit some big numbers initially. And so we made a pact that each of us would take 10 meetings a week. And we actually have pretty open rules on the meetings.
[12:10] Craig Rosenberg We said, meet with anybody who is the right person, or we can justify a route to the right person. And so that's interesting. If you think about what I mean, shoot, we met with engineers that, you know, we would take a meeting with. We would, you know, talk to them and tell them what we're trying to do. And we had a couple rules on the calls. One was, obviously if we could do anything to help them, we would. It was a wide range of different types of people. But number two is we just tell him. Hey, here's what we're trying to do.
[12:50] Craig Rosenberg And then the other part of the role was at the end of the call, we would always say, based on what you know about what we're trying to do, who do you recommend that we would talk to. And so those first call of 20 meetings led to another 20 meetings, because what we realised is something that I've been teaching people for a long time I just found out is real, I wasn't lying. People want to help people that they like. And it was amazing. And it I mean, honestly, Scott held me to that meeting number for four years of the business. And occasionally he whips it back out on me. And it's really easy.
[13:27] Craig Rosenberg It's activity based. You know, it's funny. Everyone says, you know, activity base that I just believe in, you know, I learned that and just watching other people at solid activity creates more solid activity. We found deals from places we would never have thought of. One thing we did learn was that the deal was never a straight line. We rarely got on a, you know, went to meet an old contact, and they said, you know what, I want you to come in and go do something. What always happens is they said, this is awesome. Let me think about who you might talk to, then they would never refer to us. Then two weeks later, they say, hey, I just met with Jim for breakfast, you guys should talk.
[14:07] Craig Rosenberg And they would do that. And that's where we got the deals, the deals were like the friends of the friends. And that's how we initially got our business. Now, you might say, well, where did your list come from? LinkedIn. We just went through, we downloaded our contact lists out on LinkedIn and started going down the line and catching up, man, I caught up. Let me tell you something. Everyone should do this. I caught up with buddies from college. I caught up with people I hadn't talked to in 20 years. I talked to a cousin who I'd never met. And it was awesome.
[14:42] Craig Rosenberg And by the way, we also learned so much, right? I mean, you're in the, you know the game. I mean that we learn so much by throwing a landing page out there. You also learn so much by going and talking to people about what you want to talk about. And we would come back each week with our learnings. You know, along the way if I talk to this person, they thought this or this didn't really work. And yeah, so it was a, that was a pretty simple thing. And here's the other thing we did. Out of the gate, because remember, we were following formulas that other people had done like the kings of the game like Gartner and stuff.
[15:18] Craig Rosenberg And so we stood up events in the first month of our lifetime. We just said, we're gonna have an event. And Scott said, well shoot, how many people are going to come? I said, 20. He's like, you sure? How are we gonna get 20? I said, we will. I said, we will. We did. And we just kept the events going, we did them every month and a half, and that they became part of our business model. But initially, it was a great way for us to add another channel to what we're doing, and we did it out of the gate.
[15:52] Craig Rosenberg And by the way, you know, we were, there's a story I had heard about Marc Benioff, who, when he started Salesforce said, now we're having a conference the minute he started the company. He hired his best friend, I think, from high school, and just said, you're gonna run Dreamforce, this big event, and you're gonna go do it this year, and it's going to be a big event and just stood it up and said, to hell with it, we're having this customer conference. Well, we don't have that many customers. We don't know what we're doing. Who cares? Do it.
[16:21] Craig Rosenberg And we were like, that was our thing. We say, you know, we're gonna do it. We're just gonna say we're running events, and people are going to come through hell or high water. And now, that was another sort of channel that we did. And then I'd say one other thing we did was remember, we had this thing where we said, who, what are the best companies in the world doing? Well, we followed that mantra too. Like our website, Scott said, well, we got to be cool.
[16:45] Craig Rosenberg So and we copied Optimizely. Yes, Optimizely, we copied your site a long time ago, actually, we told them that one time, and they said, yeah, it did look familiar. Because Scott said, look, either it's I mean, pun intended, it's an optimised site. And, and so let's copy it. Scott thought of the little things, you know, because he knew we wanted to be cool, right? Because we were studying great stuff. And he thought about everything, like, what kind of computers like I had an old ThinkPad because I was at break stuff all the time. Say no, you're rolling with a Mac. And, you know, we're gonna, your signature has to look like because he just thought of all these little things that went with the brand.
[17:25] Shahin Hoda As an email signature, right?
[17:36] Craig Rosenberg Yeah. anything a customer would see he wanted it to be on brand.
[17:31] Shahin Hoda I love that. Yeah.
[17:32] Craig Rosenberg And many people don't think about brands you know, when they started. They're thinking, raw demand gen, they're not thinking about brands. And he had a vision for the brand of innovation. And so he looked at the ideas of the world, right? He saw how they sort of presented themselves and how things looked and felt and he took those little things from them and tried to infuse it into how we engaged with the world. It's pretty cool.
[18:59] Shahin Hoda How did you go about building your own brand? Because I mean, your name is pretty well known in the space and you're referenced quite a lot. How did you start that? Is that something that happened along with TOPO? Was that something that you push separately? How did that work?
[19:16] Craig Rosenberg Oh, man, you keep feeding me these great pitches here because I can talk forever.
[19:22] Shahin Hoda You know, actually, you know where we should start with that. Where is the story of a colonel coming in? What's the story? I know some people call you the colonel. What's that about?
[19:34] Craig Rosenberg I got to tell you something, man because we just met. I have so many nicknames. I have pockets of these, like communities of people that I'm friends with. And they all have different names for me. And so there's this like, sort of it's a smaller crew of folks, and they decided to nickname me Colonel Sanders. And I remember when they said it, I was like, what are you talking about? They go, don't you get it? And I said, no, I still don't. But um, and they went with it and it became really funny.
[20:12] Craig Rosenberg Okay, and then they made t-shirts. I have a T shirt I should award, it's inappropriate actually. The colonel is presenting his displeasure with people. And, and they just had fun with it. So I actually would say, it's not a good nickname. It's a good story in a cab with it. And that it's just funny to call me that, you know, it's like, I'm sure when you heard it is oh, he's known as a colonel. It's like, yeah, basically, not that many people call me the colonel. But it's this one crew. And they had a lot of fun with it. A lot of fun.
[20:47] Shahin Hoda I could imagine. I could imagine.
[20:49] Craig Rosenberg Yeah, I've had a lot of nicknames over the years. I'm just that kind of guy.
[20:53] Shahin Hoda Let's talk about your personal brand.
[20:55] Craig Rosenberg This is a crazy story. Because I got to tell you, everyone always tells these intentional stories. Like the story of founding TOPO, there's a lot of intentionality, right? Like, we were like, we're going to be like this, we're going to be like this. But the individual brand happened like this. So we were, you know, basically Tippit, which was a company that Scott was the CEO of. And I was helped to found there, a business media company, but we came from enterprise software. So marketing was still young. I mean, I'm talking like, we founded that thing before marketing automation took off like 2005.
[21:28] Craig Rosenberg What we, our premise was, we were going to create a business media company, take enterprise software veterans, and learn from the B2C digital marketing guys, right? Because they were just crushing it, right? SEM, and SEO, all these things. So we brought on all these San Francisco hipster digital marketing gurus, and we founded the company. We started, and we're just going along, and then Scott calls me downstairs, we had a two story. And I come in the office, yeah, what's up? He said, oh, you're gonna start a blog. I said, what? He's like, you're gonna start a blog. I said, well, how do I do that? He's like, we're a media company dude, go figure it out.
[22:13] Craig Rosenberg And so I go up, I call our SEO guys are getting Bryan Provost in San Antonio. I call him. And he's just as, he was helpful, but he was just the same as Scott. He gets on and says, what do you need dude, just start a blog, what the hell, go look at a blog and go do it. I see. But I don't even know where to start. So the first thing you have to do is go get a URL. And so um yeah, I just went through names and he's like, you go on the site, you go figure out if someone owns it. So the first name that I came to that was so excited about after days of thinking was Funnelnomics. And it was taken. Actually a company called ReachForce had had that URL at the time. And then I tried all these other names, whatever.
[23:01] Craig Rosenberg And I went down to Scott said, Scott, I'm struggling. Come on. Are you serious? What do you do about it? So I really want Funnelnomics but someone took it. So he's like, Look, look at me. You're not a Funnelnomics guy. He's like, you're sort of crazy. You're edgy. Do something else. Like I don't know Funnelholic. Okay, and I looked it up and it's available, bought it, okay. So then I called Brian again and said, okay, now what do I do? I got a URL. He's like, okay, you go get WordPress and go start writing. I said about what? He said. dude why are you asking me, hangs up, he's like whatever... So I just started writing. I got a man, I looked at those old posts, they're so bad.
[23:41] Craig Rosenberg And you know, and he would humor me on my call. Well what am I supposed to write about? I wrote a bunch of posts, and he wrote back. Oh, those posts are terrible, like, so give me an idea. He's like, go take a post out there that you like or don't like, and go comment on it, link back to it. So basically, this is a crazy story. But this guy had hacked Wikipedia, and made the mistake of bragging about it on the internet. And as you know, you don't do that. The Wikipedia police just zapped him. So it was an incredible story. It's perfect for me, a guy who loves humor. Post goes up, we cracked Wikipedia. Two minutes later, boom, off Wikipedia. And the next blog post is "There off Wikipedia."
[24:31] Craig Rosenberg So I wrote a post on that, just linking back to a ton of stories and laughing. And then my traffic just goes through the roof, you know. Wikipedia has this army. And all these guys were trading the posts and a couple more patents and we want to write on your site. And the guy who cracked Wikipedia, he's like, interview me for your site. And I was like, oh my god, I'm a media company. And I kind of got the traffic going. Then once a traffic goes like well, I gotta keep writing and I got to write better. And so, then I started to get a little more serious, start to figure things out. And what happened was, so I was an accident tourist. And then you know, the team's like, well, you got to get on Twitter.
[25:12] Craig Rosenberg Doing webinars, and they needed marketing automation needed people. That could be thought leaders in marketing automation. There wasn't a ton, you know, the research groups hadn't picked it up yet. I wrote something on marketing automation. Because I loved it, I thought it was a great idea. And I became a marketing automation thought leader. I mean, literally, I wrote one or two things where I call well when it comes to your webinar. And then the other one said, oh, we want you to speak at a webinar. And, um, they just started, I came in the mix. And then once you know, you're a marketing automation thought leader, then I had to dig deep, I had to write about it more and all this stuff.
[25:15] Craig Rosenberg I'm like, what, what's Twitter? They're like, get on Twitter, go get the URL, we'll help you out, tweet this, go tweet that, whatever. And so I start the Twitter handle. And that goes along with things. But the big turn was marketing automation. So remember, content marketing, it's so funny, we take everything for granted now. But back then it was like, content marketing was new. Everyone, you know, we had these marketing software companies that were like, in a cold war for creating content every day. And they were creating thought leaders, as a result. They were writing blog posts, they were creating ebooks at a pace we couldn't even believe. Now we believe it, because we do it.
[25:55] Craig Rosenberg And I basically learned as I went, I kept writing about this stuff kept learning about these new innovations. And I learned that when you write about it, and you study it, that's when you actually generate an opinion. And you'd be, you know, an ideology emerges. and real learning happens. And so it kind of went hand in hand. Everything's sort of took off on its own. I mean, I was like, I remember just going to, like, Brian, going through that got, I have, like, 30,000 Twitter followers, how that happened? And it just kind of everything just kind of happened like that. I mean, now I'm very self aware.
[27:02] Craig Rosenberg But back then, I had no idea. Um, and so that was hugely beneficial to starting TOPO, right? Because people knew who I was. And they still do now, right? That's by the way, not, I'm not puffing my chest. I'm just saying, I mean, the individual branding thing is a lesson for everyone. And, but I didn't mean for it to happen. But it's been awesome. I've met so many different people, and you know, how to formulate opinions and to, you know, know, stay on top of the world as a result of sort of maintaining this thought leadership. But I've met amazing people along the way. And it's been cool. And frankly, I don't know, man, I think, you know, if yeah, Scott, he would say Craig's brand was huge to start TOPO? I don't know if I'd say that. But it was helpful. Definitely was helpful.
[27:57] Shahin Hoda Right. That's interesting. I think. Marc Andreessen says something similar to you know, pick a new area that it's very new. And if you do 50 hours of research in that area, you all of a sudden become an expert in it, because it's scant, there's not a lot out there about it, and you can crack the code versus going into markets that are established, and they're, you know, existing people and people have been writing about it or talking about it for a long time. I love that story. I love that story. One of your one of your mantras is to work harder than you thought you did yesterday. What is that about?
[28:40] Craig Rosenberg Great. Wait, where did you get that? That's awesome. I said that. That's so cool.
[28:47] Shahin Hoda You tell me that's not the case? You work hard. Come on. Let's be honest.
[28:54] Craig Rosenberg I love that quote. I don't know, man. I mean, I think there's something that goes along with that statement, which is, I agree, it's hard to work hard. That sounds too bad. But it is hard to work hard if you don't love it. And you got to love the game. And when you love the game working harder than you did yesterday and working harder than you did an hour before is worth it. It feels really good. And so passion and belief is like a huge part of working hard. And yeah, I mean, I don't think there's any substitute for it. I do think people are working smarter, I think. But, you know, if for example, if you want you know, you asked about thought leadership and people ask me that all the time, I tell them you know, it's hard work right?
[29:40] Craig Rosenberg If you have to do a day job and build that and so if you're willing to make the sacrifices then do it man, but like it's not easy and like you got to be willing to work and you know, building TOPO was, you know, was a lot of work. I think that statement is a great thing I'm going to put on my wall and credit myself, it was saying I love it is, you know it built on itself and momentum, you know, passion and momentum sort of allowed us to believe in that. And so it's funny now it's like when you say those things today, you know, with the four-day work week or whatever the guy's book is, I don't know.
[30:21] Shahin Hoda Four hour.
[30:22] Craig Rosenberg Yeah four hour work day. All these things, you know, I'm not against them. I mean, I certainly want people to have balance. I chose balance and hard work. I just chose a little less sleep.
[30:34] Craig Rosenberg And I raised three kids. And I mean, while I build TOPO. It just meant that, you know, I did. I was always home for dinner, I was feeding my kids and you know, but you know, at night, I went back at it. And, but I liked it. And it's really hard to live by that mantra if you don't like it, love it, or play the game every day. And so, anyway, you know, I hope, I don't know, there's so many, do you know, Dan Waldschmidt is? He's a thought leadership author. And he's just a crazy guy in a good way. Brilliant. He's brilliant. And I did this one time, I did this webinar with him. And he gets pissed when they start. I mean, he's so passionate about teaching people to work hard he gets pissed.
[31:20] Craig Rosenberg And he's like, you know what, people come to me and they say, you know, well, Michael Jordan would work eight practice, eight hours a day, right? And Dan's like, looking at him going, like, that's the hard part. That's a choice. He's like, it's different. You know, if you wanted to tell me, Michael Jordan could do things on the basketball that nobody else could do. Yeah, that's hard, right? But if you want to tell me that he worked eight hours, and that's amazing. He's like, person, that's not amazing. That's his choice. And that's your choice. And that always stuck with me. It's like, um, you know, that's a choice. And it's okay, you know, in putting in the hours that it takes to be successful. And, I mean, that's a choice. It just is.
