The Importance of Pause with Ryan Zadrazil

00:00

Say you want some clarity in sales and marketing and SEP? Well, we have just the remedy: our podcast, RevOps Therapy. Yeah.

Erika 00:18

Hey, Ryan, thanks for joining us on the podcast. I’d love if you could just introduce yourself to our listeners.

Ryan 00:25

Yeah, definitely. Thanks for having me, Erika. So, for everyone listening, my name is Ryan Zadrazil, and I’m the co-founder of Pause, a desktop/mobile application that helps SDRs connect faster with their prospects. So they spend less time and they have more time having conversations. With that being said, I, I’m a salesperson by trade, but I am a mental health, mental health advocate. More importantly, I’m involved with communities like Uncrushed in NAMI, and I’m just very passionate about both mental health and advocating for people with any kind of disability, whether it be a mental illness, physical disability, or anything of that nature.

Erika 01:10

I love that. Thank you, Ryan. I know that’s how, um, how we connected is just over general interest in mental health and kind of how that shows up in, in sales and in business. You’re at a really exciting point with your company right now. Can you share a little bit about what’s been going on?

Ryan 01:32

Definitely. So we’re first and foremost redesigning our website, and that’s gonna be ready tomorrow, hopefully, which is super exciting, because some of the copywriting needed some, some fine-tuning. In addition to that, we’re about 10 days to two weeks away from starting our beta testing for Pause. So I’m just really excited. I’ve been getting a lot of customer feedback, just showing people what we have so far. But it’s going to be more fun when we put it into action and see how we can help people have more sales conversations in less time.

Erika 02:06

Oh, yeah, I’m curious. How long has it been since kind of you started Pause to now when you’re just about to launch?

Ryan 02:16

So I was working at Better Mind when the idea started. It’s kind of an interesting story. My co-founder, Matthew Province, who’s the head of training right now at Traineo. He, um, he invited me on his podcast based on the content I was posting on LinkedIn. And we started talking; he’s like, “Ryan, like, what are your goals? Where do you want to be like, beyond Better Mind?” And I’m like, “Well, I want to start my own SaaS company. But I don’t really know where to get started.” He’s like, “well, coincidentally, I’m working on a SaaS product right now. Do you want to be my co-founder?” So that’s how it happened. That was back in May or June, probably of last year. So I still worked at Better Mind for a while and slowly worked on Pause. And then it became a thing where I needed to focus on Pause more than Better Mind. So I ended up having to leave, which is a great company. It was great helping Cody grow the business. But I’m really excited to focus on Pause and see where things go.

Erika 03:18

And that’s a great story. So you’ve had a good time on podcast and sounds like a really, really fun story. I know, like, I talked to a lot of SDRs and, and salespeople who have, kind of, ambition to do something really entrepreneurial. And so, I like, I think a lot, I talk a lot about kind of the transferable skills from being a sales rep to starting your own business. And I’d love it if you could talk a little bit about what that’s been like for you; like, what skills you feel like have transferred really well and kind of what things that have been kind of learning by fire. 

Ryan 04:00

Yeah, so Better Mind was like the perfect job to have prior to this because I wore a lot of hats as the second hire and the first sales hire, I was pretty much building everything out doing account management, working to you know, renew accounts, there were a lot went into it. So on the sales spectrum of things I’m very prepared for that. What I wasn’t prepared for is development, figuring out how to market things, everything else that goes into building a startup. So I’ve invested a lot of time just educating myself on… I don’t know how to write code. Let’s be honest, like, I can’t do that. But I can understand what they’re explaining to me and how to explain my vision to the developers. So I think if you’re coming from a sales background and you want to build a startup, like, it doesn’t hurt to be well-rounded or have a basic understanding of the other aspects of the business.

Erika 04:53

Yeah, like talking about being a generalist or kind of wearing a lot of hats, I’ve heard mixed feelings about that, like, on the one hand, I’ve read, you know, if you’re a generalist, that means you’re going to be replaced by a specialist at a certain stage in company growth. And that might be true. But it also sounds like if you’re the kind of person that really likes to build things, or to kind of be there from the ground level, like being able to, to wear a lot of hats and be more of a generalist that, that seems to have been really valuable for you.

Ryan 05:32

At the beginning, it will change. I will not always be wearing all these hats. So it’s more of laying the foundation for the next person who’s going to wear the hat. 

Erika 05:42

Yeah, I’m in a really similar spot where it’s like, a lot of times a night, especially when I talk to my family, and they go, “what do you do?” I say, “you know, whatever it takes, generally, is my, my job description. You know, I lead Go-to-Market strategy at Greaser. And I, yeah, it’s just kind of like, hey, whatever our team needs right now, I just sort of patch all the holes, wherever they are, they come up.” So I, I can empathize a lot with that role, and also empathize with like, this isn’t going to be forever, you know.

Ryan

It’s just the beginning. 

Erika

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, and I know, you mentioned before we hit record that you’ve been talking on LinkedIn for about two years about mental health. And I would love to hear you talk a little bit about kind of like, what, how that’s been for you just thinking about mental health and talking about mental health while you’re on this, this road with Pause that I’m sure has its ups and downs, and like, how do you? How do you stay focused? And how do you kind of take care of yourself while, you know, you’re going through this stressful… I’m projecting because it’s stressful for me. But it’s, um, yeah, just curious about your experience with that.

Ryan 07:04

So a few takeaways. The first, when I initially started posting about mental health on LinkedIn, it was a lot of female engagement. I have noticed, since I’ve built rapport with people, and they’ve been, you know, establishing some familiarity with my content. You know, there’s been more men engaging, and I’ve been getting more messages from both men and women, um, related to mental health. But one thing that I don’t like so much is I’ll get messages, like, Hey, your posts really resonated with me, but I can’t comment or like it, because my boss will get concerned. Like, and that scares me a little bit, that there’s not a level of transparency with certain companies where you don’t feel comfortable, like, I guess being you to a certain extent. So I’d really love to see that change a little bit. And people feel more comfortable opening up because that’s really a component of what builds the stigma is when people aren’t comfortable, you know, opening up about something like that. If they’re not ready, I get it. Like, if you’re not ready to talk about mental health, that’s okay. But if you are and you feel restricted, I think that’s kind of an unfair position to be in.

Erika 08:11

Yeah, that, that’s really concerning to hear. Not only that, that people feel like just they can’t talk about it generally, but that it might affect how people at work see them or treat them or affect their employment. Like that’s, that’s so concerning. And I don’t know if you relate to this at all, but I feel like in, in sort of the circles that I kind of am in outside of my job, like, I feel like people I know and people I’m around are so open about mental health. Like I spend two days a week being a psychotherapist. So like I’m, quite literally just, like, immersed in mental health so often that it’s, I think it’s good for me to continue to hear those types of things, just so I know that there are so many people out there that still have their social stigma around it in so many places. But it just continues to shock me with all the information that’s out there. And just how easy it is to get access to that information. It just continues to surprise me how difficult it is to still talk about what needs to change.

Ryan 09:28

That’s a very complex question. But my initial answer would be I always says people like and I don’t know if it’s changed, but in grade school, very little talk about mental health, very little education. And maybe it’s changed now. I don’t know; I’m not in grade school anymore. So I don’t have access to the like curriculum, but even in middle school in high school, not a lot of, like, proactive, like, making it aware to people. And then like at Better Mind you get to college and there’s a counseling center, and counseling is very promoted. So it seems like there’s a shift. And I don’t know if this is different public versus private schools or different grade levels before college, but it’s like, here’s the Counseling Center, let’s figure out what’s been going on for the last 18 years. That’s kind of what it feels like to me when I look at it from an external lens.

Erika 10:19

Yeah, yeah, I think I remember, it wasn’t really until I got to grad school that I understood what emotions were, you know; I always thought, you know, when I was younger, and I was in competitive sports, and then when I was in sales for the first time, you know, I always thought emotions were like a weakness that got in your way. It wasn’t really until I got to grad school that I realized, like, oh, emotions are our reactions to our environment based on past experiences. And there’s something that, that feels really logical about that, to me; it’s like, oh, if I had a bad experience with this, and I encountered that thing, again, I’m not going to feel good about it. It’s like, that makes sense. And that seems so basic. But I think my point, to tie it back to what you said, is that I don’t think we learn much about how to manage our emotions, how to pay attention to our emotions, and our just our general embodied experience when we’re kids, and it’s just so strange that we don’t do that. It’s almost like, you know, I don’t know, like a manual for how, how it works to be a human. Like, we don’t really get that. And that just seems so basic and so fundamental. So I would I’d be a huge advocate for having that being standard curriculum in schools. 100%.

Ryan 11:41

Yeah, like just a brief story about that. Um, so when I was 13, and I, I don’t, I know this now, in hindsight, but I definitely started having issues with the bipolar. But I had no way of communicating that to the psychiatrists, or my parents, or my teachers because there was no education around. I didn’t know what bipolar was. I didn’t know what the symptoms were. So just an example from my own personal experience, like where that thought process that I was explaining before kind of comes from.

Erika 12:14

Yeah, yeah, I appreciate you sharing that. It makes me think, too, about how I think what another thing about mental health education and conversation that I think needs to change is, you know, talking about mental health solely as sort of like an intervention when there are problems, right? That it, like, it kind of just reminds me sometimes I make this analogy of, you know, you don’t assume that someone who’s going to the gym every day is going to the gym because they’re in poor physical health. Right? It’s like, it’s like, no, you can go to the gym at any point. It’s just you do that because you want to improve your physical health. And so similar things with therapy or even just mental health education. Like I think there might be an assumption, or there might have been an assumption when sort of standard curriculum was developed in schools that, Oh, you don’t need to worry about mental health until there’s a problem. And that’s just so untrue. Just very basic things like you’re saying, like, how do I have vocabulary? Or how do I have language or understanding of how to communicate my experience, and by the time that you might be in distress, like, you need to have already had that education in order to explain that, and even to, just to help, like, I’m just thinking about what we’ve all been through the past few years, but the pandemic, just to, just to make it through day to day life with healthy coping mechanisms and just being able to stay, stay present day to day when you’re feeling distress, like, that you can educate yourself, and you can make your experience better if you have that information. And I don’t think that people think of mental health that way, for the most part,

Ryan 14:00

I would agree. It’s a what do they call you said crisis, but crisis intervention? That’s a common term I hear with mental health-like incidents, but what can we do to be proactive and avoid that crisis intervention? What can we do? Now, I understand not in all scenarios, it’s gonna be like that. But there are a lot of things we can do to prevent that crisis intervention having to come to that.

Erika 14:28

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And even like when, when someone does have a mental health crisis, it’s very helpful if people around them are also educated and know how to be supportive because I think that’s another thing too, is that when someone does have a mental health crisis, that can be so isolating because there’s so much stigma attached. People don’t know how to respond. They don’t know how to be supportive and some people are really afraid to ask, and I know one thing I was thinking about as you were talking earlier, is just issues around mental health care accessibility. Like I’m, uh, I’m almost done with the clinical internship that I’m working in right now and community mental health, and a lot of my peers are kind of making this decision, you know, do I want to stay in community mental health? Or do I want to go into private practice, and private practice means that the community that has access to you is much different than a community mental health setting. But as a therapist, like, private practice, is just you can actually make a livable wage. It’s like, if you go into community mental health, like you can’t make a livable wage, or it’s not like, at least in Seattle, it’s really hard to, and you get burned out so easily. And I think that’s a fundamental problem, too. Like we’re having a mental health crisis in this country. And I’m just kind of like witnessing, you know, it’s like, oh, do I want to become a psychotherapist and make $50,000 a year? Do I want to make six figures staying in tech sales? It’s like, it’s just, there’s something about that, to me that feels like, that’s not a good decision to ask someone to make.

Ryan 16:12

It’s a tough decision because it’s your passion versus what you’re currently doing. And you’re both equally passionate, probably of both things. But it’s a, it’s a hard fork in the road.

Erika 16:22

Well, yeah, and I think just generally speaking, for mental health care professionals, I think it’s similar to what’s happening with teachers right now. Right, you’re seeing like a ton of teachers wanting to move from an education system into SaaS and becoming SDRs. And I was telling someone recently, yeah, the next wave is going to be therapists because therapists have a lot of the same transferable soft skills that teachers do. And they make a very similar salary. And it’s like a very similar system where you don’t always have the freedom that you need to serve the people that you got into that profession to really help. Like, sometimes you’re being asked to do things that you know, aren’t helpful. And you can’t actually, you get into it, because you have this big heart and you want to help people, and then it just ends up being a bunch of bureaucracy and burnout. And I just, I think that that needs to change. What I’m just kind of going back to like the, the entrepreneurship piece, like what would you say are, are some takeaways or some kind of things that you’ve learned in the last couple of years about how to how to care for, for your mental health while you’re undertaking kind of a stressful project.

Ryan 17:43

So I’ve learned from other people first and foremost, and myself, I guess, but I’m Jeff Riseley, from the Sales Health Alliance, taught me the importance of putting self-care on my calendar. So when it’s time to take a lunch or take a walk, it’s time to step away from the computer, which can be challenging at times, because we all have a lot to do. And then James Buckley taught me that there is no such thing as work-life balance, it’s a work-life integration like you have to find a way to make them work cohesively. It’s not a balancing act. So those are like the two biggest takeaways I’ve had that have become applicable to what I’m doing with entrepreneurship, that have kind of helped me through the journey so far.

Erika 18:31

Yeah, I love that. I think, what is, what does work-life integration look like for you at this point where you’re like, a few days away from your beta launch, like I imagine that you probably are working more than than you typically would. So like, what does that look like for you right now? 

Ryan 18:50

So it could be me waking up at 5 am. Like, no, I don’t normally wake up at 5 am. But maybe I wake up at 5 am and do work for two hours. And then I step away and go on a long walk. And then I come back for my meetings. And after my meetings, do a little bit more work. If I’m feeling up to it, you know, I can do whatever I want throughout the day, as long as I’m there for the meetings, and I make time for myself and get the work done that needs to be done. So it’s less, you’re still locking yourself into some sort of regular schedule. But I think it just helps to have that variability where you’re not always at your desk, like, working 24/7. Because that’s like we were talking about a good way to burn yourself out.

Erika 19:35

Yeah, yeah. And it’s something I’ve been noticing to you that I’ve been seeing more on LinkedIn is just having, and I know we were just talking about this, like having some self-awareness where you know, like, for example, I like to take a walk in the morning so I’m going to always schedule a walk then, or I like doing my creative work during this time, or I like having meetings during that time, or like, um… How over the last year that you’ve been working? Working on your company? Like, Have you become more aware as you’ve had, like, have you had more freedom over your schedule and kind of how have you adjusted certain things or blocked off certain times to do different kinds of work?

Ryan 20:18

So something I do consistently every day is take a walk with my dad, whether it’s at the end of the workday, in the middle of the workday, or in the morning, that’s like, my, my happy space or my whitespace, where I just talk to my dad and let him know what’s going on. And we, you know, just it’s a nice way to unwind and refocus, whether it’s during the work day or after, or before I get started, like it just helps me center myself. So that’s my big self-care activity that I always make sure I do every day.

Erika 20:49

Oh, man, I love that. That’s precious time with your dad, too. Um, I know, we talked a little bit about self-awareness before we hit record. And I would love to kind of revisit that kind of just your, your general thoughts on being a self-aware salesperson and what that looks like?

Ryan 21:13

Yeah, so I think what we were talking about was like, how you frame the question like, how do I become a great SDR? How do I become a sales leader? How do I become an AE? And I guess the way I would look at that is like, “Why do I want to become an AE? Why do I want to become a sales leader? Why do I want to be an SDR?” And reverse engineering to find like, the actual reasoning of what drives you to want to do that. Not just taking someone else’s word for it and doing what they tell you to do in order to become it. Like why do you want to be that?

Erika 21:48

Yeah, so if we were to use SDR as an example. And let’s say because I manage our SDR team, and that’s one of the things that I try to ask pretty often is sort of like, what’s your motivation? And let’s say that someone’s transitioning from say, education to being an SDR and their reasoning for wanting to be an SDR is to like work from home to spend more time with their family and to increase their salary. Like, if we’re working on this sort of reverse engineering, what would be the next step once you find that why?

Ryan 22:21

Yeah, definitely. So once you discover the why I think it’s applying it, how you’re gonna get it done. So it’s like, instead of the how it becomes the why, and then how am I going to do this? How am I going to take those components and do the things I need to have that work from home lifestyle? Or the other two things you mentioned that I forgot.

Erika 22:44

Yeah, I mean, usually, I kind of make that assumption that teachers transitioning to sales are probably doing it for, you know, flexibility and money. That might not always be true. But that was, that was a big part of why I’m in, I made that transition as a former teacher is I said, “Oh, this, there’s just so much more opportunity here.” I’m not going to be, like, before I transitioned to become an SDR, I was told that, that I was frustrated in my work because my expectations of myself and people around me were too high and that I needed to lower my expectations so that I could be like, just more in sync with my workplace. I was like, “Alright, I gotta get out of here.” This is, you know, this is like my manager, the person that’s supposed to be like, you know, leading me and helping me grow is telling me that my biggest obstacle is my high expectations like that was honestly the thing that made me just be like, alright, like, I gotta try something else. Because this is just, I can’t just say, “Okay, what I have is good enough. And I don’t want to strive for more like, that’s just not.”

Ryan 23:55

That’s the self-awareness piece right there. You were self-aware that you were in a situation where you felt like you couldn’t grow anymore. So you did something about it. Like, that’s awesome.

Erika 24:04

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, it was I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into either. I just kind of knew someone who knew someone that made an intro for me at Outreach. And I got, you know, I earned the job. But yeah, I had no idea what I was getting into. And here I am, like, five years later still in it, so you never know where that can take you. Yeah, something I’ve said before is like, I wish I wish that more sales people were asking like, Okay, I know, I want to be great. Rather than like, how do I close more deals? And how do I you know, like, I’ve heard the term tactical empathy that Chris Voss uses, and I’ve heard a lot of salespeople start talking about tactical empathy. And something I think a lot about, especially since I started my internship and that I’ve been working towards my license is like, I wish people would be asking like, how do I become more self-aware like how do I? How do I become more aware of like my blind spots basically? And that’s something that I know when I’ve been in, like really difficult conversations internally and with customers, or on difficult sales calls, like kind of my willingness to be really, really honest about how I’m feeling or what’s going on in the moment, I feel like that’s actually what’s worked to my benefit put me in a position to have sort of, like bigger conversations. And I don’t hear people talking about that, that like, you know, I would, I would say it like, my biggest professional growth has come from like therapy, you know, what I mean? But I yeah, I would say that’s not something I hear talked about a lot.

Ryan 25:46

Yeah, I’d have to agree. It’s, the empathy piece is like something that some, like some people just naturally are very empathetic. Like, like, I’m sure a lot of the teachers and psychiatrists that may be making the shift, like, they definitely have that skill, but understanding how to apply it to sales can be a little bit of a different ballgame because there’s a lot of like active listening involved in at not asking leading questions like framing the questions a certain way. So that all still take some education, I think in order to be successful, trying to do like, as you framed it, tactical empathy.

Erika 26:21

Yeah, yeah. Um, your one thing, one thing that I just like a very practical thing that I find really helpful, is even just like expressing doubt to someone, like, you know, if I’m on a sales call with someone, and I feel like they’re not telling me the whole story, I’ll just say that I say, hey, you know, Ryan, I hear you saying, XYZ, and I’m just feeling like, that’s not the whole story. What else are you thinking? And people are just like, whoa, you know, but it’s just like, that’s, that’s honest. And if you know, if someone pushes back at that, or gets angry at that, like, you know, it’s like, alright, interesting, that’s data. But people don’t usually get angry when I say things like that. They’re usually like, kind of grateful that I said something because I think most people in a sales conversation or any kind of difficult conversation, just tend to, like avoid conflict as much as possible. And even within ourselves, right, we want to like avoid internal conflict. So I think we try to like smooth things out even subconsciously. But just being able to say to someone how you feel or how, like, something just doesn’t seem right, or something doesn’t seem off? Yeah, I think that’s one of the most important sales skills is just to be able to call that out without fear of losing a deal or, or losing a relationship.

Ryan 27:37

It’s like, I’m going into a meeting, just call me another time, like, do you really want me to call you back? Is this a conversation we can just have real quickly? Like, some people will be really transparent with you and say, hey, just call me in 30 minutes. And I had that the other day. Somebody, I called somebody, and I tried to push for the conversation and said, hey, just call me in 30 minutes. And then he actually texted me and was like, “You can call me now they’re late.” I didn’t see the text. But we eventually connected, but I was just so shocked by how I was transparent with them. Just “this is why I’m calling. Can we have a quick conversation?” He was open to it. It just wasn’t right at that moment, which is okay.

Erika 28:19

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I love that. It’s like, it’s not, it’s not just about like pushing someone when you want something like, it’s not only about pushing someone when you want to close a deal or get a meeting, it’s also about, I mean, I guess it’s always that you always have an interest or like some sort of investment in what they’re saying. But I’m just thinking about, like, pushing someone for a “no” to right, like, hey, if this isn’t gonna work out, just let me know now, because I don’t want to waste my time, you know, not in those exact words. But I think when… it reminds me just a lot of people talk about this, but I know Josh Braun talks about, like letting go of the outcome. Like you just have to let go of the outcome in order to be fully honest, in the moment. And so I think, but in order to be fully honest, in the moment, I think you have to be really self-aware, too. So you can really respond to what’s happening rather than just like the script you have in your head or just like, just thinking about the ultimate goal. I think that’s hard.

Ryan 29:19

Yeah, it’s important to detach from the outcome. Because if you’re so fixated on getting a meeting, that’s going to drive the whole way you have your conversation. And sometimes it works out but other times, you might get greedy and push too hard, and then you lose them. And you just want to step back and listen instead of, like, talking over them or doing things like that. The call may have been way more successful.

Erika 29:43

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that’s, that’s feedback I’ve given to someone recently or shows, you know, the customer expressed a doubt. And the first thing you said was, how do we fix it? And it’s like, basically what you hear when you’re a customer is like, “Oh, you just you want me to forget about this? I still have a lot of concerns. Like you can’t fix this right away.” And instead, I was like, hey, what you have to do is you have to say, “Okay, I hear that you feel upset about this; we really dropped the ball. It’s horrifying for me to hear that you had that experience with us. And that’s unacceptable.” Pause. And then wait for them to say, “yeah, thank you.” And it’s like, at that point, it’s like, I think they feel safe enough to then entertain a solution. But until you really like stop and say, “Oh, I hate that you said that.” I think people find that type of honesty and that willingness to just be like, oh, that I feel bad about that, rather than just be like, how do we make it better. But again, I think that’s, that’s hard to identify that in the moment when you’re talking to someone because that’s so uncomfortable. But that’s just a piece of self-awareness, I think.

Ryan 30:53

And it’s not something that happens overnight. I still have bad calls, like, everyone still has bad calls. And it’s something like, it’s okay, you’re not going to have 100% success rate cold calling, like, it’s just not gonna happen.

Erika 31:06

Totally, that’s, that’s really important to: just having a lot of patience and grace for yourself. And that’s part of being self-aware too, right, is just realizing that we’re human, and we’re going to make mistakes. And if we just try to do the right thing, whenever we, we can, like, that’s really as much as we can expect out of ourselves.

Ryan 31:28

As long as we give it our best, you know, all we can do. And some days, you’re not going to be able to give it your best, because you’re just not going to be in it. And that’s okay. Like, just like we have bad calls. We have bad days, too. And you gotta give yourself that grace in order to keep moving forward.

Erika 31:44

Yeah, yeah. And that’s Yeah, that’s cool to hear from someone that’s sort of like, on the brink of launching a huge project to know that you can, you can get to that point where you can create something, and you can have success with that attitude. Because I think that’s something that when I’m in like a lower, lower-quality mental health state, I like I think one thing I feel afraid of is, you know, what, if I take good care of myself by detaching, turning off my screen, going for a walk, and I can’t get work done, and then I won’t be good at my job anymore? You know, it’s like when I feel like my mental health and my well-being are like, in direct competition with my professional success, that’s stressful. But I’ve learned that in the last couple of years, so like, oh, actually, my professional success increases when I take care of myself contrary to what I believed, maybe five or 10 years ago. So yeah, I don’t know, have you? Have you had like a similar journey? Or have you always just been able to prioritize your mental health before you get burned out?

Ryan 32:49

No. I’ve… full transparency like with bipolar, like you do have episodes, and I’ve had some, and they’ve sent me back a lot, I had a really bad one when I was 28. 33 now. And like, that was when it kicked in, like “Ryan, you have to do something beyond just taking your medications. Like, it’s not enough, like you have to take care of your physical health, you have to take care of your mental health, you need a support network.” And I think that was in the post that you had seen from me, that kind of initiate this conversation was being self-aware, having a support network, things like that are so important. Whether you have a mental illness, or you’re just trying to take care of your mental health, having a support network is so crucial to like long-term mental and physical health.

Erika 33:38

Definitely, I think. I think another thing that I probably learned way too late that we should also be learning about early in school is that connection is a fundamental human need. And I think, especially over the last couple of years, I know personally, like I’ve really felt the strain of being disconnected from people just by not being in proximity to people, like we can talk on the screen all day, but there’s something about being in a room with people and not having a job when you do it. Right. Just like being around people for leisure, or just so you know, connection. I think that that’s so important to have that outside of work and the communities that can kind of bridge that to like professional networks that aren’t part of your job necessarily, but that you can be part of to share experiences with. I love that those kinds of communities are becoming more and more prevalent.

Ryan 34:36

Yeah, so with COVID and everything and working remote like I do feel a lot of distance from people I used to spend time with. But at the same time, like I’ve become more intertwined and closer to a lot of the people that you know, I’ve met through LinkedIn like we talk more frequently. We have phone calls, sometimes multiple times a day. It just makes a huge difference knowing that someone’s there for you, even though they can’t physically be there for you, they’re still there for you. And that can make all the difference. 

Erika 35:10

Yeah, that’s awesome. What, um, what advice would you have for people who are in a position where they are feeling a little isolated, and they have some maybe ambitious professional goals and want to reach out and make connections with people? I know, there’s a lot of people in that position right now. So what advice would you have for them if they’re just getting started?

Ryan 35:31

Yeah, I suppose a piece of it really depends on who you’re trying to connect with. Like, say you’re an SDR. Are you trying to connect with other SDRs? Do you want to get to know sales leaders? Founders? It’s just audio messaging has been like the most effective component for me, like in order to start conversations with people on LinkedIn, at least, because it’s just more personable. Like, “hey, Erika, saw this on your profile, would love to chat some time, Ryan?” Like it sounds a lot better than just getting a text message. I’m sure everybody’s sending those out right now. Like all the Inmails and cold pitches and whatnot. So audio and video messaging has helped me a lot like better connect with people and have conversations with the people like that I want to initiate conversations with.

Erika 36:19

Yeah, that’s great. Oh, I think that might be a good place to end. Anything else that you want to say before we end or anything you want to plug while we’re here.

Ryan 36:31

I’m obviously plugging Pause, dial Pause.com. Go ahead and check it out. But more importantly, if you’re listening to this podcast, and you made it all the way to end to the end, I’d love to chat with you. Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I’m pretty responsive. And I just appreciate everyone who listened to the episode.

Erika 36:50

Yeah. Thanks, Ryan. It was really fun talking with you. I’d love to do it again sometime. 

Ryan

Definitely.

36:57

Hot dog. That was a great episode. Thanks for listening. If you want to learn more about Greaser Consulting or any information you heard on today’s episode, visit us online at www.greaserconsulting.com. Be sure to click the Follow button and the bell icon to be notified on the latest here at RevOps Therapy. Thanks and see you real soon.