Selling all the Time

Chris Larsen

08.12.21

As the founder of a company, you have another major role: Lead Salesperson. Hear Chris' thoughts on staying sharp in this arena.

Summary:

As the founder of a company, you have another major role: Lead Salesperson. Hear Chris’ thoughts on staying sharp in this arena.

Thuy

So, Chris, I also wanted to ask you about your overall career. Your entire career, you developed new visions for how to make finance more equitable, more accessible, and you had to go sell these ideas to so many different folks, right? You had to sell them to investors, to consumers, to strategic partners, to enterprises. For all the entrepreneurs out there, or anyone, really, that has a vision and an idea to sell, what is your best advice for them?
Chris_Larsen

Chris Larsen

Well, I think the role of a CEO and a founder is, I mean, basically, they are a salesperson, you're selling all the time, right? And you're giving the pitch over and over, and over again, to, your point, customers, investors, every candidate you're trying to hire, regulators, so I mean, there's points where it seems like all you're doing is youÕre pitching, you're giving the pitch over and over again. So, definitely becoming a good communicator, I think, is really important. I wish I had taken more public speaking classes in college. I kind of learned it the hard way, I think. It was very hard for me in the early days. I just had to kind of muscle through it, but I think the more skills you get under your belt, the better. Selling skills, I think it's true how people that were salespeople, some business person I know, they sold steaks when they were in college, right? Door-to-door, I don't know how you do that, right? But he became an amazing salesperson, right? So, I think you can't get enough of that stuff, even working, I swear to God, working at a McDonald's, interacting with people, those are the soft skills you don't learn really in colleges. I think it's kind of a shame. So, as much of that you can possibly get, it's only going to help you later on, and then of course, later on, hiring a phenomenal sales team that knows that, I think it's very different, whether it's government, enterprise, or consumers, it's going to be very different, but seeking out those domain expert, that's what's really important.