good dms feel more like improv

one thing about working at a startup is you don’t really get handed a script.

when i joined, we had to figure things out as we went. what to say. what not to say. what actually mattered. there wasn’t a playbook to lean on.

now we’re in a place where we’re building those playbooks for the reps coming in behind us. and that feels like progress. scripts help people get oriented. they give you something to start from.

but living inside a script forever isn’t really the point.

Kondo: Superhuman for Linkedin DMs has paid to be mentioned at the end of this issue. Thanks, Mitchell, for your support.

sometimes a conversation turns into a bit.

you’re riffing off the other person, responding in real time, and both of you are clearly bought in. once that happens, you kind of have to commit to it. forcing a script back into the conversation usually kills the momentum.

this one went that way pretty quickly.

he mentioned that he can find something funny in almost anything. so i joked that we should book a demo just so he could no-show me and find something funny in it.

instead of shutting that down or steering back to something more “professional,” he leaned into it. the joke kept going. it turned into a real back-and-forth, and at some point the natural next step was just to put time on the calendar.

the meeting got booked without the conversation ever leaving the bit.

this conversation worked because the flow came first. everything else followed from that.

shoutout to joey. he and i are friends now and i had a lot of fun with this conversation.

this dm sent using kondo. you can use this link try it for a month for free. this is a great way to support me directly. :)

cody is one of the first people i ever prospected, way back months and months ago.

he’s just a genuinely nice guy. easy to talk to. easy to be around. one of those people where the conversation never feels forced.

he’s on paternity leave right now, but we had a chance to catch up the other night and it reminded me of something i don’t think about enough. some conversations are just easy. no agenda. no pressure. you just talk.

we ended up chatting about dad stuff and life and whatever else came up. it was simple and it was good.

go give him some love. if you’re a dad, i’m sure he’d appreciate the support.

content is like kneading dough. do it just enough to bring the ingredients together, then stop. if you keep working it, it loses what made it good in the first place.

ants are less likely to commit to a path that feels busy, even if it is faster.

kondo just dropped a hubspot integration and it’s been really nice.

my linkedin dms now sync directly into hubspot as activities, so i don’t have to manually log anything. if you’re living in linkedin dms and hubspot, this makes your life easier.

they have an integration for salesforce too.

here’s a link to check it out for a month for free.

by the way, i pretty much wrote this entire issue with chatgpt. if you want to see the process for the sake of transparency, here’s the thread where i built this issue. feel free to check it out.

if you found this issue helpful or enjoyable, please consider sharing it with a friend! it would mean a lot. here is a link to subscribe :) if we gain 100 subscribers before the next newsletter we can have a pizza party.