The Power of Storytelling in Business Communication ft. Doug Landis

If I can help you feel that and empathize with where you are based on what I've learned from other customers like you, then guess what? You're going to feel more safe and comfortable.

With the coffee in hand, welcome back to another episode of the Revenue Reimagined podcast. We have with us today a name that is synonymous with the world of startups—more so with the art of storytelling. He's been called a sales professional wrapped in a marketer's body with a super deep understanding of customer advocacy. He's the current CEO of DL Advisory, an early-stage storytelling, narrative building, and go-to-market consultancy. But before that, Doug was the growth partner at Emergence Capital, which is an early-stage B2B venture firm, where he was instrumental in the growth of some small companies you might have heard of like Zoom, Bill.com, Salesloft, Chorus, and Ironclad. The list goes on. Prior to that, Doug spent some time selling, building, and scaling at some other small companies—Box, Salesforce, Oracle, and Google. So, wealth of experience, the master storyteller himself. Doug, welcome to the show, man.

Thank you. That was one hell of an intro, man. I got goosebumps. I was like, I've done a lot. That also means I'm old.

Sometimes I think I got to bring Adam around to introduce me to places. He doesn't give me that nice of an introduction.

See, that was for the audience, you know? We were just reminiscing. Doug and I go back probably ten, twelve years in the circle of the sales community. This is the first time we've met in person. So, awesome.

Reminiscing is kind of fun, but let's jump into it. So one of the big things is storytelling. You're huge in storytelling, and what we find a lot with our founders is they don't do a really good job of giving their origin story, how that origin story evolves, and that emotional connection. So I'm curious—as you built out your advisory services, what was the origin story that you started with, and what can you give the audience on how to generate and build their own origin story?

That's a good question, Dale. I appreciate that one right out of the gate. You know, first thing in the morning with the coffee in hand, you're like, "So let's get after it."

Well, what a lot of people don't know is I'm actually a professionally trained actor. I started acting when I was five years old. It was just like the theater, being on stage, getting into character. One of my first roles ever as a child actor was Raggedy Ann in a Raggedy Ann and Andy performance. There was a creative freedom of expression in that art form. As I got older, when reality TV shows kicked off, I actually had some friends who were working at CBS and a number of networks because I grew up in the Bay Area, and they said, "Hey, these reality TV shows, you should check them out. You should audition." And I did. I landed on four different shows, maybe five. I don't know. We can talk more about that later. But what I learned was that this art form of communication was really powerful, and the camera and I got along. So there was this connection of "Okay, how do I communicate to an audience?" Even right now as I'm looking at a tiny little camera, how do I articulate and communicate to an audience that actually does the one most important thing we're all trying to do when we're communicating—which is elicit a positive response?

I learned and developed this as I was young and into my professional life. When I came back to San Francisco after going to University of Oregon, then Chicago and Denver, I found Jean Shelton's Actors Lab acting community in San Francisco. She's one of the creators of core forms of acting development. I went to school there and graduated. I realized, "Wow, this is so fun. I don't want to move to LA and be an actor. What I want to do is incorporate this into the professional world." Growing up in Palo Alto, I got to see companies like HP, Sun, Google, Facebook, and Twitter blow up. What I realized is that this vehicle of communicating—incorporating story form in communication—is so powerful. Yet at work, we speak in fragments. We talk speeds and feeds. We talk a bunch of BS.

I had the good fortune of working at this tiny company called Salesforce in the early days. You know, one of the greatest marketing, sales, and marketing organizations ever created. It's got sales in its title. It's kind of cool. What I learned there in particular was this whole notion of "Look, the reason we speak in speeds and feeds and bullets and fractured statements is because we're talking about ourselves." The only way to really get customers to showcase customer centricity and customer love is to speak about them. And the easiest way to speak about them is to tell their story. So it all kind of fit together and was interesting.

I left Salesforce and went to Box to work for Aaron Levie. He's a phenomenal orator. He's so smart. There's a pivotal moment in my career where we were trending to about a hundred million dollars. We had just hired a new CRO—a dashing young man who was there to take us public. Of course, anytime you hire a new sales leader, they want to walk around the floor and meet all the sales team. So we do, and I'm introducing him to all the players and people that he needs to know. He asks everybody, "Okay, how do you talk about Box?" We got twenty-five different answers from twenty-five different people. Not uncommon. But what was common was there was no consistency at the core of who we say we are and what we do. There was no value in it. It was all "me, me, me, me, me. Look at us." And unfortunately, when we're thrown more products, we default back to our comfort zone. So in Box's case, people would say, "Oh, we're in cloud storage." Of course, if Aaron ever heard anybody say that, he'd fire them on the spot. Maybe not really, but theoretically.

I realized we had a problem. We didn't know how to pull and infuse our customer language, our customer stories, and our customer experiences into the way we talk about who we are and what we do. I'd been at Box about five years, and I went to Aaron and said, "Hey, I want to create a new job for myself."

He said, "What?"

I said, "I want to create a job for myself. It's called Chief Storyteller, and I am going to reorient how we talk about who we are. Then I'm going to train everybody on that because the reality is there's one thing to create the stories, which just takes some work. Marketing, I'm looking at you, marketers. You. Like, none of this problem, solution, ROI—that's such BS. Marketers need to figure out how to create these stories, and then sellers actually need to know how to become a better storyteller. They need to know how to look for the signals to get into a story and how to look for the signals to get out of a story because I don't want you to tell them stories twenty-four-seven, because that's just a weird form of communicating. But you need to understand the mechanics of it."

That's how it happened.

I love it. That was a really long story. I apologize. But it's so true, right? We as sellers work with typically early-stage—call it A to C stage startups, some pre-seed. I actually have a post-it here on my desk that ties similar to what you're saying, Doug. I ask every founder the same question: "What's the number one problem your product solves for your prospects or your customers?" Most founders don't tell a great story. They don't talk from the buyer's perspective. They talk about feature dumps—"Well, my product does this, and we do this, and we do this, this, this, this, and this." I'm guessing you saw a ton of that when you were at Emergence, probably now, and even back at Box and Salesforce.

Yeah, so it's interesting. You're totally right. This is the look—founders aren't the—

Only ones that suck at telling stories, by the way. Salespeople also suck at telling stories, just 100% by the way, so do marketers. I'm going to keep picking on marketers today. I don't know why. Yeah, I like I still have my coffee. I'm just like, we're going to duke it out, marketers. Because you can make sellers' lives a hell of a lot easier if you actually help them with the things that they need. Yeah, yeah, I'm going at you, marketers. I'm looking at you. But we'll get there, and I'll tell you what you need to do for them. But so, back to your question about these origin stories of these founders. Well, here's the problem. On one hand, you have a lot of founders that are like they're hammers looking for nails. They're really smart. They know how to build product. They saw a problem in their company and they experienced it, like, "Let's go solve for that and let's go build a company out of it." You're like, "All right, dude, that's like a feature." That's not a real company. And so you're kind of like, "Well, what's your connection to this problem?" "Oh, I saw our sales team struggling with it, so I decided to go build it." It's like, "All right, that's interesting, but do you really get it? Do you really understand why it's a problem?" And I think this goes back to the ethos of when you're working with early-stage founders that are product or engineering-led, and even sellers, because we train them to do this. We focus too much on the what we do and how we do it. And we don't focus enough on the why.

Like, look, as investors, we're making bets on people. We're not making bets on your technology. The truth is we're betting on you to out-technology everybody else, out-execute everybody else. And in order to do that, you actually truly need to understand the problem from your buyer's or even the users' perspective and to viscerally get it and understand what it is doing to them in their lives personally.

It's interesting. I came up with an example. This is tripping people out. They're like, "Cool, well, whose box? What do you do?" I'm like, "Oh, we're in the business of saving lives." Everyone's like, "What the heck? Aren't you a cloud content storage company?" "Oh, no, no, no. We are in the business of saving lives." And then I would explain the situation of a doctor sitting in an ER dealing with a patient who's on a multitude of medications and having all sorts of complications and has to go all the way down the hall to log into an old, archaic system to try and look up these symptoms to try and determine what they recommend. It's like, "Well, what if you just had an iPad?" He's like, "This is the issue. Boom. Done. Oh, cool. This is what I need to know." And the difference between the 60 seconds of walking down the hall and logging in and doing this right now could save somebody's life. Right? And so it's like it's orienting. And ultimately, if you really think about it, the easiest way to become a better storyteller is just to spend a lot of time with your customers. Get in their seat. Sit in their shoes. Think about what they're giving up in their life to try and get their actual job done, right?

And you know, it matters. And here's the other thing, too, for founders. Since you all work with early founders, we all need a purpose. And especially Gen Z right now, we need a purpose for going into work. I need a purpose for working for you and working with this company and trying to solve this problem. If you don't give me a good purpose behind it, which is more of the why—why do we do this? Right. Well, then it's kind of hard to get behind it. And then I feel like I'm just kind of selling widgets.

Well, it drives back into earlier when we were having a conversation on leadership, right? And so, how do leaders become better leaders? And when they talk to their organization, it's about the why. Like, we can say make these calls, have a storytelling process, etc., etc. But why are you doing that? Because now you can be relatable to customers. And a lot of times when we'll train sales reps, I like to train from objections versus feature functionality. Like, you'll hear about our product three million times between now and the end of the month. But you won't hear—forget about price sensitivity, that kind of excuse. Like, what are the real objections? Well, I'm worried that you guys won't be able to fit into our infosec infrastructure. Okay, that's a real objection that we now need to solve for because that's a pain point that the customer's going to solve on. I just find we don't deal with objections the right way.

Well, so to me, that's a great entry point. And again, when it comes to storytelling, I don't want you to talk in story form 24/7 because that's just weird. We don't do that in our personal lives, right? So, like, you got to know when to get into and out of story. Someone gives you an objection, it's a great opportunity to tell a story. To reorient, like, "Okay, I totally recognize it because I've heard it before. In fact, I was talking to Steve and this is what he shared with me about how it fits in the infosec ecosystem. You know, one of the most important objections that I think nobody spends enough time on—yeah, the biggest fundamental issue that we all face in the world of SaaS is change and change management. We just think our product is so easy and it's so powerful and it's so simple and it hooks into everything and everyone's just going to use it. It's like, "No." And I've been saying this phrase for, I don't know, probably feels like two decades now, but adoption is ROI. Adoption equals ROI. It's not new anymore because I've been saying it for so damn long, but it's really, truly is. And so, if people aren't using your product in a way that you think is likely to deliver the most value, then you're missing the big important salient point here, which is all about change and change management. And again, you can tell an amazing story about how you can drive change management into an organization pretty quickly and seamlessly, but you got to know it. You got to understand it from a customer's perspective.

So, look, there's the reality. There's so many opportunities to incorporate story form and narrative form into your company and into how you communicate, not just internally, but also externally. People just need to be more consciously aware of it. People buy from people. That's why companies who invest in meaningful connections win.

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Where does that responsibility lie, Doug? Like, I love how you keep calling out marketing, but you know, is it marketing? Is it sales? Is it getting everyone around the table? Like, how do we build that story?

Yeah, totally. Well, I'd say first of all, I'd start at the top. Like, look, great leaders are usually great storytellers. They just are. They're great communicators. And they understand because they understand how to communicate from different perspectives and points of view, right? So, they, and oftentimes, great leaders speak from the point of view of their customers because they spend a ton of time with their customers. All those CEOs out there that are afraid to talk to their customers, I think it's largely because they don't know what to ask or what to say or how to have those conversations, which is unfortunate. They need to go spend some time getting comfortable with that. Because all the great leaders that I know are super entrenched with their customers. And so, they can pull—they just have a natural arsenal of stories to tell because they've been spending all this time with customers. And our job is to help you, Adam and Dale, feel safe and comfortable and not alone in dealing with a problem that you're dealing with. And so, if I can help you feel that and empathize with where you are based on what I've learned from other customers like you, then guess what? You're going to feel more safe and comfortable.

So, it starts at the top, number one. Your leaders have to get better at telling story instead of dictation. By the way, you can still use facts and stats and all that stuff. Just lead with stories because it's a better form of connecting and communication and empathy demonstration. But when it comes to actually creating the stories, I'm going to lean on customer success first. And here's why: because they're closer to the customers. They know, in your customers' words, the true value that you deliver and where in their jobs and in your customers' lives, where does that value impact them? To what degree? Right? I'm not talking about saving time, reducing risk. That's all great. Yeah, CFOs care. I get it. That matters. But I also care about like, hey, can I give Sue, this mid-level marketing manager who works at Coca-Cola, can I give her her—

Sundays back? Hmm. Can I give her freedom to actually be able to go to her kids' softball games? I don't know. I want to know where we hit people, you know, in real life. Not so much just at the bottom line or top line, however you want to think about it.

So I'm going to look to customer success. I want some of that language. I want some of that juice that they get from talking to customers and I want that fed back to both product and I want that fed back to marketing.

Now, marketers, I'll pick on you here for a minute, because y'all should be good at this. We're talking about this offline before we started, so I'm just going to say it now. We do spend all this time training sellers and SDRs and customer success folks and resellers, doing renewals and upsells and all this stuff. How do we train marketers? Where is their training? Where is their development?

It's funny. I do all these storytelling workshops all around the world and most of the time it's for sellers and I'm like, I want all customer success and I want all marketing there. I want anybody that is customer facing because marketers, your job is to help us sellers figure out the core components of the stories we need to be able to tell, right?

So as marketers, here's the key: marketers, your customers are not characters. Cisco's not a character. Coca-Cola's not a character. Home Depot's not a character. I don't care about those logos. I want to know the people in those companies whose lives you're changing, right?

OpenTable Joe. I was just at a company in Atlanta yesterday and we were talking about OpenTable Joe and his role. And it wasn't like we weren't talking about OpenTable. I was like, I don't care about OpenTable. I care about Joe. And what was Joe dealing with? What was Joe's life before this? Before we stepped in and helped out, right?

Because there are a couple things that are really critical in storytelling. One, we need characters, right? Two, we also need context, right? So most stories are missing context.

When you ask me, Dale, about what's my origin story, I mean I went all the way back, right? I started acting when I was five years old, right? So I gave you context. Now you don't know how old I am, but it's been a long time ago. But now you have some context because I had a starting point. I set the stage for this journey I was going to take you on, right? And that's often what's missing is that context.

So that context is either from what was to what it is, or what it is to what could be. Right? And so when I have these things, when I have these elements, it makes it easier for me to be able to tell the story.

The other thing that's really missing often times in our stories, and this is an exercise I do with everybody, so here's a free tip for everybody: go through all of your customer stories. Ask all of your sales people, what's the point of this story? What's the point of it?

And I'm also curious, like, what stories the sales people are telling, do they really align to what ends up as a result? Like if customer success is getting results on this, are we telling these stories or are we telling some completely different value story?

Well, most often we're telling a different story because that information from customer success isn't usually fed back, right? And so it's that feedback loop that's usually broken and it's missing. And so customer success is telling one story and sales is trying to tell another because sales thinks, "Well, we're on the front end of the process and customer success is on the back end of the process." And so maybe our story should be different.

The truth is, look, the reality is every company needs a story library. And you need story time in your company. Like you literally, in your team meetings, you need story time and everyone needs to get up and tell a story. And then you're going to evaluate whether or not that was a real story or not, or whether it was just this list of a statement of facts or just a sequence of events, because oftentimes people just don't understand the difference.

Yeah, it's a bedtime story, but let's do it at work, right? So we can start to build this library so that we know what stories to use when, because I guarantee the companies that you work with, they likely have two or three stories that they all tell over and over and over again. And they're not necessarily going to be that relevant to every audience that they speak to.

I mean, when I'm talking about a story library, I want a story library for every one of your buyer personas across every stage in the sales process, because you should be telling stories even at the commercial stage when you're negotiating. And you should be telling stories during the handoff when you're giving it to customer success. It's not just in the front to like tell you my origin story.

I think that's super interesting. Sorry, Dale. That's super interesting to me and I think a lot of people don't think that way, right? Like we talk about origin story a lot and we talk about the importance of a proper handoff and making sure that we're setting the stage, but I don't think I've ever heard anyone say it in the phrase of like using storytelling throughout, right? When we do that handoff, why is this important to do it this way? And what do we see? And what does it get you in tying it all together?

So that's super interesting. Sorry, Dale. I stepped on you, man. But Adam, just think about this for a second. Buyers, people buy from what? People. And? Trust. Yes. How do we build that likeability and that trust? Not from spewing off a whole bunch of facts and stats. No, not feature dumping. It's relatability. Storytelling, relatability, right?

And so why wouldn't you? I think part of the challenge is people one don't have the stories to tell. Two don't have the skills to actually tell the stories. And three don't know when to actually tell the story for which persona and which stage. Like what story do you want to tell? Or they just don't practice at all. And that's the other thing. They also don't practice because it takes work.

Like I was literally in a session yesterday, and I like to put people on the spot. And a great exercise is just, "Dale, you're about to be put on the spot, Dale. Tell a story."

So the great exercise is like, "Okay, so Dale, why? Why revenue? Why partner with Adam?" That's a long story. Yeah, why partner with Adam? So I mean because you wanted the number to go up into the right. That's the story.

But here's the thing: both of you need to have your own why story. Why did you start Revenue Reimagined? Why work with each other? Why does this matter? Because if you don't have your own personal why story, and this is why you work at any company, it's hard for people to connect because I want to know that. As a buyer, I want to know that. Like, "Okay, what do you? Why did you go there? Out of all the things that you could do, why did you go do this?" Because now I'm getting to know you. And as I get to know you, I'm starting to build a connection.

And in every interaction that we have with anyone in particular in this world, our job is to do three things: build a connection, demonstrate some level of empathy, and credibility.

100%. I love that. Our story is very long. Our story is not made of bullet points. You know, going back to leadership a little bit, dog. You've gone through like Oracle, Salesforce at a young age, you know, Box and brought to 100 million. How has your leadership evolved over time through all these stages of your career?

Ooh, wow. I mean that's like we're back to like childhood trauma conversation here, Dale. That's what I like. I like to put the dagger in.

I don't know if it's a dagger. I think it's more like look, as we mature we recognize that there's a lot of different ways to get things done. I feel like in my younger years my biggest kind of leadership gap was like I was just too much of a control freak. And it's like you know typical front-line sales leader where you're like, "Okay, let me take it over. You know, there's an important call. I need to get the deal done in order to actually hit my number. You know, you can kind of feel the conversation is not really going where it needs to go and it's like okay. So Adam let me just kind of summarize where we are and what you know and the two kind of hurdles that I think are really keeping us from moving forward, right?"

Next thing I know, this rep's like, "Okay, cool. You go take it."

And I think, you know, I think often times I have a lot of energy and it's like it sometimes I would used to think that it was like you know it's just easier if I do it. Yeah. And look, I still struggle with that because I still like, "Oh no, I got it. I got it. I can do it. I'm Superman. I can do 18..."

Different things. But now I feel like to me leadership is much more a people responsibility role, and that you really need to understand your people from a perspective of who they are as human beings and what really matters to them and what's going on in their world. And really have a very high give factor, and your actions need to be in line with your words.

And I think the other thing too is, of course, my good friend Todd is all about transparency. Like, the more we acknowledge as leaders our shortcomings—it doesn't mean people are going to question your ability to actually lead this company and take it public or whatever. It's like, no, you're human. We're all human. And we all have our strengths and weaknesses. My job as a leader is to kind of fill those gaps that I have with people who I would argue are way smarter and way better than me. I'm not going to be perfect. I'm going to make mistakes. But I'm going to set leaders just like you were talking about training marketing. Like, we need to train leaders and give them the ability to have some transparency, some accountability, some self-awareness.

I think those are all the things that I've seen as I've grown up through leadership—is the insecurity you have as a young leader into the ability to know you're going to get more done if you circle yourself with people that are smarter than you and do things in a different way. And I think we need as a community of leaders to do a better job of helping train future leaders because that's the only way a lot of these companies are going to grow properly.

I agree. But the other thing is too, I think unfortunately we live in a society where we're more and more fear-oriented and fear-driven, right? And so it's like, especially if you're—look, the two loneliest jobs in a company are the CEO and head of sales. Like, yes, straight up. Marketers, no offense, but y'all can hide what you do. And numbers look good. All these leads, the Glengarry leads. Sales people are pretty straightforward. Like, sales people are either hitting your number or you don't, you know? And if you don't, it's your fault. You're out, right?

And it's like, oh, well, that's interesting. Well, let's see. The product doesn't work. We can't get anybody implemented. Nobody knows about us out in the market. I've been asking for new product capabilities for two years, not getting any of that. But sure, I suck as a sales leader, so go ahead and fire me, you know?

It's like, you know, we know going into this that this is what we're dealing with. And I think it's hard for people to have really honest conversations because guess what? It starts at the very top. Investors—like, I have a fiduciary responsibility. I have invested in your business to show that this is a good investment, and I care about two things: doing deals and increasing valuation. And if you're not increasing valuation, then we've got to make some changes here. If we're not actually hitting escape velocity here, we've got to potentially make some changes. Unfortunately, if we're missing our number, the number one change is got to bring in a new sales leader.

I can't tell you how many times I'm like, I would be talking like board members off the ledge. Like, okay, can we not freak out right now and go fire this person? Can we kind of focus on some of the other things that are not going right in the business and think about this holistically? Think about the implications. Like, if you use them as a—what do they call that? Like, you use them as a scapegoat. Or like, I'm going to send a message. It's like, oh, awesome. And then the example got to fire the sales leader today, right now.

You know, these early founders, if it's their first time, they don't know how to do this. And they're getting pressure from their board and their investors. And you know, they're lonely. They're like, who do I talk to? I can't go talk to my team because they're going to maybe start to lose some confidence in me. I can't go talk to my investors because they're going to likely lose some confidence in me. So I need to go talk to other CEOs who maybe are in the middle of doing this, maybe not, maybe they—you know, so there's a level of vulnerability and transparency that you got to get comfortable with there as a leader.

And that's why I think we actually have a really good play in the market because we actually play that advisory role to help CEOs like, how do I have this conversation with somebody? I can help me work through it instead of being in my own echo chamber. Like, I know I was a victim of this. When I was the CRO, head of sales, like, I always tried to play the political game because obviously you don't want to get fired. You're trying to be playing inside the lines. But like, in the position that Adam and I are in, like, we don't have to. We tell you the truth whether you like it or not. That's going to be up to you because we like, we've seen this script. We know the story. The ending doesn't bode well for you.

You know, the challenge I think we have though in our advisory capacities is like, what I often struggle with is like, I can tell you a hundred times, but you have to choose to listen and follow the advice. I've seen this movie a thousand times. I know what's likely going to happen. Likely I don't know for sure. And I'm going to tell you all these things, and then it's your job to do something about it. And that's that, again, kind of goes back to that. Leadership is like, that gets frustrating. It's like, oh my gosh, just don't do that. Don't do that. Don't do that. Oh, you did it. Okay, well, that's not going to bode well.

Like, hey, you know, you're paying me to tell you the truth. I told you the truth. You didn't listen. So okay, that's kind of on you. But I want to see everyone successful, and I don't want to see—it's like a parent. Like, I don't want to see you make the same mistakes that I saw the older brother make, right? Because, you know, I know if you jump off that—you know, I know if you go off that BMX ramp, you're going to break your damn arm. Greater than 50% chance something bad is going to happen. I'm just saying. I've seen this before. Oh, I know you're special. But okay, do it anyway. Everyone's a snowflake, dog. Everyone.

Yeah, that's true. It's true.

Damn, we covered a lot. I think, you know, it's so funny to me. And we did cover a lot, and I wish we had more time because I could go for another 30 minutes. But when we talk to founders and sales teams, and what you're saying about like that sales leader being fired—like Dale and I have both been in that seat, on both sides of that seat, for the record. And it's often the wrong gut decision to make. Like, listen, there are times you absolutely need to let a sales leader go. Make no mistake about it. But generally speaking, the problem—and we see this all the time—is the sales leader was hired 34 days ago, and you expected them to miraculously fix everything that the previous sales leader you fired in 34 days. And, you know, triple the revenue. And it just doesn't work that way.

That's the worst. That's the worst. You're like, oh, wait, so you're hiring someone to fix all of that you couldn't fix the first time around, and you're only giving them three months, right?

Why do sales leaders only get three months to ramp? I don't know. Like, we hire an enterprise AE and we give them 12 months to ramp. Well, likelihood is like six nowadays, but okay, let's give them—let's just land on nine. Let's land on nine. We get a sales leader and you only get three months. That's it. Like, if you haven't fixed everything and we're not starting to show progress, it's like, dude, in three months I'm just now figuring out how the hell I get my marketing counterpart and I to agree on a number that is not quote-unquote "leads." 100% BS.

Okay, Doug, let's wrap this up a little bit. You ready for some rapid fire, and we'll get you rolling?

Let's do it.

All right, first question. Here's the rules: you get 10 words or less. Otherwise, there's this miraculous gong that comes out through whoever's side. It's the special platform we have, and it gongs you and tells you to be quiet.

Early bird or night owl?

Early bird.

If you weren't in tech and you couldn't act, what other profession would you be in?

Golfer.

Nice. No hesitation. What's the handicap?

I'm currently an eight.

Woof. Wow. Trying to get to—trying to get to scratch?

Yeah, wow. What's your favorite guilty pleasure snack?

Only playing for four years. Guilty pleasure snack? Chips and salsa.

Okay. No guac?

Just salsa. No, just chips and salsa.

Okay, cool. Don't complicate this, Dale.

Yeah, I'm simple.

Besides yourself, who's the best storyteller you know?

I have two. I'm also biased because I love them both. They're very dear friends. Yeah, I probably have three because this is how we communicate. This is like we talk in this form. So Jen Allen, John Barrels, and Amy Valles. And the four of us just sit around and tell stories. We don't BS each other.

Cool. Love it. Doug, you've worked with a lot of startups both as yourself working there and also with Emergence. When you look at the state of startups today, what's one word to describe the state of the startup ecosystem?

Struggling.

Yeah. I like it. Last one, let's wrap this up. Dream vacation destination.

Scotland.

Scotland. Nice. Play a little bit of golf. You got to go play the Old Course.

Yeah, play the Old Course. Knew that was coming. Love Scotland. I had the best Thai food of my life still to this day in some back alley in Edinburgh. I love it. By the way, I've been to Scotland and I love it. I went there for the art festival in August and it's the craziest town on the planet in that month. I just want to go there to play golf. My first response actually was Greece, but I'm like, yeah, I can't really play golf out there. I'll just hang out and look at pretty water.

Doug, thank you so much for joining. Where can people learn more about your new advisory services? How can they find you? How can they interact with you besides LinkedIn? We know LinkedIn.

Yeah, LinkedIn is funny. Out of most social media platforms, I probably spend more time there than anywhere else. I'm old school like that. But you can find me at dl-advisory.co or douglandis.com. They both go to the same place. Yeah, just find me there.

Cool, man. Doug, thank you so much for joining. This was awesome.

Thanks, guys. This was really fun. Cheers.