Joe Dunaway 0:02

Welcome to the VC Code, where we unlock real stories of small business owners who've battled chaos, crushed out, and conquered their challenges. Faith, family, and finances. No fluff, just raw, honest conversations that decode the path to victory. One story at a time. What is up? Thank you for joining us today as we explore our latest purpose-driven journey, the Revenue Architect, where we learn about scaling beyond the sales hero, how to transition from founder-led selling to an integrated revenue system, why revenue is a leadership responsibility, not just a department, and the tactical steps to remove yourself as the bottleneck in your own business growth. Most founders spend 15 years chasing leads and closing deals, only to realize they haven't built a company. They've just built a very high-pressure job for themselves. Today, we're tearing down the sales hero myth. The JP Rinolo, a 15-year B2B sales and revenue veteran who has helped countless founders move from emergency sales to engineered revenue through starting point associates. JP and I connected in and out of Dan Martell's elite mastermind. He is the antidote to the sales hero complex. He understands that most founders are one bad quarter away from a burnout-induced revenue crisis because they treat sales as a magic trick rather than a repeatable institutional system. He is the perfect guest for our audience to move from being a technician to being an owner. Today we explore the revenue system. How do you build a machine that works without you so you can focus on leadership instead of being the lead closer? And as always, we'll filter JP's journey through the VC pillars faith, family, fitness, and finance. JP, we're excited to have you on, my man. Welcome to the VC Code.

JP Rinylo 2:08

Joe, I have to say first, thank you for having me on. This is uh this is exciting um to have a conversation around all the things you just mentioned. But I also have to say, wow, I mean, that's a that's a that that's a hard thing to live up to, I feel like. Thank you for all the uh the the recognition there. I appreciate that.

Joe Dunaway 2:24

Yeah, well, it's it's all it's all real and and we're gonna find out why. We're gonna start at the very beginning. We're gonna go with the breakthrough. Revenue is leadership. You talk about founders who either avoid sales, rush to outsource it, or refuse to let go to it altogether. Having seen dozens of startups go from zero to scale, what is the psychological reason founders struggle to let go of the keyboard and the pitch deck?

JP Rinylo 2:49

That's a great question. Um let me take a second and just use a word that you just highlighted there a second ago uh in my in my intro. You use the word veteran, that I'm a sales veteran. And I think that one of the things that comes with that call it badge is having an opportunity to see it done really well right and really well wrong across a myriad of companies, both clients as well as employers, as well as peers and partners. And I think the number one thing I recognize across all of them, and even those that did it right, is there's this there's this myth or or philosophy that a lot of them make a mistake on around what sales is. And they treat sales very much as like a role of a person in their organization that is mandated to accomplish one thing, which is the sale of their product, their service, their offering, whatever it is that their business produces. And that philosophy of it being a role negates what I recognized as it's actually a leadership function first. Sales, revenue, anything related to generating business or generating income for your business or revenue for your business, et cetera, is going to be it has to start at the top. So getting clear on the philosophy of what is sales going to be to your organization is the most critical thing that I think I've seen as like the the the pivot point for most companies when they uh when they first get started. Does that answer your question?

Joe Dunaway 4:24

Yeah, and that's an interesting perspective. You don't really hear that often. Usually you do hear it as it's a department, it's a function, um, it's obviously uh essential, right? No, no one's saying that it's not essential, but right uh, you know, leading off that it's a a leadership piece, and it's it and it makes sense, right? Someone's gonna someone's gotta direct like who our customers are, why we are, what, what's you know, what why are we getting into sales? So like revenue as a leadership responsibility is really important mind shift for our audience to understand. You argue that revenue, revenue is a leadership responsibility, not a siloed sales function for the founder listening who thinks sales is what the team does, or how does the mindset shift actually change the entire customer life cycle?

JP Rinylo 5:14

Um, one of the things, it's again another great question. One of the things that I always look for when I work with clients. So for clarity, I work with clients who are asking them this question or asking themselves this question, which is like, how do I scale my organization so that I can get more sales, more revenue, grow the team, grow the business, you know, sell to new sell new lines of business, sell to new industries, et cetera. Like those are the types of clients I'm working with. And typically they're in that like growth stage between five and ten million or just north of 10 million, but they're kind of like feeling like a ceiling. And typically when I get in there, I ask like some very basic questions. And one of the basic questions is, Well, where does your business come from today? And that's the in asking that question, I should be able to hear, well, here's who we sell to, here's what we sell to them. And they typically find us by this means, right? Some channel, some marketing, some referral programs, some partner programs, something. If they can't answer, though, where the business comes from in a clear way that gives me understanding that they know that sales is like using my my reference to the philosophy, sales is the is the vehicle, not the role as a salesperson, but the sales is the vehicle at which you are able to help someone buy what you sell or what you provide. That's all it is. The way that they become aware of who you are, what you are, why would they why would they buy from you, all of that is not part of the sales function. It's part of the marketing and business function of being in business. So, like you and I met through the Dan Martell um elite community, and we've that means most of us you know listening who have who are familiar with Dan Martell have probably read the Buy Back Your Book, a buy back your time book. And if we look at that um replacement ladder that he builds, when you're buying back your time, it's if we go from the bottom, it's uh administrative, operations, maybe delivery, I think it was, and then you replace yourself in marketing, and then you replace yourself in sales. And then last is you replace yourself with leadership. There's a reason why sales is so high in that list of the or in that rungs, you know, in the rungs of the light of that ladder. And it's because the sales is the hard doing the sale of what you sell is the hardest part for anyone else to learn when you're first starting out. And so again, kind of like that philosophy of it being a leadership function, there's a reason why it sits so high on that ladder. Uh it's the hardest thing that you have to be able to identify as a as a you know, here's what we do, you know, here's what speaking about Dan Martell, here's what we do, and here's how you sell it. It's the hardest thing to hand off. That's why it's last in one of the last lists of items on Dan's list.

Joe Dunaway 8:04

Well, what does a real sales system look like in practice? And how do you differentiate it from just hiring a salesperson?

JP Rinylo 8:12

Well, first I want to touch on I think it it's often the founders that I've the founders I've chosen not to work with mostly in the past year and a half are those that believe that it is just hire the salesperson as the first step to building a sales function. And I'll say there are there are organizations where that I that I've been a part of or that I've watched that step be taken. Let's just hire the salesperson and let them figure it out. And when that's occurred, there's one of two things that happens. They fail, and they fail fast and soon, despite how great of a salesperson they are or were before they joined your organization. Um and they fail and either recognize it themselves and let you know, hey, listen, this isn't working, and then they tell you what they need in order to be a success. Or they're afraid to tell you what they know they need for to be a success, or you don't, or or the founder or the business owner doesn't want to hear it, doesn't believe it, says, no, no, that's your job, and then they and then they quit. So that's like one of the first the first paths I've seen it be that they uh when they when they take that stuff first. The second path that or the second outcome I've seen is they hire the salesperson, the salesperson's good, and this was this is where I often operate it well. Sales person's good at figuring out what they need at the bare minimum to be a success. They're a success in that way, and then they just start to continually build more and more success on that like first step of being the salesperson who figures it out for the organization, but then soon they're golden handcuffed, the business is golden handcuffed to that person, right? So that's what I see is the most common thing. I and I I know I kind of didn't answer the question directly because I went down the path of like what do they typically do? But typically the first step people think in building a sales function is to hire a salesperson. And I think that's actually the last step I would coach someone to do.

Joe Dunaway 10:06

Well, and you answered it because that is the difference, right? If you're hiring a salesperson, if you hit the lottery, you might get a salesperson who can help you build the system, but that's not what they're there to do. They're not there to build the system. The system needs to be in place in order to ensure that that salesperson feels like they're winning. Because uh, like you said, a world-class salesman, a rainmaker, stands no chance, or at least is gonna be unhappy and not want to even stay, even if they are finding success, if there's not an actual system in place. So, yeah, I mean, I I completely agree. And let's go back to like the hero culture, and and there's a cost to that, right? You know, in the finance pillar, we know that inconsistent revenue is the fastest way to kill a company's valuation. How does the hero mindset of a founder closing every deal actually lower the enterprise value of the business? I think we were kind of heading in that direction anyway.

JP Rinylo 11:05

We were, yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. Um, so yeah, what I was referring to in that example is if you do hire a salesperson and they are successful, you're making them the hero, which is fine for your initial objective, which is generate income, grow the revenue, grow pipeline, etc. But now you're now you're handcuffing yourself to that person's continued success. And you, as the founder or business owner, don't know necessarily how they've been so successful. And then if they decide to your point, because they're unhappy because they're doing it all, they're feeling all the all the burden, they leave, you're effed. You know, you're big time, you're you're in trouble. Now, let's go the other way, because this is the other part of your question. If you are the business owner and the founder and you are doing all the sales and you are becoming the hero in how the business generates revenue, and you've you let's say you followed the the leadership ladder or the um replacement ladder that Dan's taught us, right? And you're you've got all the steps except for maybe marketing and sales in place in a way that you can literally point to it and say to someone else who can't comes in the door to sell for you, this is how leads are generated, this is the message that's being put out in market, this is what we sell and how we sell it, and this is what it always costs, or this is what it costs, and here are the variables. If you're not able to say that as the business owner to someone else, you're not ready to hire for sales, and you are becoming the hero for yourself in the business by not defining those things. Because you, and this is what I see most frequently. And actually, I spoke with a woman when I first started my my practice. I spoke with a woman who had been in business for 20 years. She'd been running her company for 20 years, and I asked her that question I mentioned earlier, like, oh, well, where you know, where how do you generate business? She wanted me to come in and help her build her sales function. I said, Well, where does business come in from today? And she told me her network referrals and this and that. I said, What about marketing? What types of lead gen channels do you have? Oh, we don't, we don't, I don't believe in marketing. We don't spend any money on marketing. And I said, Well, where do you generate leads that don't come from your referrals and your network and the other channels you just mentioned? Oh, well, if if we don't receive them, then that's what I'm hoping you can help me figure out. And I'm like, Well, you just told me don't spend money on marketing. And whether you call it marketing or lead gen or demand gen or whatever you want to call it, any salesperson is going to expect that yes, their job is to help cold call or do outreach or generate and you know, generate interest from within their network or known known audience. But if you don't know what your known audience is and you're not engaging with that known audience somewhere or any audience somewhere, where do you want them to go when they've exhausted all of their audience? And like her eyes like lit up, and she was like, Oh, well, I mean, I've been in business for 20 years. I never had to address this problem. Like, well, how big's a business? And she was like, Oh, we've done uh 21 million. I was like, This year? She's like, No, you know, lifetime, lifetime. Yeah, I was like, that's about a million a year. Like, that's your ceiling. The way you're living right now, that's your ceiling. And she wanted to be a hundred million dollar company in five years. And I was like, Well, you better start investing in marketing. And I was just kind of being completely frank and honest and direct about it because at that point she recognized that she was being the hero by just continually using the model that worked and not making the investments in the things that were going to help her move the needle further, which were define those things and get yourself in a place where you can say, Here's how we generate lead leads, or rather, here's our message, here's how we generate leads with that message, here's where we generate those leads, here's what we sell to those people, here's why they buy, here's how they buy, here's the pricing, etc.

Joe Dunaway 14:48

So and that builds value when you're trying to exit. If if you're the sales hero, you can't sell the machine that you've built, you can't sell this brand, right? You need that system in place that builds value, and honestly, it builds a hell of a lot more value than what the amount of time it costs you to build it, way more. Because if you can it is hard, but like if you can if you can replace yourself and you have a system, now you've just created so much more value and you can walk away. You can either fully exit or stay on at a smaller capacity and you know buy back your time, go do other things right now. That was a good example. I really like that. And I'm glad you didn't use me as the example because we had a similar conversation not too long ago. Um, but when a founder brings you in, what's the first operational leverage point you look for to prove they can scale?

JP Rinylo 15:45

Well, I kind of I've kind of talked about it already. Um, the first leverage point that they have is a very clear message for the pain that they solve for their clients or the solutions that they provide that eliminate pain or eliminate or or it's so usually you're you're it's um I learned this a long time ago from one of my first in my first sales uh jobs. It's you are either selling painkillers or vitamins, right? Like those are the two versions of of products that are out there in in any market in any industry. You're either solving a problem or you're supplementing a situation that helps to accelerate things. So, like for instance, if I get in there and I identify that there's no clear pain point that you that your solution solves for your client that is written in a sentence or written in a paragraph or can be written across all the different solutions that you sell, then that's the first thing that we need to get crystal clear on, or you need to get crystal clear on, that then I can help you get to the point where we can go out and have a conversation with someone and say, well, listen, what we typically find is when we work with clients like ABC and they're experiencing XYZ, we solve their solutions with or we we provide them solutions that look like one, two, three. It's I don't know if there's any other clear way to answer that question. And like that's the most critical thing.

Joe Dunaway 17:07

Yeah, so there's there's a there's a there's an element of marketing before you can even address some of the sales issues of of your clients that that you're willing to work with. It's like, hey, what can you answer these questions? Can you answer these marketing questions? Because if you can't, what are we doing here? Like the there's more work to be done before we can actually grow and scale your uh systemize your your revenue.

JP Rinylo 17:34

Yeah, I mean, Joe, actually the the the word that comes to mind that you just shared as it relates to that important uh thing that I look for is it's a fundamental. It's not really the marketing, it's the fundamentals to marketing. Got it right. Marketing tells the story well, sales makes the story real. That's that's the way I've always like kind of operated, right? But marketing needs the the raw materials to have a story to tell. And if they don't have any raw materials when they come in the door, or going back to the hero concept, if all the raw materials live in the founder's head, if they're sitting in their creative spark that they that they experience every time they they talk to a prospective client, and they're never really captured in any sort of a formal way, you can't even hire for marketing. Again, why marketing is so high up on that ladder that Dan has built um when you're trying to replace yourself and buy back your time.

Joe Dunaway 18:36

Yeah, 100%. Um, we're gonna lighten things up a little bit and we're gonna shift we're gonna shift over to I think one of uh your favorite topics, uh fitness, man. Um I know you and I can do an entire podcast on just this topic alone, but um, scaling a business requires extreme mental clarity in the fitness pillar. How do you maintain the stamina to stay consistent in a B2B sales space? Do you see a correlation between physical discipline and the stamina required to build a revenue system?

JP Rinylo 19:10

Great question. I thought you said we were gonna lighten it up a little bit.

Joe Dunaway 19:14

Um less technical, but just you know.

JP Rinylo 19:17

Yeah, no, no. Let me make the connection. Um so I mean, the short answer I could answer is just yes, I do see a direct correlation. Um, I think the word you're using to support that is discipline. The discipline that it requires to express any sort of fitness is the same level of discipline it requires in order to go through the exercise of what we just talked about as it relates to building a business, which is to sit down and do the hard work. I mean, shit, for my own company, building my own business for the first time. I've never done this, but I've seen it done four different times. Five, if I really count every employer prior to now, um, six if I think about the corporations I work for before this. Uh they all have to do the hard work and sit down and say, you know, uh what's the book right there, Jim Collins. Good to great. Make it a very so going back, bring us back to fitness, pick a single thing that you want to focus on. List what would it take in order for you to accomplish those things. What does accomplishing that thing look like? And then work backwards from what accomplishment accomplishing it looks like in the sense of the discipline it will require for you to be able to do the tasks over and over again until you can identify yes, this is working or no, this is not working, right? Um Jim Collins and Good the Great, from a business perspective, calls that the hedgehog concept, right? In the traditional sense of fitness, it's you know called being patient and being disciplined and you know, picking a single goal. Now, I'm I'm the guy, you know you you you and I've talked about this before. I'm the guy that says I want to lose 10 pounds, I want to get cut, and I want to, you know, increase my uh my my back squat, my bench, and my deadlift all at the same time. Yeah. Now, can you do that? Absolutely. Can I do that with my 15, 20 years plus of experience in both crossfit and bodybuilding and weightlifting? Yes, because I'm much more familiar with what it requires. Am I as disciplined, though, is always going to come back to being the number one thing I have to pay attention to? And the thing I'll tell you that we that you and I have probably not talked about in this call, but or in this uh podcast episode, but we've talked about, I think, in prior calls, is and you always have to factor in what are all the outside variables that are going to impact your ability to stay disciplined and give yourself some grace when the seasons of life are going to challenge you to be able to stay disciplined to the degree that you would like to hold yourself to as a standard. And that's something I've struggled with. Big time because I've I'm I'm a I'm an all or all or nothing kind of guy when it comes to things. And so, you know, what is what is it they say? Um, you know, done is better than perfect when it comes to doing a task. Yeah. I struggle with that, man. I'm like, all right, I really want this workout to be a you know a banger. So I'm gonna do the right warm-up, I'm gonna do the right, you know, mobility work, I'm gonna do the right weights for the program, I'm gonna do the right warm down, cool down, and then I'm gonna do the aerobic component. And then like suddenly I look at the clock and be like, shit, I only got 45 minutes, I'm not gonna be able to get all that in. Fuck it, I won't even work out today. Yeah, that's a hard one, man. Yeah, that's a hard one for me. I don't know if that answers the question directly, but it kind of like correlation.

Joe Dunaway 22:45

Yeah, for sure. And and my my version of that is just like, you know, you gotta also, you know, there there is the hard work, but there's also the boring work, right? The things that are also boring that that get you the results. So there'll be moments of like hard work where you feel like you did something, um, and it's almost like tangible. Uh, but then there's also the work that's like boring and you feel like it's not gonna do anything. Uh, you know, the consistent work um and showing up every time, like, yeah, going to the gym, even though you can't get that full workout in, or spending a little bit more time on this area of the system that maybe may seem monotonous, but like, you know, are you using the right language? Are you consistent there? You know, are you documenting how you did it? A lot of that stuff, you know, all builds together. And it doesn't the reason discipline's so special is because nothing happens overnight, nothing good happens. It just it's just consistently showing up and doing the small things that over time looks like you've did all these big things, but the reality is it's just been done brick by brick the whole time.

JP Rinylo 23:52

Yeah, Joe, I want to add something, uh, uh, an uh uh point of clarity that came to mind for me. Nothing remarkable happens overnight. Right. If you need to lose, uh I you know someone with within the elite community just lost a hundred pounds and she did it, she did it in like just over a year. And that's a that is a huge accomplishment. But it took her over a year, right? Here's the question I always get like so I've I've done a lot of coaching. Um, I do business coaching and business advisory. I also do fitness coaching and fit fitness advisory in both the CrossFit and and non-crossfit related communities. And I used to get asked this question, uh, you know, JP, how did you get so fit for CrossFit? I said, Well, I've been doing it for this, this this was a conversation I had a couple years ago. I said, Well, I've been doing it for 15 years. And he said, Oh, wow, really? 15 years? I said, Yeah, like I didn't walk in day one knowing how to do ring muscle ups and all this. And I, and now this person had some weight that they wanted to lose, and you know, you could tell that their fitness level had not been something they focused on for a long period of time. And they were like, Well, look, you know, like I I'd love to be able to do that. I was like, Well, all right, well, where worry about that later. Like, what's your first objective? And they're like, Oh, you know, I want I I need to lose about 50 pounds. I was like, all right, well, and in how you know, in what time frame do you want to lose that 50 pounds? Like in in 30 days, in 60 days, I want to, I mean, in the next 30 days, I'd love to be I'd love to be down 25 pounds. And I'd be like, listen, how long did it take you to put on that 50 pounds?

Joe Dunaway 25:24

Yeah, exactly.

JP Rinylo 25:26

Think about it, think about it in reverse, right? Like, that's the question I always like, okay. Well, how long did it take you to accomplish your your last big objective or goal that you that you you know that stands out in your mind, right? So like that's the way you look at it from a positive. Look at it from the other direction, still positive, but from the other direction. You know, you you what uh for like my wife, for instance, she just had uh surgery, and uh the the surgery she had 30 days ago is preventing her from being able to do like planks and push-ups and things that she's for the last you know 20 years of her fitness career, she's been just doing them left and right. Well, she can't do she can't do a plank right now, and she can't do a uh a push-up. But I'm like, you're only 30 days outside of a major surgery that's gonna prevent that. But you're starting physical, so but so like this is where like again my wife talked about discipline, the tie between you know, like picking a thing and making a plan and figuring out a way to get after that thing. She right away made a physical therapy. Uh her first appointment is today at 5 p.m. You know, like she's she's gonna figure it the fuck out, yeah. Step by step.

Joe Dunaway 26:31

And I've told you I coach, man. I I got people that come in that have been out of it for a while, they put on weight. My my sobering advice to them is always like like just do enough to show up. You just need to keep showing up, right? Yeah, and I can guarantee you, I can guarantee you results, just keep showing up. Because honestly, it if you're losing, you know, 50 pounds in a month, that's not even healthy, right? Like it's it's it's something you're doing is not right. A really good point. You know, it's not even healthy, even if you can do it, should you do it, right? Just because you can doesn't mean you should. And we know that in business as well, especially when it comes to the entrepreneurship world where you start seeing some things work and opportunities, more doors start opening. You don't just because you can doesn't mean you should. So, but yeah.

JP Rinylo 27:22

That's that that I love that saying. I I I said that to a client recently and I forgot how powerful of a statement it is. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Joe Dunaway 27:31

Yeah. Well, and I say to my kids all the time. So here goes the next question. You spend 15 years in high-stakes revenue leadership in the family pillar. How has your view on working smarter evolved as you've grown? How do you ensure your career doesn't take the time uh and presence that belong to your family?

JP Rinylo 27:50

Well, first I want to call something out that I think has has come up in the elite conversations, but I think is not more broadly talked about. There's this element of hustle culture that exists out there in the entrepreneur world. And I've been a part of the hustle culture before I even started my own, you know, practice here. And I went full tilt into that hustle culture for those 15 years, uh, 14 of those 15 years, to the point where my wife called me a roommate in the house because I was working from home for all that time, and as I still do, and I would get up at like six or seven and be on my phone, be on my laptop, be headphones on, walking around to taking meetings all over the house. And if it was a summertime and the kids were off and my wife was off, I'm yelling at them to be quiet. Shh, shh, I need hey, quiet. I gotta, I gotta do my work, guys. I uh does that does no one know does everyone not know I'm on a meeting right now? And I started to hate myself, right? But I mean, that was uh what what was I doing? I was grinding, dude. I was doing the work, I was making it happen, and that was before I was even doing it for myself. Um, was when I was doing it for employees or employers, and it was actually encouraged in a way by the employers. Again, I was working for Star Wars most of my career uh in the sales space, and it's almost encouraged by them because that's because they know, especially for for the say this goes back to kind of like you know, your hero sales rep um conversation point, you know, because if you are the business owner doing all the selling and you're the bottleneck around sales, but you're afraid to invite someone in to help you define it and document it all and build it out so that it's something that you can then systematize and hand off. And there's like a little bit of a fear element there that no one else can do it, or that you're afraid to let anyone look behind the curtain to see what it looks like, you know, when you do it the way you do it and possibly call you out or judge you on it. And so, like, that's why you continue to just monger it. Well, that means in order for you to grow your business, you need to really hustle. And you're probably not gonna spend a lot of time with your family and kids if you have them, and you're not gonna probably have it, and you're probably not gonna spend a lot of time in building a relationship with someone if you're not married, but you want to be, right? Because you're gonna be constantly in that hustle culture or hustle mindset. Uh, if you are someone like me, you know, my story is true. Like my wife called me a roommate, and I was I was like, this is not fucking working, right? Like my kids were starting to get they still today, I've I've not worked for an employer for over two years now, and I'm very grateful for the move that I made because what I've noticed is my relationship with my wife, my relationship with my friends, with my neighbors, with my community, with my CrossFit, with myself, has all improved drastically. But there are still, even for my relationship with myself, there are still some like uh I know you're military, so you'll you'll understand this, like some trauma triggers that occur when the kids see me in the morning and I've got my earbuds in, and they come downstairs on like a you know Friday morning and I'm up before them, they're like quiet and they're like and then like they tiptoe around me, you know, and like I'm like no no no, it's okay, guys. Don't worry about it, no big deal. I'm just I'm I'm just on a call with a friend, or I'm just on a call with a client, and like I let my clients know, like, listen, I work from home, this is this, this is what's happening, right? Just just like somebody could walk into my office right now, this is what's happening. So like I I've kind of given my kids back the grace to understand that they are more important to me than anything I'm doing in work-related business. But that trigger actually hurts me still. That trauma trigger hurts me still sometimes with the sense of hustle culture because I'll feel a lot of shame and guilt when I'm taking a dog for a walk for 30 minutes longer than I normally would because you know we we didn't get a walk in yesterday. And I'm like, shit, I gotta, I gotta hustle back to my desk. I gotta get back to my desk. And for what? I mean, yeah, dude, listen, here, here, Will Smith used to say this: you will not outwork me. I I can assure you that there's no one who will outwork me. If it's something I am truly passionate about, you will not outwork me. But I have to now understand that, and I encourage anyone listening who's in a business owner, founder, or or any seat, executive seat, recognize that there's a reason why there's so many Instagram posts out there that say, you know, uh carpe diem and and and make sure you're doing the things you love to do. You're not gonna regret not sending that email on your deathbed. You're not gonna regret, you know, the the the things that are work-related when you're on your deathbed, when you're 80 and you're sitting in a nursing home. You're gonna regret the things you didn't do and the and the people you that that really help you live life and experience life.

Joe Dunaway 32:54

100%. You're gonna regret not spending more time with those people that you love. And it's, you know, it I'm glad more people are talking about it now because there's there's ways to avoid it, right? And I think talking to guys like you and I who have been through it, you know, we just want that next that next generation of of entrepreneurs and business owners and executives and leaders to prioritize. I mean, that's why the the Vichy pillars come in this order it's faith, family, fitness, finance. It works itself out. If you're doing these three things, you know, this piece will work itself out. So um I'm really glad that you shared that. Um I want to jump into our our rapid fire. We have a lot of fun with this now. You know, three quick questions, you know, not too deep. Uh this one, this this first one.

JP Rinylo 33:43

And I don't get to know what they are yet. Okay.

Joe Dunaway 33:45

You don't get to know what they are. Okay. This first one, you can't say sales system as an answer. I'm already taking that off the board. So here's the question: what's the number one mistake founders make when hiring their first salesperson?

JP Rinylo 33:58

Thinking that they have some sort of magic pixie dust in in a in in their you know pocket that they're gonna wave over top of your prospects and they're gonna automatically be ready to buy anything you sell.

Joe Dunaway 34:10

Yeah. Um what is one metric every founder should track but most ignore?

JP Rinylo 34:20

What is one metric every founder should track but most ignore? I gotta think about a couple clients in this scenario. Um their client growth. Like the the the percentage of growth within their clients. Within a client as in their clients, not like how many clients have they acquired, it's the growth within a single client because that is where most of your revenue can come from to fuel your growth as a business.

Joe Dunaway 35:00

Existing clients, right. You got it. Yeah. Uh we use usually refer to uh Vici as victory. Um, what does victory look like for JP JP Ranillo in 2026?

JP Rinylo 35:17

Well, I can't help but when I think of the word Vici, go back to my Latin studies. I studied Latin for four years, and Vici comes from Vini VD Vici, which is what Caesar said, I believe it was Caesar who what he said when he showed up. Yep, when he showed up and had conquered, had he conquered Rome or Sparta, he caught he'd conquered someone. I can't remember the exact story, but that's who said it. And it's the whole concept of I came, I saw, I conquered. And it's for me, it's like I saw an opportunity when I started this business that has now become very clear for me in 2026, which is to help others who are in the seat of either building a sales team or are the sales team figure out how to navigate their success for growth and scale so that they no longer are the hero. I I just want like that's if anything, I just want to help people who don't know how not to be the hero but are the hero from recognizing that like it's awesome while it's awesome, it's gonna suck when it sucks. And there's and and when it sucks, you're you're gonna feel worse than you did, you know, than you ever could have expected. Um, I don't know exactly how to answer your question around what victory looks like for JP. If I'm helping a hundred people in the next year make better choices around how they build their sales organization, that would feel like victory for me. Whether they're engaging with me as a client or not is not the point of that hundred. Yeah, I'm picking a random number.

Joe Dunaway 36:50

Which can which can save literally save companies and honestly save the burnout and and the mental health of of some of these solopreneurs or these hero salesmen.

JP Rinylo 37:02

So yeah, yeah, the ment the the mental health is a big one, man. You've you've cut you've kind of picked up on that in my uh in my responses, probably. Yeah, 100%.

Joe Dunaway 37:10

Um, quick recap, all right. So if you if you haven't caught on yet, sales is a system, not a personality trait. Leaders own the revenue, they don't just do the sales. If you're ready to build a system that outgrows your personal pitch, connect with JP on LinkedIn, Instagram, or even visit the website at static startingpointassociates.com. You can uh you can find those links in the show notes. JP, anything you got for our listeners?

JP Rinylo 37:42

Yeah, uh Instagram is actually the best place to probably reach out to me directly. Um if you want to have a personal conversation, uh just shoot me a you know message in the DMs. But you know, I would like to leave, I always like to leave the audiences that I have the opportunity to engage with something that's of value. Um, I've found a lot of value in it recently for myself. Um part of the elite community process is to, you know, in the buyback your time methodology, is to uh your first step is to hire an executive assistant. And that was something I did for myself recently in the last 30 days. And today actually is her 30th day, and we just did her 30-day review. And I put together, we've we she and I had put together a uh 30-day onboarding, 60-day onboarding, 90-day onboarding, and then we ended up tying a variable comp component to it. And so I've actually got a template that she now she and I have now created as a result of this that I've shared with a couple other business owners and founders that gives them a way to tie a motivation factor into the overall first 90 days of the overall onboarding exercise with an executive assistant. And I'll make sure I uh get that over to you so you can send that template out to your audience alongside this uh episode. But yeah, if if anything, if you're a business owner and you don't have an executive assistant yet, highly recommend making a heavy investment in that. And I have some resources I'm happy to share around you know how to go about doing that as well. But yeah, that's that's what I want to offer.

Joe Dunaway 39:03

Lots of value, compounded value there from JP. Appreciate you, sir. Uh, to our audience, stop chasing, start engineering, and build a system that serves your vision. We'll see you on the next episode of Vichic Code. Thanks, Joe. Thanks for tuning in to the VC Code, where the underdogs rise and the numbers finally make sense. If today's story hit home, share it. And remember, faith fuels a fight, and your comeback is already in progress.