We Went Viral Last Week

On Sunday, March 29, we posted a reel to our TopSDRs instagram account. At the time, we barely thought anything of it. We post reels pretty much every single day. However, when we woke up Monday morning, we discovered that we had gone viral.

The reel itself was nothing crazy. Just me (Andrew) sitting at a table talking to the camera about the day I quit Barclays. BUT something in it clearly struck a chord. Since it went up, Chris and I have been having non-stop conversations with insanely high performing individuals (including many of you reading this) who feel similarly unfulfilled by traditional paths. In almost every one of those calls, I’ve been asked about my decision to quit a big bank and join a series A startup as an SDR. So, I figured I’d take a moment to share what was actually going on in my mind at the time, and my reflections on the decision some 5 years later.

What I was feeling

When I was at Harvard, I was on the rowing team. Rowing was incredibly hard. It demanded 25+ hours/week of time (often early in the morning). Required me to cut weight, spend hours in frigid temperatures, and limit my social life outside of the boathouse. On paper it sucked. However, I didn’t see it that way. Yes it was difficult, but even on the bad days, my heart was in it. I cared about the end goals we were working towards. I loved spending time with my teammates. And I actively wanted to get better at the thing I was spending so much time doing. In short: I was bought in.

Fast forward to post-grad, and I remember sitting at a desk staring at a computer feeling perhaps the worst emotion any high performer can experience: indifference.

Indifference at woris like being on a tube floating down a lazy river. You’ve shown up, you probably have a decent attitude, but you have no control (and have no interest in controlling) where you end up. You just sort of let the current take you where it will.

Going from controlling my own destiny on the rowing team, to sitting on a metaphorical tube was worse than despising what I was doing. I felt like I was being lulled into complacently. Like the edge that I had spent years honing was disappearing. Not only that, when you’re heart isn’t in something, it’s nearly impossible to give 100%. When I rowed, I consistently improved because there was something inside of me driving me, pushing me to be better. I didn’t feel the same fire working at a big firm. I knew that I would probably only ever perform at 80% capacity, because that extra 20% can only be eeked out when you actually believe in what you’re doing. At this stage it was apparent to me was that working for a big corporation wasn’t what I wanted to do long term, but the problem was I didn’t have a good answer for what I wanted to pivot to.

The turning point

During Covid, Chris and I had started a small side-hustle called Virbar. Virbar was essentially a virtual bar. You could log on with friends, match with other online groups, and play games like would you rather in shared zoom rooms (no it was not Omegle!). And while we knew from the jump that Virbar wouldn’t have legs beyond covid, it actually did pretty well during peak lockdown. We had customers such as Williams College paying us several thousand dollars per month to use the platform, and partnered with some very notable influencers (@Fibula) to help spread the word. Most importantly though, the experience taught me two things: 1) being in a small, scrappy, entrepreneurial environment made me feel alive again (like when I rowed) 2) despite my strong resume, I had basically NO real professional skills…I couldn’t build and I could BARELY sell. So, I decided that I needed to fix that. I needed to learn sales.

Making the leap

At this point, I knew I wanted to go find a startup where I could learn how to sell; the only problem was though I had no idea where to start. So, I chatted with folks in my network and then did what any young, resourceful person would do: I turned to LinkedIn.

Over the course of my two week break from work (we had a mandatory “two-weeker” at the bank) I DMd tons of founders on LinkedIn and over email. I shared my story with them, and told them that I would do “whatever they needed” if they would just give me a shot.

Looking back, my messages were definitely way too long, and I’m almost certain my emails were going to spam, BUT somehow some way I managed to get on the radar of a founder who had just raised a big series A from Insight and Google Ventures. I met with him, shared my WHY for making a jump from a bank to sales (something he was understandably skeptical of initially), and after a few more interviews + an in-person meetup with the team, I got the job.

Quitting + My reflections

As I talked about in the viral reel above, quitting my job was nerve racking because I liked my boss + team, BUT I never doubted the decision itself.

I knew that I had to get off the lazy river.

I had to put myself into the position to learn skills that would help create asymmetric upside in my career.

Looking back on it now, it’s the best decision I have ever made. Yes my bonus the year I quit was more than my starting salary at the new job, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to find something I could fully buy into again. To put myself in an environment where I would be pushed to build a skillset that would serve me no matter where I ended up. And that’s exactly what being an SDR did.

Going into the experience, I probably would have told you that I would be learning sales. In retrospect, I think I learned how to handle rejection.

It’s a crazy thing in our world. Growing up from 0-22 we are basically taught that success = the absence of failure. However, the reality is that the most successful people in the world are the people who have failed the most. Nothing teaches that better than being an SDR. Every day is filled with more rejection than most people face in a lifetime.

It hurts in the moment, but long term, it gives you the power to take on whatever you want.

I have MANY more thoughts on rejection, ego, prestige etc. but for now I’ll leave it here.

If you have questions or are interested in making a similar type of move please feel free to reach out. We created TopSDRs so that unlike me, you don’t have to DM a ton of founders on LinkedIn to find your next thing.

Have a great week!

-Andrew