Transcript:

Rick Currier (00:01.03)

Well, hey there, welcome to the show.

Ami (00:03.266)

Thanks, Rick. Excited to be here.

Rick Currier (00:05.392)

Yeah, it's super exciting because we were just talking about how you know my co-founder, Honda Lewis, and you live in my hometown of Alameda. And we've never really met, but I feel like we have a lot in common.

Ami (00:15.822)

Yeah, between those two things, that's far more that I have in common with you than any other podcast host I've ever sat with.

Rick Currier (00:24.594)

So I know you've known Hondo for a while, but I don't know if you told me or if I just don't remember. How do you know Hondo?

Ami (00:30.414)

Yeah, so I was trying to figure out this morning how long it's been. My guess is it's probably, it's at least 15 years and maybe like as much as 17. And the reason I can sort of pinpoint that is, so my career sort of started in software, took a sharp turn into the world of retail and hospitality, where I spent about 15 years and then back in software the last seven years. And so during that time in retail hospitality,

started with an e commerce website selling kind of men's clothing and accessories that will sort of, for those of you watching this will make sense of my background and probably my attire as well. And so we started as a website in four, and then we opened our first store in the financial district of San Francisco in 2008. And so as we were making that move, we spent a little bit of money couple 1000 bucks at the time on some print magazine advertising.

And I don't think hondo actually I know hondo wasn't the salesperson But I believe he was the sales manager kind of shortly after those first ad buys And we continued to do them for years And so whenever we were late paying the bill, know hondo would come into the store and say can you write me a check and and we would and And so yeah, that was so we we opened the store in 2008

So that's why, know, so, but again, I don't know that I met Hondo right around that time, but it was probably around 2009, 2010. And, you know, we're not best friends, but we've sort of kept in touch via LinkedIn, you know, events, things like that. So.

Rick Currier (02:12.136)

Yeah. And he took me to your store, I believe once. I think we were on the top level. was like a club, an exclusive social club, a bar, lots of, yeah. And it was, mean, first of all, tell me a little bit more about it because I know there was like a fly fishing store downstairs. You could go upstairs, get drinks in this exclusive environment. Like tell me about it, because I loved it when I went, but I was only there one night.

Ami (02:21.954)

Yeah, that was the club.

Ami (02:33.226)

You should. You sure you said we only have like 20 to 40 minutes. So, yeah, so no, I'll do it. I'll do it short. Yeah. So let me and let me start with kind of the concept from the beginning. So when I when I left software, my dream was to redefine the traditional men's store. And the traditional men's store was a, you know, kind of men's clothing and some accessories. I worked at one of those when I was in college in Berkeley.

Rick Currier (02:36.904)

Well, give me give me the highlight because I think you know, yeah.

Ami (03:03.05)

little 2000 square foot store that sold suits sport coats Hawaiian shirts khakis, you know shoes cufflinks stuff like that And this was right around like the cigar boom for those people that weren't alive in the mid 90s They'll probably wonder what the heck I'm talking about But there was a period of like, I don't know five years or so where cigars were like all the rage and I actually spent a year working at a cigar shop in downtown San Francisco and

when I came back from the cigar shop to the clothing shop, the owner of the clothing shop asked me again, because cigars were so hot at the time, did I think it was a good idea if they converted their back office into a cigar lounge? And I was like, my gosh, that would be a great idea. Now I'm also I'm like 20 years old at the time. But I thought it was a great idea. They didn't do it. But the thought never left my head. And so when I went into software and started making some decent money, I was spending all my money on clothes.

cigars, bourbon, golf, sunglasses, watches, you know, that type of thing. But I was buying all those things from, you know, a half a dozen different merchants and spread out all over the Bay Area. And so my idea was, I can't be the only guy that likes buying these things. What if I put them all under one roof? At the same time, in my software job, I was also traveling a couple hundred thousand miles a year. And so I was constantly on the road.

actually, the company was incorporated under the name on the fly, it later became called wingtip, which is what you visited. And so I was a prestigious member of the United red carpet club, which isn't that prestigious, as you know, but but what was interesting to me about it was if you flew a lot, and because like San Francisco is a hub for United,

Rick Currier (04:42.418)

You

Ami (04:51.318)

If you flew a lot and you flew a lot on United, the red carpet club was a no brainer. Like why wouldn't you join? There's nicer bathrooms, there's treats, know, water, know, what Wi Fi, whatever. And if you didn't fly United a lot, it would make no sense to join the United red carpet club. And so my vision, when I started the business, although didn't really come to its true fruition until about 2010, was to also add a private club aspect to it.

but where the idea behind the private club was if you were a good customer of the store, the club would be a no brainer to join. And if you didn't like what we sold in the store, then the clubs probably, you're probably not gonna like what we're doing there. And so started as a website in 04, added our first store in 2008, added the club concept in 2010, but away from the store about three blocks away in a second location. And then eventually,

brought both together, the store and the club into a single building, which is what you visited. We opened that in 2012 and it was 22,000 square feet. So on the ground floor, we sold clothing and accessories. We had, as you mentioned, a fly fishing shop. We had a single chair barber shop. We had a wine and spirits department and we had a little cigar vault. And then on the top two floors of the building and 13,000 square feet, we had the private club, which had a full service bar and restaurant.

We had a whiskey collection of 500 whiskies, a cigar lounge, a boardroom, private dining rooms, a billiards room and a roof deck. And still there today, sort of new name, new management. That's definitely a story that would take more than 40 minutes that we won't get into today. But but yeah, that was the concept. And so I'm glad Hondo had a chance to take you there.

Rick Currier (06:29.292)

Hahaha

Rick Currier (06:37.574)

Yeah, mean, from my perspective, more than just convenience and amenities, for me, was an experience. And I think that's, and that's why I wanted to hear that story and share it with the audience, because knowing what you're doing today at Sixth Sense, you know, it's more than just delivering a story. I mean, I feel like you're delivering an experience. So why don't we talk a little bit about what it is you're doing today? Because I think what you did has a really impact on what you're doing today.

Ami (07:02.454)

Yeah, well, there's definitely there's definitely a lot of tricks that I brought with me from my time in retail and hospitality over to Sixth Sense and and actually before that Microsoft and so let me let me think if I if I should start there or not. Well, we'll just keep it to Sixth Sense. But yes, I've long been a big believer in experiences. I've said more than one time that one of the

books that I read back when I was in the business planning stages of my concept, this would have been like early 2000s was a book by a gentleman named Joe pine. And now his co authors escaping me, which I feel really bad about. It'll come to me as soon as we hang up, but called the experience economy. And it basically kind of walks through kind of the evolution of economic offerings, starting with like, you know, commodities, things you might pull out of the ground.

and then products and then services and then ultimately experiences. And now he's actually about to publish a book on transformations, which is a whole nother thing that is influencing what I hope to be doing at Sixth Sense next. But so there's a there's a line in the book, The Experience Economy, where he asks the question, you know, what would you do differently in your business if you were to charge admission?

And so, you know, again, think about it. No one's going to pay money to walk into a men's clothing store. But if you start thinking to yourself, what would I need to do in my men's store to to be able to justify asking someone to pay to go in like that all of a sudden gets your mind racing in all these different directions. And for me, like, people already pay for private clubs for social clubs.

And so if if kind of the common thread through our membership is a an appreciation for the finer things in life be it Clothing or watches or wine or cocktails or good food, you know travel things like that That was kind of the the genesis of the idea. So, so as I I've come to six cents One of the first kind of projects that I did that was extremely experiential and will be difficult to kind of Convey without pictures, but I'll do my best is an executive dinner

Ami (09:13.838)

And executive dinners in my opinion are ripe for being made much more experiential like the typical executive dinner is an executive with PowerPoint, you know at a steakhouse and They work because companies continue to do them But very few of them are ever memorable And so I wanted to kind of figure out how to make an executive dinner more experiential

And so with the dinner that I do with Sixth Sense and some of it you'd have to know a lot about Sixth Sense to appreciate, but I'll give you a couple examples. Our CMO wrote a book called No Forms, No Spam, No Cold Calls. It's a book about account-based marketing. Tons of people have read it. Whether you use Sixth Sense or not, I think it's a book every B2B marketer should read. But again, the title is No Forms, No Spam, No Cold Calls.

So in the beginning of my dinner, after I actually teach a couple of guests how to saber a bottle of champagne, I'm tempted to reach for my saber over here and show it, but basically you're opening a bottle with something that looks like a big knife or a sword. It's not that hard to do. I've taught probably close to a thousand people how to do it at this point. But like rather than me sabering the champagne for the guests, I wanna teach a couple of them how to do it.

Rick Currier (10:18.738)

Haha.

Ami (10:36.719)

So we do that outside and then and we come in and then we do kind of a round of introductions Which they would do it at most dinners, but what I ask is I basically say I've brought a little amuse-bouche for them to enjoy with the champagne and I hold up a unopened can of spam and I open it up and I have a giant serving spoon and Basically, I ask each attendee to say their name what company they work for their role there and then spam or no spam

And I'm basically gonna just plop a giant pungent piece of spam onto their plate and of course Most people say no a couple of trolls will usually say yes because they know I want them to say no spam Someone will inevitably Make the you know, like everybody gets the connection with the book But some people will like try and make it explicit when I'm trying to keep it a little bit more subtle And so I go around the room and that's kind of the spam no spam part

Halfway through the dinner. There's a part where we talk about the importance of six cents qualified accounts That is when an account has shown enough signals that you should probably have sales start to prospect into the account and after kind of talking about that concept I basically I talk about how Important we believe it is it is at six cents that our customers reach out to those accounts right away You can't wait weeks

to reach out to those Sixth Sense qualified accounts, you should reach out to them within a day or two. And I say that at Sixth Sense, we take it so seriously, we don't measure it in weeks or days or even hours, we measure it in minutes. And then I say something to the effect of, I, for example, if I pronounced you all a Sixth Sense qualified account, and as I say that line, my helper in the room sends a little message to a Slack channel where there are Sixth Sensors waiting, one assigned to each attendee at the dinner.

and we've done our best to get their cell phone and all of a sudden within seconds everybody's phone in the room starts to ring at the same time. Now most people are polite enough that their phones are on mute or on vibrate but like between Apple watches some vibrations the room starts to buzz. I tell people like if your phone's in your purse you know or whatever go ahead and pull it out please answer it.

Rick Currier (12:41.072)

Wow.

Ami (12:55.917)

And then there's like a little one or two minute, you know, conversation between the guests at the dinner and these six cents folks, usually business development reps, but not always. Sometimes the account executives assigned to the accounts and it's super low tech, but like it is consistently one of the things that people say was their favorite part of the dinner, just cause the element of surprise and the coordination. you know, sometimes we'll do the dinner. It'll be.

it'll be eight o'clock on the west coast. And it's like it's 11 o'clock on the East Coast. And there are people staying up to make the calls because they want to talk to their prospect even though it's it's literally for 90 seconds or less. So that's kind of the no cold calls part of the dinner. And then for the no forms part of the dinner. I have these sugar cookies made by a local vendor with a stencil where it's the most boring sugar cookie. You know, people are doing all these crazy things. Is it cake? Is it not cake these days?

Rick Currier (13:26.216)

You

Ami (13:49.401)

These are sugar cookies that are basically white frosting and then black lines and text that'll say like name, email, PO number, signature. And I do this whole thing where basically this is kind of right as we're moving into the dessert course. So after the, the entree, and I basically say like, the content that I'm about to share is so valuable that I can't give it to you unless you give me some information about you first. And so they, by the way, they have edible ink pens. And so they start filling them out.

And then I explain no, you know, we don't believe in forms. And I go into that whole spiel. And so that's the no forms. I tong a bottle of port in the dinner, which is basically using a combination of open flame on a like an REI camp stove, as well as a shave brush that's been sitting in freezing cold water. So it uses thermal shock to basically crack open the bottle below where the cork is. My finale for the dinner is timed to music.

It starts with me making a blue blazer cocktail, which is a flaming cocktail So I literally light overproof whiskey on fire pour it from tanker to tanker while doing a spiel time to music Which has the final reveal that I'm not gonna spoil here But yeah, I mean it's I've never been to a business dinner like that. I think most of my attendees haven't

And as you could tell, I'm extremely proud of it just because of how different it is from your typical PowerPoint and steak dinner.

Rick Currier (15:23.368)

Yeah, seriously. Wow. I mean, I think, you my biggest takeaway is it's memorable, but it's not just it's not just doing things that are kind of, you know, quote unquote, shocking for the sake of shock. I mean, you're really tying it into the content of the dinner. So so what advice do you have for, you know, maybe someone that doesn't have your background that is doing those more standard, boring PowerPoint dinners and they they want to up level it, but they don't know how to do half the stuff that you just described. What should they be thinking about just to up level a little bit?

Ami (15:36.205)

Yes.

Ami (15:48.099)

Yeah, well s-

Ami (15:52.111)

Well, so first of all everyone can learn how to saber champagne and Port tongs not that hard the blue blazer cocktail. I did give myself second degree burns once That lasted my hand was in pain for probably a week or two now. It's complicated It shouldn't have happened And it hasn't happened since it was like literally probably the second time I did it Well, we won't get into it. But so I understand why people wouldn't want to

do incorporate a blue blazer cocktail into it. But there are other kind of, I don't know if like exhibitionist is the word, but you know, there's things you can do like that. I'll give you another example that's just thinking about your brand and your company and your taglines. So Sixth has trademarked a phrase called the dark funnel. The dark funnel is meant to contrast with the known funnel. The known funnel would be.

every activity or signal that you have in your company CRM or your marketing automation platform. So think every trade show badge scan, every outbound email, email click, webinar registration, you know, outbound phone call from a BDR, all that stuff's in your known funnel. Those are things that are happening with a person whose name you know, their email, their phone number. The dark funnel is all this anonymous activity that usually happens when companies are researching your company or your category.

But they don't want to make themselves known yet because they don't want to be bothered by salespeople. And so one of the first things we do in the dinner, they've you everybody sits down and at their seat is a menu and it looks like the menu at any other dinner they've been to. So it's got the restaurant logo at the top and the date and it's I call it the sixth sensory supper because the dinner is going to stimulate all six of their senses. And then it's got you know, some information about each course the champagne they're drinking the wine they're drinking, etc.

After I introduced the concept of the dark funnel, I basically have my helper dim the lights and I've handed out these UV flashlights and they shine their UV flashlights on the menus which have been sitting in front of them for probably 10 or 15 minutes and they didn't even take a look at. And all of a sudden, Ininvisible Ink is basically a screenshot of an instance of Sixth Sense we've set up for that prospect.

Ami (18:15.693)

with some keywords that they think they would want to track if they were a customer and some language that I personalize at the top around it. And so all of a sudden there's all these oohs and aahs in the room because they had no idea this was there. my gosh, this is data about my company. So not everything has to be crazy, know, or dangerous or by the way involve alcohol. I have a slide about the alcohol consumption during my dinner.

just so that folks that are lightweights like me can pace themselves. So to your point, like the drinking isn't there for drink, like let's get drunk. The drinking is there because it's infused into the content of the dinner. And I've had a couple of folks that have asked me, know, I've had folks that have borrowed the invisible ink thing. There's things we do with wine aroma kits where you smell like the scents that are common in wine out of these little

plastic vials. And so I've had folks at other companies that have like borrowed those ideas and use them and have called, you where did you get them? What was your talk track and like, and I'm obviously flattered when that happens. I'm excited to help. So it's really just like thinking, you know, outside of the box, no one ever charges, you know, for their executive dinners. So I think just going back to that experience economy question of like,

Rick Currier (19:41.65)

Yeah.

Ami (19:41.867)

If we were to charge guests to come to our dinner, what would we need to do to make it worthwhile for a prospect, right? Who we want to sell to, what would we have to do to make it worthwhile for them to come and then sort of work backwards from there? One other thing I'll just say real quick that's a favorite of mine, you everybody's familiar with the concept of brainstorming. Not everybody's familiar with the idea of shitstorming. And that is not something I made up.

You can Google it. There's a guy who it's kind of like his thing. But the idea of shit storming is just like it sounds. You get a group together and you try to think of the worst ideas possible. But the idea is that some of those really bad ideas may spur a good idea or good ideas. And so just kind of the fun of like letting your mind go wild and, you know, go in all these different directions and down rabbit holes and not be afraid to shout out any idea.

may like spur some other idea. So I think these days, if you want to get everybody every executive you did invite to an executive dinner has been to probably more than one and is typically bored by them. And so just Yeah, think between the food, the beverages, the content, gifts, props, you know, what can you do that would make it stand out and, you know, hopefully get some LinkedIn love.

or at a minimum, it easier for you to get attendees to the next one.

Rick Currier (21:12.422)

You know, I love the approach of just thinking about if we had charged for this, what should the experience be? And I think that just kind of reframes what is the value that we're delivering. Let me ask you, obviously, Sixth Sense is a digital company, but they're investing in these executive face-to-face dinners. So I want to know from your perspective, the in-person connection, like what role does that have within this greater digital world that we're living in?

Ami (21:36.493)

Yeah, mean, well, Sixth Sense has long been about kind of big splashes at events. So I've now done, I think, 20 of these dinners. And the dinner that I've described so far is a marketing dinner. I have a similar but completely different sales executive dinner that I've probably done five or six of now. We co-hosted the last four of them with Gong. And, but...

Like before I got to Sixth Sense, one of the things that we do once or twice a year, it's probably twice a year, once at Forrester Summit, because that's where a lot of our target market shows up. And then usually at Dreamforce, Salesforce's conference, since that's where a lot of our prospects and customers show up, is we'll do something where we, know, most companies, they get the booth. And if they want to spend a lot of money, they'll buy a big booth.

If they really want to spend money, they'll host a happy hour, you know, or a cocktail reception or something like that after the show. What Sixth Sense tends to do, which I haven't seen a lot of other companies do, or at least not at the scale that we do, although I feel like a lot of our competitors have copied us, is we'll go rent out, buy out a bar or a restaurant near the show for the entire duration of the show.

and we fly out a bunch of the executives to it. So that usually means, you know, heads of marketing, sales, customer success, but also product. And, and the idea is there'll be kind of like a workspace area where if people just want to kind of get a relax from the show, get away from the hustle and bustle of the show, crack open their laptop, do some work, take some phone calls, they can do that. But then there's also a bunch of kind of like meeting tables.

And the expectation of the sales team at Sixth Sense is that they are going to book meetings with their prospects or their customers that are going to that show with the executives that will be there representing Sixth Sense. And so we'll leave a trade, you know, most companies will leave a trade show with a bunch of badge scans, which to me are kind of like the weakest thing. It's better than nothing, but it's the weakest thing you can leave the trade show with. And we're much more focused on like

Ami (23:48.949)

I now I'm forgetting the name we use for them but like quality conversations basically But even quality conversations isn't like talking for five minutes with someone that was manning the booth It's a 30-minute meeting or an hour meeting at what we call Club 6 Which is this you know place that we've completely decorated with our brand There's teal everywhere and navy and orange and everything from the floral displays

We have partner companies that sponsor it. So one of our partners will sponsor the coffee cart usually and stuff like that. And so that's all about in person FaceTime, you know, between our executives and our prospects and our customers. And again, we do that at least twice a year through this activation that we call Club Six. We do our we do my dinners. We've done we've had other executives do dinner series at Sixth Sense as well. So, yeah, I mean, just as everything becomes more and more digital,

really with like, with AI starting to kind of, I'm not going to say in fact, but take over so many interactions, like it just puts a higher value on face to face if and when you can make it happen. But to get somebody to get on a plane or to walk away from the trade show, or to be away from their family for three hours after work for a dinner, like you've got to make it worth it. And things that maybe work.

Rick Currier (24:52.232)

You

Ami (25:14.393)

five, 10, 20 years ago aren't gonna work today.

Rick Currier (25:17.852)

Now you mentioned Gong. You know, lot of people that listen to this show do partner events, right? So it's not just them putting on an executive dinner. They're doing it with another company. What advice do you have in terms of preparing, running, follow up, working with a partner?

Ami (25:33.751)

Yeah. Well, everything you just said and then just sort of making sure those things are dialed in because they're not always dialed in. Gong has been a longtime partner of ours, customer of ours or a customer of theirs. And so I have the sales executive. I actually started it as a lunch. mean, the other thing I think every marketer needs to be willing to do these days is experiment. And my sales executive lunch

I wouldn't say it was a failure, but it was definitely not a success the way I envisioned it. And I have some hypotheses about it. So by the time I did my first sales executive lunch, I'd probably done 10 or 15 of the marketing dinners. And our no show rate was probably like 25, 30%. Usually people calling to cancel ahead of time, you know, hey, something came up, I can't get a sitter for the kids. I'm sick, you know, that type of thing.

My first sales lunch, we had a 50 % no-show rate and almost all of them were no calls, no shows, which to me is like the worst of the world. Like really you have no manners whatsoever that you couldn't give us a heads up that you took this seat and you're not gonna be able to make it. My hypothesis as to why it was so much bigger than what we see in marketing and so less polite is that if you're the head of sales somewhere,

and you walk into work and you know, I'm there for a couple hours, then I'm gonna go out for this lunch and something comes up. There's some customer that's angry, there's some deal that's slipping. The easy thing to cancel is that lunch you were gonna go to. And so, so we never did the lunch again. I mean, I'll do them on site for customers. Like especially if they're doing their sales kickoff and we've got a captive audience, because then I know everybody's gonna show up. That's been successful.

But for prospects, we haven't done it again. So we moved it to a dinner. And, you know, we wanted to reach sales leaders Gong wants to reach sales leaders. If I can be candid, Gong has much more awareness, probably 10x the awareness among sales leaders than six cents, even though we have a complimentary solution with Gong and and our solution actually integrates with Gong and that integration is actually going to get even tighter here in the coming months. So

Ami (27:52.781)

Basically, their chief evangelist and I hit the road. did two of them. We started just with two Seattle. Now I'm gonna forget Seattle and I think Austin and had enough success that we did two more in Dallas and Chicago. Maybe we'll I hope we'll do some more. But yeah, we worked very tightly in part just because we already had a good relationship with them in terms of ironing out.

who's funding what who's responsible for the landing page who's responsible for, you know, confirming they'll show up who's responsible for follow up. And we have a partner team, they have a partner team. And you know, just hopefully you've got good experienced people that know all the i's that need to be dotted and the t's that need to be crossed. I don't think I would break any ground with things that most partner orgs probably don't already think of. But just

Like you got it the most basic blocking and tackling has to be done or the events gonna be a waste of money

Rick Currier (28:51.494)

Yeah, no, I love it. Man, I've learned so much from this. I'm rethinking our own events that we've done. Ami, I really appreciate you coming on. If people want to learn more about the events that you're running or Sixth Sense, any particular place that you would send them a recommend they go to.

Ami (29:07.343)

yeah, well, so, I'll be doing another one of my own actually be able I'll be doing my sales dinner at dreamforce this year. That's not live yet on six cents. You'll probably need an invitation, from a six cents account executive. but you know, obviously six cents.com, has a bunch of information. we, you know, a lot of our customers want to know what we're doing in our go-to-market all the time. So

There's a fair amount of content between six cents or our community site rev city. So that's rev city dot six cents.com just like it sounds rev as in Victor CIT y.com. I'm going to be doing a lot more in kind of like the community space and rev city for six cents coming up. I kind of teased that earlier when I mentioned about transformations. So some of this stuff I'm going to be publishing there but but like what we do with club six at trade shows.

I'm almost positive there's videos and or written content about that at six cents calm. So we definitely, we don't try to keep any secrets around both the successes and the failures we've had with any, you know, go to market activity that we've tried. If you want to connect with me, I'm on LinkedIn.

I will, you I accept just about every request, but if you pitch me on what you're selling as our first interaction, I will block you with no apologies. So.

Rick Currier (30:33.64)

All right, well, there's the trick to make your connection on LinkedIn. And I hope I can make it to an event, because I want to learn how to savor champagne. And I'm not going to do that at home. My wife might kill me. So I'll wait till I see you next.

Ami (30:44.015)

I would love for you to attend. don't think there's anything in Denver right now, but if you make it out for Salesforce or for Dreamforce in October, I'll make sure to save you a spot.

Rick Currier (30:54.074)

Awesome, great. Well, thank you so much for joining. Really appreciate it.

Ami (30:56.953)

Thanks, Rick.