Scott Sambucci didn’t set out to be a Silicon Valley sales sage. He started as a history major who waited tables. Yet three Midgame Moments—his first outside-sales job, a move to the Valley, and a family-driven pivot—shaped a career that now helps founders scale revenue without burning out. In a wide-ranging conversation on The Midgame Mindset, Scott walks through the lessons every growth leader needs when moving from hustle to repeatable go-to-market motion.
Why this conversation matters
Startups fail or fumble sales for two blunt reasons: founders think the product will sell itself, or they try to outsource sales before the company is ready. Scott’s playbook is practical and mercilessly direct. He challenges common startup lore and gives founders an accountable path to scale enterprise sales, hire the right people at the right time, and preserve personal life while growing a business.
Three career-defining pivots
Scott frames his story around three pivotal personal moments that shaped his sales philosophy:
- The textbook sales apprenticeship: His first outside-sales gig at Pearson taught him territory management, time discipline, and how to treat sales like a small business. The on-the-ground rigor—cold calls, demos, territory planning—produced early success and a sales mindset that stuck.
- The Silicon Valley plunge: Moving west pushed Scott to think like a technologist. Being in the Valley taught him how product and sales must collide early and boldly.
- The family choice: When his young son fell ill and travel-heavy startup life felt impossible, Scott said what many leaders only think: “I chose personal life.” He walked away from stock options and startup chaos to build SalesQuality, proving that career and family decisions can be deliberate midgame moves.
Founders must sell (and keep selling smartly)
One of Scott’s core points is simple and sharp: founders need to sell. He tells the story of founders doing coffee-shop demos, taking the first credit card on a paper napkin, and learning by doing. Those anecdotes underscore a reality: the earliest product-market signals come from founders engaging customers.
But engagement alone is not the endgame. Scott is blunt: founders who refuse to learn a sales framework or who try to offload selling too early set the company up to fail. As he says, you must “give some framework to a salesperson”—target customer profiles, objection handling, demo cadence, pricing posture—otherwise the hire is set up to experiment instead of produce repeatable results.
Hiring mistakes that cost growth
Scott frames two common hiring errors in startups:
– Hiring too early: Bring in a salesperson before you’ve documented even a rudimentary sales process and they will flail. Salespeople need a playbook—not a guessing game.
– Waiting too long: Founder-led deals can create a perception problem with enterprise buyers. If a bank or large customer sees the founder still running every call months into growth, they may doubt the company’s maturity.
Finding the sweet spot is the work of a midgame leader: validate a playbook as the founder, then staff the edges first—BDR, customer success, and basic operations—before layering in AEs and a VP of Sales. Scott’s phrasing is memorable: “You squeeze yourself out from the outside in.” Start by delegating repeatable edge activities and then move inward.
The player-coach fallacy
The player-coach model sounds attractive: hire someone who can sell and lead. Scott counters with hard-earned reality: in enterprise sales—long cycles and big contracts—being a high-performing producer and a capable manager rarely coexist. “You can’t do it,” he says. The result is often mediocre performance in both roles. Hire for the role you need now, not for a heroic Swiss Army persona.
On trust and delegation
At Naya One, Scott describes a partnership built on trust with founder Karan. They negotiated a practical rhythm: sometimes Scott runs a deal; sometimes Karan does. That mutual respect lets the founder show up when it matters most—and step back when others need to own execution. Scott says it plainly: the best leaders know when to be pushed and when to push others.
Mentorship, teaching, and paying it forward
Mentorship threads through Scott’s career. A great early manager taught him how to treat a territory like a business; later, Scott became that mentor. He’s taught in classrooms, advised founders, and helped young professionals land their first roles. He calls it a mixture of repayment and selfish joy: teaching forces clarity and gives him the satisfaction of watching others grow.
Powerful quotes from the episode
– “I chose personal life.” (On stepping back from startup travel to be present for his family.)
– “You have to give some framework to a salesperson.” (On why hiring too early fails.)
– “You squeeze yourself out from the outside in.” (On delegating sales as the company scales.)
– “The companies that succeed are the ones where the founders are willing to actually sell the product.” (On founder involvement in early sales.)
Quick takeaways for growth leaders
- Validate a repeatable sales playbook as a founder before hiring a salesperson to execute it.
- Delegate edge functions (BDR, support, ops) first to prove repeatability; hire inward to scale.
- Avoid the player-coach trap for enterprise sales—separate selling and people management when deals are complex and long.
- Establish trust with founder-executives so they can step in only at high-leverage moments.
- Remember that career choices are midgame decisions—sometimes scaling means creating space for life, not less of it.
Listen for the practical moments in this episode: how to price early, how to run demos for non-technical buyers, and how to negotiate contracts with large institutions. Scott blends storytelling with tactical nuance—perfect for founders, heads of sales, and anyone responsible for scaling go-to-market.
Watch the episode and learn Scott’s full playbook for moving from hustle to repeatable revenue.
More from Scott:
– LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottsambucci/
– Startup Selling: https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Selling-sell-really-have-ebook/dp/B0081GEFAQ
– Stop Hustling Start Scaling: https://www.amazon.com/Stop-Hustling-Start-Scaling-Repeatable-ebook/dp/B07R7RW39Z
– 52 Sales Questions Answered: https://www.amazon.com/Sales-Questions-Answered-Scott-Sambucci-ebook/dp/B00EDDE6TG
Show Transcript
0:00I used to believe in the player coach model. I used to believe like bring in a person who could do some selling, carry
0:05a quota, you know, carry a bag as they call it, and also manage two or three people. And I thought that’s what I was
0:11going to do here at Darm. Turns out it’s nearly impossible. You can’t do it. Welcome to the Midgame Mindset. Join us
0:18as we dive into the pivotal moments that shape today’s top sales and marketing leaders, RevOps innovators, and
0:24entrepreneurs. This is where grit meets growth and the game changes for good. If
0:30you find value in this conversation, be sure to share it with another growth leader who would enjoy it. And now,
0:36let’s get to the show. Welcome to the Midgame Mindset. I’m your host, Rich Bishop. And today’s guest came to me
0:42through a previous guest, Steven Steers. Scott Sambuchi has been a Silicon Valley
0:50sales and product leader for about 25 years. He’s an advisor, a coach, a
0:56mentor. He’s currently the global goto market lead for NIA1. And Scott, I’m
1:03really excited to dive in. Thank you for joining. Thanks, man. It’s an honor to be here. Always good to have somebody that’s
1:08willing to listen to me. Now, uh, I hit on a couple of the
1:13highlights. I’d love to hear a little bit more about you. So, I’d say that the Okay, so probably
Scott Sambucci: Career Journey and Key Highlights
1:19three things come to mind. So, number one, uh, out of college, I was a history major, which doesn’t leave you a lot of
1:25career options. And so, I had a friend of mine was a couple years older, and he said, “You should do sales. You’re good
1:30at sales.” Uh, even though I hadn’t really done sales, but I waited tables in high school and college, paid my way
1:36through school, and I was, you know, good good waiter at Applebee’s. So, um, you know, Tuesday, all you can eat ribs.
1:44And uh so I ended up getting a sales job, ended up at a company called Apprentice Hall College Textbook
1:49Publishing, which eventually became Pearson Education. So my job was to go to universities and sell college
1:55textbooks. And people ask me, “What what exactly does that mean?” It means that whenever you were in college and you
2:00went to sell back your used book and the bookstore said, “I’m sorry, we’re not buying those books back anymore.” That
2:07was because of me. So I would either sell a replacement book, the the professor didn’t want to use the old one
2:12or I sold the new edition. So that that was my job. That got me eventually into a product role and this is in the late
2:1890s when the first sort of web 1.0 and distance learning everything else was coming around. Got me really interested
2:24in technology. Um and so I ended up at a startup in Silicon Valley. So that that
2:29first sales job though I think is probably the most important to me because it it was an outside sales job.
2:35I was 22 years old out of college. I had a one of the best managers to this day
2:41for that point in my career. Um just really was patient with me and taught me a lot of like how to think about
2:48selling. Uh I read a ton of books. I was reading a book a week about sales and just really treated the whole territory
2:54as as a business. And in my first year as a salesperson, I was the number five
3:00salesperson out of 300 salespeople in the entire company and the number one in my discipline. So at the end of the year
3:06when we had the big sales meeting and they’re doing like the the the top performers, this guy comes up on stage
3:11and it’s, you know, skinny guy wearing a tie and people are like, who’s the intern? Like why is that guy up on
3:16stage? Turns out I was one of the top sales reps. Um, so that just taught me about how to like manage the territory,
3:23you know, how to go to pay phone, use a calling card, call people back, check my email at night, just all the rudimentary
3:29stuff that unless you’ve had an outside sales territory, like a lot of people just never learn how to do that. How to manage your time, manage territory,
3:35manage, you know, you’re not sitting in your office every day. So let’s say that was like crit critical point number one.
3:41And then that also introduced me to technology. Critical point number two, moving to Silicon Valley back in the
3:46early 2000s, working at at an education startup. Um, just getting into the valley and the
3:53valley mindset and thinking I would move to California for two years and then move back to the east coast and that
3:59was, you know, whatever 22 years ago. Um, so that just taught me, okay,
4:04Silicon Valley, this is how things operate. I grew up on the east coast of New Jersey, had kind of the East Coast
4:09mindset. So learned California, learned how to think like a technologist, learned how, you know, this part of the
4:16world works, which is completely outside the the realm of most people’s like thinking and possibility. So that was uh
4:22step number two. And then step number three uh sort of related to um family
4:29stuff where eventually got married, had her first had her first our first only child. And I was working at a startup at
4:36the time. And I remember um my son was about a year and a half old. She was
4:42just old enough to start going to daycare. And I was traveling a ton. I was commuting two and a two and a half hours each way to an office from Davis,
4:49California to to San Francisco. And those are the days I was home technically to come home at night and
4:55then the other weeks that I travel and I remember getting a text message from my wife as I was going into a BW3s in the
5:02middle of Dallas, Texas to meet my team and she said, “Benjamin’s really sick. I
5:07got to take him to the ER.” And it still chokes me up to this day. That was like 12 years ago. Because I just remember
5:13the helpless feeling I had that I’m stuck in Dallas. It’s six o’clock at night. There’s no flights home. My wife
5:19has to deal with this. My son’s going to the ER for the first time and I just felt really helpless. And it was that
5:24point where I realized I’m like, I can’t do this startup thing anymore. Not right now. I need to be home more. And it took
5:31me a good nine months to unwind that position where I could actually leave the startup I was at. And then I started
5:36my own company called Sales Qualia where I did coaching and advising. And that’s where I really became kind of my first
5:42real foray into entrepreneurship. Um now eventually I ended up um winding that
5:47down and ending up in Iowa where I am now. But those those were kind of like three key points. So one getting the sales job, two moving to Silicon Valley
5:54and then three reaching a point of maturation in my life where I needed to do something that was
5:59more for my family than it was for working at companies. Yeah. And I know that that realization
Transitioning to Entrepreneurship: Family vs. Career
6:06had to be hard, but obviously you made a a very good decision. Great father um
6:11right in in choosing that path. want to ask my son that he might give you a different answer.
6:18No, maybe now, but once he gets older. That’s right. He’s right. Well, I mean, it was it was a hard it was hard
6:24decision in some ways when other ways were really easy. Like, it was easy decision. I’m like, I got I want to be home. I don’t want to do this anymore. I
6:31did I did love working at startup and all that stuff. But you you know, you reach a point in your life where you’ve got two lives going on. You got business
6:38life, personal life, and then I just chose personal life. Um the hard part was just walking away from stock options
6:44and all all of that piece, but you just sort of like you don’t you don’t know how that’s going to work. Um but
6:50certainly glad I did it. I mean for those, you know, from the time he was, you know, basically two till the time he
6:57was 10 or 11, you know, ran my own business mostly from home. So I got to be there, take him to school most
7:03mornings, pick him up from school, get him breakfast, do all the things that I otherwise would never have been able to
7:09do. and I’ve been still working at a startup. So, I’m eternally grateful for that piece.
7:15Yeah, that’s fantastic. And before COVID made working from home a normal thing
7:22for a lot of the people, right? Like kind of blazing a path there, which is great.
7:27Yeah, I think it was just like about having flexibility. Um, but by the time CO came around, I’m like, can I go to an
7:33office? I want to get out of here like a lot of people. Yeah. I’ve been doing this for a while. Time to get around.
7:39Yeah. I’m I’m Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I’d love to to talk a little bit about
7:45the the transition that you made. So, going to Silicon Valley from New Jersey is a big change,
7:52but then also history major, selling books to tech.
7:58How did you make that that shift? And what were some of the lessons that you had to learn to kind of get your mind
8:03into the right place for that change? Um, I mean I was really lucky with P what I
8:09worked at Pearson in that like as a salesperson um I at least for me I found their
8:16training to be excellent and the autonomy you you were given was really good. Um my manager like I said was
From History Major to Tech Sales: A Natural Progression
8:22really good. We had really good product. So I was just lucky to be set up for success. And then um as you’re selling
8:28the textbooks back then we also started selling CDROMs that go with the books and companion websites. So I kind of
8:35backed into the technology piece just by way of having to learn the product and how to demo websites to professors that
8:42didn’t know anything about technology. And then when I got promoted to a product role, then I had to build the websites and I had to build the text
8:48that was going with the textbooks. So it’s just kind of like this natural progression that it was just part of the
8:54career track that I was on. So I got lucky there and then getting recruited to go work at a a Silicon Valley
8:59startup. Um now I’m like doing tech every day. So, it wasn’t like coming out
9:05of college, like I said, I was a history major. I I chose history because there was no math and, you know, no science,
9:11no math, and no coding. I was like didn’t want to do any of that stuff until I started traveling to San
9:17Francisco and California when I was with Pearson to go to colleges and universities as a product manager. And
9:23then I had a couple buddies from college that had moved out there a year or two before. and I would stay with them and you know we’d go out and grab a beer and
9:30they’d show me you know show me San Francisco and I’m like this is the place I want to be. So it was really just kind
9:35of a merge of I happen to have enough tech experience that was valuable to a Silicon Valley startup from a sales
9:41business development standpoint and I had the desire and the freedom and the flexibility to move out there. So um
9:47yeah I mean I think it’s just kind of circumstances and being a little bit lucky. Yeah. And the flexibility to to roll
9:53with the punches so to speak and Yeah. I mean, you’re like 26, 27, single, living in New York, working in
9:59New Jersey. I’m like, “Sure, I could be in California in two weeks.” I mean, that’s that’s the way the world works back then. Um,
10:06now you you ask me like, “What’s going to happen in two weeks?” And I I’ll tell you in two weeks time exactly what I’m going to do. Got to plan six months
10:13ahead if I want to do anything like that. Now, in those in those early days, you
10:18you working with startups. You worked with a couple of startups in the valley. you you you helped them get from in many
10:26ways close to zero to millions in in ARR to get started. What were some of the
10:32common themes that you saw between those startups that you were working with that helped kind of take them from that that
10:39early stage to, you know, actually getting to the point where, okay, we’re we’re a real company now.
10:46Yeah. Um it’s going to sound so stupid and simple. The companies that I was
10:52with, we were we had founders and team that were willing to actually sell the product. Like if you think about back in the
10:58early days, it was like, oh, do website, do product launch, people, you know, customers will come. I was lucky in that
11:05the founder at Applio, which is the first company, he was a worldrenown economist, uh, guy named Paul Romer, who
Common Themes in Startup Success
11:12eventually won the Nobel Prize in economics about five years ago. So, I mean, this guy was like world-class economist, worldclass academic. He
11:20wanted to start this company because of some things he had built for his classroom. And we’re like, Paul, we need
11:26you to go on these sales calls with these other professors and do help us with product demos. He’s like, okay. You
11:32know, Paul, we need you to go to the conference and we’re going to have a round table and have you talk about your teaching experience at Stanford. He’s
11:38like, okay. Like he was not afraid to go talk to customers and be in front of customers. So, um, I say that because,
11:46you know, even now in today’s world when everyone knows how important it is to go talk to customers and be selling, we
11:51still I still meet founders all the time that are afraid to sell or think that the product should tell itself or they
11:57don’t they’re unwilling to learn how to sell in an enterprise organization that’s highly complex and then they’re
12:04like, well, I don’t know why this thing isn’t working. I’m like, it’s not working because you’re not doing the sales work. So whether it was that
12:11company Napia, the second start I did was Altos research. Same situation. Founder wasn’t a worldrenown economist
12:17but he was a really good product leader to build a company and he told me the story. It’s the first time he made his first sale. He was in a coffee shop
12:23because he didn’t have a office and he calling people up and he’s doing demos on his computer. And the first even I
12:32remember this. He’s like the first person that actually wanted to buy it. They asked me how much was it? and I didn’t know what the answer was because
12:37nobody had ever asked me that question before. So he’s like, I just made it up. I’m like, 50 bucks a month. And the guy
12:43was like, great, I’ll take it. And he’s like, awesome. And the guy’s like, so do I give you my credit card or something
12:48now? And then he’s like, oh yeah, yeah. What’s your credit card? So he took the credit card number down on a piece of paper. And he had this credit card
12:55number. And he didn’t know what to do with it. So then he had to go to PayPal and set up a PayPal account to actually process the payment. And again, it
13:02sounds silly and you’re like, “Oh my god.” like that’s you know the guy was like so infantile in terms of his his
13:08business knowledge but he literally was doing phone calls from a coffee shop and just figuring it out and being willing
13:13to do it. He got his first 100 customers on his own before he even brought me on. And of course I helped you know build
13:18process and accelerate it and scale it. Um but any any startup if you look back
13:24I mean it’s you can criticize people like Elon Musk or anyone else but those people are out there selling right and
13:31unless as a founder of a company even if you’re you know you know a CEO of a top company
13:38I guarantee you like there’s been a lot of fanfare on my LinkedIn feed about I don’t know three four months ago how
13:45Oracle sold like $30 billion dollars of cloud compute to open AI guy. And
13:50there’s some people on LinkedIn that were foolishly saying like, “Hey, could you imagine the sales commission of that?” I think it was actually three.
13:56Oh, yeah. They were like, “Oh, you imagine the sales commission of that guy.” I’m like, “Are you that dumb to actually think
14:01that there’s like a sales guy that started with like a cold email?” You know, like, “Hello, Sam Alman. My name
14:08is Scott and I represent a company called Oracle. Would you like to see a demo?” It’s like, “No, freaking Larry
14:13Ellison is doing the sale.” Like, that’s how that deal gets done. Um, so even at
14:19the highest level, the founders and the CEOs are the best salespeople. So any
14:24company, if you look at their success, in my opinion, it’s always going to be traced back to a founder that is willing to take a sales mindset.
14:31Next year’s growth targets aren’t going to build themselves. And guesswork isn’t a strategy. Midgame Consulting’s annual
14:38sales planning guide is built for CRO of high- growth, high impact companies who
14:44want to use the latest frameworks and templates that build an integrated sales
14:49plan to start the new year off right. It’s free and available for download. Just go to salesplansuccess.com.
14:57That’s salesplansuccess.com. Yeah. And I know one of the harder
15:03transitions that the owners that have that kind of mindset have is eventually
15:08you get to a point whether it’s a million and a half, 2 million, 5 million, there’s some sort of breaking
15:15point in there where it’s like, all right, we need the professional help from a sales point of view to come in and maybe you can fly in on some of the
The Balancing Act: Hiring Sales Professionals
15:22the enterprise deals, those larger deals like you were just referring to, but um could you give some examples of maybe
15:29some of the challenges that you’ve seen whether directly or indirectly from those that you’ve been around with maybe
15:35the owners that have a hard time letting go of that that sales and and how do they overcome? Yeah.
15:40Yeah, it’s a great question. Um, so there’s there’s actually two mistakes that I see often with founders or
15:46owners. One, they don’t hire soon enough and two, they wait too long to hire. And
15:54it sounds like, well, wait, is it one or the other? So when I say is that they they hire too I should say they hire too
16:01soon or they wait too long mean they hire too soon means I’m an owner I don’t
16:06have time for sales I’m a product person I’m an engineering person I’m an operations person I’m a financial person
16:11I just go got to go find the sales person the sales dude the sales gal who’s going to sell my thing for me now
16:17the challenge with hiring too soon is that unless you hand a salesperson a sales process they’re not going to be
16:24able to sell that’s why they’re a sales sales person, not a founder, right? You have to build that bare bones, even if
16:30it’s a very rudimentary framework on how you sell and hand that to a salesperson and say, “This is how we sell. These are
16:36our target customers. These are common objections. This is the best way to run your product demos. These are the key
16:42people in that organization you’re going to have to find and talk to at some point in order to overcome their questions and help make sure they’re
16:49comfortable. This is how we present pricing. This is how we do implementation.” You got to give some framework to a salesperson because if
16:54you go here’s a product, go sell it. The first thing they’re going to say is great. Who are our target customers? I don’t know. Figure it out. Okay. What’s
17:01our value proposition? Well, we got this tech that does AI. You’re like, yeah, but like what problem does it solve?
17:07Like, I don’t know. Figure it out. You know, you’re like asking the saleserson to figure out, you know, the sales person’s like, “Okay, I’m gonna spend a
17:12year figuring out how to sell this thing and not sell anything at all because it’s all experiment. And if I do happen
17:18to sell something, it’s an accident.” So they hire too soon thinking they can just offload sales. Right? So that’s one
17:24big mistake. The second big mistake is they wait too long. Meaning they’re unwilling to give up the reigns of
17:30sales. They feel like, well, I’m the founder and I’ve got to be involved with every deal and I’m the, you know, the super duper product expert person and
17:37it’s not just parachuting in like I need to be on the initial intro call and I got to run the demo and I got to answer the technical questions and I got to
17:43negotiate the contract and I got to be there for implementation. There’s actually a point in your company’s life
17:48where that’s a detriment to your company and the perception, right? If you’re selling to a large company, like right
17:54now we sold a bank. If I had, you know, a CIO of a large bank or the kind of
18:00people we talk to now, and then the very first sales call, it’s our CEO doing
18:06baseline like qualification calls. The CO be like this is like some super small
18:12startup with two dudes in a garage. like you the part of what they’re evaluating
18:17is not just the product work. They’re evaluating like how robust of a company is this? How much structure is
18:24actually here? Because we we fight this every day as an emerging company. We’re we’re going through thirdparty risk
18:29management. We’re going through due diligence. People are asking us questions like how many employees do you have? Where are they based? Do you have
18:36a SOCK 2 audit which is a security audit? Do you have an ISO certifications? Have you done penetration testing? Who are your other
18:43customers? can you make some referrals for me? They they want to know that you’re real. And if you’re this the
18:48founder and you’re like, “Yeah, you’re going to be our 20th customer and I’m still doing the cold calls.” Somebody at
18:54that stature on the other side like, “Hey, like I probably don’t want to deal with this company yet. This person should have figured out how to get me
19:00into their sales pipeline without him or her being involved.” Um, and that also leads to situations where now you try to
19:08bring somebody in and the founder is so stuck on this is the way we must do sales, forgetting that they’re the
19:14founder and they have a certain way they can talk to people and a certain nuance they can hear that no one nobody else in
19:19the world can hear. Eventually, what happens is you actually can’t hand it over because it’s too founder le. So
19:26that’s why I say sometimes I hire too soon and sometimes I wait too long. Yeah. Finding the balance between the
19:31two. what is that sweet spot based on the skill set that’s there with the founder and and others in the organization.
19:37Yeah. And I and I struggle that like sorry to interrupt uh like with Nia our
19:42founder Karen there are situations where I’m like dude I got this
19:49like you don’t need to be on that call. He’s like oh I don’t know I should be on that call like no you shouldn’t be on
19:55that call because one I can do it. two, we need to save that for later on because if you do need to parachute in,
20:01I need to do it at a time that might be a higher higher risk reward or higher
20:07higher point in the sale, right? Um, so it takes it takes somebody who’s willing
20:12to be told to back off sometimes and because there’s going to be a time and other times where I’m like, “Oh, I’m
20:18going to do this call.” And he’s like, “You know what? That call I think I should be there.” And I’ll think about it. I’m like, “Yeah, actually, okay, you’re right. You should be on this one.
20:24So, let’s make sure you’re there.” Yeah, it’s become it sounds like for you, especially at NY1, it’s become a
20:31partnership, right? You guys really have a good It sounds like a good push and a pull and that part is the ones that
20:38don’t have the push and pull and can end up in the right spot are the ones that get themselves in trouble.
20:43Yeah. I mean, you got to have I mean, I have I mean, I I Yeah, I mean, I would run through walls for Karen and I think
20:51he’s seen that and I have and and I will um because I trust him. He trusts my
20:56judgment. I mean, we just spent four days together in Canada, two days in Montreal, two days in Toronto. Um
21:02working together. Some meetings he did on his own, some meetings I did on my own, sometimes we did it together. And just in between meetings, you’re just
21:09spending a lot of time talking about philosophy of business and philosophy of sales and philosophy of like what’s the
21:15strategy going to be? And in those conversations, I mean, I we were just having a beer after one of the days and
21:21he’s just like, “Look, man. I mean, I he told me this. He’s like, I trust you with any decision that you’ll make. I
21:27might not agree with it, but I trust you enough to know that you’ll have a really good reason why you made that decision.”
21:33And I was like, that’s pretty awesome, right? to know that I have that autonomy and that freedom to make a mistake or to
21:39do something that may not work out and I could be hiring somebody. I’ve already hired one person this week. Uh might be
21:45hiring another one next week. And he didn’t have to interview him. He’s like, I’m He’s like, I want to. I’m
21:50really busy. I’ve watched some call recordings, so I’ve seen how they are and I’m pretty comfortable with it. I’ll I’ll get on a call with them for sure.
21:57But look, if you think that she’s the right person and you think that’s what the salary needs to be to get her, go
22:03for it. Nice. Yeah. Yeah, it’s a good spot to be with that kind of trust that you’ve built. Yeah.
22:08Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn’t have I wouldn’t have unretired for anything less,
22:13you know, because when I when I did when I did when I started doing my sales consulting, I started joking with people like, “Oh, I’m retired, right? I’m not
22:20doing the sale. I’m not doing the startup thing anymore, right? That’s why I stopped doing it because I wanted to be home with my my wife and you know,
22:26helped support her in her career. She was finishing up a PhD. Um, and so yeah, so raising a child or raising a child.
22:33She’s like trying to finish her PhD. Um, and now he’s f my son got old enough
22:38that now she could and she finished her PhD and now she’s like, “Okay, she’s got her career, so I need to help support
22:44her as much as she was supporting me when I was running around doing the startup thing.” Um, and I was like, “I’m
22:49done the startup thing.” But Karen actually was a client of mine in my coaching program. And so I got to work
22:56with him and observe him and his team for a year. And after um I attended a conference with him, I was like, “Okay,
23:02I’m sold.” And then I started winding down the consulting work and then you know and then full-time with him. So I
23:08had time and patience to be able to do it. A lot of people don’t have that, especially earlier in the careers, but I
23:14had the ability to do that and that’s another reason why this works really well. Yeah. I’ve got one more question on the
23:21the startup sales aspect of it before we before we jump to a couple of other
23:26topics. But on that front, I I know that one of the decisions that is always kind
23:32of um really a difficult one to to make early on for that founder that’s doing
23:37the sales is do I bring in a sales leader who’s willing to also roll up
23:43their sleeves and get some things done for now, but can build out the processes and the structure that we need to hand
23:48off, or do I bring in a a couple of people at the BDR level to to do some of
23:54the appointment setting and and slowly kind of build up. So, it’s like the the top down type of approach with somebody
24:01that can do both or bottom up. How do you think about that when you’re in those situations?
24:07Yeah. So, um I used to believe in the player coach model.
24:12Uh I used to believe like bring in a person who could do some selling, carry a quota, you know, carry a bag as they
The Player Coach Model Revisited: A Challenging Reality
24:18call it, and also manage two or three people. And I thought that’s what I was going to
24:24do here at D1. Um, turns out it’s nearly impossible.
24:29You can’t do it. Um, meaning that when you’re doing enterprise sales, especially at our level, we’re selling
24:34to banks that our starting price point is going to be a couple hundred thousand, sometimes up to a million bucks. Um, I mean, I’ve I’ve spent
24:43months meeting with dozens of people at one company just to get to the point where now we’re ready to do the
24:49contract. And now it could be four weeks of just contract procurement, all of
24:54that crap. I mean, I’m going through right now like sending text messages back and forth. I’m team times in the last three days to try to get something
25:00signed at the end of the quarter because they need it for the budget and we need it for our for our numbers. If I’m doing
25:05all of that work and concentrating on five, six, seven late stage deals and also going to conferences and also
Managing Remote Teams Effectively
25:11setting up meetings to go while I’m while I’m in Toronto and also getting ready for the conference that’s going to be happening in in three weeks time and
25:18you’re like, “Oh, by the way, we have these three salespeople. They all happen to work remote and we need you to manage those p those people.”
25:24You just it can’t be done. It just can’t not to any real effectiveness. And so when we brought me in, that’s
25:31what I was doing at first. And what Karn and I realized is for me to be as
25:36effective as we need it need to be in the United States and Canada to ramp up the revenue here. My attention that was
25:42being spent with the sales people based out of the London office was distracting me away from doing that. So we just
25:48basically said Karten said look I’ll I’ll manage the sales team here. You do
25:53US and Canada for now get that up and running and when we need to hire people then we’ll move you into managerial
25:58role. And that’s the only I think one of the key decisions that we made early on was not assuming that we could just hire
26:05a player coach because what you end up is getting either or like a mediocre version of both.
26:11Um, so I say all that because I think the best thing a sale can do is hire for
26:18specific roles and tasks first because if we go back to what we talked about earlier, you should be building that
26:23sort of first framework of a sales process. The only way to then test if it’s an actual framework or is it
26:28repeatable is go say okay if I know this is how we get leads if I do this stuff on LinkedIn and I send these emails and
26:34I go to these conferences I can get leads as a founder what you got to do is go put two or three people in that seat
26:39and go hey you two three people these are the things I did can you also get similar results as I did and the same on
26:46the back end on the customer service like this is how I’ve been servicing customers and supporting them and doing implementations starting to build a
26:52little bit of a framework for that let me get somebody else to come do this can they do that with 80 90% effectiveness
26:58as me doing as a founder. That’s actually the most important thing you can do first is to get those things off
27:04your plate on the edges. The sales development, sales leads, customer support. It also proves that yes,
27:10there’s some scalable piece and then you kind of start inching into the pit where now you hire an AE, two AES, three AES
27:16that are now helping you actually take over territory, take over accounts, converted deals into paying customers
27:22and you’re slowly kind of like pushing yourself out of the sales organization.
27:27I think you’re going to squeeze yourself out from the outside in. Um because if
27:33you do those things then at that point you’re going to have maybe you have two or three people on the business side
27:38including marketing and you have like two or three people on CS you have a couple account reps or account AES or
27:44account managers. Now you’ve got like seven to 10 people bring in a VP of
27:49sales that manage that team and part of that management might be deciding which two or three people are
27:55no longer you know willing and able to stay at the job. they’re not performing as well as you need them to be or the
28:01companies change and the roles change and that person’s not adapting to it, then they bring in some of the people they know and they start to make that
28:06team their own and they start to scale it from there. So that’s to me the best way to do it and that’s what’s ended up
28:12happening here where I was hired as a player coach turned out to be an individual contributor along with five
28:17or six other individual contributors. Now, Karen is still heavily involved with some sales, but we’re starting to
28:23squeeze him out. And now, I’m going to take that BP role and start hiring people in the US to to take over those
28:29roles. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And and you make a good point there, too, about
28:34um people not necessarily being the right fit now that you’re ready for that VP, right? Because that is a different
28:42atmosphere. It’s a different culture. And you know, it’s very common that as
28:47the companies are growing that you’re going to have people that were there at the beginning that are really made for
28:53the early stages and as the company evolves and gets to 30 million, 50 million, maybe they’re not the right fit
Adapting Leadership as Companies Grow
29:00anymore. And you really have to take a good look at that. And that includes the CEO, that includes the VP of sales, that includes
29:06individual sales people, includes engineers. You know, maybe you needed somebody who’s like, you know, wy, you
29:12know, creative hacker type to get a first version of a product up and running. But when you start putting in structure and code check-ins and QA,
29:18they’re like, I don’t know how we’ll do any of that. You’re like, cool. Thanks for helping us get the first version of the product out. Time for you to move
29:25on. We need somebody that’s willing to do QA and willing to do code reviews and those kinds of things. It’s no different in sales. It’s the same thing,
29:31right? You might find somebody that’s like scrappy and creative and gets those early deals. Then you find out like those early deals were like kind of okay
29:38back then like but their dollar sizes were smaller or that customer wasn’t our ideal customer but we we surely needed
29:44those things to get things going. Now we’re telling that person you got to sell this way to this bank with this value prop this contract size. And
29:51they’re like I don’t want to do all that. I want to do it my way. You’re like cool. We do it your way but do it somewhere else. Now it’s time to bring
29:57somebody else in who’s willing and able and and effective at running that playbook. It’s just natural. That’s why
30:03some CEOs, they get to a certain point, they’re like, “Look, it’s just better for me to step aside and bring in somebody else to keep running the
30:08company. It’s just a natural course. You have to be able to have the talent adapt. Otherwise, you have to you have
30:14to be able to make sure that the the talent is adapting or you’ve got to adapt the talent to to to fix that.”
30:21Yeah. There’s a the leadership author John Maxwell um his like fundamental
30:28leadership bible was called the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership. Yeah, I’ve read it. Yeah. And the very first
30:35Yeah. The very first chapter in there is what he calls the law of the lid which is your your ability to succeed is going
30:44to be capped by your leadership ability. So if your leadership ability is a five out of 10, well then that’s the most
30:50that you’re going to be able to get in terms of success, in terms of value that you create and so on. And I think what
30:56we’re talking about here is is very much about that that you’ve got a a certain
31:01lid to where your leadership abilities are or your sales abilities are that may
31:07work for a company of, you know, 1 to 3 million, but when you get to 10, it’s a
31:12different type of environment. So people that can make those moves are the ones that are moving their lid and actually
31:19getting stronger and taking on some of the being able to adapt I guess really right and being able to take on some of
31:25100% or just figuring out okay this person was really good in this role for a while but now we’re going to take that person and move them over here and that
31:31person’s going to work on this part this problem that we now had that we didn’t have before and that’s that was another part of our conversation that car and I
31:38was having just sort of like like where where do we move Scott around as we go so at this phase we need a VP of sales.
31:44The person’s going to run it, get a certain dollar amount. Once we get there, then maybe we then Scott hires a
31:49replacement and then Scott does operations or Scott does opens up different markets or Scott does this or
31:55Scott does that because at some point maybe I’m better more effective for the
32:00company in a different role. And I think that’s I think that’s an open honest conversation that whether it’s leadership doing it amongst
32:06themselves or down to individual contributors saying like, “Hey, for the next 12 months, this is your job. If you
32:12do this really well, there might be a point where we’re going to find somebody else to do that job and then you can go
32:17tackle marketing for us or you can go tackle advertising or you can go help us do live events because it’s also good
32:24for that person to develop new skill sets as they continually grow and develop.” Um, so you gota you I think I
32:30have that open conversation with people that I’ve had work with me. I’m like, “Hey, this is your job for the next 18
32:36months.” And if you do this well and this is what’s going to be next, right? So then there’s no surprises
32:41later on. And if they’re not willing and able to adapt, then you go, “Hey, you’re not it doesn’t seem like you’re going to
The Importance of Mentorship
32:47be a good fit. We’re going to, you know, move on to the next opportunity.”
32:52Important to set the expectations up front. And I think that’s a a really important step there and and it creates a lot of trust between you and the team
32:59and it changes the conversation when when maybe they aren’t the right fit anymore that it it’s a very different
33:06conversation when you’ve already set the expectations, right? You can you can really kind of plug in on that. Yeah. And they’ll usually know it even
33:12before you say it. They’re like, “Yeah, I was kind of feeling like this wasn’t a fit and I was thinking about maybe I want to pursue other opportunities.” You’re like, “Great. Let me know. I can
33:19help you. I can be a reference for you.” you know, then you leave in a positive way because you never know when you’re
33:25going to need that person. That’s right. And one of the things that helps in a major way is having a a
33:35mentor along the way, especially early in your career, but frankly, we all need mentors throughout our careers at the
33:41different stages to help us with the skills that we have. I know that being a
33:46mentor is important. You mentioned in your early days when you first started selling the the textbooks that you had
33:53somebody who really taught you the way of sales. Did that kind of plant the seed for you and that desire to to then
34:00go on and I mean you’ve served as an adjunct professor multiple times at multiple universities. We heard from
34:07Steven Steers how important you were to his career and in the mentoring that you’ve done there. Um what kind of set
34:13that for you? Are your go-to market teams built for scale or are they stuck in chaos? At Midgame Consulting, we turn
34:21high growth challenges into operational wins. From sales strategy to CRM to
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34:44Um, karma.
34:49Um, I don’t know. I mean, uh, that’s a good question. I really I don’t I never really thought about it. It’s like, hey,
34:55why do I why do I do these things? Um, I mean, now I do it because, you know, I’m I’m 51 with gray hair and, you know, I
35:02look around and see people that are young and it’s it’s sort of like I’m looking for proof that the next
Paying It Forward: The Value of Teaching
35:08generation is actually gonna go. There’s promise here and I’ve been fortunate
35:13like you know we’ve had people that have you taking care of my son that are now family friends like we had this this um
35:20at the time she was in high school and she helped babysit my son all the way through the years during COVID and then
35:26now she has a master’s degree and now she you know in her 20s and she has a career and we invite her over to the
35:31house for dinner. Um so I’m like wow she’s really smart and she does really cool things and I’m like there’s promise
35:36there. So, I guess I feel like, you know, on the other hand, there’s like a guy down the street that’s in our
35:42community club and he’s still an undergrad and he seems really sharp and sort of asking questions about his studies. He’s an engineering major and
35:48we started talking about GPUs and I’m like, “Oh, I actually know somebody who has a company, you know, would you want
35:53an introduction?” And I think I and what I told him, I was like, “Look, man, I’ve been 22. I know what it was like when I
36:00was when I was a history major at Winthrop University trying to figure out like what am I going to do with my life?
36:06like I have no jobs, no prospects, no money. Like what am I gonna do? And I
36:11was fortunate to land an internship at John Deere, which got me some interviews, you know, because it was,
36:17you know, John Deere logo, which led to at least getting an interview with Pearson. And after that, it’s, you know,
36:23had help. So, I think part of it is just like it’s pay it back because I would have wanted somebody to help me and had
36:28people help me. Um, that’s probably the biggest part of it. You know, the teaching and stuff just kind of came out
36:34of necessity. It was like a lot of times it was just filling uh income
36:39opportunities. Like the first time I started teaching it was when I was living in Kazakhstan. I had a I was over there for graduate school research and
36:45then ended up staying for six months. Uh because the university found out I had a master’s degree an MBA in finance and
36:53said hey can you teach finance for undergrads? I was like I don’t know. They said well we have a teacher that’s going on maternity leave. Can you fill
36:59in for a semester? I was like sure you know. So I ended up saying I was supposed to be there for six weeks to do
37:05some grad school research and ended up staying six months. So that got me into uh into teaching and then different
37:11points in my career when I was making transitions like when I left Blend to start sales quality at the consulting
37:18firm um I taught at Holtz International Business School because it helped pay the bills while I was getting the
37:23company up and running you know so part of it is just you know I need to pay the bills but I do enjoy teaching you know
37:29whether it’s workshops or webinars or you know classroom I like I actually the thing I most enjoy is preparing the
37:35presentation preparing for what’s going to go and then executing on that and
37:40delivering in a way that it feels like people are enjoying it and that they’re learning. So it’s, you know, yeah, I’m
37:47helping other people, but also selfishly I’m getting plenty out of it because I enjoy it. So, you know, it’s not all
37:53altruistic, I guess. Yeah, there’s there’s a payback there
37:58for sure. Obviously, I mean, there are a lot of other things that you could have gone into besides teaching, right, to to
38:05fill that up. There there are other options out there, but yes, absolutely.
38:10I’m sure you’re getting something from it. But I I’m sure that there’s a satisfaction in seeing the the students
38:17grow because you’ve also done that within your companies as well with some of the the sales reps that you’ve worked with and and helping to see them grow.
38:25There’s got to be some some um gratification that comes when they kind of hit those next levels.
38:31Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but even that you could argue it’s like, well, that’s it’s my gratification, right? So, it’s for me
38:38as much as it is for anyone. But like when I was at PULT, one of the students in my class ended up hiring to work for
38:44me at Salesqualia part-time and then when he graduated he worked full-time and then eventually he opened his own
38:50coaching business and now he’s got his own uh he’s a vegan bodybuilder in
38:56Mexico and the guy’s a stud. He’s got his wonderful business and I’m like, you
39:02know, maybe somehow someway I helped him out along the way or you mentioned Stephen, same thing. Um, but again, it’s
39:08often like, I helped that guy out. Um, so there’s some of that, but yeah, it’s
39:13good. I mean, I think people deserve a chance if they’re a hard worker and give them an opportunity to take advantage of
39:19it. Like, I had an opportunity to go work at Pearson. They didn’t have to give me that job. I earned that job in the interview. Um, basically, I told
39:26them I wasn’t leaving until I got the job offer. I I had an interview and it was it was
39:34running long and they’re like, “Hey, we have somebody else down in the lobby that’s also interviewing.” I was like, “Great. Why don’t you go downstairs and tell them that you just filled the job?”
39:41And I said that in the job interview. And they’re like, “Well, we we can’t quite do that.” I’m like, “Why not? I
39:46mean, is there any particular reason why you wouldn’t hire me?” And I just like closed them right there. I don’t know
39:52why. That was good. Yeah. And I was like 22 at the time. I don’t know where it came from. I just
39:57really wanted that job and I felt like I was a good fit for it. And they’re like, “Okay, we’ll we’ll call you back.” So
40:02then the that was with the regional manager and this guy, uh, Butch Porter, who ended up being my industry manager, he’s like he took me out. We talked for
40:09a while. I’m like, “It’s going to take for me to get this job, man.” He’s like, “I think you’re in a good spot. Just give this a couple days.”
40:17So that’s awesome. I love that, man. That kind of confidence walking in like, “Well, this is mine. This is mine.”
40:24Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Well, I are there any um as
40:30you’ve grown, obviously you’ve you’ve changed in your philosophy, you’ve changed in your skills, you’ve grown
40:37along the way. Would you say are there any philosophies or values that you held
40:42when you were younger in the New Jersey days that that served you well that
40:48maybe don’t serve you so well anymore? Or you’ve dropped them and said, “Yeah, you know what? that that was for that
Evolving Perspectives on Leadership and Empathy
40:53period of time in my life and now I don’t really feel that way anymore. Yeah, I think I tried to try to drop as
41:01much of the Jersey guy as possible. Um I went I went I went to uh undergraduate
41:07school down in South Carolina at Winre University and um I had been living in
41:13Florida. We I grew up in New Jersey. We moved to Florida when I was in high school and I went from Florida to South Carolina but I was still Jersey, right?
41:19So, I had I had a ponytail and shave my head underneath and I’m in the south and
41:26I go to these cake parties and I’m just sarcastic, you know, uh, petulent New Jersey guy
41:33and everybody’s like, “What the hell is wrong with this guy? Like, why is he being such an ass?” And then the same thing when I moved to California, right,
41:40the first year or so, you know, you know, I got the New York attitude. I’m going to bring New York to San Francisco. I’m like, my buddies are
41:45like, “Dude, just chill, man. That’s just not the way it works around here. Um, so luckily I think I’ve shed a lot
41:52of the New Jersey, New York, East Coast attitude. I’m still pretty like intense in terms of my focus and stuff and I
41:58could be pretty direct. Um, and people tell me I have a resting face
42:03sometimes. It makes me appear unpleasant and unapproachable, but that’s that’s just Sorry, I’m old. I have wrinkles
42:09now. Um, so I think the places I’ve adapted a lot is just being a lot more
42:15um attempting to be a lot more empathetic towards other people and their
42:21situation. I think as you um as you encounter more people throughout your
42:26life and you start to get to know more people and you start to understand what their backgrounds are. First thing is
42:32like for me personally realizing how unbelievably lucky I was to be a white
42:37male born into you know the United States with middle class parents and having you know good intelligence, good
42:44health, every like pretty much every advantage possible that somebody could ever hope for. Um you just sort of take
42:51that for granted when you’re younger. You just sort of assume that. But then you go to a place like especially when
42:56you get out of the east coast, you move to California where it’s more heterogeneous and you have different cultures and different people and
43:01different backgrounds. Um, and then when you get older, you know, like I I uh I
43:07did some volunteering for Special Olympics and just I had a friend of mine, we were in a triathlon team together and he was coaching Special
43:13Olympics soccer and he found out I played soccer. He’s like, “Hey, you should come coach.” So I was like, “Okay, I’ll help you out.” And then you
43:18get there and you realize like, man, like these are wonderful human beings that are no different than the rest of
43:24us. It’s just they were born into different situations as me. And then you watch their parents who have grown
43:30children or that are that are still living at home because they’re not able to take care of themselves. And you just
43:35like, whoa, wait a second here. Like life could have been really different
43:41for a lot of us, right? Um, so I think you get older, you start to appreciate,
43:47you know, where you see family members go through health problems and you’re like, “Oh, wait a second.” Like we’re in
43:54our 40s now and, you know, people die early. You know, they they can get cancer. They can, you know, they have
44:00kids that could, you know, pass away. You know, there’s so many things. You know, you hire somebody to come clean
44:06your house and you learn, you start talking to them and you realize what they’re going through in their life and worry about being deported because they
44:12have family and they went to Mexico and they almost didn’t get back. You’re like, damn. Like,
44:17yeah, looking around going like, when’s it when’s the shoe going to drop for me, man? Um, so I think you just if you
44:23don’t at least try to find that awareness. Um, and I’m sure there’s plenty of times I’ve forgotten this
44:29myself, but I think probably the biggest thing is just understanding. Um, I’ve heard a couple different quotes to this,
44:35which is like everybody has a pebble in their shoe. Um, forget where I heard that. It was,
44:42uh, it’s on the Tim Ferris podcast. Um, and you just don’t know who people are.
44:47Um, you don’t know what they’ve been through. There was the the writer from the New York Times that end up
44:52committing suicide. He talks about the story where like, you know, father’s in line with three kids and the three
44:58kids are really whining and complaining and crying and somebody’s like, “Hey, can you, you know, can you can you
45:03control your kids?” He’s like, “Oh, sorry. My wife just passed away today.” It’s like, you just don’t know who people are and what they’re going
45:09through every day. You walk through an airport and just look at people’s faces. Like, you have no freaking clue what
45:16that person is going through. Um, like I I I do I used to do a lot of
45:22ultra running and people would always get impressed. They’re like, “Oh, that’s really great.”
45:27Like, “Man, you could run 100 miles. I could never run 100 miles.” I’m like, “So, so what?” Like, it doesn’t mean
45:33you’re It doesn’t mean I’m any better than you. It’s just It means I’m probably dumb and stupid and you’re not. Like, why would anybody sign up to do
45:39100 miles and do all that training, right? And but but the word like the one thing that I hear sometimes with people
45:44is like man like the longest I’ve ever run is a half marathon. And I’m like
45:50it’s not a half anything. And like what do you mean? I’m like you ran 13.1
45:55miles. Get in your car and drive 13.1 miles. That’s a long way to run. Like
46:01they shouldn’t call it a half marathon because it’s not half of anything, you know? Or people like, oh, you know, they
46:08they do this stupid 5K and these people out there doing a 5K. And I remember in my town a couple years ago, uh, I
46:14happened to be at a park and this 5K loop finished in the finishing line of a park and it was just like one of those whatever, you know, 75 bucks, you know,
46:21run a 5K. And I remember watching these people getting to the finish line and it’s, you know, they’re finishing 5K in
46:2730 minutes, 35 minutes, 40 minutes. And it’s like you don’t know who those people are
46:34because to them it’s not just a 5K because to them maybe it’s a person that
46:40had to go through chemotherapy for six years, right? It it breaks me up to think about this because you just don’t
46:46know what that person had to go through just to finish a 5K. Maybe it’s a mom who had like four kids and then she’s
46:54got a two, a four, a six, and eight-year-old at home and she finally was able to make time to train. She gets
47:00to finally do a 5K like after raising four kids and putting her body through that. You can imagine
47:06how that feels to that person that maybe used to be a high school track athlete, but now after four kids, it’s like, you
47:13know, if if anybody out there has a wife and kids, you realize like what having a child does to a woman and her body and
47:20the stress that it puts on it mentally, physically, emotionally. You’re like, it’s not just a 5K to that
47:26person. It’s like a life achievement. People like, oh, I just run 5Ks. I’m like, great, you’re doing 5ks. That’s
47:33awesome. you know, so I mean I I try to to think about those things when I’m out there
47:39because you just don’t know who people are. That’s right. Putting putting a lot of
47:45value in what people are going through is important and and Scott, we can see that throughout um throughout your
47:52career, the mentoring that you’ve done, the the sales that you’ve done and how you’ve approached it and and obviously
47:57the the impact that you’re having on on the community that you’re you’re around and of course your family as well. So, I
48:03think that’s that’s a great place to to leave this. Um, I really appreciate you
48:09joining us here on the show. Um, if people want to to follow you or learn
48:15more about NIA1 and the things that you’re doing, how do they do that? Um, I say easiest way, go to LinkedIn
48:22and search Scotti or go to Google Scotti LinkedIn. Uh, as far as I know, I’m the only Scotti on LinkedIn. It’s the
48:28easiest way to get hold of me. Um, yeah, you can go to niawan.com if you want to if you’re, you know, a bank looking for
48:35software, but that’s probably not the best. I’d say just, uh, yeah, just do
48:40that. Um, if you’re if you’re in the sales world, you can you can search for me on Amazon. I’ve written a couple
48:45books on sales. Uh, most recent one’s now few years old, but it’s called um,
48:52uh, stop hustling start scaling. So, it’s about that transition to go from hustling and getting those first
48:58customers and revenue as a as an owner of a company as a as a founder, as a CEO. How do you get to a place where
49:03you’re starting to scale that sales team and that sales those sales efforts? Um, that’s just based on my experience doing
49:09this for a few years. So, you can, you know, buy a copy of that if you want to. It’s like five bucks, but um I think
49:15it’s well worth five bucks. So, absolutely. Um, but that’s fantastic. Yeah. And we’ll
49:22Great. Yeah, we’ll include all of the uh the links in the show notes for everybody as well so they they can get
49:27directly there. But yes, please go go check out the book um all of the books that are out there because Scott, you
49:32are a wealth of knowledge. So, thank you so much for spending the time with us and and sharing. I appreciate it. Thanks
49:37for joining us on the Midgame Mindset. If today’s episode sparked a new idea or helped shift your perspective, share it
49:43with someone who’s ready to grow. Subscribe, leave a review, and keep playing the game. With the right
49:48mindset, the best moves are still ahead. Until next time, keep changing the game.
