Episode #83 The Brutal Truth About Startups, VC Pressure & Scaling to $3M ARR with Max Greenwald

What does it take to turn a struggling startup into a multi-million dollar success?
In this episode of Bridge the Gap, we sit down with Max Greenwald, Founder & CEO of Warmly, an AI-powered sales platform that generates warm leads. From pivoting multiple times to tripling ARR in a year, Max shares the raw truth about startup survival, VC pressures, and the reality of finding product-market fit (hint: it feels like someone yanking you forward by the nostrils 🤯).

💡 Topics Covered:
✅ The brutal truth about VCs vs. Founders’ goals
✅ The real definition of product-market fit
✅ The ultra-marathon mindset of building a startup
✅ Why being “lettuce” vs. a “supermarket” determines if your company survives
✅ The power of warm leads & why cold outreach is broken

👀 If you’re a founder, sales leader, or just love startup war stories, you don’t want to miss this one!

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Transcript

00:00 
This is Bridge the Gap, powered by Revenue Reimagined, the podcast where we dive into all things revenue. Each episode, we bring you the top founders and go-to-market leaders to challenge how you think about growth and help you bridge your biggest go-to-market gaps. 

00:14 
I'm Adam Jay. And I'm Dale Zwinski. As always, thanks for hanging with us. There's a million ways you could be spending your time and we're grateful you're choosing to spend it with us. Be sure to check out our newsletter if you want the show notes and tactical advice on how to bridge your GTM gaps. 

00:30 
Let's get to it after a quick word from our sponsor. Let's face it, y'all. Hiring sales talent is a real pain in the ass. Getting A players is key to bridging your go-to-market gap, but it's harder than ever. 

00:42 
If you're not actively engaging passive talent, you don't stand a damn chance. That's why at Revenue Reimagined, we trust our partners at Pursuit to help our clients find the best talent fast. If you're looking to strengthen your sales team, go check them out. 

00:56 
At PursuitSalesSolutions.com. Welcome back to another episode of the Revenue Reimagined podcast. We have, I guess we'll say a friend of the show today because Warmly is definitely a friend of RR. We have Max Greenwald, who is the founder and CEO of Warmly, which if you don't know, and you're living under a rock, is an AI sales platform that generates warm leads. 

01:20 
He's a first-time founder who spent time at Google, didn't know anything about sales when he started Warmly five years ago. And after, we'll say a few pivots, they've actually hit their stride, have over 300 paying customers who want to use AI and automation to land more sales. 

01:36 
We'll talk about this year of clear that you've been doing that I've been following along with. Max is an avid skier and ultra marathon and triathlete. So I'm just going to go eat my ice cream in the corner because you're in much better shape than I am. 

01:51 
But welcome to the show, Max. So great to be here. Thanks for having me, guys. Max, welcome to the show. And let's start off a little bit differently. So you're an ultra marathon. your love skiing. What's the parallel between ultra marathoning and founding a tech company? 

02:10 
I mean, I think I like that one. I mean, I think it's pretty much there, right? It's just the idea that it's not a sprint, it's a marathon, probably an ultra marathon can take a lot longer than you think it's going to take. 

02:23 
And the other fun analogy that I'll draw is that it's not a race about your endurance, it's a race about your nutrition. And basically, what that means is as long as you're learning as much as possible every day, and that I'm going to equate to eating right during this race, right, eating the goose and the gels and the bananas and whatever it takes to like make it to the finish line, you're going to be able to sustain and endure. 

02:50 
throughout the distance of the race. And I think a lot of people think that it's more of a strength race, right? It's all about if I did enough pushups, which maybe you could equate to, did I come from the right background? 

03:02 
Or did I practice enough of my swimming laps? And that you can equate to, did I hire amazing people who've been there, done that? But at the end of the day, I think it's more about just learning and I'm a first time founder, right? 

03:19 
So I'm biased, of course, but I really think it's about nutrition. It's about feeding yourself knowledge day after day. And also not dying is another big one. I think basically the classic saying that startups, what is it? 

03:34 
It's like startups, the most common way that startups go under is they commit suicide, which basically is the idea that if you're giving up on yourself, if you don't think you're gonna succeed, if you let sort of negativity get you down when things aren't easy and going well, which things never easy and never go well, then really you're gonna fall on your own sword. 

03:56 
But if you just keep at it, pound the pavement, eat the next banana, eat the next goo or gel, you'll be able to get to the end of the ultra marathon. How do you rationalize that with investors or people that are trying to put money into the company or pushing you at growth at all costs as a founder where you're like, no, it's a marathon, it's not a sprint, and you have people trying to push you towards that? 

04:23 
I don't really think the needs and desires of founders and VCs are aligned, and that's one of the hardest pieces to it. I fancy myself a bit of a- Can you just say that one more time for everyone listening? 

04:35 
Founders and VCs need- That's so spot on. They're not aligned. And I don't mind telling VCs that. I mean, one of the things that makes me, makes my blood boil a little bit is that any VC, when they give you advice, they're coming from a perspective, wanting to make their funds successful. 

04:50 
you might think, oh, well, they're investment in us. If we're successful, they'll be successful, so we're all winning. But remember that a VC has 30 investments across their portfolio, and the way their portfolio construction works is they want 23 of those companies to die. 

05:04 
They want four of those to break even or make a little bit of money, and they want three to be huge winners. And to say that again, they want 66%, 70% of their portfolio to die trying to be a unicorn. 

05:17 
And I am not diversified. I have one business, and I don't want to take a 70% chance that my business is gonna die. I want to take a 90% chance that it's gonna be moderately successful to maybe a unicorn. 

05:32 
And yeah, I'm not here to build a small business. I'm a first-time founder. I'm very lucky in that I don't have not yet at least kids, a house, a mortgage. I'm not in debt. I can take risks. So I am taking a big risk. 

05:47 
Um, but I'm not going to drive myself off the edge of a cliff the way that I think a lot of VCs will push you to. Um, and so in the analogy that we're talking about, you know, they're expecting a sprint race and I'm expecting an endurance race and, um, you just have to have an honest conversation with your VC boat that looks like, and I think they've helped me see that I'm not running an ultra ultra marathon, 

06:06 
maybe just a marathon, but also it's not a, I'm just trying to use the analogy. It's not a sprint. It's, you know, it's some sort of distance. Um, and we're five and a half years in and I am really grateful to my VCs who, uh, came in early where we had our series a preempted, uh, for three and a half years, we pivoted around, um, you know, we had a lot of skepticism. 

06:27 
A lot of our VCs, the patience was tried as they were like, we put a lot of money into you, like, you know, where's your revenue? And we're like, Oh, we have to get revenue. Like that's weird. Um, I mean, I'm saying this in the revenue, re-imagined podcast. 

06:40 
I mean, for us, revenue re-imagined in the early days was no revenue. That was the re-imagined part. Um, but eventually we figured it out. And I think, um, as I, you know, we're, we're in a very great and lucky position that the last two years we went zero to 1 million in ARR and then one to three. 

06:56 
So we just tripled this past year, which was exciting. Um, and we finally figured it out and I recently posted this on LinkedIn that warmly is the classic overnight success story. If overnight means 1861 days. 

07:07 
Um, cause it's been, it's been five and a half years. And, uh, you know, I think that's classic. Like people don't realize that they're like, Oh, you guys, like all of a sudden became, you know, Oh, a success. 

07:18 
And you're like, yeah, after like, I did like blood, sweat and tears on this thing. Yeah. So let's, let's, let's talk about that for a second though, because I've been following warmly for a long time. 

07:32 
Um, I 1,675 days. Not, not quite that long, but long. And the product today is not what the product started out with, um, or what the product iterated to, or what the product iterated to after that. Um, how did you get Max from where you were to where you are now while at the same time for lack of better terms, keeping the VCs off your back, right? 

07:55 
Because again, like give me that revenue or you're out and you're not out, you're still there. You made some great pivots. I'd love to hear a little bit about that. Yeah, so I think keeping in mind that like every pivot we were learning, like if I were to draw a graph of like time and learnings, it's a ultra crazy graph up and to the right, right? 

08:13 
Like we have this coolest curve imaginable. It's not revenue, it's learnings. That's up and to the right from day one. My revenue curve stays incredibly flat for a very long time and then pops up. And then my like just product trajectory curve is just all over the place. 

08:28 
Ups and downs, pivots, turns, backwards, forwards. I mean, we have tried. B2C, B2B2C, B2B, we've tried PLG, we've tried SMB sales, mid-market sales, enterprise sales, just any just sideways thing you can imagine like we've gone after and failed at all of them and really just tried to find a path in the space. 

08:49 
And one of my favorite phrases by Eric Torrenberg, the founder of On Deck was the idea maze. And he says, you're lost in the Minotaur's maze and it's gonna take a long time to get out and you're gonna sound like kind of a crazy person because one week you're gonna be talking about this one idea and the next week this other idea and you kind of have to like navigate it all. 

09:08 
And I have a couple of like classic tips that I give first time founders for how to navigate the idea maze and figure out the space you wanna be in. Warmly because we're warm and we wanna be about connection, we've always been in the space of helping connect sales and marketing people to their best customers. 

09:26 
So we've always been in the revenue space, but yeah, we pivoted a whole bunch of times. I mean, the very first idea for Warmly, this is not a joke, was Tinder for co-founders. So my problem was I couldn't find a co-founder. 

09:39 
I love it. And so, and I was the CTO to start, built this swipey app where it was like, do you wanna be my co-founder, left swipe, right swipe? And it's a terrible idea for so many reasons, but it got my co-founders not to quit Google and start the business. 

09:53 
So it was a good leap of faith and knowing what I know now, it's the dumbest idea in the world. No one should ever start that. But at least I was too naive then to really know that. So I left my cushy job to start this thing. 

10:06 
And then it snowballed from there and we just, I can tell you the next seven pivots, but long and the short of it is we tried to figure out what's the best way to connect people. And it turns out that finding more warm leads for salespeople is something they'll pay money for. 

10:19 
And I think it's important for a lot of people that are potentially listening to this and I would say this as I learned through my sales leadership journey is. I would always ask the founder when I do an interview, how many pivots you have left with the funding that you have? 

10:39 
Because the problem is you're going to have some pivots. And if you don't know how many pivots you have left, like you're going to end up committing, you know, you're going to die somewhere along that line. 

10:50 
Because what ends up happening a lot of times and Adam could probably vouch for us as well, you get brought in to like one or two pivots left. And then it's like, shit, I don't have enough time to pivot or they think, they think, hey, you've done sales before other companies and you've been successful. 

11:10 
So you can come in and it's like, then you look at what's the pipeline look like? What are the conversion rates? What are the, you know, all these metrics that you're running in, you're like, I can't get there in six months. 

11:20 
Like, yeah, it's going to take us six months to just build that foundational piece to get you to 25% conversion rate from demo to close. And they don't understand that. For kind of my founding sales and marketing leaders out there who like to come in at the really early stages and get involved with the company, I think you're asking a very important question here, which is that you should be asking, 

11:42 
how much runway do you guys have yet left? And where are you in your product market fit journey? And being savvy because a lot of founders are gonna be like, oh, we've figured it out, we know everything, we have these great customers. 

11:51 
It's like, no, like they haven't figured it out, and that's okay, but it is important to talk through basically how many pivots left do we have? And knowing that if you only have one bullet left in the chamber, maybe that's okay, and maybe you're willing to take that risk tolerance, but coach that founder to say, please don't try to pivot us halfway through when things aren't looking good. 

12:09 
This is like, you know, do or die, and so we're really gonna like push it and push through. And you know, some of the best companies in the world have been founded with one bullet left in the chamber, and honestly, one of my VCs once told me, you know, I'm bummed you guys have as much money as you do because it doesn't make you as hungry as you could be, because you know, if you're on your last leg, 

12:27 
like you're gonna come hell or high water, you're trying your hardest. Yeah, I've heard that. It's funny, like you talked about product market fit, and sadly, the majority of founders that I've spoken with long before Revenue Reimagined, they all think they have product market fit, but they really don't. 

12:51 
From the eyes of a founder who has not had product market fit, and who now clearly has product market fit, how would you describe product market fit? Because it means so many different things to so many different people. 

13:07 
I'll give this credit to our CDron investor, James Currier, who describes product market fit as somebody taking their two fingers and shoving them up your nostrils and yanking you forward. And if you aren't being yanked forward with two fingers in your nostrils, you don't have it. 

13:23 
And it's some version of like, you know, if you know, you know, and if you don't know, you don't have it. But really, I think it's, you know, you got to break down product and market. markets easier to figure out because you know, you can basically understand is this a growing space are there competitors in there one of the Big things that I think a lot of people shy away from is they're like, oh, 

13:41 
there's too many competitors in this space Hell yeah That's a great space to be and that means like this thing's working It means a lot of other idiots out there who figured out all the problems before you got there So that you can be successful and rarely ever is first to market the one who succeed That's always mostly I think more like hardest working to market Which is like somebody who puts in the most time and grinds the hardest But anyway that aside markets easier to figure out products tough and I was actually a product manager at Google And so I thought that I was good at product. 

14:08 
I suck at product I am NOT a product person and one of my personal journeys and evolutions as a human was realizing that I'm a sales CEO And not a product CEO And so I am really happy that I delegated product to my other co-founders who are much better at product than I am But I think I tried for a long time to just sort of go by my gut and be like these are the features that are Going to win and oh if we just built this thing then we're going to be successful, 

14:32 
but product fits in the product market fit typically is in the form of how simple can your product be and can your customers describe what you're doing in a very easy way and Also, especially for b2b I like the just the simple mark of if you had to get rid of 40% of your tech stack today Are we making it or not? 

14:52 
And that's just like a pretty easy barometer for like, you know when things get hard Do I stick around if you have the product part of product market fit? You're you're sticky enough that you're sticking around when the budget gets cut People buy from people that's why companies who invest in meaningful connections win the best part Gifting doesn't have to be expensive to drive results. 

15:11 
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15:44 
We'll call them zombie tech companies now have built call it 75% of the tech They overlap with other things kind of like what you're saying Like if I got to get rid of you know, 40% of my tech So you guys still are you guys still there is do I derive value based on what we're selling? 

16:02 
To make that make that successful One of the really good Analogies here and again, I'll quote James Currier who's our CEDAR investor in FX When we were talking about what kind of product you wanted to be said there are two kinds of products You're either a supermarket or your lettuce and bear with me for a second And the idea is that the supermarket is something you go to every week you kind of have to go to the supermarket to get food. 

16:27 
Now, you don't have to buy lettuce. You choose to buy lettuce because it's good for you. But if that lettuce is brown or isn't there, isn't looking good or doesn't taste good one week, you're going to go for something else instead. 

16:39 
And the equivalent in product is basically like, you're essentially a system of record. You're something that just kind of has to be there. Like you kind of need a CRM and whether your company is amazing or terrible, you still have to have a CRM. 

16:51 
And if there's a bad quarter or a bad year, you're going to keep your CRM. But if it's lettuce, you have to have a fresh lettuce delivered every single week. Warmly is kind of both. And one of the things that we struggle with actually is this idea that we have to deliver fresh lettuce every single week. 

17:06 
If there's a single week where I don't deliver you warm leads, you're going to cut me, right? You're going to say, well, you, why would I pay for this thing? I think I didn't get, I didn't get the fresh lettuce. 

17:14 
And so we have to... kind of have this balance of like, and we're moving more toward being this orchestration platform where you set up all your workflows for your go-to-market motion, you connect a bunch of stuff, you like orchestrate these leads, etc. 

17:26 
And by doing so, even if you have a bad month, you're still going to keep warmly because we're kind of this like core of your like revenue and go-to-market motion. And so it's definitely better to be a grocery store than to be lettuce. 

17:37 
It's often easier as a first-time founder or just any founder building a business for the first time to start with lettuce because you can basically find a quick hit feature that's just like here's quick value, here's quick value, here's quick value. 

17:47 
But be careful because if you don't deliver quick value every single week, week over week, year after year, then you're gonna get cut. So I actually love that analogy. Candidly, I'm gonna steal it. He steals everything. 

18:00 
I'll take credit for you. I think the way it works is I gave the other guy credit for it, but if you take it, I get credit for it. But I think it holds very true. At the end of the day, the number one thing we hear from people now that they're concerned with is top of funnel. 

18:20 
How do you build pipeline? And like, sure, you might have a shitty quarter, but are we bringing in the leads that we could identify the leads? Maybe you need to change your messaging. Maybe you need to change your process. 

18:30 
But at the end of the day, are we getting you the information you need so that you can act on it? Yeah. Max, you compete against some of the, I'll say, most well-known names out there. I don't want to say biggest. 

18:44 
I'll say well-known. People who are prolific on LinkedIn. I believe I read the other day that you actually met in real life with one of your biggest competitors. Why such a competitive space with people who are so prolific in their brands? 

19:05 
So is something funny to me? Because about a year and a half ago, we decided that we'd go pretty hardcore on a LinkedIn social strategy and just being very vocal about what we do. And we're taking unique approach. 

19:16 
I think we did my going clear thing. So I basically transparently share all of our metrics and numbers on LinkedIn and share what I'm learning because I want other people to grow from that and not other people in our space do that, but they do post on LinkedIn all the time. 

19:29 
But I think it just what I don't know what it is, but it's some sort of like, everyone, everyone caught the bug of, I think we can make money on LinkedIn. And so let's all go into it. So I think that our space in particular, mainly because the number one place that sales and go to market people hang out is LinkedIn, all started going pretty deep on it. 

19:48 
I think I've been surprised at the number of personality kind of founder types that have emerged. Like I think that by nature, like often a lot of founders aren't very like, you know, kind of forward in their brand and their presence and try to hog the spotlight because they're more like maybe like geeky, right? 

20:08 
But actually not okay, I'm gonna change for a second. Here's is that the founders of the 2010s were more product nerds because like technology was really important. But now that technology is ubiquitous and we have AI and automation, and it's really easy to build tech. 

20:27 
I actually think that sales focused founders are coming out of the woodwork and sales and go to market kind of like more social type founders are coming out of the woodwork in the 2020s that are here to take advantage of the ease of creating software. 

20:43 
And their strong suit is something that's yet to be seen which is just an absolute dagger of an ability to crush it on the sales and marketing side. So that's my hypothesis as to why that we might be seeing that. 

20:55 
But otherwise I would just say we're in one of the hottest spaces in revenue technology. And I think that if you're starting out today, why wouldn't you build in the red hot ocean of where things are frothy and where people are putting money toward? 

21:11 
Yeah, I think like every batch, every YC batch, I look at the list of companies and there's like six companies whose tagline is literally our tagline. And they're like doing exactly what we're doing. 

21:22 
And yeah, I mean, it's getting easier and easier to get started, which is maybe good for the world but bad for sort of competitive advantages and moats in starting companies. And so where are you gonna win? 

21:36 
Well, you're gonna win on brand, which means you're gonna understand why some of these people are trying to build and develop their brand and you'll win on just hustle and hard work. So yeah, I'm in a very crowded space. 

21:46 
A lot of those people are also posting on LinkedIn. I respect them, I read all their stuff. I have follow on their things. And yeah, it's my morning coffee. And I wake up in the morning, I roll out of bed and look at what fricking Adam Robinson's posted next. 

21:58 
And it's like, damn it, you know, I should have posted something like that. And yeah, I wanna be friends with them too because I don't know, I'm one of those like rocking chair people where it's like when I sit back on my rocking chair and I'm like 100 years old, maybe 150, if we can live that long with all the advancements in the health stuff. 

22:13 
But I wanna look back and like be kind of. of amused that like I went to war with, you know, against some of these great people that I respect and admire and, um, feel like it was, it was a fight worth fighting because it was like, it was fun in the arena. 

22:26 
I'm with you, man. Some of the people I'm closest to are our direct competitors. Um, and there's times where we might not be the right fit and we'll send them business and vice versa, but at the end of the day, like there, there's enough business out there that I don't need to be an ass to you just cause you compete with me, like let's compete and made the best person win. 

22:46 
I mean, Dale and I started by us competing and my winning. I have to bring that up every chance I get. Um, but here we are. He dodged a bullet. I will say, I say it every day. You got it. You got to respond to that, man. 

22:58 
He just, he outflanked me. Hey, look at, I'm, I'm not too proud to say he outflanked me. I was not getting out of, but you won in the long run. I was not getting on a plane to fly all the way out to where you would need to be. 

23:09 
But is it just like a tortoise in the hair thing where like Adam came out fast, but you know, the tortoise one in the long run. Well, it's funny because I started doing fractional or like consulting like two years ago. 

23:24 
And then like I was, after this whole incident happened, Adam, like it was the same thing. Six months in, 11 million in series A funding, you know, no product. 16 million selling paperware. It's the same thing. 

23:38 
Literally selling Figbob. We'd go in. We'd go in and be like, this isn't going to make it. So I just told him like, you know, come, like come outside and like do what you do best, but do it for more than one founder. 

23:50 
And that's kind of how, how it all started off. But one of the things that I've been curious about, because I, I, Melissa is a big, we're friends with Melissa Gaglione and, and I saw the video that you guys, the video you guys did in Tampa or wherever you guys did that video. 

24:05 
So I'm curious, like, where's the cowboy, the hat, the, the whole process. Like give the, give the audience a little bit of the background. Yeah, I mean, I think there's an explicit conversation where we wanted to figure out what our brand was and kind of stick true to it. 

24:21 
I think that there's this kind of rebel spirit within warmly of never giving up, of being a bit of the outsider, of kind of watching and waiting for a moment to strike. And I think everyone wants to root for an underdog story. 

24:37 
And there's just something about cowboy energy that I think embodies that really well. You know, the, the cowboy thing was first brought on by our head of revenue Keegan Otter, who's dubbed himself a software cowboy, which I love. 

24:50 
I grew up in Colorado. Was that, was that pre warmly or because I'm warm? So when we first joined, we said that we were going to be changing our names on LinkedIn to include a couple more words to just stand out like in the text. 

25:04 
You know, some people put like an emoji or whatever. I lowercase my first letter of my first and last name to kind of just throw people off a little bit. Just cause it stands out a little more. That automation really well. 

25:15 
Yeah. So I changed. my name on LinkedIn to Maximus Greenwald sales founder. And then I needed to get verified. And I knew that was going to improve my stats. And so I had to get they were like, unless your ID says sales founder on it, you can't like have that. 

25:28 
And I was like, Oh, fine. So I like remove that. And so now I'm just Maximus Greenwald. And then Keegan was able to get verified, I think through his school ID or something. So he didn't need the is okay if you had a longer name. 

25:39 
So he made his software cowboy and then it's sort of stuck ever since. And then, yeah, we were just looking for a social outing once we were hanging out in person. And there was a sort of a place that did brand branded cowboy hats. 

25:51 
And so now every seller on the warmly team has a branded cowboy hat. And it's just kind of our marker. I don't know. I think that like, you know, it's the people who are customers, you know, the diffusion of innovation curve, we have your like early adopters, then you're like, you know, or late majority, whatever. 

26:08 
So I think we're still we're exiting the early adopter phase. But I think our early first couple hundred customers are these kind of rebel, rebel cowboys that are just like China cowboys and cow gals, um, who are just trying to, you know, change up how they do their go to market motion, think a little bit differently, lean more into automation and AI, um, bring a warmer way to sell. 

26:30 
Uh, and so, yeah, I think it's just sort of our ethos now that we're rolling with. I love it. Dale, I would pay anything to see you sport a cowboy hat, um, all over. I'll leave my comment to myself. I, uh, I travel a lot and this thing's tough to bring on an airplane. 

26:48 
Um, cause you can't, you can't, you can't put it in a, in a suitcase cause it'll get, it'll get ruined. Um, and then, you know, I'm like sitting there on the airplane and I can't lean back cause it's like, got this thing on it. 

26:57 
So it's like on my lap or then I like put it in the overhead bin and then someone tries to like shove a backpack in there and I'm like, nope, nope, I need it for my cowboy hat. Uh, and then, you know, we have teams in Europe and in Israel and Brazil and stuff. 

27:08 
And so, you know, I'll like touchdown and, and, you know, and like Tel Aviv, Israel or whatever. And they'll be like, Oh, ha ha, like American cowboy. And I'll be like, howdy. I love that. Max, with all the pivots you've made, um, and where you guys are now looking back and hindsight's 2020, but what would you, what are like the top two things that you look back and you're like, shit, should've done that differently. 

27:33 
Yeah. Pretty much every pivot that we made, there's gone on to be a huge company in that space who did great with it. And that's what's crazy to me, right? Is like, I thought when we pivoted, there's no way this is going to work. 

27:46 
And yet time and time again, you know, we were proven wrong except for Tinder for co-founders. No one's ever done that. It's a shitty idea. I maintain don't don't do it. Um, and so there's something about timing, which is out of your control. 

27:58 
Uh, there's something about grit and problem is this pivot or persevere, right? Persevere means you just sit in your filth and you suck it up and you keep iterating and growing. And then pivot means you just thrash around. 

28:15 
until you get lucky and you jump on a goldmine. And I think that's just a really hard thing. So, you know, when I look back, I would probably just tell myself, whether you pivot or whether you persevere, you're believing in yourself and you're gonna make it. 

28:29 
And that is just sort of a self-confidence thing that, I mean, I remember weeks on end where I was just paralyzed with sort of this guilt and shame and anxiety. I had this like dry heaving problem, like every morning I'd wake up and the first thing I do is I run out of the toilet and just like dry for a couple hours and I just like, I wasn't sure. 

28:45 
Should I pivot or should I persevere? Why isn't it working? I thought I'd be Elon Musk by now, you know, but it's like two years in and like, I haven't made a dollar for my company. And so yeah, I think that, you know, lesson one is just more of a self-care one, which is just like, believe in yourself, you're gonna figure it out, you'll keep iterating. 

29:03 
And as part of that also telling yourself, it takes a long time to really understand your space. Now I'm a product person coming in to a sales and marketing world. I didn't know anything about sales and marketing. 

29:12 
So you have a leg up if you've like. been an SDR and a year ahead of sales before, but it can take like two years to really deeply understand your space. Like, I remember the first time somebody told me what an SDR did. 

29:23 
And I was like, that's a real person. Like, what's like weird, like, why would they do that? And then like, then, but even a year later, I still didn't really get what it meant to be an SDR. And so I started cold calling myself. 

29:35 
And then I'm like, okay, now I understand this stuff is, so it takes a while to understand your space. And understanding your space is very key to more quickly, you know, iterating through the cutting through the noise and bullshit to see if you can build something. 

29:47 
Though being an outsider is good too. Because being an outsider allows you to look at things differently. Like I came in to sales and marketing, and was like, why are we cold calling? You know, like, why don't we just use the warm leads? 

29:58 
Like, what, you know, what's up with that? And so that likes, you know, snowballs unit in a new way, if you can bring in that outside perspective. So those pros and cons there. What's my second hindsight is 2020 lesson. 

30:14 
I think it's just it's probably like, never stopped taking customer calls or prospect calls. I think that oftentimes when things get hard or no one wants to buy, you retreat into your shell and you're like, well, I'll just like work on the product for a couple of weeks, or I'll just go get a patent on my cool idea or all by by a latest domain name, because.ai is hot. 

30:36 
And it's like, you're just working on shit that's not really moving the needle. But you can move a lot faster if you're constantly on the phone with people, prospects, customers, like, I try to jump in on five customer calls a week, I try to jump in on five prospect calls a week, I listen to, you know, our outreach to hire recording, they listen to our fathom CS recordings, like, it just kind of hear the people talk and like you get new ideas every single time. 

31:02 
And you always surprise yourself at what you can learn. But you just got to keep that ear ear to the customer. I think that's one of the most important things, like said in the podcast, like too many founders or revenue leaders or whoever. 

31:14 
it is like they're like, Oh, I don't know whether they think they're too good for it or they think they don't have time, but back to the excusing, like, yeah, you prioritize that just like you would like training for a marathon. 

31:26 
You got to do the same thing. Yeah. Well said. And I think the thing that I've realized is, um, as scope and complexity scales, you believe that you, whether you're a revenue leader or marketing leader or whatever, you're trying to be a lot more strategic because you can't do everything, right? 

31:41 
You used to be able to write every social post used to be able to review everything. And then there's just some, there's people process tools, yeah. Ads to manage SEO to manage. Like there's so much going on that you're like, okay, I need to be more strategic. 

31:53 
And then you say, okay, well, if I'm being more strategic, I can't take these little meetings that are like not really going to move the needle because they're not strategic. And so you take a step back and you're like, well, I just need to do things that scale. 

32:04 
But like the classic founder lesson is do things that don't scale. And part of that should be like three, you know, prospect meetings a week. 25 cold call dials a day. These don't scale. They're not, but they're interestingly very strategic because it allows you to keep your ear to the ground to figure out what's going wrong within your org. 

32:26 
And so yeah, I think that's a lesson for really anybody that I even got to remind myself, which is like, yes, you can be very strategic in your role while also being very on the ground and getting tactics done too. 

32:35 
Yeah. I love that. I love that a hundred percent. All right. Let's, um, as we wrap it up here, let's move to some rapid fire. Um, ton of, ton of cool knowledge dropped. Um, totally probably going to post tomorrow about a supermarket or lettuce. 

32:51 
Um, that, that one's going to stick with me. Uh, all right, max early bird or night owl. Uh, it's supposed to be rapid fire, night owl. If you weren't in tech, uh, what like trade or, uh, other industry would you be in? 

33:06 
I love middle Eastern politics. I'd like to work for the UN and solve Israel Gaza. Someone has that might, that might be the best answer we've gotten. Um, so far that, that, that's a good one. Um, what's your favorite guilty pleasure snack? 

33:28 
Candied pineapple. Nice. Yup. And the follow up on this question, cause I bet when you're doing ultra marathons, you're training really hard and you're watching your diet really closely. But when you get done, what's the first cheat meal you, uh, you go hit. 

33:42 
Oh, good one. Chick-fil-a. Nice. Sandwich or nuggets? Always sandwich. Spicy or regular? Regular. You go spicy. I do. We got a spicy guy. Chick-fil-a does have the best milkshakes on the planet. Oh, they're so good. 

33:59 
His spice is like. Barbecue sauce. Okay. So that is not true at all. Let's go look at the hot ones. Take we did. Yeah, stop. Um, Max, what's the most used emoji in your, uh, in your work Slack? I don't think you're going to be surprised to hear that. 

34:17 
It's the cowboy emoji. You guys have the cowboy hat. I love it. Awesome. Last one. Let's wrap this up. Dream vacation destination. Oh, uh, Iceland, Iceland. Nice. Very cool. Very cool. Max, thank you so much for joining. 

34:31 
Uh, it was great to chat with you. Y'all go check out warmly. If you want to get those warm leads and actually convert them warmly.ai. Check it out. We use it. Our customers use it. Uh, it actually works, which is pretty damn cool. 

34:45 
Great to be here. Thanks, Adam. Thanks. Thanks so much for listening. We hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as we did. As we say at the end of every show, give more than you receive, reach out to someone today and offer your assistance. 

34:57 
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35:14 
Until next time.