Episode #93 Still Sending 10,000 Cold Emails? Stop. Listen to This First. ft. Kellen Casebeer

Most founders think outbound is simple: send 10,000 emails and - BOOM - meetings!

Reality check: it’s not working. And worse? It’s killing your domain, your pipeline, and your sanity.

In this brutally honest episode of Bridge the Gap, we sit down with Kellen Csebeer, founder of The Deal Lab, who’s on a mission to rebuild outbound from the ground up. No fluff. No spam. Just strategy and segmentation.

🔍 What we cover:
 • Why your outbound sucks (and how to know it)
 • Why demand isn’t desire—it’s desperation
 • How long it REALLY takes to make outbound work
 • The dangerous myth of instant ROI
 • Cold email vs. cold reality

💥 If you’re a founder, RevOps lead, or just someone tired of sending 5,000 emails into the void, this is your episode.

Follow Kellen - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellen-casebeer/

PS - huge shout out to Sendoso for sponsoring our show.

We could not do this without you.

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We are also proudly supported by Pursuit Sales Solutions - Where Hiring A+ Sales Employees is NOT a Pain in the Ass!
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ZoomInfo is also a proud sponsor - check them out here!

🎁 Lastly, we have a gift for you! We’re tired of seeing people getting critical GTM components wrong. Need help with your ICP, Buyer Persona, and Value Prop? Tired of the shitty “resources” people “give away” to gain followers?

We’ve developed a tool that creates your basic GTM Foundations (ICP, BP, abd Value Prop) for you. Snag it here.

Transcript

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. I'm Adam Jay. And I'm Dale Zwizinski. 

As always, thanks for hanging with us. There's a million ways you can be spending your time and we're grateful for you 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. Let's get to it. 

Welcome back to the Bridge the Gap podcast powered by Revenue Reimagined. We have Kellan Casebier with us today who is the founder of the Duelab, which is a GTM agency specializing in outbound sales and revenue strategy. No, we're not talking outbound at scale. We're not talking thousands and thousands of emails. Kellan helps businesses actually think differently and use data to optimize these outbound campaigns, which we know is something that every single fucking founder we talk to struggles with. Let's see if we can figure out on this show how to do it right. Kellan, thanks for joining us. Yeah, that's great. I'm excited for this one. Listen, everyone says it. If I do nothing else good on this damn show, I can do an intro that you could take anywhere. 

Yeah, yeah, amen. That's kind of the best that I've found. 

That's the reason Dale keeps me around. Yeah, yeah, I guess that's the only reason why we keep him around. Kellan, so it's very interesting. We talk with so many founders, so many companies that always talk about outbound. They want inbound, they don't get as much inbound. But what are the top three things that you hear about that people struggle with from an outbound perspective? 

Yeah, I think it's like, it comes to mind to me, it's like this mixture of factors. It's basically expectations of results and timeline alignment. You know what I mean? And my lens is they're sort of two different, so it's like someone, you said they have some inbound, they want to grow faster. To me, it's like, okay, the job to be done there is to figure out how to make outbound work. You got to figure out what is the segment, how do we segment the market, what can we say to these people, what is compelling about that? And solving for that is different than solving for how do I get my next 10 meetings? And if right now, you kind of have this black box of outbound you're like how much energy in multiplies into the outcomes I need, you have no idea. And so a lot of people... Well, people think they know. 

Right, right, or they are very hopeful. Send them 10,000 emails. Send them out. Send them they will come. Yeah, and what's crazy is like, 

I mean, it's not that crazy, it's like people think that and they definitely don't get it. And even if you do, it's almost worse because if you send 10,000 emails and you get your 10 meetings and you think like that's your now your mass, it's like you're operating off of like the world's worst, you know, foundation for like what's to come. 

Not to mention your conversion rates that you're deeming acceptable are actually pretty damn horrible and you're blowing your domains and your tam in the process by sending people a bunch of shitty messages. 

But that's the whole whole... The way it's like demand, like I think like demand is stupid is basically what I've been saying lately. And what I mean by that is like, demand is like if you're on a diet and you're starving to death, you'll eat a gas station chili dog happily. 

You know what I mean? And so it's not like the demand is not like the ascendant form of helping someone. Right. And in fact, so it's like demand is good because you need to know what people kind of want. Right. So again, like the founder wants to send a bunch of messages. 

They want to move really fast. You know, that's great. That's there. But if you just appease that the likelihood that like that demand leads to where you're trying to go, it's basically zero. You know what I mean? It's transactional. It's desperation. You know, another visual is like someone who's lit on fire is not maximizing every motion to become not on fire. They're flailing because they have the demand to be not on fire anymore. And it like overwrites our ability to like cognitively control ourselves and do intelligent things. 

I love that visual. And I think that's a very good way of looking at it. And I think that's very real. But I think what I certainly see in founders we're working with, everyone struggles with outbound, right? Like everyone we talk to wants more pipeline. And to get more pipeline, we have to do more outbound. We have to talk to more people. So let's spin up whether it's an agency or ourselves. Let's go to instantly. Let's spin up 200 domains. Let's go to clay. We're going to pull in the same six signals that everyone else does and send out, hey, Dale, saw that you recently, you know, we're on the revenue reimagined podcast and love how you spoke about outbound. 

Because you're a CEO, you must be struggling with this and I can help. It's not different anymore. Like it's the same shit over and over again. But I find that founders are uncomfortable with experimentation because they don't know if it will work. 

And you touched on it as well. How long, like what are the results and what's a reasonable timeframe for these results? Walk us through like, what are you seeing? What do you need to do from an experimentation standpoint? 

And what's the reality of how long until it works? Because generally speaking, I don't think you send an email and get a response the first time. I mean, maybe you're really good. 

But yeah, yeah, sometimes, sometimes. But yeah, I so one of the phrases I give people is like, I think pretty much everyone can make outbound work on a year, 12 months. Most people probably on nine months, a lot of them at six months, many at three, very few at one. Right. And so what I often like my discovery calls, I'm often telling people like you should focus on what you're willing to do for like six to 12 months, more than what is the most good in the next two months. 

And if I sound really good, but you're only going to give me like a little bit of time to like squeeze out. We shouldn't do this. It's a waste of everyone's time. And so to me, like longevity always helps. 

I like that seem to live. He wrote this book anti fragile. It talks about barbell theory. Right. And so barbell theory is like on one end, you place these low probability, high asymmetrical payoff bets. 

Right. And that's sort of like your way of winning. You know, the most asymmetrical outcomes will come from these like low probability things that hit. And then on the other side, you have to balance that with low risk things that essentially keep you alive. 

Right. So it might be like, you know, people who become extremely wealthy, maybe it's via the stock market, but in order to participate in the stock market, you need like a wage that you can be grounded to and that can like allow you to exist. And if you go too hard on the stock market, you might actually blow it all up. And so barbell theory is like having your allocations in one or the other, not the middle. So to me, it's like better to have the long solve for longevity first. 

Right. And then if, because if you have longevity, you can place lots of these little bets, you know, and so in terms of, yeah, yeah, I mean, so I think that's like how companies should look at it. The way that I tend to look at projects is like we should do something like a pilot would be like four months, maybe where it's like maybe a month of setting things up, three months of doing things. And what I tell people is like the end of that is not the best. It's probably the worst results we'll ever get when we finish that. But what it will show is like directionality. And so we're either going like, hey, we've hit a curve where this is really working and we can kind of like pump some fuel into this, or it's kind of working and we can continue this like R and D motion, or it starts to be like, hey, this isn't looking like there's much here. And we get to kind of have the conversation of like, you're probably not going to want to pay me to keep doing this for you. So let's figure out what you need to do next instead. So it could be like a smooth landing. Yeah, that's kind of how I look at that. 

What happens when you get to that? I'm not sure this is really working type of conversation. Like, do you try to help them into like a different path? Like, and what would that path be? I mean, if they're, if they're like, I got to do outbound, but that's not really working for them. Where do you put them? 

Great question. So the basis of our work oftentimes to like set the stage for that answer is like with early stage companies, right? It depends on the company. But like early stage companies, it's usually like we're looking for message market fit, right? Like what is the phrasing against what subpopulations of our market? 

Like will people be willing to meet with us? Right. And so the idea there is like, we'll take the markets, right? Adam, you kind of mentioned earlier, like everyone's talking to people the same way, right? So a lot of our premise is literally just like start with what does everyone say to this market? 

So that buyer, yeah. Yeah. So it's like, let's say you're like manufacturing, right? First, not alone. And then I reach out to discreet manufacturers and like, hey, I'm talking to discreet me. Apollo doesn't have that zoom info doesn't have that reps don't know that that that one little tiny phrase like elevate things, you know, and that's just like one layer of it. So maybe I'll take manufacturers, identify which ones like discreet manufacturers. So now I have this like tighter list. Then maybe I'll look at which ones are like multi location, single location or I can't tell the amount of locations. And then I'll have these like three different sequences basically are like ways that I'll communicate to them. It's like, yeah, I'm reaching out to discreet manufacturers that have to move products between multiple locations to finish, you know, and again, there's like acumen and intelligence built into like the targeting itself. It is personalized. It is relevant, but it's not like cheese ball stuff. It's based on like what, how does this actually connect to it? 

And so anyways, so we come up with these like hypotheses and then each month we like test and validate, you know, five of these like let's say on average, right? So if we come to the end of a pilot and and the conversation is like this sucks, you know, we're not going to get you what you want. What it means is like we segmented your market, you know, my really smart client really smart us had all of you know, 15 ideas over three months that we ran tested none of them worked right. My lens on that is like that is extremely valuable because I've talked to that person who's on month 18 of hiring and firing agencies and reps and this and this and this and they're spinning their wheels and we'll make traction forward even if it's just disqualifying things right. And so a lot of times then you're kind of coming to this discussion of like, what is true that we thought these things could work. 

They're totally not right. Is it like the market has no appetite for this that's useful to know. Is it like email, you know, because a lot of times we're testing the email it might be like wow we've really just qualified email as like a viable you know we did a supply chain operations thing before it's like that's not going to be their channel. You know, and so you mean you mean everyone doesn't respond to cold email. Yeah, I know it's crazy right. 

Allegedly allegedly. And so, you know, so when you get to the end of those things if they don't have like their results it's like, we had some ideas of what could work. We hopefully you can look at like what we did and feel very comfortable like yeah I don't need to try that again because that looks like a great representation of the test. And then there's like, you know, it's kind of like what are the next hypotheses, you know. And sometimes it's like hey you need to like call these people some there's some markets that are like not that elastic to outbound in general right like I think that's another thing people don't really realize is like the market exists without us and they have behaviors without us like vendors aren't owed these conversations you might like segment it perfectly say a very compelling argument that doesn't mean they're going to do anything you know I mean so sometimes you just on earth like this market is not going to trust you at face value with this idea. 

What do you do when you when you get to that place is it like go knock on doors like do we go back to like snail mail and like get in front of people. Like if the outbound email is not working. 

Yeah, a lot of times people open snail mail. We've done some snail mail we have we've done some 

that's in the right industry it actually does work. Yeah, we. 

To me the question that I asked my clients is like, it's sort of like we need to define what a win is from that environment right because again it's like, are we looking for the next one customer to be a design partner, are we looking for the next 10 customers to get like a seed raise it like you need to cut costs to like, maintain like viability and you're just feeling very emotionally defeated and like we need, you know, so like sometimes it's a product thing right like sometimes it's like hey look like the market's not excited about this like you're going to need to find some sort of X. Because like, it comes back to this like strategy versus messaging thing, you know where it's like, you know on one hand maybe it's like hey we can host executive dinners we can get people in a room you might be able to get customers. But again, if what the market is saying is like if you go cold outbound to them and you go hey I know this about you we do this and no one cares. It might actually be a false positive to use those dinners to go get those next 10 customers, because you might just be sort of like incrementally dragging out the fact that like there's no real market fit for this, you know I mean or there's like not that powerful. So it kind of depends on like, you know sometimes you have a tech founder is like I'm going to ride this thing out, you know, so the day I die and it's like awesome let's go figure out what that looks like. Other times people want you to be like, could you please just tell me this doesn't work so I can stop trying to do this or something like that. 

I think that's important too like saying what was not going to work. I think anyone listening to this should send Adam like snail mail and see what he opens for snail mail or email. 

I'm totally down for it. We all know it's going to be email because I have a CD and I have to open it the second I get it. Well you just delete it, bubbles. If it looks like spam you're right I do just delete it. I think, listen I am not the ICP for snail mail but I do think and we've talked about this, Kellan with other folks like Dale Dupree and there's ways to stand out like I do think snail mail works in the right space barring that you're not sending the same you know five by seven card that everyone else is sending. It's just like email how do you stand out from the noise. If you send me the same the pressure cleaning guy that I get one from someone else every week in my email box it's not going to work. 

Do something different it is. You've been doing this a hot minute. How did you get into this? How did you say like this is what I want to focus on because I looked at your LinkedIn like normally you know I'll say that the Clay experts if you will it's like oh I've been head of Alps. I've been outbound at nine different places or you know I was VP of growth and I just got tired of all the bullshit. Your background is not bad. What made you say like man I want to help people do outbound. 

Yeah yeah yeah so okay so there's a number of things. The first thing is like when I was five years old I asked my dad, dad what's the job where you make a lot of money. 

Right and he goes there's one job in the world where you choose how much money you make it's sales and so as a little kid always knew it was going to be sales. 

I dropped out of high school as a freshman started working full time and going to community college I put myself through San Francisco State I got like my first SDR job. 

I've been running my own like trade business I started my money to get into like tech sales super excited about it. Walked in day one they're like your director quit there's no manager on the team copy paste this message good luck. No one wants to be here right I walked in day one wanting to be there knowing more than be and like not really like knowing more you know but like it wasn't the like welcome to you know I was expecting like welcome to the big leagues like who's calling my name so I can walk out you know it's like I walked in in a suit and they're like why are you wearing this you dork you know. And so like I walked in it's like oh okay right and I kind of like chipped away in that job for a little while I sold myself into a full cycle a job not you know that paid me a bunch more super exciting not realizing that like outsource HR small business full cycle is not going to be the most fun role in the world. And so again I was like working really hard not necessarily like the best and I was only like okay like I don't know I worked hard I was fine. So then I got into a startup company during COVID where like I again like kneecapped my pay in order to go do something really exciting. And that's where I got to kind of learn about like startups and like kind of you know we were like pre product and so I got to kind of take this idea of like what is the idea of what we do and like outbound that to the market and like connect that way you know and that was like really fun and felt kind of like. 

Is this like creative unlock. And so it's funny though because like my background was like an account based sales guy like I was like I was a cold caller. I'm a you know I'm a communicator I'm like a one to one guy like I go you know do my research and stuff. I worked for Joey Gilkey for a little bit as a fractional head of sale or like fractional VP of sales at his old revenue agency and so I was building outbound sales teams is like an embedded consultant and we were like hiring tech stack and strategy process. And we're do this like six months 120 K offer where we were like building an outbound sales program basically. And what I saw doing that was like two thirds of the clients it would just go great if they could like if pipeline generation was like relatively straightforward and when pipeline generation isn't straightforward. 

It was a nightmare because the offer we were selling maybe one tenth of it was centric on like cold called cold email but that could block the entire success of things right. And so what I realized is like oh there's this and there's this like opportunity to basically test and validate will pipeline generation be you know like super difficult or not before people go spend 120 grand plus hire plus tech stack to like stand up these programs. Right. And so day one was like test and validate messaging. 

That's it. And then over time it's expanded into being like a little more infrastructural with teams a little bit more like data operations a little Rev Opsie. And like we're good at the kind of positioning stuff that it's like if we can justify the spend on some of the more like operational things and we get to like participate in the strategy stuff in a way that like the standard cold email agency gets fired if their results aren't there right away where we don't want to only live and die by like cold email results. We want to be helping design the system and we can just operate this like slice of it. You know what I mean. It's kind of like stumbled into it. 

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If you're looking for a proven way to win and retain more customers, visit Sundosa.com. I love the story about full cycle AE, not what most people think it is. And H.R. boutique H.R., that's a tough space, man. I've been there. Not only don't they want to answer phones, they don't want to answer emails, and they don't have budget. 

I was 22, 23, so I was 20 years younger than anyone else on my team. I sold myself into the team as a completely atypical hire, going, I will go hard on outbound. 

I will be the best pipeline generator on the team. I'm calling small business owners as a kid in the Bay Area, and we were a premium price, super low risk. Basically, we're a great fit if you're very low risk. That is the opposite. Our number one competitor, China, is based in the area. 

We were not the best market for the company's Texas-based awesome company. I just found there's a lot of headwind where I had this energy, but I was running through something that wasn't the best conduit for who I believed I could be if I was in the right environment. 

Go ahead, Del. I have more. It just starts back into circling back to what you originally said. You got to make sure that you're calling the right people. You have the right definition of your ideal customer profile, the buying personas, and then differentiating your value proposition, kind of like what you're saying. Most people are like, I am the best XYZ, and the best, like, it's the same marketing message that everyone's saying, and it just does not. You'll never differentiate yourself, and they're like, why is the message work? It's like, well, you say you sound like everybody else. So how humanly can we differentiate you? 

It's difficult. Yeah. I mean, I think too, like a lot of, like you said, like people say, like, I am the best X, right? And that's like a declarative statement, like a boss. It's kind of like, I'm this. 

Who cares, right? And like, I think what people don't realize is like, you need to, like the market exists, even if our company doesn't. They have a way, you know, there's like patterns of thinking, patterns of behaviors that exist, there's attitudes that already exist. And like great messaging is like, understand and communicating to the market where they exist, not trying to like drag them into our world. 

And I think that's where companies basically treat the market like it's a burden, you know, it's annoying that they're not just like abiding by our messaging to like come talk to us. And my lens is like, outbound is like the truth. Like if you have this idea that's so great, you go run outbound messaging and no one responds, that is more real than your belief. And if you hate that and you're mad about it and you're like, oh my, you know, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, that's you, that's on you. That's terrible leadership. 

You know, I mean, you should be so thankful that someone's like, oh my God, they don't care about this. We need to change things or you're dead in the water. And a lot of, yeah, you know, and that's where like a lot of weak solution providers start trying to hack things together. They're like, what thing can I do to misrepresent the truth here? Can I, you know, exploit this little micro situation that makes this person willing to talk to us that is completely irrelevant from like the competitive argument we're trying to make? You know what I mean? And like the actual revenue contribution to that is obviously going to be terrible versus when you can go like, hey, I see the situation about you. You probably deal with things like this. Would this be interesting if you go, hell yeah, let's learn more. 

There's so many different things I want to go to. How do we change it? And I know that's easier said than done, but how do we change this mindset of instant gratification, right? And I do think that's what it is. And you touched on the way you do it. 

And I love that. We also, you know, typically our engagements are four months and we start it with an audit because the problem you think you have isn't the problem that you have. And we need to understand like, what are we trying to solve for? And we need to, you know, treat the root of the problem, not the symptom. I need more meetings. 

Isn't like, it's not okay. Let's come in and book more meetings. You got to start somewhere. How do we change this mindset? And I do think it runs across very early founders who are looking for message market fit all the way up to. We're working with a hundred million dollar company that's struggling with the same problems. And it's the same mindset. How do you change it? Like it's not instant gratification. 

Yeah, I think like to me a big piece of it. It's like this weird thing where like people have this need or like this pain. They're trying to solve something. But like to me, it's like trust. Like there's a complete lack of trust where it's essentially like people know they have a problem, but they're so hesitant and worried about the solution market and like rightfully so because the solution market, you know, it's like, I don't endorse most agency businesses, right? Like, you know, I mean, it's like you wouldn't. And so it's like, I can't. So I think the problem is like people, you know, you're some VP, you've had, you've talked to 10 people who say they can do something. 

You don't believe any of them. I think they start to kind of like generalize the stuff to themselves or just like this can't be useful. You know, and I think it's what, you know, I mean, and even like the solution side of the market, like I feel a lot of people purposely injecting like anxiety and chaos, you know, they're like inflating how bad things are and they're like misrepresenting, you know, and all that. Gotta get those clicks. Gotta get those impressions. And so what happens is you have these people whose like mind is just scrambled. They're like, I have no idea. They're like one guy that seems kind of reputable says like, this is God's gift to go to market. 

The other guy's telling me like if I use this, like my entire business is going to fail. They're like, I don't really know. I just want this. And because like what I've found is when I'm embedded with someone and you know, it's like, give me, give me three calls with someone. And by the end of that, they're like, open book. 

Let's talk about anything. And what's hard is like the upfront of that employers are kind of trained to have this like, man, let's really vet this. And let's like, you know, let's see if we can poke holes. 

And that's like not how you would, you know, it's like if you're like going on a first date with someone, you're not sitting there like, where's the gotcha in the situation? You know, you're kind of like kindling this thing and you foster it. And over time it grows into this thing and kind of maybe like despite some of the weaknesses, there's like these good things that can happen. 

And it's like, if you're just looking at the world, like, is there anything imperfect about this? Could anything go wrong? Is there risk in the situation? The answer is 100% yes. 

Every single time. And I think like the orientation towards bad things versus like winning is like really gets in people's way. You know, so it's like, and that's why again, it's like, I understand if you're, if you're in a situation where you can't spend six months worth of this to do this, that's why what's most important is like have a plan you're excited about that you can continue shooting for some period of time to actually deal with the benefit out of it versus like 45 days of net new things got, you know, every 30 days, whatever. Yeah. 

And I think that's a great point. I think the challenge is we as a community have done it to ourselves, right? Because there are bad actors. There's a lot of bad actors in the consulting agency world that are only looking for the monetary aspect of it and not for like the true result oriented aspect of it. And I think then the buyer by definition starts getting like defensive. And so, like that trust part of it, the trust proxy that you're talking about in the beginning of that conversation is super important. 

And like that was to me, you only get that through iteration over time. That's why your best customers are probably people that are brought to you, you're recommended. Like if you're doing, if you're, if you're trying to find people cold out from even for your own services, it's not going to be as good as the people that are like, Kellan is like the shit and he's going to get stuff done for you. And like, but he also may be totally honest with you in three months to be like, this isn't going to work and we need to like go figure out something else. And I think that honesty, like everyone wants to use the button, but the honesty is super important. Like at least you're going to try to make the modification change. We end up being patterns of things that we're trying to accomplish versus like, let's try it and see if it's going to work. And then if it doesn't work, like at least now when you check off the box, it doesn't work. 

Yeah, yeah, because I even think on the solution side, like a lot of people even like solution providers often like or in like if you're like a lead gen agency, you're like, we'll get you 10 to 20 meetings, right? Well, it's like, like you run your thing and you get three meetings, right? 

Like one lens on that is like, we didn't hit the goal, right? But the truth is that founder probably needs help more than the person who you walk in and you hit 20. And the problem is the solution market doesn't want to work with the person who only gets three because they think they're not worth it. With, you know, maybe they're not the founders in those situations who know they kind of have like a little bit of a dicey situation are the ones who are like, we're looking for guarantees and we're like, what are you talking about? Like there's, there's exactly no guarantee. 

We get that almost every engagement calendar. The first question is so we're going to spend X on you. What's the exact ROI we're going to get and how much more revenue are we going to close if we work with you? Yeah, I don't fucking know. 

Yeah, we had a we had a we had a CTO CEO, Ciro talked to us and we said, you know, first thing we do, we do a go to market audit so we can figure out like really where the challenges are and the exact responses. Well, what if you're audit shit? And I'm like, okay, well, That's what I mean. 

It's like to me, I mean, like quite literally that's like, it's like, hey, man, if that's how you look at this stuff, we definitely shouldn't work together 

because like we're not the right fit for you. Yeah, just no one's the right fit for that person. Like you will never ever, ever, ever, because like 

it to, you know, I one of the, the phrasing I use with people is like, you know, you get through the proposal stuff and people, you know, should I do this? 

Right. And, and it's like, my lens is if you're excited to spend the money to learn whatever we're going to learn, this will be a home run. You're going to get the end of this. 

This will be so awesome. If I sound really good talking about this stuff and you're hearing like, I really think this is going to work and you'd be totally pissed if we get no results at the end of this. Don't do it because that's 100% of possible outcome. And I don't, I'm more concerned about having like detractors on the back end of it than like acquiring the next customer. I mean, to you guys point like there's not there, you know, there is extreme demand for this type of stuff. So there's like no shortage of like people who, you know, want some type of help. 

So I think people just also have issues with like scope definition, right? Like you're like, you're helping the GTM work. And to them that just inherently means like revenue ROI, right? But when again, like there's, you know, like that revenue is the outcome of lots of little bits of things working really well, you know, and if you're not willing to kind of go like, well, let's make this work well, and then let's get this working well and we'll kind of wear these together. If it's just all or nothing, light switch stuff and you're a budget buyer, it's like you're not going to get that. That just doesn't. 

That's so true. I mean, the way people should be thinking about these things is that there's an evolution and not you're going to like, you're not going to fix it in one piece. Like, and the challenge is a lot of people, they're so broken. That's why we built out like four phases. Like we think about how do we stabilize like the chaos that's happening within the current state? Like there's a reason why things aren't working. Like, and a lot of times it's not super obvious. It's not like this is the problem. It's like, okay, once we go through all the conversations and figure that out, now we can actually figure out what the problems are. And now we can solve this root problem versus some branch of some problem you think it is. Yeah. 

So anyway, what's the future of outbound in like two minutes or less? Like is email going away? Is it going to have to be, you know, cold call? Like where is outbound going? 

Yeah, I think it's not going away. Like I could see it maybe getting more expensive, basically, but like, like more expensive to cut through. But I can, you know, Google raising their prices and stuff. The utility of like a random email address sending you something who you've never talked to is extremely high. 

Like that's probably, I don't think that will ever go away. You know, you sign up for a newsletter, they're sending you a cold email, right? You get an introduction to someone that's a cold email. You go on someone's website, says email us for help, cold email, right? Like all, so cold email is going to exist. I think, you know, maybe like, maybe like humans behaviorally go to like other inboxes or something. But I think like the idea, like the mechanism of like individual targeting with text arguments is like forever. So my lens is like, you know, if your value is only deliverability, that sucks because that's like low value. But if you have like kind of targeting and messaging strategy, like you'll transcend whatever comes in the future. 

All right, let's do some rapid fire. Let's have a little bit of fun. What's the hardest leadership lesson that you've learned since going out on your own? God, all of them. 

Okay, so for me, I would say like, you can't do it all. You know, I'm like, I want to be a hero. I'm the guy that's like, yep, I'll get that to you by the end of today. 

I'll get that to you tomorrow. And it's down the, down the line, we're just having this conversation. Yeah, yeah. So I think it's just like, I, you know, I care a lot. And so, but like, it doesn't serve, it sucks when you let people down and you're trying to help, you know what I mean? And so I think that's the hardest thing where you have like these really great intentions. You have people that are very rightfully frustrated at you and you're like, that is my fault. You know, that, that to me is the things that I just like, you know, I feel like building fallen on me. 

What's a piece of advice that you gave in the past that now you completely disagree with? No, that's all you want. Um, one of them is like, 

I would just say using multi-channel to test messaging. And what I mean by that is like, I think it's like we complicate what it looks like to test things. And there's like, like phone conversations, what converts via verbal conversation is different than like, you know, it's a lot of like emotional transmission where like text is like almost purely logical based. And so I think like logic based conversion is like a higher signal than the other side and it's more repeatable. So I would say that. Yeah. 

First one that comes to mind. What's the mistake that you made that you still regret? That's tough. 

I mean, I still regret it. I think the things that come to mind, honestly, all the things I can't name them exactly, but it's like every deal I took on that like, I did there were reasons not to. 

I felt like I wanted that's the most like every single like micro answer that I could give is basically like someone where I had a hunch that there was something a little off where I said yes anyways and where it bit me in a way that was like that was just stupid. 

Let's wrap this thing up. Let's wrap this thing up. If you're a revenue leader listening to this right now or maybe a founder CEO, you know, what's one thing that they should hear right now that they can resolve on in their go to market strategy? 

I would say separating the idea of testing and experimenting things from where you harvest your results that you owe. And if you give yourself space to do those two things independently, like it's easier to get results if you're just being super transactional, potential, you know, like kind of like whatever you currently have to do that experiment is for your future what you'll have. I think I love it. 

Callum, thank you so much for joining the show where where can people find you obviously LinkedIn but where they find more about your company and how do they engage with you man. 

Yeah, so LinkedIn's the best definitely like especially if anyone has questions, curiosities hit me up there the deal lab.com is like the website it's it's very basic it's like decent it has what we do. Mostly we're working with people early stage who want to like test validate outbound messaging. Sometimes we're doing like the spoke data sets and stuff like that cool tan build out. And then the third way is just like kind of you know, we're like a clay expert agency and like a spotlight agency so people want to do any of the sort of like embedded clay missions we support that as well. 

Like a cleavage and see. Yeah, my favorite. Callum thanks so much for joining the show man. I appreciate it. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks so much for listening. We hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as we did. 

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