Episode #96 You Built It, They Didn’t Come — Now What? With Nate Broome

In this episode, we sit down with Nate Broome, former Outreach revenue architect and CaptivateIQ sales leader, to unpack the brutal truth behind scaling GTM from SMB to Enterprise.

We go deep into:
 • The hidden pitfalls of platform selling
 • Why your “why” sucks (and what to do about it)
 • The cold email apocalypse and how to survive it
 • Why brand awareness isn’t optional anymore
 • Real leadership confessions that hurt (and teach)

If you’re a founder, CRO, VP of Sales, or just someone stuck in the dashboard mines pretending to forecast — this one’s for you.

Follow Nate - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-broome/

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

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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 another episode of the Bridge the Gap podcast powered by Revenue Reimagined. We have Nate Broom with us today who was a key architect of Outreach of Success, building their commercial team which represented the largest percentage of revenue throughout his six years there. He moved on, most recently led sales at this little company called Captivate IQ that you might have heard about, which is one of the leaders in the compensation management space, helping them transition and navigate the move that so many think is so easy but actually isn't. And I'm sure we'll talk about this from SMB to Enterprise. Nate, thanks for joining the show, man. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. 

So you've gone through a lot of different iterations and changes, especially from SMB, velocity type sales. Take us back to a moment where you felt like your go-to-market strategy was out of control and then what were you thinking about? How do I resolve that out of control feeling that you had? 

Yeah, I mean, like I think most sales leaders, a few of those was popped in mind. I think the biggest one that really stands out to me was probably like later stage outreach, right? 

As Adam mentioned, had an incredible six-year run there. And to a point, we were selling a point solution. Like everybody knows we're selling sequence thing, right? And then eventually we evolved into selling a platform that included a gone compete product, included forecasting, some data analytics. And all of a sudden I had SMB in mid-market, maybe junior-ish type sellers trying to sell a platform after selling a point solution for so long, right? And so right away, like you have to reach through the enablement, the content, the decks, the business acumen, you're solving bigger problems, there's more stakeholders, what have you. And you know, ultimately, you know, how we got through that moment and how we assured in kind of this platform selling and outreach was really aligning people on the overall strategy, what we were trying to do, just trying to solve more problems, right? 

And the framework that I've used for that, I'll drop it here, but happy to answer questions. You know, first and foremost, we aligned everybody on like, hey, here's the strategy, here's what we're doing as a company, here's the direction. We had to get everybody clear on what their part of the strategy was, right? And then most importantly, we had to teach people how to execute the strategy, right? I've seen this too many times where people make the move to platform or more of a sophisticated selling or solution selling, and then they do all the planning, the strategy to ICP work, Adam, you're familiar with this, right? 

But they do all the stuff, and then we forget to teach people how to actually do the job on the phone, right? It's wild. It just happens over and over and over. So that was the big thing for us and how we got through the moment. 

And I think one of the things that you were saying is like, the why. The why is like super important. I was already talking, dude. 

Yeah, go ahead. We'll go into why, right? Stintic, right? Start with a why, right? Like that's it, right? So, yeah, you'll look. I was talking to somebody yesterday, one of my advising clients, and one of the things that we were talking about related to the why was that sellers can be really predictable sometimes, right? They're going to sell what's easiest, what's fastest, what makes the most money, right? And sometimes, while you're transitioning to any sort of transformation within your organization, it takes a minute for the sellers to catch up to that, right? 

Maybe it takes a minute for the comp plan to catch up for that or the strategy or whatever, right? And so it's really important that, hey, you talk everybody through. Here's what we're doing. Here's why we're doing it. Here's what matters to the organization and our customers. And then, oh, by the way, here's why it's going to matter to you, right? 

So I agree that the why, 90% of the time, sadly, is not explained, right? Whether it's a CEO, a revenue leader, a frontline manager, oftentimes it's literally like, okay, go do this. This is what we have to do. 

Why? Well, because the CEO said that this is the goal. Dale tells me all the time that he wants me to do something, I say why and his answer is because I said so. And I tend to oblige. But generally speaking, I found that you get so much more when you do explain the why. Having worked, you know, made it all different size companies, how do you balance sharing the why with not over sharing? Because that's tough, right? We want to give the why, but sometimes the why isn't pretty. 

Yeah, and I'll tell you why. How do you balance that as a revenue leader? Man, that's tough, right? Because especially in the last, like, handful of years, the why has been to stave off competition, to move from VC, burning money, to profitability and efficiency, to potentially risk the organization. So the ugliness of it and the heartache of it is real. You know, I think for me, you have a post about this today, Adam, and I'll shout that out. It was about empathy, right? Is it like, you know, I think for me, it's that you can only do so much, right? And I think if you're very consistent, if you're building up those equity points with your teams, with your leaders, you're doing those heart check-ins, what have you, that sometimes you can explain everything perfectly and you're still not going to nail it, but there's an inherent trust in the decision making, the track record, what have you that can help kind of guide the moment. It might not make it any easier. 

It still might be messy and clunky and what have you. But that's what I've found to at least get me through the moment now, whether I'm sure I've had a hundred examples where I've failed miserably and messed it up and mucked it up and I've had good examples as well, but it's really empathy and meeting people where they're at to get through that moment. And I think the last thing I'll say is that, you know, most of my leadership career I've been managing and leading mid-20 year old sellers, right? So there is a reality that never seen some of these cycles happen within organizations before and so you just got to like continue to like guide them and mentor them through the moment. 

Yeah, I think that's a big challenge with a lot of even leaders. Like you can be a good leader and still not know how to coach, still not how to pull through with empathy, the transparency that's needed to actually be successful. As you look back in, let's take outreach since we are kind of going through that process. There must have been a fairly big gap from when you were going from a point solution to your enterprise motion and your platform motion. What was the biggest gaps that you guys saw? Was it that it was the wrong team selling the, you know, or you guys didn't, you know, do the proper transition to training them and almost like re-onboarding them from the initial process into like a platform motion? 

Yeah, I would say that we eventually figured it out, but it was clunky and they're getting ready. I might get some fire techs after this, but I'll say it anyhow. And the confines of our small circle here and whoever's listening, right? Our biggest challenge with hubris, right? You know, when we were selling a point solution, we had one primary competitor in sales lofts who did a masterful job, really strong go to market with a pleasure to compete with them because they had to bar high, right? But we did really well, right? Yeah, we were doing really well in our niche, in our space. We were well thought of with our sequencing and kind of that orchestration tool that we had that was our point solution, our first real product, right? 

And then when we ventured into Clary's world, into Gong's world, into everyone's world, right? We just assumed that we were going to have the same type of success and momentum, right? And really what we were selling, a whole new product, a whole new persona that we talked about and that initial hiccups that we had with hubris, like, well, we're going to turn this thing on, it's going to fly out the door, what happened to you? And we had, don't get me wrong, we had built that, built it and they will come. 

Yeah, built it and they will come. And we definitely, we had success, but there was definitely, whatever we thought our transition period was to enable the teams to educate the market, to create brand awareness and all that type of stuff, it ended up being two or three times longer, right? In part because we didn't start from a place of feeling like we are on our heels or that kind of thing, right? And so eventually we learned the lesson really fast, but we did have to learn the lesson. Yeah. 

I want to double click on that. You said a phrase, two words, that Dale and I talk about a lot, that I don't think people put enough stock into or realize this is as important as it is. Dale, do you know the phrase I'm going to say? I'm going to put Dale on the spot. 

No idea. You say a ton of phrases, so who the heck knows what you're going to say? 

Fuck off. Brand awareness, Nate. You know, there is, I find, whether you are at one point the behemoth that is or was outreach, whether you are, you know, Dale and Adam's startup. I don't think people put enough emphasis on like, you don't have a brand and you can't just build it. 

Build it. I don't really care how good your product is. Let's assume you have a product that's going to solve whatever the problem is. You're not going to call Dale, tell them you have this product and Dale's never heard of it, never seen it, has no idea what it is. And he's going to turn around and be like, shit, man, I've been waiting for this call my whole life. 

I can't wait to talk to you. Yet so many founders, CEOs, revenue leaders think that, oh, just do some outbound. And like, if you do some outbound and get outreach and put people in a sequence that, you know, you're going to build, go to market. How do you properly build and compound on brand awareness? Oh, that's a loaded question. 

A loaded question. I feel like I need a marketing counterpart here to help with whisper sweet nothings about brand awareness in my ear. As a, yeah, I think there's a couple things to it, right? I think is one is you've got to have a high bar for the product. You've got to have a high bar to take care of your early adopters within your customer base, right? Those people that are on the outer edges of your product and their advocacy or their feedback back to you, right? 

And so you're taking care of the kind of a core, right? You've got to get case studies. Like you've got to get proof points soon and early, right? That might, I think, maybe tactically speaking, give a tactic here is that you might have to give the product away, right? You might have to go do for a long proof of concept. You might just have to beg, borrow, plead to get bad into the corporate headquarters to like, you know, usher it along, right? Get access to the rest, whatever the thing is, right? 

You mean people do this thing called in-person sales and actually go places? 

You're hopping on a flight tonight to do the same thing, right? 

Because we fundamentally believe that sales have to be done in-person. 

I think that, you know, look, I think, yes, there's a place for the in-person and a place for the sure. But I think that you've got to create that, you've got to do that initial work, right? 

And then you've got to have a really good go-to-market strategy and execution orchestration amongst, you know, your SELs, marketing department, private marketing, you know, sales and how sales is communicating to, you know, get the word out there, right? Like, hey, these are the types of successes that we're having. We may be the new kid on the block, but, you know, we're formidable. We can provide value. We're an alternative to whatever is going on. 

And I think, you know, more than anything, like, when we entered, like, the call intelligence space at Outreach, right? Look, nobody has better planned equity, brand awareness than Gong, right? Gong is, like, universally beloved, right? And rightfully so, right? And so when we're inching in on their territory, they've got a high bar that we've got to cross a threshold on to provide value. So, yeah, I think that's part of it. And then as a sales leader, when you're marketing the, I just left it, I think I'll give here, as a sales leader, when your marketing leader comes and talks about brand, you've got to give them the space. 

Because when they're talking about demand gen, it immediately equals leap, right? Or has some sort of ROI on leads and opportunities and meetings. But if I have a brand, that doesn't necessarily translate to pipeline right away, right? And so sometimes it's hard for a sales leader to put their, you know, put their mind wrapped around that, right? But it's really important, the farther down funnel you get, the bigger you get, new product, platform, all that stuff. 

I just tell sales leaders, if you don't understand awareness or brand, then just try to do cold calling with zero marketing, zero outbound. Zero awareness of who you are. 

Zero didn't happen. I got a funny, I'll go. But so many people do it and think it's going to work. 

I got a funny story about that. So we, so when I first joined Outreach and Hoppin, that rocket ship, that came in as a sales development leader. I was the first external, you know, FDR leader into Outreach, right? So I was leading a team. 

And what happened? Did you have blue hair? I did not. I was not. 

I did not have blue hair. But Sam Nelson was part of the, one of my early teams and all, you know, Sam Nelson's kind of got the Kobe Bryant thing going, right? Where it's like, you know, all these stories about Kobe Bryant being just a maniacal worker and doing all the little things and being a grinder. All those stories about Sam are true. 

So this community that he built and his expertise are like, it's well earned and, and forged in the fire, if you will. But yeah, when we first started going, you know, with Sam was part of the team, you know, we were calling CRO and, you know, one, we probably called you out. Like one was that like, hey, look, what is sales engagement and who is Outreach? Right. And like that was like the early days of cold calling. I tell you what, it's really hard to book a meeting and get some of these attention if those are the first two questions out of their mouth. 

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Well, in your, in your building kind of a market, like you're building a brand in a market, which is also difficult. I used to, I ran the sales, I ran sales for a company called Kite Desk and you've probably had Julien Sweat that was in your group. She used to work for me. Oh 

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In the whole team. Yeah, those are, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's funny. That's a small world. 

It's, um, you're right when you, when those are the first two questions, I'd imagine it's very, very hard to book a meeting. And now, you know, you have companies like Outreach, Salesloft, Gong that have this brand recognition. And I think reps and like, we'll call it the next generation of revenue leaders who are going to go work at some startup because some founder thinks because they worked at Gong that they're great to go lead their startup. 

They're not separate conversation we could have. Have all this brand recognition and it's very easy to call a CRO on the phone when you're calling from Outreach or Salesloft or Gong. And while you may or may not book the meeting, you'll at least get the time of day. They know who you are. And then you go work for, you know, Nate's startup and you want to book the meeting for your new conversational intelligence tool. And they're like, who the F are you? 

You don't exist. Yep. And these reps struggle with that, right? It's, I often say to revenue leaders and founders, it's very easy to go from no name startup to big company. Like your adjustment is you're going to have a lot more policies and procedures and you can't just wing shit. 

But yeah, brand recognition part. Your job is going to get easier going from an Amazon or Gong or Outreach or Salesloft to Bob startup. I've yet to see very many people who could successfully go backwards like that. 

So you've got to, it's a mental shift for a store, right? It's not saying that it can't be done, but like, there's a lot more examples of not being done well and people, you know, flaming out by making that move. And I think, and by the way, I think in our market right now, like in just the marketplace, I think that we are actually going through that type of moment where you had this generation of, call it, I don't want to call it Zerp era, but call it like pre AI technology, right? Where there's all these companies that are in this like hundred to three hundred four hundred million dollar range that didn't go IPO. They don't have AI, have a strong customer base. And then now there's the young upstarts of AI companies that are starting to flourish, right? And so now, now, so I think I think you have this, this marketplace of leaders and sellers who are now looking at the new hyper growth companies, which are going to be AI type companies. I think, you know, no, because we clay or great examples of those gleams, a great example of that, right? 

You know, 11X, like all that stuff, right? And they're all going to have to contend with that, right? And so I think that there is a mental shift that you have to work through of like, am I comfortable, you know, in ambiguity? And I willing to actually do the work, right? Like that's required. Do I have it in me, right? To do that, right? Like, I think that's a very real, a very real conversation that a lot of people are having, right? You know, so right now. 

Yeah, startups, startups are just different. You, Jason Lemkin actually posted about it the other day, right? You, you got to be willing to just do whatever it is you got to do, whatever job it is and not get bogged down in the job description and you don't have a month to make a difference. Like, you just got to come in and figure shit out. Yeah, I want to shift gears slightly because I do want to talk about cold email, just knowing where you came from. Okay. Cold email is fucked. Like to put it nicely. You know, and I, to some extent blame outreach and sales off for this. 

I'll take it. I'll take the hit. I'll take it. And it's fine. But like, we went through this area, Dale's going to have a stroke because I just saw my camera flash and it's going to move. So I'm going to do it just to annoy him for a minute. And then I'll put it back. 

Sequencing, I think had a valuable place. I still think it has a valuable place. But I think these tools have created this mindset of go wherever you're going to go, buy a list of X number of people, maybe enrich it, maybe don't. 

If you're not, I mean, shame on you. Drop people in a 36 email, 97 day sequence. And maybe email 30, Dale's nodding because we all get the maybe that maybe that 35th email is what's going to make me convert because one through 34 didn't. Like, what the hell happened to doing email the right way? And how do we fix it? Man, how's that for a loaded question that 

we can all my, you know, I'm going to get a call for Manny after this. You're talking about outreach and all the, all the things I love outreach. 

And I love many. Yeah. I think, um, and I do as well. 

I think, uh, look, what happened and how do we get through it? Um, you know, I think like anything else, right? Uh, we, we, we had too much cake and now we're overweight and we have cavities, right? Um, we, we took a, we took a good thing and we abused the hell out of it. Um, and as, as the tools proliferated, right? Um, so did the, the email. 

So did, uh, you know, a generation of sellers who, um, didn't have to grow up without it. Right. Um, so I think that's part of it. Right. Um, look, I think like anything else, it's a, it's a channel that just isn't going to have the return, uh, that, um, that, that it once did. 

Right. And so, um, so how do you, and so the landscape has changed, right? So if that's not working, so a couple of things is like, Hey, how do you take a sixth sense or how do you take a common room and an intent type data and, um, start reacting to signals, right? Um, start to be smarter, right? 

Um, how do you, I think the newest one is like chat, GBT's writing everybody's emails to look personalized, but it's still missing quite a bit. Right. So how do you still add the human element and stay relevant? And so I think there's going to be, I think the technologies will always shift. I think we saw that with, with cowed out back in the day to outreach to, you know, the next generation of things, but the humans have got to stick with it. 

Right. And so you've got to be relevant. You've got to be timely. You got to be omnichannel. You've got to be true ABM and working with your marketing, you know, teams and, and all that, right? Um, and so I think that's the way through. 

I don't think we're going to get these crazy conversion, even with that, but I don't think we're going to get these crazy conversions, right? And then I'm going to die on this hill, pick up the damn phone. 

Well, I don't think everybody's cell phones now, right? 

That sort of sequencing does help though, because it's just not emails, it's phone calls. It could be, you know, pigeon mail. It could be like, there's a lot of things that you can do in the sequence that's just emailing. So people associate sequencing the email. But I would disconnect. 

Yeah. But here's the thing I would say that as I, like, coach failed leaders too, and I didn't talk to somebody about this yesterday where they're talking about two reps, both reps were hitting their KPIs. Let's just call it, you know, 50 dials a day. These are A, E, outbound things, right? One rep was having massive success, right? Multiple meetings, uh, progressing deals, like all the things you would want to hear about a rep, right? The rep beat, same activity, same KPIs, but wasn't having nearly the amount of success, right? And I think that one of the, one of the things around all this, these, these, these tools, the tracking is that you have KPIs for days. You have metrics for days, you have dashboards for days, right? And so we have a generation of sellers that unfortunately are used to being managed to a dashboard and to a KPI, right? 

Maybe not even more so than even the revenue target and the quota target was just wild, right? But the real secret sauce is the quality of work within the KPIs, right? And so I go back and looking at those sales managers and those frontline leaders of like, how are you coaching the reps within their KPIs? 

If they're doing outbound cold emails, how are you making sure that it's not generic, that it's personalized, it's timely? They're making calls. You know, are you call coaching and making sure that, you know, they're looking for connects that they're doing quality, objection handling, great intro lines, all that type of stuff, right? And so what's all this, you know, I think, I don't know what the saying is, but that the, the rigor around coaching and managing, like, it's never been more true than today. It's just, I think we've had a lot of, I think you have a lot of generation of staff leaders who haven't had to come up that way and they're learning, they're learning the hard lessons and a tough back to a wide range. 

VP of the spreadsheets, VP of the dashboards. 

Yeah. Yeah. And look, let's be, I'll be honest, like, you know, it's like, Hey, look, when, when it was when it was Zerp era, that was the, that was the required skill. Sure. It was the required skill was, could you manage from a spreadsheet? 

Could you manage from a dashboard? Because it was about the engine and keeping, you know, keeping the wheels on the plane, even everything flying. And then as pipeline, pipeline decreases, it gets harder, macro stuff starts hitting. Oh, wait, can you actually deal coach? Can you actually coach reps? Can you actually, you know, do transformation? And yeah, it's, it's, it's a part of the moment, right? 

Yeah. The deal coaching, there's so few leaders that I know that can do it really well. Um, you know, anyone could, and I think what most people think deal coaching is, is not deal coaching, right? 

Anyone could look at a Salesforce or HubSpot report and be like, yeah, okay, mate, your next step is out of date. And, you know, you have your next yes, your closed date looks good. That's not deal coaching. That's, that's not pipeline inspection. 

That's looking at a report and we could all do that and we don't need a meeting for that. Um, so I, I think that to survive and thrive in today's go to market, what you've done in the past isn't going to work. Like you, you have to be in there. Like we talk all the time how we don't, you know, we're not consultants. We don't hand you a pretty slide that can tell you what to do. 

Like we're going to get all up in your shit. And I think that a lot of managers don't know how to do that in a way that doesn't come off as micromanage, but comes off as a way of like, I want to help you, I want to coach you, I want to guide you and make you better. 

Yeah, I find it interesting take on that though, because I think I was talking to, um, uh, one of my old leaders who not had a stale of it and a pretty hot startup now and we were talking about management, right? 

And she's got some young leaders on her team. And I think for a period of time there, we were really fearful of this idea of micromanagement, right? And what is micromanagement? I think at its core is like micromanagement is like, uh, leading from fear, right? 

Or maybe managing from fear, actually the better way to say it, right? And you're, you're not pleasant to work with your, you're not celebrating success, like you're all day with every business. You're not really providing value, right? And it like facilitates this hands off approach, right? 

If like, I don't want to be known as a micromanager, right? And I think that came true. I think, I think for a lot of leaders that, you know, a lot of young leaders that came true during kind of this like Hay Day, you know, Zurb-era Hay Day, where people were getting poached left and right. There was always like, yeah, people were paying astronomical amounts of, you know, base and OTEs for first time sellers, right? 

Like, I mean, I lost like a small army of STRs to AE gigs. We can promote them fast enough into roles where they were, you know, making tons of money in a first time closing role, right? And so there was a fear of like, if I micromanage too hard, right? If I'm not, you know, whatever, um, I'm going to lose people because they're going to have a, there's another thing out there for them to go. And unfortunately though, it takes you away from coaching. And the hard truth and the feedback that you actually, you actually need and to move your career, your development, your deal sports. 

Coaching is important. And I think it's, it's as much on the rep as it is the leader, right? Like I use the term culture of coaching a lot. Yeah. And if you don't want culture, if you don't want a culture of coaching, if you don't want to be coached, I'm the wrong leader to work for. Um, like if you're looking for someone who's just going to like, Oh yeah, cool. Sure. 

Whatever. Like I'm not going to be a hard ass. So like I am going to coach you and it comes from a bit like I want you to be the best. I, let's say it's been a long, a long time. It's been a hot minute since I've been in a full time leadership role. Um, but I always said that the, the, the metric that I look at other than numbers up into the right is how many people can I get promoted into a leadership role? 

Yeah. How many people can I get promoted where they want to go? If you're sales and you want to go to marketing, while it might suck for me, my job is to get you there because that's what you want to do. And that's what makes me a good leader or a bad leader. Um, so I love the emphasis on that. Yeah. 

We are come. Oh, go ahead. We had time. No, no, no, we're going to go to rapid fire, but I want you to finish your thought. We don't have really quick, really quickly. Right. 

Like I think you don't have to be really quick. We don't have strong time limits. Oh, there we go. 

There are sales never on time for a meeting. So even if you have one right now, he's going to be laid out anyway. So I love it. The Ziggertorps deal. 

I love it. So well, read Hoppe wrote a book way back when with some PhD type and, um, the concept of the talk about that book was about the Alliance, right? About the company and the employee would have you and back in our dad's days, right? Like my dad worked. He got a job at 18 and he didn't leave until he was 60. Right. 

Like that was my dad's life. But right. And what have you? And I think now that's not true for any of us, right? That's not in this era. 

And so how do we make the tour of duty of a two year, three or four year stint with our reps, with our leaders, right? Super valuable. Right. And I think that's as your point, it's like that it might be painful, but it's only painful on that first go. Because if you could establish the culture of like, Hey, let's I'm going to develop you, which means that I need you to lean in. I'm going to lean in with you. We're going to have some hard truths and hard conversations. 

But guess what? I'm going to get you where for you want to go. You want to find that first house? You want the promotion? Awesome. 

You want to go and be a leader of another company? Great. Let's go help you do that, right? 

Whatever your thing is, right? But then the people coming behind them, they can be like, Oh, if I lean into Adam, by leaning into Nate and what they're giving me, I'm going to get to where I want to go and there's a track record there. And so, and that's got to be the social contract, if you will, that we operate in today's, in today's era, at least, at least that's what I believe. 

It's a great way to look at it. All right. Let's get into some quick rapid fire to wrap this up. It's never as rapid as I'd like it to be. I'll be quick. But that's okay. What's the hardest leadership lesson that you've learned? 

Oh, um, not meeting people where they're at and treating people like a number, right? Is that when you get stressed and numbers are tight and you got to make the number, you got to make the quarter, um, not putting people first, putting the number first, right? And you might muscle your way through the moment and get that deal in, make that number or whatever, but, uh, you absolutely ruin credibility. You, uh, ruin the long term value of that relationship or what you're getting out of that team. That's a good one. 

What's the piece of advice that you once, uh, agreed with, but now you completely disagree with? Grow it all costs. 

It's a good one. Yeah. I think that's, uh, uh, it was good. It was, it was right for the moment, but, uh, we've all paid the lessons back. Uh, so yeah, I grow it all costs. This, uh, uh, I definitely don't believe that anymore. All about efficiency. 

My house things have changed. My, um, what's the leadership mistake you made that looking back, you still are like, man, I regret that. 

You know, so that was prepping for this. I was like, I'm going to get that question. 

And I was thinking back to my interview. So, so my very first, I'm going to apologize to Curtis or Scott to Paul, Megan and a bunch of others, right? But my very first management gig, right? Uh, was that a small Seattle startup, uh, and, um, got promoted from being a top rep. And I effectively came in and was a first time sales leader. 

I was a terrible first time manager because I was trying to replicate myself. Right. I was trying to like, this worked for me. This is how I'm motivated. Uh, this is how I like to be talked to. Uh, this is how all the every manager, like I didn't read any of the books clearly. 

Cause that's what they all tell you not to do. That's what I did. Um, and so, uh, for that first team that had to, uh, to, uh, you know, pay the price for my leadership development, I apologize. 

So that's a great one. Last one is a wrap it up. If there, if there's a revenue leader listening to this right now and they're trying to bridge these gaps, these go to market gaps that they have, what's one thing that they need to hear right this minute? You're not alone. 

Like, I think that's the big thing is that, especially DPs, um, CROs, right? Heads of, um, you're one of one in an organization. Right. Your peers have different, um, you know, metrics and things that are held accountable to that's maybe not as hard, uh, hard as, uh, as easily defined as revenue and ARR, right? Um, and your CEOs and your boards have different things. You've got to be the captain of your ship for your, for your teams. 

Um, but you're not alone. Right. Um, so, uh, chances are, if you call another sales leader, um, there's going to be a high degree of empathy and understanding. 

Um, so, uh, we all have those dark days, right? And so, uh, and I know it's sales leaders. Yeah. It's collateral, but I think as sales leaders and then as men, we're taught to show no weakness, right? Um, and so we, we kind of hold this facade. Um, but there are dark days even in the happiest of revenue time, right? So, so, so, so friends for sure. 

I love that. I, I, I, it's, it's so hard to do it alone. We talk about this all the time. Um, and if you try to go at it and do it alone, you, I, I can't imagine as, as much as Dale drives me crazy. Um, I was having this conversation with someone the other day, like, I don't know if I could do this if I like had to do it alone. 

I, in fact, I know I couldn't, um, for a variety of reasons. Uh, phone a friend, get advice, don't think you know everything. Um, and don't be afraid to say, I don't know. Um, yeah. Yeah. 

It's amazing. Thank you so much for joining man. We appreciate it. I am excited to see what is next for you. Um, and thanks for dropping all your, uh, all your advice and tidbits today. 

Yeah, it's just great. Adam, a pleasure, Dale pleasure. And, uh, uh, if anybody needs any help or advice, uh, I'm around the DME on LinkedIn and, uh, happy to help. Cool. 

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