Bottling the Founder Sale: From Visionary to Scalable Engine - Shift & Thrive - Episode # 098
S&T
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[00:00:00] In today's business world, change is the only constant, and mastering transformation is the ultimate key to success. Welcome to Shift and Thrive. I'm your host, Natalie Nathanson.
Each week we'll bring you conversations with CEOs who delve into how they successfully drove critical change in their organization. This show is sponsored by Magnitude Consulting, bringing you the thinking power of a growth consult. And the getting it done, power of a full service B2B marketing agency.
Today, we are cracking open one of the most critical yet deeply misunderstood transitions any B2B company will ever make, scaling out of founder-led sales. In the early days, no one sells your vision better than you. You carry the passion, the relationships, and the storytelling magic. But as your company matures, the scrappy marketing and [00:01:00] sheer hustle that got you off the ground eventually stop working.
You hit an inflection point. In this forty-minute special, we've brought together some of the sharpest minds we've had on the show to explore the necessity of early founder sales, the difference between founder market fit and product market fit, and the ultimate secret to scaling. Why you must figure out how to bottle the founder's magic rather than just replacing it with a professional sales leader.
Let's dive in.
Natalie Nathanson: my business has been bootstrapped from the beginning. I do think it's more common in general for services firms, but I think it like really forces you to be very like prudent, thoughtful, and conscientious about your investments. And like for us, not just impacting our own budgeting, but like how we approach clients budgets because they're often in a similar situation, not necessarily bootstrap, but always very. Cost conscious. And I think the misconception sometimes is, uh, that you don't spend, or that you're kinda cheap on things. Um, where I think for, for me, it always [00:02:00] means like, it's not, don't spend. It's, uh, you know, spend wisely. Don't throw money at a problem, like analyze the problem, look at the different ways to solve it, and then spend money like where you need to.
Sanjay Manandhar: Absolutely. Absolutely. And, and, and look, you know, uh, the, the other dis also that comes very quickly, uh, you know. Uh, want to make that decision is how are we gonna get revenue in a service business? Uh, you know, you are looking at revenue from day one in a product business. You need the product first. So there's a huge, uh, you know, deep hole you go into.
But at the same time, it was my responsibility to bring sales in. So I was the main and only salesperson from the very beginning. And I, I did things that were slightly uncomfortable for myself. But I'll tell you, that
was great
learning. And, uh, you become more and more familiar and comfortable selling.
And I want, I needed to sell. From the very beginning. So, uh, within eight months, uh, after, uh, the company was formed, I got my [00:03:00] first customer. So that's important.
Natalie Nathanson: I think that's such an important point about like, you have to do things that you're uncomfortable doing, and then they become comfortable and like every founder needs to know how to sell, whether they like it or not. And so either you come in with that knowledge or you, you learn it on the job and, uh, no one can sell better than a founder in the early days.
Right.
Sanjay Manandhar: Absolutely. Yeah.
Natalie Nathanson: Yeah, I'm curious, you were just talking about, you know, acquiring the first customer. Uh, curious to hear a bit about the go to market and how kind of that funding decision impacted how you thought about your go to market, um, either kind of at, at that time or how that's impacted you since then.
Sanjay Manandhar: Great question. Uh. So, uh, again, subsequently, uh, in future companies, I've made, uh, distance differently.
But at Arava, because I couldn't afford very, uh, expensive salespeople, I ended up, uh, selling myself, but also expensive salespeople meant, or any salespeople meant selling direct, and I wasn't fully clear on [00:04:00] direct versus channel, and. I, I must say, you know, the very first customer was, uh, a public school in Maine.
And, uh, basically I told someone that I knew, uh, who was a tech director there. This is what we're doing. What do you think? And so in, in a nutshell, the offering was, it was, uh, the browsers were becoming more prevalent, and my idea was. If you have a digital screen, why couldn't you use a browser to manage content on that screen remotely?
So we
need to represent, uh, you know, uh, what the, uh, layout would look like. And we've, uh, allowed sub windows. You could upload your own content. Content, could be text image videos, uh, RSS, uh, tickers and so forth. And you put a schedule together and you publish. And then. You know, it publishes, uh, on this, uh, internet connected, uh, screen that you may own.
This school basically used to, as most schools did, uh, a whiteboard in the, in the foyer of all the [00:05:00] announcements of the day and so on and so forth.
So,
uh, my friend, uh, the tech director said,
Hmm,
you are saying I could have a dynamically changing content and I don't even need to go to the school. I could be doing this remotely.
I said, absolutely.
Okay,
Let's give it a shot. So again, we did not sell the hardware or nor did we do their content. So our software allowed you to do
the content.
And, uh, so, uh, he was my first customer. I remember, uh, it was about $1,600 and I framed that check.
Natalie Nathonson: So interested to hear a little bit from your experience.
What are some of those most important things to get right on the go to market side as you're kind of pushing out new innovations?
Saket Saurabh: Yeah, I think go to market actually, so my DNA being a product, um, you know, person and a product, you
know, founder, CEO, the
go to market thing was something that I actually learned over time by observing and also by making mistakes.
And one of the things that,
GMT20241213-185833_Recording_640x360: that, um,
Saket Saurabh: Um,[00:06:00]
I've
learned in that whole process
in terms
of the go to market is that the initial, you know, technology or the innovation that you create. Oftentimes, I believe that the founder or the creator has to become also the salesperson of that, uh, it has in the, in the, in the way that, uh, being able to now,
you know,
you have something, but you've got to take it
to market and
market is a lot about, you know, communication through and cutting through a lot of noise and finding those
early adopters who really
are willing to, take to, uh, go out of the
comfort zone
and try something new, uh, and, um, and take a bet on something, um, and one of the, uh, obviously, you
know, people
know this very well probably is, um, is, uh, if you have
seen Crossing the
Chasm or read the book Crossing the Chasm, it's all about How to get that early adopters
and then
going past to the mainstream of the market. Uh, what my experience has been, um, and some, and advice that I give to a lot of
entrepreneurs when
I talk to them is you [00:07:00] have to be the first person to communicate what you're building, figure out what's the best way to talk about it, um, and then be the first person
to try
and
sell it.
Because while you are marketing the product and while you're selling it, you're actually also trying
to figure out
back to what
your product
should be and where is it missing the mark. And you're also able to understand what, how a buyer or a customer is going to perceive
that
product and where will it have challenges.
So
it's something
that, um, you know, in the startup world, we often say is that You know,
the first
million dollars in sales or even the first few million dollars
in sales have to
be done by the founders and then they can start to ramp up
with
support, with building a support team around them, creating leverage around specific actions.
So, you know, bringing in somebody who can help them get in front of more people, like somebody who will go schedule the meetings for them, but they still go do that, that conversation. So now they're spending less time, you know, setting up meetings,
for example.
And then similarly, in [00:08:00] every step of the way, You
know, finding,
uh, and building the team, uh, finding the people
to create
leverage around them and and building the go to market organization with that.
And some of the process and DNA, I think, becomes the way a company ultimately
uh,
does its overall go to market and sell. Um, like, um, again, going back to the NVIDIA example, a lot of it for us was, um, you know, we'd build the graphical chip, build the technology, and would encourage the developers, the, the game developers, the publishers,
to you,
to build games, uh, optimized for our
technology. So
we didn't go and sell,
uh, You
know, the chip directly to people. would encourage people to build games that take advantage of that, and that
is what
would
drive
the demand. And that's a very different go to market motion than, Uh, you know,
maybe you're
building a product and you're, you're setting up a store or, you know, you're giving people a trial or making it open source.
So there are many go to market motions that are possible. But oftentimes the, the initially the founder and the innovators and the creators [00:09:00] are the ones who have to test and figure out what works best
for what they have created.
GMT20250612-143010_Recording_separate1: you just mentioned product market fit, so wanted to hear a little bit more from you. Um, just, you know, how you're thinking about that with where you are currently and what are kinda some of those motions that are, uh, helping you there.
GMT20250612-143010_Recording_separate3: I mean, you know, early in my career, I think, um, I viewed product market fit as more of like an arrival and a point in time of like, oh, great, we have product market fit. But like, in reality it's a, it's a, it's a spectrum. And so, um, you know, there's a big difference from having founder market fit where, you know, you as a founder can, um, find a customer, um, share the vision, get them excited, you know, have them become a customer.
Like that's, that's a very different. Um, go to market motion, then having, you know, a sales team and, um, trying to find non-friends and, and bring them in, you know, into the, into the company as a customer. Um, and so for us, I think it, it, you know, it really depends the market. We're not necessarily innovating and creating a new market.
We're more of a fast follower. Um, [00:10:00] and so I think for us, what we've tried to do is understand what our competition has done effectively, um, and then to, to the best extent, leverage ai. Um, to very much streamline the onboarding, um, streamline the effectiveness of the technology, um, relative to how much effort the customer needs to put in to get value out of the product.
And so, um, you know, I think it's like what is the market already dictated as a need? Um, and then where can we find opportunities to leverage the latest and greatest infrastructure to, you know, deliver a better experience?
GMT20250612-143010_Recording_separate1: Yeah, I think that's great. And I think that, uh, kind of phase of, you know, being in that fast follower, um, does have certain, uh, elements to it, like you said, kind of best in class execution. I think that focus on differentiation, right, is really, we know there's a, uh, product market fit here. We know others are kind of in the space now, kinda where's our place to play, right?
GMT20250612-143010_Recording_1280x720: exactly.
GMT20250612-143010_Recording_separate1: I'm looking at that. [00:11:00] Um, how do you think your sales background, uh, impacts you in kind of some of this, uh, early decision making differently than say maybe a, like a technical co-founder?
GMT20250612-143010_Recording_separate3: Um, you know, it's. I think there, there's a, uh, a serious level of discomfort that I went through initially because when you're in like the stealth mode or like the ideation or creation of technology, like there aren't measurable metrics, like how many customers, what's the a RR? And so, you know, I think for me, just like being candid, like it was a super uncomfortable 18 months, uh, because there wasn't these measurable, uh, metrics that you could like, you know, kick your feet up at night and be like, oh, I, you know, I emptied the bucket, did a great job.
And so I think on a personal level. Um, you know, that was, that was something to get over. Um, you know, but I think, um, very fortunate to have two co-founders that I've worked with previously. Um, I. They specialize in software development, big data distributed systems, and so I think [00:12:00] my sales and go-to-market experience has been more just additive and helping get customers around us in the creation phase to make sure we really have the pulse of the customer as we're deciding what to build.
Um, and so I honestly, I think, I think like the first 18 months was like they were shining. They were doing what they do, and I was just trying to be a participant in getting as many people around us and, uh, getting as much feedback on like the capabilities and, um, what, uh, features of the product would really drive adoption.
Um, and so I think honestly it's just, um, being, being able to go and, um, tell a half-built story, but still have confidence, um, you know, and drive enthusiasm. Enthusiasm around what we're doing.
Natalie Nathanson: I wanna ask you, um, uh, really a a little bit more from the CEO uh, perspective. Uh, what do you see as a common mistake that CEOs make when they're trying to scale, uh, or kinda revamp their Go-to-market?
Kerry Cunningham: There's,
I would say there's a couple of things I can think off. The top One is that, um. [00:13:00] The things that got you to where you are will not get you to where you want to go. Um, and I know CEO CEOs hear that and know that, but that applies to marketing as much as to anything. Um, so the, the kinds of things that work effectively at lower scale when you're, uh, growing, um, even if you're growing quickly, just stop working later on.
Or you get to a, so let's say that you are in a new, you're in a new category and you're a new vendor. You've gotta do all kinds of things to get attention. And it's much more kind of gorilla marketing and, and, and outbound sales and, and founder-led stuff and all of that. I see that all the time and that's great.
At some point, that stops being the right way to approach, uh, getting new customers. And, and one of the things I see most often, and I'm, I'm actually talking about this a lot these days, is when you're a smaller company, it takes heroic efforts to get important things done. You cannot scale on [00:14:00] heroic efforts.
You want as many heroic efforts as you can get, but you're not going to scale on heroic efforts. You're gonna scale on being smart process, um, using, uh, data, well, um, using, uh, all of the benefits of, of the, the scale that you've gotten through your heroic efforts earlier. But you've gotta pivot away from those.
And I think that's something a lot of companies, You know, it's difficult to see in real time. Uh, and like the better we can notice that, uh, the better we'll be. And so that's part one, but I forgot part two.
Natalie Nathanson: Um, well, I know we've talked a little bit in the past about, uh, kind of storytelling and kind of continuing with your point about the founders is, uh, kinda the story that they're telling and how that needs to evolve.
Kerry Cunningham: So, yeah, so the, I I'm calling this, um, folklore debt, uh, if you will. So, um, we all know what technical debt is. You go out, you, you buy technology, [00:15:00] um, and that locks you into a certain way of working in certain kinds of processes in your organization. And we call that technical debt. Um, as we grow as a company, uh, we acquire folklore debt, uh, we acquire debt from the stories that we tell ourselves about how we become successful.
Uh, and the stories about how we won in the past often are not the stories that will be about how we win in the future. And so I think there's actually, uh, we're writing about this now, but there's a really kind of simple process. If you get company leadership together and you say, okay, well, You know. We, we had a, our, our our, uh, launch era, we had our scale up era name.
These kind of periods of time that are clearly different. And what are the stories that are associated with each one of those? Um, I think it's important also in companies to, to celebrate those stories. You don't want to dismiss them or, or just get rid of them, but, You know, you gotta have a trophy case where you take, You [00:16:00] know, the, that great founder story or the heroic, uh, campaign that got us our first 10 million a R quarter or something like that.
Um, and you put it in the trophy case and then you move on and find the stories about how you become the. $250 million company, or the $500 million company or whatever. It's, so I think it's really important that we do that because those stories that we tell about how we're successful really limit the options that marketers and sellers have.
Um, when the stories from the founders especially are this, how we, how we succeed is, uh, we we're gorilla marketers. I see this from this company that I'm, I'm kind of watching these days and they're just, You know, they're hiring somebody and they want this person to be a gorilla marketer and they're hiring salespeople and they've gotta be the most aggressive this or that.
So that's great. At their stage, that's what you gotta do. But if they're doing that five years from now, they're gonna crash and burn. Um, and it's that story that's being developed about who they [00:17:00] are. Then I think we have to keep an eye on.
Hey, this is Natalie, your Shift and Thrive host. After chatting with lots of CEOs, one thing is crystal clear. Leveling up your company means having a killer Go-to-market strategy. That's what my crew at Magnitude Consulting does every day. If you're trying to step up your marketing game, whether it's strategizing, accelerating your pipeline, expanding into new markets, or getting into AI and automation, let's talk.
No pitch, no pressure. Just good conversation. Visit shift and thrive podcast.com/natalie to schedule a time. Can't wait to connect.
Natalie Nathanson: What about timing and you know, when to bring on, uh, you know, rev ops, right? Whether that's a fractional service like yours, when to bring it inhouse. How do you know if you're ready? How do you know if you should have brought it in kind of a year ago? Can you talk a little bit about that?
Jacki Leahy: Yeah. Okay. So [00:18:00] all points express, all claims and points expressed are opinions of Jackie Lahey only. I do not speak for rev ops. I don't know who does, but it's not me. Uh, but here, here's my view of it. Uh, you'll know when you need rev ops. I think there's been this push of like, oh, you need rip ops.
It's like, yeah.
you know, um, you always want revenue to lead infrastructure.
right? And you, I always want
it to be the minimum, minimum viable structure, process stuff,
um,
to support growth. Because when you
are really
constraint focused, solu solving growth, anything you solve for right now, in like
Probably four months, but likely
a year and
a half it's
gonna be
irrelevant. It's, you're gonna rip it out anyway, right?
It's gonna be different. You're different. Different [00:19:00] chess board it There might be like Canvan kids on the board by then. Like you have no idea.
Uh, so I like
to say
you really wanna have that, uh, product market fit.
Um,
so likely that happens around like 10 to 30 customers, depending on like
a CD and stuff like that.
Um, you've probably, you've probably started
shifting from
founder-led sales to org
led sales,
or sales led sales in some point. Um, and even that, it'll probably be too early. It's really when.
It's
the Google Sheets empire starts to crumble, right? Um.
All
of a sudden, whoever is
in charge
of sales, the sales leader, um, up until that point, they've been on every sales call.
They know where deals are. So a spreadsheet, they know that, but then all of a sudden things grow to a point where it's like, I don't know who this company is. I don't [00:20:00] know what, what the sticky points are.
Are
we even missing things? Is is everything. Then you find out a bit better
deal that's not
on your like deal tracker, final spreadsheet, and then you find someone has a copy version.
They're, that's the point where it's like, uh, I prob we probably do need to invest in the time and really attention it's in. intent. You
can only prioritize one
thing at a time as a company and it, so it's like, okay, we got it. We gotta prepare ourselves,
organize
ourselves. Um, and my thesis is that you shouldn't hire rev ops in-house, um, until later.
Until later. Um, you really do need operators who've been there, done that, seen things. It's much more of an apprenticeship, um, situation. So anyone that you would hire, if you could, there's.
There's
not many of us, [00:21:00] right? It's a new, it's a new ex expertise. We'd be far too expensive to take on Responsib, like, fiscally responsibly.
Like, do not hire me. Like, no, not only can you not afford me, um, but I'll be bored. I'll be bored outta my mind, right? So, um, as long as you can, I
do think having that
fractional. Um, center of excellence. So at first it's like a right hand execution. Then it kind
of, we
grow with you, um, and pick a partner who has your best interest in mind, right?
If like, hmm, for the,
if are
gonna need a Salesforce. Let's get you one in-house. Let's scope that role. Let's help you get one of those,
right? But a
lot of things, the projects are
just moving so
fast. It's impossible to be an expert in lead routing and territory [00:22:00] and comp design and like all these things to really have
proficiency at.
If
you're in-house, you're only, if
you're in-house for like two years, you see everything once in one context. Whereas
external
consultants.
Fractional
people. We're seeing all of this all of the time across different go-to-market motions and use cases. So things start to rhyme things, patterns start to emerge.
It's like, heck, we shouldn't do that.
I can't tell
you exactly why, but that's not it. Let's think about a different way. So,
um,
especially when you're shifting and changing so fast, um.
GMT20250717-170207_Recording_1280x720: um.
Jacki Leahy: I am biased, but go fractional.
Natalie Nathanson: What about on the go to market side? You talk about kind of what's in place, what are you working on?
GMT20250313-185743_Recording_separate3: So that's another transformation.
Um, if
we keep
with that theme, just because as founder, I have been the salesperson. In fact, the, [00:23:00] the reason we had to make this shift recently is because in 2017, we decided let's put more resources
into product
and bring a new product to market. And that meant we took away from sales. We, we had lost somebody on the sales side.
We just didn't reinvest in that side.
We put
it in a product. And then we kept putting it into product and kept putting it into product and we became a product led organization. Well, frankly, we've always been a product led organization and to me. I love this analogy of how sales, um, typically works. You have your hunters who take the spears and go after the whales and the big game.
And you've got your gatherers that take the leads that are coming in and nurture them, et cetera. I would call us fishermen. We put out nets. And hope the fish swim in. We try to put them into ecosystems where the fish can live, but really that's the best we are. We take in a, a, fish that comes through the net and we try to turn it into a sail, let's say, and so this has been a very hands off approach, if you will.
I
mean, it's kind of in a way. Remarkable. [00:24:00] We've
gotten
to the stage we've gotten to, We need to become a sales driven organization. And last year we brought in fractional sales leadership
to help
us do that. And we ended up making more sales, closing more deals
than we
had in the prior two years combined.
So we know that that's the path to be on.
the
big leap that I'm taking with sales though, is I have set the goal to go after the biggest of the big companies, the fortune 500 to fortune 1000 style companies, because that is. The scale we should have been playing at this whole time. We are an enterprise software company and we have some really big customers, but we should focus more on that because their scale and volume would be, I mean, 10x more revenue per customer, maybe 20x more revenue per customer.
and therefore we could grow faster
and solve
more problems. We're a bootstrapped company, so we're absolutely limited by our funds. So therefore, if we go after that kind of sale. And we're really close to winning our first one already.[00:25:00]
then
I think that we're going to grow faster and that's that big, how question, like, how would we do that?
And I don't have to answer that question anymore. I have people who do know how to do that, that are coming on board to help that happen. I'm optimistic, Natalie. It doesn't mean it's going to work, right? It doesn't mean there's not going to be challenges and struggles and we're going to go through teams or whatever, but I am now committed to this vision because lots of companies sell to the fortune 500.
So we're going to become a company that sells to the fortune 500. That's what we're going to figure out how to do. That's our new company identity. Let's put it that way.
Natalie Nathanson: there we go. Well, and I think, like, to your point, right, there's different, like, sales motions involved, there's different marketing motions involved, you need different kind of sales and marketing infrastructure kind of in the underpinnings, um, and all of those pieces are the building blocks that then really help you kind of drive fast at that.
GMT20250313-185743_Recording_separate3: And I think that our history helps us get there because. It's not like we're abandoning our current customers, and it's not like we're going to say no to a smaller customer.[00:26:00]
I'm just saying from a sales driven approach, we're going to go after
the big
of the big, and we're going to talk to everybody who's interested in what we can do from the standpoint of we
can solve
their problem, and they have a problem that we can solve. might fit into. So it's not, it's not so much that we're only going to take a deal worth 5 million or 10 million or something like that.
It's more just the mindset of we're going to strive for more. We're going to shoot for the stars.
and
get off the ground and we'll see where we get.
Natalie Nathanson: Curious to ask you, uh, maybe a more introspective question. Uh, thinking about, uh, your career and maybe, you know, as you started, uh, what advice would you, would you give your, your younger self, uh, in your, you know, first leadership role? So if you were sitting in the room with, uh, younger Haseeb, what would you tell yourself?
GMT20250807-165822_Recording_separate3: Uh, I'll, I'll, we just talked about it. Uh, sales is the most important thing. Many of my friends who, who start sort of, you know, start early in their career, work on these kinds of. Uh, initiatives start companies or whatever. Uh, I [00:27:00] think that I see the following mistake made consistently. We're gonna build a product and then we're gonna hire a rockstar sales leader and magic will happen.
And unfortunately, magic doesn't happen. Right? More startups. Lose their first couple of CROs or head of sales, right? For this very reason, because there's this, completely ridiculous expectation that some guy or gal who knows nothing about what you built comes from a whole other thing because they have sold something else in a whole different world.
They will magically be able to apply policy, you know, some process here. And I think people. confuse causation and correlation, when it comes to sales, right? So they think because this person was successful here, it must be because they were there. So then bring them here and then magic will happen here.
And they kinda apply this, ridiculous sort of, you know, correlation chain. And then they say, why is it working? Maybe it's the product. No the people who built it are the best people [00:28:00] to explain why you should buy. The trick is to actually find a way to bottle the founder sale. Versus replace the founder sale, and I see my friends in the VC industry consistently make this mistake.
You, you are already at 2 million. Let's hire a professional sales guy. Absolutely not. I've done this now. I did not know this before. I have fallen into the strip twice now. Now, bottle the sale. Not replace the sale. I wish I knew this 10 years ago. I really wish I knew this 10 years ago. Because what happens when, when this mistake is made in a startup, you end up losing time.
You end up losing a year or two years of time, right? And time in a startup is, it's time, but it's money, right? You just wasted 20, 30 million depending on how much you're burning because you're trying to figure this out with a whole new organization. Don't do that, right? There's a better way to do this, uh, sort of with some fits and spurs here at Rafay.
We figured that out. [00:29:00] Um, again, by the grocery dots working really well. Our sales business process is working incredibly well, but we found a very, uh, sort of, you know, uh, cohesive, symbiotic way to do this.
Combining this notion of founder selling and professional selling versus replacing, uh, and because we are doing sort of this together, uh, the sellers are learning how to actually behave like founders.
I see them pitched. Like I, I listen to a lot of force meetings. We record all of our calls. I listen to a lot of them. Um, they're doing a great job 'cause they're, they're becoming storytellers. You know, that's a distinction. The biggest distinction in my opinion is people who built the stuff, they know how to tell the story.
Sellers don't do that. They come in and they talk about speeds and feeds, and I have these customers and are better and how's cheaper. My guys are telling stories, they're not talking features. If I can replicate that to a thousand people, we're the most smart company in this industry.
Natalie Nathanson: I was talking to, uh, someone [00:30:00] recently, a serial entrepreneur, and he is kinda more in the kinda VC funded tech startup world, but he was talking about the, uh, the, the founder selling and just, you know, how critical and beneficial that is to an organization, but like, how do you bottle that up and then
train your,
your sales team and, and support them In way. Um, and I'm curious if there are any things that you found worked best for you as your. Uh, right. As a services firm, it is highly consultative and different implementation. Look different.
Tameem Hourani: But you gotta be there, right? It it is, it is. It is different than software, but you gotta be on the front lines with your people at the end of the day. my job is to help everyone understand the value RapDev brings. my job is not to write code. I, don't write code anymore. It's probably good for RapDev and for the customers.
my job is not to, do marketing. My job is not to do finance and send invoices. My job is to be at the front with the sellers helping customers. understand what we do. and [00:31:00] frankly, it's, what I did for, a career, right? So I'm trying to help customers do what I did, and, for them to know that I was on their side at one point for them to know that I was in their shoes.
And that's why we're trying to solve this problem. that's really, what I enjoy the most as well. but you have to be on the front lines. You can't, hide behind HubSpot in a bunch of automated workflows.
Natalie Nathanson: Right. Those are the, uh, additive to the, the
core, Sales is not engineering.
Tameem Hourani: I've come to come to terms with that. So sorry to all the sales guys out there who I told I could automate with hubs. It's not gonna happen.
That's a wrap for this week's episode. For show notes and more visit Shift and thrive podcast.com. A special thank you to our sponsor, magnitude Consulting, bringing you the thinking power of a growth consultancy and the getting it done Power of a full service marketing agency to help B2B companies fuel their growth.
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