From The Kitchen to the Boardroom ft. Alan Zhao | Revenue Reimagined Ep. 027

Alan Zhao, Head of Marketing and co-founder at Warmly, shares his unconventional journey from running a Vietnamese restaurant in Texas to building a B2B SaaS startup. He highlights the surprising parallels between the two worlds, noting that in both environments, speed and removing operational friction are critical to success. By eliminating small bottlenecks, founders can focus their limited prime time on high-impact work instead of getting bogged down in endless execution tasks. A major theme of Alan's strategy is the "art of copying" and fast-following over relying purely on constant iteration. Instead of waiting to invent the perfect product, Warmly looked at market successes, built exact replicas to get into the game quickly, and then leaned into category creation and brand story to differentiate. Alan emphasizes that achieving a "win" is the ultimate cure for team fatigue and churn. Finally, Alan touches on the future of go-to-market motions, arguing that marketing must precede sales to build awareness and demand. Without a strong brand and category awareness, even the best sales team will struggle against competing priorities. He envisions a future where AI SDRs handle initial engagements, breaking down data silos to capture buyer intent right from the website.

Discussed in this episode

• How Alan transitioned from running a Vietnamese restaurant in Dallas to founding a tech startup.
• The importance of speed and eliminating micro-frictions to maximize high-value prime time in any business.
• Why copying successful market products exactly can be faster and more effective than innovating from scratch.
• Dealing with startup setbacks and team fatigue by relentlessly focusing on finding a single key win.
• The strategy behind Warmly's Series A category creation and brand archetype overhaul.
• Why asynchronous work and protecting the 9-to-5 window from useless meetings drastically boosts productivity.
• The necessity of marketing over sales to generate awareness before launching direct outbound motions.
• The future of AI SDRs and automating top-of-funnel engagement to capture immediate buyer intent.

Episode highlights

1. 0:00 — Restaurant to Tech Founder
2. 3:15 — Speed in Operations
3. 7:45 — The Art of Copying
4. 12:30 — Focusing on the Win
5. 16:20 — Transitioning Leadership Roles
6. 21:00 — Category Creation Strategy
7. 25:40 — The Power of Async Work
8. 29:10 — Why Marketing Before Sales
9. 32:50 — Future of AI SDRs

Key takeaways

• Speed is your biggest ally; treat seconds like they matter in execution.
• Fast-follow market winners perfectly before trying to innovate on the fringes.
• Achieving a single win is the ultimate cure for team fatigue and churn.
• Eliminate useless meetings to protect valuable deep work time between nine and five.
• Build marketing awareness first, or your sales outbound will fall on deaf ears.

Transcript

out, you're just taking the credibility and that's the only thing that matters. All that other process stuff, it's just a mechanism to explain how you got there that other people may or may not be able to replicate. But the results are the most important. Welcome back to another episode of the Revenue Reimagine podcast.

We have with us today Allen Jao, who is a former finance and restaurant manager, turned self-taught coder. He was the CTO and co-founder of Warmly for three years before he switched over into sales development. The AE side of the house, the CSM side of the house, and now is the head of marketing. I got the privilege of spending some time with Allen last year down in Costa Rica.

Um, and now he's here to join us on the show to talk about uh, all things the founder journey for Warmly. Allen, welcome, man. Awesome to be here. Thank you so much, Adam.

I'm sorry you had to spend time with Adam in Costa Rica. Sounds like, sounds like hell, but we can, uh, we can, we can jump off. Thanks for joining. Um, so one of the things we like to talk to founders about is really like, why did you start the company, why did you start Warmly, like, what's the origin story behind behind Warmly?

Yeah, so before Warmly, I was actually running a restaurant in Dallas, Texas. And it was a Vietnamese restaurant. We, uh, we sold hot soup in the middle of summer. So it's not the wisest choice to make.

We made I do I do love me some pho, though. Yeah. In the winter, though, it sells out. I mean the doors, the lines out the door, but in the summer, struggling.

And then our AC broke down, and then COVID happened. So, needed to find something else. Uh, I went through this program called On Deck, which is like a founder's fellowship. You kind of meet other founders, ideate, start businesses together.

I met Max, who's our CEO, and, uh, we started something called Control it. We hacked on it as a hackathon project. It was a way for, uh, the streamer to, uh, the viewers to vote on what the streamer does next. So we hacked it in about a day, pushed it out, got 300 people posting on Reddit, and then from there we just did four more for more different products until we ended up with the product today.

Super interesting because it's it's funny we've interviewed many different founders, but you're like the second or third one that started with a hackathon and, uh, and ended up into a a real company. Love that. It's a relationship. On Deck, uh, YCOM, there there there's a few of them when it comes to, you know, the accelerators, but I I think the hackathons are interesting and I think, you know, in companies I've worked at like not even starting a company, but some of our best product ideas, um, started with just hackathons that turned into pretty, um, incredible products.

So, I think it's, you know, it's super interesting to me that you were in the restaurant space. I spent a ton of time at Toast, um, you know, got to work with a lot of restaurant owners. And I think it's one of the most difficult, um, arenas to play in and be successful in to your point. But that transition from, you know, running a restaurant to tech, like, that's a big change, right?

Like, that's a massive change. When you look at like what you were doing before, what are some of the skills that you think carry over, like, being a good founder and running like a good tech company? Because I think a lot of people don't realize that like, oh, you're just running a restaurant. Like, it's not that simple, folks.

Running a restaurant is not like showing up and just, you know, making some food. Yeah, I think speed matters. That's probably everyone can probably agree in the in the, uh, the tech sector, especially in startups, like speed is your biggest ally. And in restaurants, seconds matter.

And it's similar like as a founder, if you're starting a company, seconds also matter, too. Your response time in seconds matter, how fast you can get things done before you go grab a cup of coffee, go for a walk, eat dinner. Like, all these things in between can take up the day. So if you can get five or six things done, and because you're faster, then over time that that definitely adds up.

And restaurants, you just have two times during the day, lunch service and dinner service, and then the rest of the time you kind of twiddling your thumbs. So you have two to three hours of prime time, like real prime time, and then, uh, the rest of it is kind of waiting around. So, not not not to say you're you're just waiting around, you're definitely grabbing ingredients, but that's the time where you're trying to make the most amount of money. And how how how how do you how do you do that, right?

Because like I I think what people don't realize, and I I I do tie this to startups, is you can't just wait for people to come to you, right? Like, whether in a restaurant and it's like, oh, we're just going to sit here and hope everyone finds us, or we launch the next great startup and Dale and I talk to founders all the time where it's like, well, we're just going to launch a website and do some SEO and like we're going to be a million dollar ARR company at the end of the year. Uh, PS, no, you're not. Um, like how talk to me a little bit about that.

The uh, how to run a how to start a restaurant or how to start a company? The parallels. The parallels. How how how how do you how do you grow them?

Like you said there's a lot of downtime. So, like, what are you doing in that downtime in the restaurant industry that people don't think of that correlates to the downtime, I mean, there is no downtime in the startup industry, but then come back to growing a startup. Like the marketing side of it, like how you guys are actually like building those things out. Yeah, for the restaurant industry, um, it was a lot of about, um, yeah, I mean, we we we didn't have a chance to run it for an extremely long time.

We were mostly focused on keeping it alive. And so, sourcing the ingredients, you know, like, there there's just so many little things that get in the way. When when I said that fiddling your thumbs, it's like things that you didn't think that you needed to do, but you still need to get up and go do it. So waking up in the morning because we didn't have enough jalapeno peppers, and then our some of our dishes were like five or six, like ingredients that you wouldn't think about.

I mean, pho has probably like 20 ingredients, uh, coriander seeds, star anise. And if you're missing any one of them, then it's it's going to ruin the recipe. So constantly we're trying to do things like we're missing one thing, and so we can't serve it, and we have to waste a lot of time doing that. And you you probably align that to, uh, to like when you're doing your go-to market, right?

Like, I don't know, if you don't have a BDR feeding leads in then like you're not, you know, your your downstream funnel, your converted funnels aren't aren't working the way they should. Yeah, definitely. Sales process for sure, operationally within the company. If you're missing one small thing, I think about it for like a small task, simple simple example is when you're trying to log in, or someone else is trying to log in your path, because they need to use your account for something.

Then you have to pull up the off, you know, put in 46, pull up your YouTube app. Stuff like that, it adds friction to the system. So as many of those that you can remove, the faster, more streamline your process, the more you can focus on deep work, the stuff that actually makes money. And the same thing apply in start in restaurants.

Like, I think a lot of restaurant like, like we weren't in the business for for too long, and we haven't seen a ton of success, but my hunch is that a lot of restaurateurs, they're they're losing sight of the forest for the trees. So, you could you could do a lot with just a little bit of time. But instead, you're just bombarded with another order over here from Uber Uber Eats, another problem over there, fire over here and just constant execution, constant execution, when if you look at the bigger picture, there could have been a bigger play. Maybe you should have sold at stands at like a corporate office.

So, but but I think what you just said there ties over really well because it it's you can't be so focused on the execution that you lose sight of the strategy. Conversely, you can't be so focused on the strategy that you lose sight of the execution. Especially in startup land, they're both important. Let's, um, let's shift gears just a touch.

Let's talk about some assumptions, right? So, in in every time a company starts, there's all these assumptions about what you should do. Your VCs are telling you what you need to do. Your co-founders are telling you what they want to do.

You know what you think you should do, and everyone is getting in your ear. And there's this echo chamber of like, this is what you should do, and these are the these are the best practices, right? When when you look back and even currently with Warmly, like what are some of those best practices that you've like either challenged or just totally said, "Fuck it" and ignored that have turned out to really help propel the growth that you're seeing in Warmly. Yeah, one of the one of the things people say a lot was, um, you need to iterate towards success, like find iterate, you know, increment.

This is something we actually focused on a lot, at least on the engineering side, was improving cycle time. You know, like, how fast can you get product out in front of users? And so, uh, once you get your cycle down to two days, then it didn't really matter what your ideas were because you just focused on execution, and any idea, like, if when you can't get your cycle time down, then there's politics because everyone wants to get their idea in, and, uh, you don't have the time, you don't have the engineering bandwidth, you still have engineering, sorry. You have to wait.

But when your cycle time is two days, then it you're only limited by your ideas and your creativity. So we thought that that was the solution to finding product market fit. And we focused a lot on like the product development cycle. Uh, what what I think I've I've realized, especially after this last pivot, is that instead of relying on our own business genius to figure out what the next thing is going to be and keep iterating on the way there, uh, there is this art of copying.

So, you should just, you know, like, what we did is we just looked at the market, see what was working, uh, really well, made a hypothesis of where the world was going to go, what the world needed based on what we knew about this market, and then we just started building it. It it was it's really simple, actually. We just took that product and we said, how fast can we just copy that product? Don't change lit literally do not change a single thing.

Has nothing to do with iteration. Do a fast follow mode. Just just copy it. Exactly.

Do that fast follow mode. It's it's interesting because there's many people think that they have to build a brand new product. Sometimes it's just about building things in a more valuable way to actually help a user execute differently, et cetera. So that's very interesting.

Yeah, it's, uh, don't but don't change anything. And then, after a certain point, people start to say like, how are you guys different from this? How are you guys different from that? But by that point, you're sort of in the game.

Before we were never really in the game because the market wasn't there. We're trying to find the market. I think that's where we got stuck for about three years. Yeah.

Yeah. And then you were kind of just talking about before we jumped on was, you know, you guys were a bit flat and then you guys accelerated through the growth. So, talk a little bit about dealing with setbacks. There's a lot of times where you're trying to figure it out, you talked about the fast-following pieces, but during the journey of your startup over the last, you know, three years where you're you're dealing with the setbacks, what are some of those and how did you navigate those from like a key lesson to someone that's trying to start start a company and and get to revenue?

Yeah, one of the biggest setbacks is when you're not really growing and you've been around for three years. You're not a young startup anymore. You start to see the earlier employees get more and more fatigued. Like I said about the cycle time, we want to move fast, and if you move fast for too long, people get tired, especially if they don't see results.

Um, and if you're constantly switching and pivoting and trying new things and it's not seeing results, then people get very tired. And, uh, the one of, I guess, one of the harder parts is bringing people on that I knew. Uh, so friends join this company and who are very good at what they do, and then watching them leave. Right.

And these guys gave up a lot of time and so that was that was pretty challenging to see. And, you know, I guess thinking that maybe it was a culture problem, maybe it was management, maybe it was something to to work out internally. Uh, but at the end of the day, I think I got this advice from a mentor, you just need a win. And that winning or the lack of winning is actually the root of all this all these problems.

And So would you say go after the small wins? Like that like dealing with that setback, if someone's going through that process, try to find any of the small wins to like stack? I guess from my perspective, it it's just going to be painful for a bit. But someone once said when I was going through this, it was it was an advisor of mine.

Uh, he said, this is going to pass. You know, like, sun will rise, nobody died, all right? You could be in Afghanistan, point blank, yeah, on point. And so, it's it's going to be okay.

And, um, but the most important thing is to win. So, from then on, just focusing on how do we start to win? And what's the biggest problem? Uh, and finding the real bottleneck in the system.

It's like a book Phoenix Project. There's always a real bottleneck in the system, and working anywhere outside the bottleneck is just an illusion. And so, did that, and we turned things around and, uh, never really had an issue with retention. Everyone's happy, mission aligned.

Uh, before it was a rotating door. Now people have been around for two plus years. We haven't had any churn. That's, um, you don't talk to a lot of companies that don't experience churn in some way, shape, or form, right?

And I think depending on the company, you know, what acceptable churn is, are is certainly different numbers. But to say that, you know, we haven't really experienced churn, um, is something you should be really proud of. Um, I don't think that you see that a lot. We certainly don't see that a ton.

Um, so I think that like when we talk about celebrating wins, um, that is a big win to celebrate. So, Al Allen, you've held like a lot of positions at Warmly, right? Like you're you're the jack of all trades. You you've done everything almost.

Um, you know, from the tech side to the sales side to the marketing side. Um, which is your favorite? And why? I think marketing.

Tell me why. Maybe I'll say Yeah, marketing for now, um, Prisoner of the moment, prisoner of the moment. That's exactly. Dale said it the best.

I don't know how to put words to it. Don't don't don't give him credit. Come on. He's going to put that out in a clip and I'm never going to hear the end of it.

I'm clipping that. Clip this. Prisoner of the moment. I got to remember that because for a long time I haven't even was trying to put words behind it.

But, uh, anything I was doing, it was super exciting. So, when I was in tech, technology was amazing. To be able to put anything on a screen and say I put that there and connect it all together. That's fantastic.

And then it was sales was so interesting, just tried reading all the books out there. Um, like 100 million dollar offer, uh, challenger sale and like this is fascinating stuff. Like you can convince someone to do something. Most conversations have no you don't have an agenda, but you're able to maneuver it where they feel like they're, you know, so it's but it's it's all in the interest of making sure there's a win-win.

I thought the psychology of sales is fascinating. So, I would say marketing today. I can say all these reasons why. Marketing is selling one to end, sales is selling one to one, and I think the one to end is in the scale and doing all with one person, technology.

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attention.tech. Now, I love that. So, let let's piggyback off that for a second.

So, as the evolution of your roles has changed, um, I'd imagine so is your leadership style, um, so is the way that you lead within the company, people, teams. Talk to me a little bit about, you know, how having these different roles and also Warmly growing up, um, how your leadership style has evolved. Yeah, it's maybe before I focused more on process and getting the job routine done right. So in technology and engineering it was there's make sure the process was right, people were happy, they knew how things were done, here's the onboarding.

Process, process, process. Um, I guess my my own style of, you know, leadership, uh, although I haven't been doing it for very long, is is to is to just be right because I I don't know what more that I can offer that experts outside couldn't offer. And so if there's one thing that I can help out with is just the context that I have within the company, and just to make the right calls. And having done that enough times, I think I realize that that to me is the most important quality of being a good leader.

Because if I was wrong, uh, most of the time, doesn't doesn't have to be every time you have to be right, but just more often than hopefully everyone else in the company. Then, uh, if you're right, I'm always right. Dale's always wrong. Continue.

Yeah, I mean it's it's it's a funny thing. I mean, you make these decisions, put a lot of resources behind it, and then if you're wrong, then maybe someone else should make some of those decisions. So just being right earns a lot of credibility and being like, hey, it's kind of unconventional for um, for a bit and you may not agree with it, but just trust me on it, and it's going to work out. And when it works out, you just bake in the credibility and that's the only thing that matters.

All that other process stuff, it's just a mechanism to explain how you got there, that other people may or may not be able to replicate. But the results are the most important. So just we're going to win and we're going to do this, and then when we win, then it gives you credence to say we're going to win and we're going to do this and we're going to keep on going. And that's that's really the lesson that at least I'm trying to tell uh, the people that I work with.

And you have free rein, just you want to win and then just go do it. I hear a lot of self-reflection in a lot of the things that you talk about, because I think one of the challenges a lot of leaders have in this space or founders is having that self-reflection, being like, okay, this wasn't working, three years, we burnt people out, friends that you burnt out, um, and how to how that leadership evolves from a burnout standpoint, pivoting standpoint, because you're pivoting a lot. I always say to a lot of people that are thinking about startups, like, it sounds so great, but I'm like, if you don't like change, you don't like pivots, you don't like the uncertainty, like, startup world's not for everybody, and you shouldn't just want to go in because it looks cool from the outside. Like, you never see what's underneath that that iceberg.

Um, Yeah. From a critical decision/inflection point that you guys were running, I think you talked about some of the pivoting, but when you changed, like, when you started like getting a lot of revenue or when you started like driving your revenue, what was the critical inflection point to kind of flip that switch? Um, okay, so this is interesting because it goes back to the the whole art of copying. It's at the the point at which we started coming up against competitors and then saying, oh, you're just this but cheaper, or you're just this plus that and then cheaper.

Then that that's when we kind of hit a roadblock and we saw like, we didn't have much as much inbound, saw deal cycles were slowing down. This is on top of the economy not being in great shape. Uh, what changed was and a lot of sales and marketing leaders probably talk about this, but you kind of want to set yourself apart and be different, not just better, not just cheaper, but truly be different. And so, did a bunch of research into this whole category creation process, you know, read the play bigger book, um, saw and and then looked at all the competitors out there and how they were positioned and this is the marketing angle of it too, but what's the brand archetype, what do we take on, what colors, and how do we what's what do people feel, what's the personality associated with us?

What's that story, right? Like you're building that that brand story? Yep, the new brand, the new category, and they say that the category leader takes 75%, and so other 20 number two, number three is 25%. So, really trying to say that this this is a need.

But, uh, yeah, creating the category. And then so once and we we basically did everything around our series A announcement. Mhm. And, you know, we got like LinkedIn influencers involved.

We got, um, we we really pushed out as much content as possible. We planned it, we had LinkedIn releases every single day to sort of tease people on what's coming up next. And then finally when the day came, we spent a lot of time on the story of exactly what we wanted to say to the press and we broke it down to three things. Like, they're only going to remember three things.

So this, this, that's our story. That's it. If you take away anything, it's just that. And we put it out there in the world, and hopefully it resonated, and said, okay, hopefully it resonates.

And I think it did based off our results. Awesome. So, you you compete with some pretty big players out there, right? Like, you guys aren't in, you know, an isolated space, um, to your point.

Um, I happen to love your rebrand. Um, so when you start talking about like, who does it speak to, and what are the colors, um, you know, I I it it speaks to me. But when you're playing against some of the biggest in the space, like staying agile and responsive is probably really more critical than, you know, arguably other startups out there. Uh, the market's changing, these folks are trying to one up you, you're trying to, you know, to continue to grow your company.

How do you do that? How do you make sure as a team, whether it be marketing or on the tech side or in sales? How do you stay the bigger you get and the more successful you get? How do you continue to stay super agile?

Yeah, I mean, for us, we haven't gone to the point where we're so big yet. So it's a little bit difficult to answer that question. We're still just about 20 people. We don't have many meetings.

Um, me and Keegan meet like once every two weeks and everything is done through Slack. Uh, the hours between 9:00 and 5:00 are extremely valuable. So if you can, you know, let people do what they do in 9:00 to 5:00 and then just handle everything async, that's that's the best case scenario. If people I I have to I have to interrupt you because if people don't hear anything else from that podcast this podcast, that is a takeaway.

The time between 9:00 and 5:00 is valuable, and let people do what they do. I am a huge fan of as much being async as as it can. There are other companies out there, um, where I I feel like there's a it's a meeting to have a meeting. Like, we have to have a prep meeting for the meeting, and then a follow-up meeting for the meeting.

Like, how do you get any work done? Um, continue. Sorry. It's so valuable that I I I had to interrupt you on that.

No more meetings, Dale. Yeah. I don't know if it's my nature of a company, but we started off remote. So a lot of the small things were hallway conversations you might have in person.

We just don't have that. So you wake up, if you have all the information that you need, you can just go from 9:00 to 5:00 and not have any interruption because you had no meetings that day. You can have a cup of coffee, go for a walk, even that's more productive than a useless meeting. So that's how we're set up.

100% agree. I keep telling Adam to stop giving meetings. But then he texts me 24 hours a day, so it doesn't doesn't work either. My my my my my first text in the morning and my last text at night.

Yeah. So there's some there's there's a there's a story there. Um, Alan, I don't know if you know Anis and Attention. Um, but he was talking about he was talking about his relationship with Mathias, his co-founder.

Um, and he said that it's always his first text in the morning and his last text at night. So right after that, I have made Dale my good morning text and my good night text just to fuck with him. Yeah, it doesn't happen. That's amazing.

Alan, we're a big yeah, we're we're big believers in giving more than receiving and you've been generous, tell the audience what you'd like to give them. Yeah, so Warmly has a free tool and it basically denonymize your site traffic, contacts and companies. We give out 150 leads a week, we can up it to 250, uh, if you go to our site and then put in the, how did you hear about us, revenue reimagined. Love it.

Love it. He's even got a code. I'm going to put that on our site. Yeah, he's even got a code for us.

He's even got a code for us. I love that. It's, um, I I don't think people realize how much you're missing out on by not taking advantage of technology such as Warmly. Like, there there's so much out there that you could understand and learn your buyers, who they are, what they're looking for, what they want, where they're coming from.

Um, that if you're not doing it, you're you're really really missing, um, the boat. Let's, um, let's talk chat about the balance, not necessarily the balance, but innovation versus execution, right? You know, so a lot of times, startups we work with struggle between what do we focus on innovation in something new, or do we focus on perfection and this has got to be executed perfectly. Kind of what you spoke about earlier, right?

About process. How do you prioritize whether it's innovation or execution? Um, and is there a time that you could think of where like this balance or shift has really impacted that strategy and the business? Depends if he's in the marketing side or the engineering side.

Yeah, I know. It's it's I used to code back in the day, so I I get I get where your head goes. Oh, yeah, coding is is very much process driven. Um, and yeah, totally agree on that.

So, uh, it it kind of goes back to, at least from the marketing angle, that's where I am today. It goes back to the this whole art of copying. Because if it's been done before, if you can find evidence of it outside, and something I I tell some people I work with, like, how well do you know the market? How well do you know everything that's out there?

And if if the answer is like, I haven't looked into it, then why innovate? Because it's not real innovation. So, it's it's probably pretty important to go out and see, uh, marketing perspective, especially in coding perspective, like everything's out there already. You can just check TTP, tools that do this, code that writes that.

Then go find that, and, uh, and there's you'll find that there's very few things that need more innovation. And if it's truly innovative, it's actually a pretty big risk. So, for us, we're not really innovating too much, honestly. We you might seem like we're innovating like, oh, we're going to try to create this whole media company, we're going to try to do this whole branding thing.

But it's been done before, and people have seen a lot of success, just not many people, not everyone has done it yet. So, um, I would even say like for us, like innovate less, uh, and then control what you can, what you need to innovate for and minimize the risk. So, just have things that work because you know it works, and then try to innovate on the fringes if you absolutely need to to differentiate. Love that.

Makes sense. What's the vision for the future for Warmly? What do you think like, what do you see your company next five years, um, planning to, you know, it's going to change, things are going to evolve, things are going to collapse and consolidate, especially in this market. Where do you guys see see yourselves going?

Yeah, so I think it's right now, it's probably a race. And in the previous pod episodes, I heard a lot of talk about where AI is going to go and how that's going to affect sales. So, we are uh, pretty bullish on the idea of this AI SDR. And a lot of the data styles are coming down.

HubSpot just acquired Clearbit, that's a big move. So now like, all the data in your CRM is going to get enriched, and then if you have all the data just crossing over, overlapping, once the data styles like I said, are broken down, then you can layer an AI on top of that. And AI is advancements increasing at a very fast clip. So, we are trying to be the AI SDR to capture attention and, uh, buying interest at the time when it's most peak, starting with the website.

But it's going to go far beyond that, eventually it's going to hopefully automate the AI the SDR role itself. So that people can do higher, more interesting work. Love that. Interesting.

I I want to double click on that for a second. When when you say automate the SDR role, talk to me about what you mean by automate the SDR role because the SDR role means different things to different people, right? Yeah, it's it's anything that you're it's like right before the human interaction. So right now, what our tool does is like, someone comes to the website, we identify who they are, company and contact, we find the buying committee of the company that you and then we find the personas that you care about.

We automatically put them into email and LinkedIn sequences, and then when they come to the site, we have an AI chatbot that talks to them. When they respond back to that, then your AE or SDR gets looped in. So it's all that stuff that needs to happen before. Uh, but it's pretty important because it's just the site is the easiest example.

When someone's on your site, they know your brand, they know who you are. And so they're thinking about you. It's that moment of when someone is thinking about you, can you get them there? Because seconds after that, they've already moved on to the next thing.

Um, that whole process, not just the site, but everywhere. If you have a hot dog stand outside, um, of a bar at 2:00 a.m., like it's going to sell out when people are done drinking.

Find this. I love it. Let's, um, let's do some rapid fire, um, as we wrap it up. Let let's let's uh, let's have a little bit of fun.

You're not in tech, you cannot go back to the restaurant industry. What profession are you going to be in? Uh, okay, professional Bachata instructor. Bachata.

I don't think this is going to get. Bachata, it's a it's a Latin dance. It's uh, it's the most beautiful thing. It's like salsa, but salsa is more fast paced, and then Bachata is more flowing.

Um, but it originated in Dominican Republic. It's gone across all across the world. And it's beautiful to do. It's good for the soul.

You dance, you listen to music, you dance to the music. It's kind of choreographed. And it's kind of impromptu as well. Very creative.

The two people partner dance can create a beautiful thing. And I I want to be an instructor for that. I love it. Cool.

That's very cool. I like that. What's the first app you check when you wake up in the morning? Um, I think it's my Slack, which is pretty depressing actually.

And most people say that like whatever they say the next thing is like, well, that's kind of depressing. Mine is not Slack. It's not so good. Mine's the weather.

Still the first thing I check is the weather. You get to go outside during the day. That's nice. Yeah, right?

Um, Allen, where do you start first? Marketing or sales? Where does a company start first? In terms of You're building go-to market, new startup, what's more important, marketing or sales?

I think marketing is more important. It's generating demand. So, if you're, yeah. No right or wrong answer.

Um, we we tend to go about 50/50. Have it explained it, but I'm sure. Yeah, please. Go ahead.

People want to know. Yeah, because, um, it it goes back to us. When we were trying to sell a product, we had a great sales team, great process down, but it wasn't selling, it wasn't closing, and it's not because we weren't sending enough emails. And sometimes we'd send a ton of emails, higher, but it was more like, people didn't understand that they had this problem.

And when they don't understand that, because our battle is not necessarily against competitors, but against where people's priorities were. Like, they the the head of marketing at a company was focused on so many different things. Like, why would they ever care about this problem? So if that awareness isn't there, then they're not going to respond to any email you send them or cold call or even if it's personalized.

And if you don't have a good brand, then it's even worse. In this day and age, it's not about what you do, it's who says like, who, not what. So, if people aren't talking about you or talking about your problem, like, oh, you should care about Adam says this, you should probably care about this problem. Then then they're not going to be interested.

So it slows everything down if if marketing's not there. Love that. Makes sense. What's, uh, what's the most used emoji in your work chats?

Um, let's see. I think it's the thank you emoji. There you go. Yeah, that.

Yeah, I added that one, the TY. Yeah. Uh, we have to ask people to do a lot of things all the time. So, it's yeah, the thank you emoji.

I love it. I uh, I I don't use the thank you emoji nearly nearly enough. I I think the thumbs up one, um, is the one for me. Um, last question, um, what's the one word you would use to describe your startup journey so far?

Hm. Um, it's been a a blast. So, there's there's no the the downs were not real downs, just the fact that we could do this at all was amazing. So, I love it.

Every day is it's just been a complete joy. Yeah. Love that. Go ahead, Dale.

Take us home. You said the last question. So, I guess this is really the last of the last questions. He he screws this up all the time.

Don't worry about it. So, um, your dream, uh, dream vacation destination. Uh, I like Mexico City a lot. I think Mexico City is for the people that know about it, they will agree with this, but, uh, it's definitely a mini paradise that hopefully will stay that way.

Yeah. Um, you know, like it's very international, it's close to home. People can still speak English, uh, very affordable, the food is amazing. The people are so warm and kind and friendly, and the weather's awesome.

Cross throughout the year. I love it. So, that'll be it. That that was not what I had in mind, um, Dale, but all right.

Um, Alan, thank you, man, for join this is what I wanted Dale to do. Um, apparently Dale thinks because I was in radio, I have to do every opening and every closing. Um, but thanks for joining, man. Um, I think when I look at what you guys have accomplished, the pivots you've made, the shifts you've done, um, super inspiring given everything that's happened in the tech climate over the past 18 to 24 months.

You all should be really, really proud of yourself. Um, the changes you've made in the products that you've built. Where, uh, where can people find you? Where can people learn more about Warmly?

You can check us out on our website at Warmly.ai, and then, uh, and we can also find our our LinkedIns. We're very active there, so feel free to connect with us. Um, Allen is is for me, and then our co-founder and CEO Max Greenwell.

He's been posting a lot. So, be on the look out for his posts. Awesome. Thanks for joining, man.

We appreciate it, man. Cheers. Really appreciate you guys. You guys are fantastic.

Thank you.