He Wrote The Sales Bible of Silicon Valley - Aaron Ross - Episode 100!

Aaron Ross, the author of Predictable Revenue, challenges the notion that his original playbook is dead. Instead, the tactical channels have simply become saturated, requiring modern GTM teams to pivot away from 'spray and pray' toward highly targeted, insightful, and empathetic outreach. He stresses that foundational principles—like the specialization of sales roles and nailing a specific niche—are just as critical today as they were a decade ago. In an era dominated by AI and unpredictable market conditions, Ross warns against the toxic societal pressure of forced hypergrowth. Many companies blindly build outbound motions they don't actually need, constantly ping-ponging between tactics without giving them the 6 to 18 months required to see real returns. Instead, sustainable growth relies on cultivating genuine, durable relationships with both your internal team and your market. The single biggest missed opportunity in B2B sales today is the lack of a systematized referral playbook. Ross advocates for bridging the gap between Sales and Customer Success to actively ask satisfied customers for introductions. By formalizing this process, teams can tap into their most powerful and underutilized channel, turning existing success into predictable pipeline.

Discussed in this episode

Why the fundamental principles of Predictable Revenue, like role specialization, still apply despite channel saturation.
How the societal pressure of hypergrowth pushes companies into forced outbound motions they do not actually need.
The necessity of moving from spray and pray tactics to highly targeted, insightful, and empathetic outreach.
Building a sustainable growth culture that successfully balances challenging employees with genuine caring.
Why strong relationships remain the most durable driver of predictable revenue in an unpredictable, AI-driven world.
The danger of getting scattered and ping-ponging between GTM strategies before they have time to work.
How implementing a systematized referral playbook is the most overlooked low-hanging fruit for B2B companies.
Overcoming the misalignment of incentives between sales and customer success to jointly ask happy customers for referrals.

Episode highlights

0:00 — Introduction to Aaron Ross
1:30 — Is Predictable Revenue dead?
3:45 — Core principles that still apply
6:15 — The hypergrowth rat race
10:10 — Writing the 2025 playbook
12:50 — Predictability in an unpredictable world
16:20 — Offloading what you aren't good at
18:45 — The biggest broken GTM strategy
20:30 — The ultimate referral playbook
24:15 — How AI will shift buyer behavior
27:00 — What is next for Aaron Ross
30:45 — Rapid fire questions and wrap-up

Key takeaways

Specialization of roles remains foundational.
Not every company needs an outbound motion.
Avoid the toxic trap of forced hypergrowth.
Relationships are your most durable growth engine.
Build a systematized playbook for customer referrals.

Transcript

Welcome back to another episode of the Bridge the Gap podcast powered by Revenue reimagined. Today's guest is someone who quite literally wrote the book on modern outbound. Aaron Ross is the author of predictable revenue, a playbook that's influenced just about probably every SAS sales org over the last decade. He helped Salesforce design and implement the cold calling 2.

0 model that added over 100 million in recurring revenue and since then has advised hundreds of companies on building scalable sales systems. But today we're not just going to talk about looking backward, we're not going to focus on predictable revenue, we're going to talk about what's changed, what parts of the playbook still work, what needs to be rethought, and most importantly, Aaron, where GTM strategy is headed next. Thanks for joining the show, man. Sounds good.

You guys are going to start off the laundry list like how many people today have said, "Oh, predictable revenue's dead." It's so funny, cuz people are trying to figure that out. It's just a it's just so much data, right? There's so much data out there.

So like what what do you put your predictability on? Yeah. Or are SDRs dead, or you know, this is dead, or I mean, it's good, makes for good marketing. Some people actually believe what they're saying.

Uh and I think when you're older, you're like, "Uh, nothing actually ever dies." Direct mail repurposed. Direct mail is still live and kicking. You know, steak dinners.

Listen, we have clients that got some of their biggest deals from direct mail. So, it's just more channels, more stuff. It's just different direct mail. You can't send the same crappy postcard that everyone sends.

You got to stand out. Yeah, makes for So so, you know, come better controversy, though, if you say the something people are familiar with is dead. So. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, it's funny, my my wife's an interior designer and she says all this. She's like, "We did that 15 years ago and now it's coming all back. Like everything like is is all cyclical." Yeah.

Bell bottoms, '70s, and then '90s. It's probably back time for the bell bottoms to come back. Exactly. Aaron, so you wrote the book that launched like thousands outbound teams.

Uh what do you think people still get right when they follow it and what's going to happen when they they miss the mark? Like, you wrote the book and people followed it and they did really well and then they missed the mark. Like, what went well and what didn't what goes well and not go well in that process? Uh, yeah, well, the thing is, I think when people um read so the original book is predictable revenue and then there was a sequel called from impossible to inevitable.

And when people read, especially the predictable revenue book, and um, you know, or they used it and they're successful and then you know, the world changes. And so there's a lot of these people who say uh right, so the book was basically the key ideas were, you know, you need to have predictable lead generation in order to create predictable growth. And a lot of people hear me like, "Yeah, duh," but actually there was a time, it wasn't that long ago, when most SAS companies or B2B companies grew wanted to grow revenue by adding sales people. So, okay.

Um, so separating the closing and the selling, so specializing your teams, you know, predictable pipelines and lead generation, um, seed different kinds of leads. So there's these core principles, we're going to go through some of those. And what people would do is, right, we're going to build an outbound team and we're gonna, you know, send email, make calls, and have SDRs. And, you know, any kind of channel was a victim of its own success, right?

Blogging, email, SEO, like it's it's all the same. So, of course, as every channel gets more flooded, and this is also for future channels, because this is not just something that only happened in the past. Like, any channel, LinkedIn, they all get flooded. And so, of course, it's not something today, whether it's email or calling, or LinkedIn, it doesn't pick your channel, or direct mail.

You just can kind of spray and pray. Like, you actually could do that and get great results 10 years ago. Um. Sure.

But now, and you need to just be better, more targeted, more insightful. Like, nothing new. More targeted, more insightful, more empathetic, which means you understand them more closely. You know, where they are, what they look what they're interested in, what they're and that could have changed in the last three months or six months.

And so the last um, you know, bit I'll put on is that, you know, again like AI. People think it's like, "Yeah, AI's going to change all kinds of stuff." And there's some changes we don't know what it hasn't done yet is create new kinds of work. We don't even know what that is yet.

That'll happen, we don't know. Right. Um, and so, yeah, of course, people all the SDR is dead, and the BDR is dead, and the XDR is dead. First of all, no, it's not.

Um, but the idea, actually the core So thing is people confuse the tactics with the book with there's these core principles that were there. So specialization of your team is a core principle. Right? You need more types of people, more types of jobs you can do fewer things better.

Whether they're human or whether they're agentic. You know, so the SDR and also not every company should do outbound. Not every company should do blogging or content. So it's like you have to know your business.

can can we pause one second? What you just said is so true. Not every company should do outbound. Aaron, you don't know how many people we speak to that the very first thing they say to us, "We need to build outbound and we need to do it because we need to send out 40,000 messages."

Oh my God, I guess exactly. Take a step back. Well, hey, think about they've got the pressure cooker of let's say they have investors. Some don't.

Okay, either there's investors or maybe they're not or the CEO, if they're not the CEO, or they've got social social pressure, right? Comparing despair, like there's all that we're living in a society of it's like this swimming in um, basically like fake pressure. It's not even real, right? It's just all societal.

Like, you don't have to grow 100% a year to get the funding, to get the thing, like you don't have to. It's just weird like rat it's a new rat race. It's not the corporate rat race, it's the societal rat race or the SAS rat race or the AI rat race, whatever, pick your rat race. It's it's the it's the it's the segment of like hypergrowth, like hypergrowth.

Like who's like is tell show me one place where hypergrowth has ever worked. Like you you scale quickly if you're a unicorn, but by luck, most of the time. It's not like you plan to hypergrowth. Yeah.

And you know what? The thing is, like, if you do it and want to do it, great. Amazing. If you want to raise money, great.

If you don't want to raise money, great. I think it's gets caught up in people um, it's like in the whole, or like the ego it's the validation, the ego. And also like that addiction of success. Like money can be addictive in its way and you know, and ego and having to, you know, raise from a certain amount, from a certain VC, in a certain valuation, or hit a certain growth rate.

If you're not doing that, you feel like a failure, because all, especially for, it's not it used to be mostly men and now I think it's, you know, probably evening out, because if you don't hit that and like these external factors of signals of success, then, you know, because we're not taught to grow up with some sort of inner self-confidence that is mostly disconnected from external validation. Like, come on, like, of course we all And so, again, it's this like, "Oh, I'm failing as a person if I don't have to." So there's this big tangled web around why people come in like, "Oh, I need to do," let's say, outbound, right, because it could be I need to lose weight, gain weight, I need to get married or not get married or get whatever. I need to do outbound, I send all these messages, because there's this pressure, and you know, again, I'd be happy to tell people and I don't even do outbound consulting anymore.

Um, is like, just don't do outbound, right? And see if they fight you on it. If they really need to do it, they'll probably, you know, figure it out. And then if they do need to do it, yeah, when I was doing it for a long time, you know, a lot of the things, look, it's going to take you 6 to 18 months to see real revenue from it.

Like basically, it's going to take longer than you want. You got, you know, you need to make sure you have the right people doing the right things, and the right expectations, and Yeah, you get, of course, you get all the stories. You know, people are always doing publish case studies that are the, you know, 1% success cases. Right?

That's the news, right? You get the unicorn and the Instagram case studies. You get the AI ramps from 0 to 6 million ARR in nine months, because those are exciting. But that's not what most people are doing.

So again, it's this distorted reality distortion that we all live in. You know, if you can kind of see that, it's like how, um, are you the tail or are you the dog, if I get that right? You know, is it wagging you, or are you wagging it? And so, yeah, it's all this weird, you know, pressure and, and I think what it does is, I've seen even more now, whether it's outbound or not, it could be, um, you know, if I do work or I'm bored, it's usually around go-to-market and growth, but there's a lot of companies that they, you know, ping-pong around, let's try this, let's try that, or even with an outbound, let's try these, let's try that, and let's try, you know, this kind of SEO and, you know, because it it's not working fast enough.

And so they switch. And, I don't know. Before it works. Yeah, well, that's the problem.

Aaron, let me let me ask you. So if you were to sit down today and write kind of the 2025 version of predictable revenue. Yeah. What's the one thing off the top of your head that is in the first book that wouldn't make the cut today?

Um, okay. I mean, it's a good question. So, well, the first, I will say, like, for the predictable revenue book, there was something that was not in that book that made it into the second book, the from impossible book, which was, uh, the very first chapter that is nailing a niche. Right.

So that was like, uh, like, you know. Yeah. Um, and that's online. Okay.

So today, and I'm not planning on writing, I'm not going to write a book, although I'm talking to people about helping, you know, advising them on helping them think through it and write one. To me, um, you know, it'll be like, where I still, you know, I do speaking and I give talks, and I have ideas in this area. But where I go to is, um, there's these few key, this key principles that still apply. You know, people struggle with specializing your, you know, basically sales team, whether they're human or not.

You know, more jobs, so people can do fewer things better. It's nailing a niche, which is you have to be even more insightful and more specific and more targeted. And these are not going to so AI will change lots of things, they're not going to change these principles. So, re-nailing your niche, um, another is again, you know, it's like just rethinking how you're creating predictable pipeline, because the channels are always changing, and their metrics are changing, and also what worked six months ago may not work today.

So, it's kind of more, though, um, you know, adaptive to it as well. Uh, and another is culture. You know, to me, so here okay, so the, that's kind of reviewing the stuff that still is relevant or more so in an overwhelming world. The newer stuff, you know, I touched on this in the prior books, but really I would expand on, uh, creating a culture, like a growth culture, which is combining some level of challenge, which most people have, but with caring.

You know, sort of, I think what's missing in general, is needed more than ever in both a, uh, a hybrid/remote world and an AI, uh, busy world, is ways that you can connect with your team, because how you do that will affect a lot of things including, you know, their loyalty, their belief in the company, their belief in the product, and the way that you treat customers, as well as your ability to grow them and their ability to contribute. So that would be, uh, a bigger section of focus. And the last one, which is be the newest part, which wasn't I mean, I alluded to some of this in prior books. Even in predictable revenue, I had an example on how I worked with my team to, you know, help them help them redo the comp plans, like a collaborative approach.

Yeah. But the newest section, uh, would be, um, you know, I give this talk now, it's called creating predictable revenue in an unpredictable world. So it touches on these things and it's a look for the future. Like, no one I don't know where AI's going to take things.

It's exciting, also scary. Yeah. No one really knows. Um, but, one thing that will serve you well, no matter what happens, you know, the thing that is the most durable, or can be, are relationships.

Now, those relationships can look like how you treat your internal people. How your relationships with your your team. It can be your relationships that your sales people create and have with customers. It could be your relationship with your market.

You know, what that's it could be doing a one-to-many or one-to-one, right? I've created a lot of relationships that are more one-to-many through books and things. It could be your, you know, a lot companies are focusing on partner eco, you know, ecosystems, communities, and partners. So there's a lot of ways you can take this and, you know, uh, apply it to your business, but relationships to me, again, no matter what happens on the tech side, are going to be things that are help you have more durable success.

So say relationships combined with some sort of systems equal durable growth. That's like the newest thing for the future. I love that. We, um, I someone just asked me a very similar question on LinkedIn, like, "Okay, so like if outbound is dead," Which it's not, you know, of course.

"Uh, and 100%," "but where's the focus?" And, you know, my my initial gut is relationships, go to network, you know, social selling, making sure that you're like fostering and nurturing those relationships. And I think going back to my old sales leader days, like, a lot of people like to say, "Oh, I have a relationship." Well, what is a relationship?

A relationship has to be bidirectional, right? A relationship isn't that I can, you know, "Oh, I have Aaron's cell phone number and I can text him and he gives me a thumbs up." A relationship is we can actually have a conversation and ask each other to help one another. Yeah, it doesn't have to be bidirectional, but yeah, it can be.

Tell me more. Well, I mean, there's lots of people I reach out to that I don't really know, but they know me. And they will refer me on or like, we're doing it, have a friend, right? So I have a a friend.

There's a good example where maybe the future. I met him through another sales guy. He's so he's a sales, he's got a sales, uh, he's an entrepreneur with a sales business in Germany. Right?

I'm in Europe. I moved to Edinburgh from Los Angeles, you know, six years ago. Um, just a great guy. Like, we have a good time.

Like, good friends. And we're like, we've kind of wanted to do something together, some kind of business together. And I've known him for like two or three years. Finally we're like, "Okay, let's do an event in Munich.

We'll just do it in like six weeks." And, um, invite some sales leaders and so on. And, you know, I'm messaging people on LinkedIn, uh, about this event. And, you know, I'm getting a lot of responses and, you know, people, a lot of people say, "Hey, I, you know, I like this your book," or, "I saw this," and, like, they know me better than I know them.

It's starting a two-way relationship, but it started off as one-way. So. Good point. Yeah.

That's right. And it's that it's that one to many you were talking about. So it's interesting because that is what's kind of happening at a macro level. Like people are trying to do one to manys a lot.

Podcasts. Yeah, founder content. I mean, Yeah, I mean, LinkedIn is a great example. There's how many people you have, you know, hundreds of thousands of followers, like how many people do you really know, right?

But you put something out there like, "Hey, I'm going to be in Germany doing this event." And they're like, "Oh, yeah, I, you know, I'd be interested to see what you what what's going on." Yeah. And I think, you know, speaking of founder like, so again, we can create one to many relationships through content, through events, through brand, through these things.

That's fine. Um, you know, for me, and I watch some of these guys, um, you know, like, Adam Robinson's, you know, he's he's obviously done really well. He's one of the predictable revenues dead guys. Um, and there's some some others, but I know that you gotta decide what's the other thing, um, I would include, too, is, um, you really gotta figure out, you know, how to stick to your core.

I don't know if that's the right term, but, you know, in a really busy world, it's like, you know, you as a as a person, whether you're an entrepreneur or a sales person, it's like, how can you uh continue to figure out what you're the best at, or really good at, or want to be really good at. And kind of try to offload the things you're not great at. And for example, I'm not great at consistent content. Right?

The the content treadmill that the the LinkedIn, the founder uh like content guys do. I just I can't I I can't. That's not my. Book content.

Like, that's where like I'm a book person. When I do content, it's usually towards books. If I'm meeting people, I'm thinking, you know, I like meeting people, but if there's more of a business context, like, "Hmm, maybe they, you know, be interested in a book or refer the book or," like, that's my lens. You know, but I'm 53 now.

And I've, you know, even in this last like five years, kind of really like saw that. Um, so, you know, again, it's this, I think another part of the book is, it's a different version of specialization. It's more like each person in such a busy world where it's so confusing and there's so many demands on you from so many people, friends, family, teammates, customers, etcetera. You know, how can you kind of continue to figure out what you can and should be, you know, really great at?

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So let's let's take a little bit of a shift. You you've worked with tons of leadership teams, you've gone through a bunch of work. What's the what's the biggest thing that you're seeing today that's not working? What's in the in the go to market strategy?

And where do they go look first? Like something's not working, it's a common pattern, where do they go first to like get that fixed? Yeah, that's a good question. You know, I'm trying to think, you know, I'm on a couple boards, and I've been on uh, I'm just thinking, you know, there's I think, first of all, there's so many different types of companies and challenges.

Um, but I do think that one of a common theme is that there's so many, um, things that can work and things that you should be doing that people just get too scattered doing too many things. It's kind of like, well, marketing's Is it a priority thing? Is it a priority thing? Or is it like not like putting the work in type of thing?

No, I think it's just trying to juggle too many balls because there's so many you feel like you need to be doing. And you feel like if I it's the fear of it's a version of I mean, usually the fear of missing out, whether it's driven by the again, investors to CEO, CEO to VP, whatever it's could be sales, could be marketing, could be product features. Um, it's it's really hard for people to kind of zone in on like, what are these really these few things we really need to do that are the most important? And remember, okay, they're going to take longer than we think they will to get really right.

Right? Cuz us humans all think, "Oh, it'll take two weeks or two months or two years." And in reality, it's three times that. So, you know, it's like really stick to that.

I wish more people knew that. I wish more people knew like, just because you are a sales leader or you've done it in the past or you've done it somewhere else, like it's just different. Like you have to like go through the process. You have to evolve and figure out where the challenge is before you can fix it.

And then you got to give it time to get fixed. Yeah. And I think something that's really been lost in the shuffle and I've I haven't gotten anyone to really zone in on this, honestly. So I don't I'm not sure why or Um, you know, so going back to this talk I gave about relationships and I have these examples.

I'm still kind of, but there's one example that is I don't have a term for it but it's kind of like customer, you know, refer some sort of referral playbook. Um, So here's this maybe people are so overwhelmed and so busy they can't get I think this is a great idea and I don't know I maybe it just can't fit because it doesn't fit their current playbook. But, you know, I'm like, okay. And I've had a conversation with a CEO.

I'm like, dude, the number one thing you need to do is talk to customers and then ask them for referrals to other customers. And there's ways to help with that, right? There's all kinds of tools to surface. You know, I'm going to talk to Bob and here's three people kind of like Bob I want to talk to.

Um, and he just, you know, I think he's overwhelmed, right? He just can't get it in his mind that that's like an incredibly valuable and in the meanwhile he's trying to do like SEO and even outbound like don't don't do this stuff. Like, it's just not resonating. Referrals are like that's number one.

Like if you if you have a if you have a referral in a conversation, that that that's interesting that they wouldn't take that You'd think. Yeah, well, it's work. And I think so there's a couple of things. One, I think is when people are really stressed, they revert their their processing power goes down, and they can kind of only do what they've done before.

It's like, think about all the sales people or executives, you're like, "Ah, I'm not getting enough deals. I just need to like make more calls. My calls aren't working. I need to make more calls."

Or, "My emails aren't working. I need to send more email." So there's something about humans, like cuz it happens often enough, it's almost like not their fault because it's just like the way we revert in a fight or flight towards doing more of the same thing. Um, and it's like it's if it's in the process.

We're getting the same result. Yeah, you know. And if it's it's I mean, same in same in relationships, same in business. It's like we're here there's a human thing there.

And like to do a new habit, a new process, a new thing is just by too, it like there's this big chunk of brain power. And if your brain will get that much in, it just I don't know. They're like it slides off or something. But the the I'll tell you the gist of it is I understand why, um, referrals are not like very systematized and especially like B2B companies.

Part of that's kind of me, like promoting specialization, because you have, you know, prospect, you know, there's SDR types and there's sales people and then there's customer success or account managers. And so now you've got this, um, misalignment of incentive. I feel like a corporate person now. But you the people who want who need more meetings, don't have the relationships with the customers who have the, you know, referrals.

And so in my mind, if you said, "Look, we're going to make this a priority." And so once either people are basically signing or three to six months later, once they've got some great results and they're they're they're happy, um, have a conversation with them. You know, so the there has to be some kind of teamwork aspect where, you know, revenue, uh, accountability people talk with the customer success, the relationship owners, and say, "Look, let's jointly go to this customer, say, 'Hey, would you be okay, um, you've had some success, you know, if we there's some other people that we think could be of benefit as well, can we ask you to make some intros, we'll make it easy on you.'" Right?

And it should be a live conversation, not some automated email, cuz people don't and they say hopefully yes. And then later they go back and, you know, again, you can surface, "Hey, here's two prospects this person might know. You know, would you mind making these intros?" So it's more of like a you you do need some teamwork and there's some new kind of metrics and there's new there's a new playbook of something it's not like that big a deal, but it is a different playbook with different stuff.

So I think it's just hasn't clicked for people yet, and I don't have the right term for people to be like, "Oh, shit. Why aren't we doing this? Why are we doing investing in all this money in all these other channels, which might be working or may not, and we're just ignoring potentially the best one and the one positioned for the future." So, that's my a bit of my bit of my little soapbox.

No, I I think it's this has been something that has been talked about for five years, 10 years, like, when you first signed the contract, potentially you have the honeymoon period. Like, there could be references or referrals there. And then, like you're saying, like three months in, you get like some success. Like, once you get the first success, like then you may want to have that second conversation.

I think in many cases, the CS team, who is now transitioning over the last 12 months into more of a revenue-generating organization, is starting to do that run that play. Um, it needs to be probably built a bit more succinct. Like, maybe you run some AI to scrape their LinkedIn, to find people that are in that in your in your ICP and say, "Hey, can you make me introductions?" Like, if you don't know anybody, here are a couple people that I think would make good introductions.

And they may know them or they may not know them. Yeah. And there's, you know, I have a buddy creating something called Connect the Dots help with that. And there's other companies who've tried this over the years.

And and there's there's one other aspect to this, which is, um, you know, it's not just a one-time thing. You need to be able to recharge the battery. Because if you ask for too many referrals, you know, maybe it's even three in one month. The person it kind of it's it's they call it a battery.

It's like it drains the battery. So there's this other aspect. But yeah, I don't I don't know. I don't think it'd be that it's not, you know, big a deal to figure out something that's going to work to help power that.

Uh, I mean, maybe it's one of these things where it might just need to have a couple case studies and examples for people to, "Oh, okay, wow. Someone else did it." And it kind of makes it easier to me to understand how it work and what to do. And now I can fit it into my little like, you know, mental tunnel to make it work in my place, my company.

Aaron, what what's next for GT GT M? So predictable revenue, let's get predictive go-to-market. What's coming down the pipe? You know, we know obviously AI is huge.

Um, but where is buyer behavior going to shift, call it over the next 12 to 24 months. And and like with AI, where where are people going to miss out? Where's it being used wrong? You know, well, the first thing, AI is only as a label is only going to be around for, I mean, not necessarily that long.

It's cuz it's going to be a utility like, uh, you know, internet, electricity, and gas. Yeah. It's kind of like the Internet. When the Internet first came out, it was like, "Oh, it's an Internet company."

And then after a few years, it's like, "Well, it's just a company that is." So, I don't know, you know, again, I think time and again, there's, uh, the obvious, uh, you know, improvements, accelerations of things we're already doing. Um, and but there's all kinds of things that would be created that we don't really know yet. So, like, once you have agent-to-agent, uh, you know, buying and selling or researching or, nobody really knows.

And plus no one really knows, you know, it is true that the the speed of the change that could happen in term and also including the job market could be ugly. Could I don't know. Um, more likely to be ugly than smooth, because it's probably going to happen so fast. It could happen so fast.

And you know, talk about that. I was reading an article the other day, the CEO of Anthropic was saying 50% of white collar jobs, um, he believes could be taken over by AI leading to like a 10 to 20% unemployment. Yeah. I mean, maybe.

You know, he also, you remember, he's got some sort of agenda in this, too. It's not like he's, you know, it's why he's little one, right? And, yeah, lots of people will adapt, a lot of people won't adapt. I think, too, that the there's always like the the you know, the tech people and the people who are already kind of like have money, whether they made it or or inherited or got it some other place, like, "Oh, you know, there's going to have to be re-training and, you know, people just have to figure something out."

And like, "Yeah, that's a lot of like real people. Like, do you have any children, parents, sisters, brothers in that boat?" You may take it a bit more seriously, because no one's really giving a shit right now, is what it seems like. Because it hasn't really dropped.

Uh, and how that affects but even more so, you know, the effect that's going to have on, you know, like the uncertainty already on society. Cause everyone I talked to, started after Covid, right? And after Covid, the and then there was the cost of living crisis and then I don't know, elections and AI. Everyone just has this sense, including executives, right?

This one VP of sales told me, he's like, he's just a little bit terrified of how fast things are changing. And, you know, that sense of what no one knows what's going to happen next month. Like, the floor could drop out. Which, you know, maybe we will, maybe we won't, but that anxiety creates again this um reversion to it's harder for people to make better decisions, longer term decisions, the right decisions.

They revert back to prior behavior, give me the quick win. I just need like the 40 you say the 40,000 things right now for outbound, like, I need the quick win because this that the other. And it's like this um, you know, this uh, yeah, that's like almost regression towards I'm just going to like turn in the crank. Like, and if the crank isn't working, I I got to turn it harder.

So, I don't know how long, I mean, how that society will take to kind of adapt between I don't know, because like you got AI and you got robotics. Like, blue collar, who knows how much blue collar, you know, how many people drive for Uber? With way I mean, there's a lot of tech. Yeah, people aren't talking about that nearly enough.

Uh, there's a lot of who knows, you know? So I'm going back to in relationships. I know who knows what all that stuff's going to do, but if you're focusing on creating and building good relationships, whether you're going to be looking for jobs, looking for funding, looking for customers, filling the blank. Just having a base level of mental health, community health, um, creativity, people that talk to.

Like, that's going to serve you. I just I that's what I'm doing. Like, trying to, um, how do I do things that are interesting to me, that are, you know, feel creative, with the right people. Um, and I still have to make money.

I got 10 children. I got a big family. And I didn't start at Salesforce early enough to retire a long time ago. Um, so but even then it's rather than going back to, "Hey, how did I make money before?"

It's, you know, what feels right? You know, really to me it's like more of an intuition because I don't feel like the things I do I could go back and use, you know, a regression analysis and AI to predict from what worked in the past, what's going to work for me in the future. But I can focus on what feels right, what's interesting, where are the gaps and who can I do it with. And, you know, feel like I keep doing that, then it's going to keep working out.

What's next for you? Good question. Um, so I'm going through I've got like, I went through my own midlife crisis the last few years. Right?

So I had a a business uh doing outbound in North America that I was just sick of doing the work. And part it was the work itself, part it was it was it wasn't a good partnership in business partnership for the long term. So, had a divorce out of that, business divorce. And so I've got this, you know, first it was this, well, I want to make money doing what I love, but I have no idea what that is.

So like first like, what do I actually like to do? If I could do something, what would that be? For like two years, I'm like, I have no idea. Um, and then over time, what I got more clarity and, "Oh, okay.

What I actually really am drawn to and like to do are books." So that's writing, um, writing with other people, helping other people. So, you know, advising, crafting, um, writing new books. And the new books are a bit different.

So one's called income operating system. The title's going to change. Just how people can make more money. Uh, the other book's called eat shit and grow.

Just like coming crazy family stories from having a and supporting a family of 10. So new books and working with some others, again, talking to people about a new sales book. We'll see. So, books, speaking, and partnerships.

You know, it works great for me when I have a really good partner, someone I trust, like I've got a build business with a great partner in Brazil. It's amazing. Right? So it's like predictable revenue Brazil.

Um, they're growing like the North America business was like declining. The Brazil one's growing. Like, doing great. A lot based on things like culture, treating people well.

Um, it's not like the tactics. It's a lot of the soft skills, which lead to the right decisions for the big picture and right decisions for the tactical stuff. So I'm, you know, whether you call it Ikigai, I'm on this path of making, uh, I'm not making as much money now doing what I love as I did when I was um, doing really kind of full-time outbound stuff. But I'm on track, and my plan is to make more money doing what I love.

Uh, and again, I I feel like I'm not totally locked into exactly it keeps getting more clear, um, then I'm making more money doing that, things I love to do, like to do, or even like to do, then I did doing the consulting. So, but love that. love that. speaking, partnerships this one Yeah.

Like the thing in Germany, that's that's promising. I want to do some stuff with this guy like. And, you know, I've struggled like a lot of people having friendships over the for a long time. And, you know, I've realized, um, you know, I do like having, if I have a business or a project with someone who I like, is like a friend, then it makes it easier to like maintain that versus being something else to do on top of all the kids and the things and the other, so.

Dale, we need to be friends. You have a business together, guys. Is it's it's there there there the relationships is very interesting. I think the pendulum will swing way back.

Like, I think the pendulum like, scale breaks everything. If we look at marketing automation, we look at cold outbound, we look at outreach and sales like scale breaks everything. And so we need to come at we need to come back to the other side of the pendulum. Um, let's wrap this up a little bit.

You got for a little bit of rapid fire. See uh, see what you what you like, what you don't like. What if I said no? Then we wouldn't do it.

No, okay, well I am. Okay. Good thing, good thing. Uh, what's the first app you check when you wake up in the morning?

Uh, usually um, text because if I have kids in the states, if there's some emergency or something, which there rarely is, but yeah, texts. Early bird or night owl? I don't know, you know. I have I'm I I haven't had a choice in either one of the other.

So, for so long, like I have to get up early to get the kids to school and stay up late because, you know, people in another time like kids and the wives and things who like to talk late, so. What's uh what's your favorite indulgent snack or food? Uh, coffee. Good coff snoppy coffee.

Snoppy coffee. Just like that. I'm a big coffee guy. No, I like, you know, I like uh, well actually lattes or uh hot chocolate.

So, I live in Edinburgh. Best place is called Modern Standard, which is near nearby. And, uh, you know, so like, or a hot chocolate where they don't use the powder. They actually melt like chocolate in, you know, it's usually like 20 20 Real hot.

Yeah. $20, you know, yeah. So living in Edinburgh, uh, Edinburgh is one of my favorite cities. I coincidentally had the best Thai food of my life in some back alley in Edinburgh probably 15 years ago.

Um, but of all the places you've been or maybe you haven't, what's your dream vacation destination? Uh, for me, I, you know, I actually don't know. I couldn't tell you because my brain can't get out of the mode of if I'm going places it's for work or with kids or, you know, some other thing. So, I've traveled a lot.

Um, so I don't know. I don't have a I don't think it'd be a destination. Oh wait, okay. Probably go back to Yosemite.

That's I had a Yeah. There's like a I really loved being there with some family. Um, like 10 years ago. And there's I've been a couple times but that last time there's something that was really like special about it.

I love that. Awesome. Let's let's wrap it up. Um, if you were to fix go-to-market today, what's one thing that you would tell people today like, "Go do this."

I think I know the answer to yours but let's wrap it with that. Yeah. I mean I think that'd be to figure out how to um, you know, create, uh, better at least better relationships with your customers and ask them for more referrals. Love that.

I knew that's going to be the answer. If it wasn't that, I think it'd be, you know, everyone figure how to, you know, exercise and sleep more. I love it. Aaron, thank you so much for joining the show.

Thank you for all the knowledge you have given to the sales community. Um, it was a pleasure to chat with you, man. Hey, guys. Feel like I'm just getting started, too.

I love it. That's the that's the part. They we could go another hour.