The answers I got?
Money… revenue… winning.
This Mad Libs exercise was something I did with the executive leaders in one of my early sales leadership roles.
Each of the leaders’ answers focused on an outcome.
Not one of them mentioned the work needed to earn it.
That’s the flaw. The stereotype of sales expects the outcome and ignores the work.
I didn’t know it at the time, but the philosophical change that occurred in that room led to the foundation I’ve built in this business.
Husband to a wife I still date, father to two kids that keep me young, Jersey guy with Philly roots, golfer on a mission to break 80, car guy who drives cars meant to be driven, weekend tinkerer, CrossFit coach, dog dad, and the last person you want to tell something can’t be done.
For fifteen years I was the guy companies called when they needed revenue. I was good at it. Really good.
I performed. Closed deals, showed up, delivered. Nobody looking from the outside would have seen it coming.
But when my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016, I went into machine mode. Held everything together. Felt nothing. Kept producing. And I was good at it… that was the problem.
Meanwhile, at work, I was carrying revenue in an environment that was quietly shifting underneath me. A leadership structure that changed without warning. A sales philosophy that clashed with everything I knew to be true. People leaving one by one. And leadership that made it clear my wellbeing was not their problem.
I stayed anyway. Because leaving felt like failure.
When my wife recovered, my body finally sent the bill. Thirty to forty pounds. Hair falling out. Depression I didn’t have a name for yet. Eventually a Hashimoto’s diagnosis that explained everything and nothing at the same time.
I wasn’t burned out from weakness. I was burned out from being too good at holding it together for too long… at home and at work… in places that were never going to hold me up.
At some point I stopped pretending the cost wasn’t real. That’s when everything changed.
So I made the decision I’d been avoiding for years… In March 2024, on my son’s 12th birthday, I quit.
I landed somewhere new within weeks. Same industry, different door. And within six months I could see the same story starting to unfold. Different cast, same script.
That’s when I knew it wasn’t bad luck.
I walked away from that one too. And this time I didn’t run toward anything.
I spent the next few months sitting with what I actually knew. Not what I’d been hired to do. What I actually understood that nobody had ever paid me to own.
And it was this: most founders don’t have a sales problem. They have a foundation problem. And you can’t hire your way out of it.
I was done raising someone else’s kids.
Starting Point Associates started in December 2024.
I was the first sales hire at five companies that went on to 3x, 5x and 7x their revenues.
Years in sales and professional services
Sold personally
Companies where I was the first sales hire
Of those five founders went on to exit
It bleeds into everything I do, and I have never found a better expression of it than in sales.
If you want to learn what sales IS, and more importantly what it ISN’T…
That is what I teach.
That is what I coach.
That is what I advise my clients on.
All of it. From how to sell it yourself on day 1, to how to hire others to sell it for you… and everything in between.
A live group room for people doing their own selling. You bring a real deal, we work it with peers in the room.
For owner-operators building a sales function with a team behind them. Built with you, not for you.
