Effective Coaching Strategies for Sales Managers with Alex McNaughten

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What up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of the live Better Sell Better podcast. This is your host, Kevin Dorsey, AKA kd. And today we're going to talk about the difference between being good and great within an org. Because so often you hear sales tips and email tips, cold calling tips, all the tips. That's everything that gets Talked about on LinkedIn and shows and everything else. What people so constantly miss is management and coaching advice. I have now led 4 orgs with over 100 reps in them. I have been scaling for the last 13 years of my life and one of my biggest light bulb moments about four years ago was all good strategies go to die at the frontline manager. And it's not because they don't care. It's not because they don't work hard. It's because they've never been coached and taught how to actually drive behavior change. And that is why I'm so excited. Alex McNaughton on the show with me today. He is the founder and CEO over at Grow AI and we're going to be diving into how to actually manage, how to actually coach that drives performance, drives behavior change, and drives skill development to get to that next level. Alex, my man, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, Kevin, for having me on the show.

It's great to be here like this, this topic. I mean, we're gonna struggle to keep this one to the timeframe because we could go on this all day. So what I want to start with just right out the gate is what's the difference in your eyes between coaching and managing? Because there is a lot of managers that think they're coaches and there's a lot of coaches that think they're managers. But it's not the same. How do you delineate those two things?

Yeah, it's a really good question and I think let's start there. And I'd love to talk a little bit about how we got to this place, why is this a problem as well. But I think coaching is helping someone to improve their capability, come to the answers themselves. It's not just showing them, it's helping them work through problems so that they can get better and ultimately improve their skill set. That's how I think about coaching. I'd love your take on it though. From a management perspective. That's all the cadences and the people side of people, systems, processes, cadences of running a team. And that is a different thing to coaching. And then there's training as well, which is effectively just teaching someone a new skill. So I think a lot of muddling up happens between these areas.

Yeah, I just think it's important because like, I think with CEB did a study a while back, they pulled like 10,000 reps and asked them what percentage of them thought they were getting regular coaching from their manager. It was like 17% of reps thought they were getting regular and impactful coaching from their manager. But they also surveyed all the managers and asked the managers what percentage of them thought were providing regular coaching to their reps. And it was like 87%. There's just this massive gap between this which kind of sets up to the next point here of like, so why do you think we are in this place? Like, why does this seem to be such a blind spot for so many companies?

Well, I think you have to look at how people come into these management positions and actually how people fall into sales in general. Right. So 77% of people fall into sales. They don't choose it as a career, they fall into it somehow. Then what happens is the best salesperson is typically promoted into a management position. Now chances are that salesperson, like you just said, hasn't been coached about selling. Then we put them in the management position and we, and now they're frontline manager and we say, okay, cool, now you're leading 10 people. Now you're responsible for 10 people. 95% of those managers get no training, coaching direction whatsoever on how to even run a sales team. So then what do they do? They just default back to what they're good at, which was selling. So every time they sell, you know, one of their team is struggling, what does the manager do? Jump in. And you know, it's the sort of self perpetuating cycle. And you know, I think it's the fundamental gap across sales orgs is. And it's the thing that leads to the lack of quota attainment. It's the thing that leads to the retention challenges in teams. You know, what is it, 14 month average tenure in sales right now?

Yeah.

17 months for, you know, someone in a leadership role. It's just this self perpetuating cycle.

Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's funny. I literally, it's so funny, man. I literally led a manager training this morning with my management team.

Nice.

One of the things, I mean we do bi weekly, but I run bi weekly trainings with my, with my leadership org. Right. Like I have a 15 hour course and Academy they go through. To be a leader on my team, like it's heavy to be a leader on, on my team and to get to those promotion levels. But when I talked to them I was like, the problem is for a lot of you, you were successful in sales without coaching.

Yeah.

And because of that, that's how you lead. Because you didn't need coaching, because you didn't have to practice. Then you pass that on to your reps. And that's not the same saying. Right. We have this phrase that we say often. I am not you, you are not me. We are not them, they are not us. We have to remember that we can't manage the way that we like to be managed. We can't coach the way that we like to be coached. We have to cater to the individual. So let's go down this coaching path.

Right?

So we know right now a lot of managers aren't doing a lot of coaching. Right. So what's the advice you give them? Right. Like a manager's like, all right, well okay, I do want to coach more. I want to be better at it. What are some of the tactics, the tools that a manager can use to become a better coach?

I think one of the simplest things that a manager can do is, you know, we'll pick the one on one conversation as the starting point. That's, you know, a lot of the interactions that go on between a manager and that their sales rep is slow down a little bit. So, you know, I think the default is to jump in to try and solve the problem immediately. But unfortunately what that creates is like a dependence. If your sales manager is constantly coming in and then just doing the things that you should be doing as a sales rep and solving all the problems for you, you don't actually have to level up. So I think it's Slow down. And instead of giving the answer away immediately is help that person come to the solution themselves. Ask them a few questions, you know, ask them what? Okay, so you're struggling with this, you know, let's say it's a, you know, like a specific deal situation. You're struggling with this situation right now. How did you come here? How did you get here? Okay, cool. Tell me more about that. What have you tried so far? And that in itself, it seems so simple. The advice we often give salespeople is ask some open ended questions. But that's what a good manager can do to help one of their salespeople or their whole team to improve their capability and remove that dependence. It's one of the biggest things. But you know, I was just gonna say I empathize with the frontline sales manager because I think it's one of the hardest roles in the world. You're pulled in a million directions. You've probably got too many people in your team. You probably. I saw, I was chatting with a frontline sales manager recently, 16 direct reports. And you're managing up and down and having a coach and having, and it's, it's a lot.

My personal record is 27 as a manager. I had 27 sellers reporting to me directly. Right. As just what the hell was, was happening there? And it's funny because the way that you mentioned it, as I've been talking about this more and more, is this the old cliche? Right? Your best seller doesn't make your best manager. Right. And what's interesting about that is it's, it's because people stop doing the very things that made them good at sales. As a seller, you did great discovery, but managers never do great discovery on their reps. As a seller, you sold the vision and the better future. But then managers don't sell the better future and vision with their reps. As a seller, you did.

Objection.

Handling. Managers don't do like managing. Following up. It's actually the same skills. It's actually that managers stop selling. Right. So I love that first step of asking questions. It's almost like again, leadership, discovery, ask the questions, dig in a little bit deeper. You wouldn't let a prospect get off the hook with one answer. You go deeper into it. So I love that. Then where do you go? Right? So I've been asking the questions because there's coming to the solution and then there's actually being able to solve it. Where do you coach from there?

So I think another thing that can massively help the stretched sales Manager. So if we use your example right, you had 27 direct reports. If you're trying to do one on one, like if you're trying to fit in one on one sites every single day of the month, you're gonna be to one on one, right? Like, it's insane. So then you have to get a little bit strategic and say, okay, of my 27 sellers, what are the common challenges that I'm seeing across the team? And now let's start to solve those time efficiently. So if I have two thirds of my team over here struggling in a specific area, that's a great team coaching opportunity. If I have one seller over here with a very, very specific problem, that's just them, that's something I'll solve one on one. And, and then also leverage the people, the high performers in your team and get them to help coach as well. So, like, a really good example is like one of our clients recently, they, you know, our platform surface, that one of the sellers in their team, their high performer, was running things in a specific way. And their leader then took that person, gave them a position of, okay, why don't you show the rest of the team how you're doing this? And that person then is like running a training and then effectively being a coach for the other 15 people in the team. And you know, it's just about, how can you, how can you maximize the hours in the day? That's it. You can't be everywhere. And I think that's the first thing that sales managers has to like, admit is like, I cannot be everywhere, so I need to be really smart about the hours I do have.

And that's the thing there, right? Is like prioritizing, first of all, doing the right things. But what you mentioned there is like, we talk about this a lot within my orgs, right? We call it the wiggle.

Right?

We call it the wiggle. And wiggle stands for what good looks like, right? So like we, we talk about the wiggle all the time. What's the wiggle? Do we have the wiggle? Do we even know? Right? And the example you just gave there, it's like once you identify what good looks like, it doesn't have to come from us. Pull that rep in and share. Because of what we also know in leadership, reps tend to love to learn from their peers more than they do their manager.

Yeah.

So I'm going to lean into that. Like, I'm not going to fight that. I'm like, okay, what are the best doing? Can I capture that? And Then we go through the four Ds right. So we say define document, demonstrate, deliberately practice. So once we know the wiggle, we go to the four Ds, the four find document, demonstrate, deliberately practice it. Right. We capture it, we explain, define what it is, we document it, we put it in writing, we demonstrate it, we do trainings, recordings, examples, and then we deliberately practice it day in and day out till we get good at it. So what's your take on practice actually as we kind of go through this. Right. So you think about skill development. Practice is foundational in my orgs. I'd be curious on your take.

I think the analogy of a sports team, like an elite sports team is really good. Like what do they do? They're practicing all week for one game. You know, they practice all week, hours and hours a day for that one moment. And sales is actually quite a lot like that. You know, a lot of a lot rests on that 30 minute discovery conversation. So why the hell wouldn't you practice before it? Like why would you leave it to chance? So I think, you know, the best performing sales orgs that I've ever been a part of or they've been clients of mine over the years have always, always embraced this idea of like continual development, continual practice. It doesn't have to be 10 hours a week. Like if, you know, like we get it, everyone's busy, but make space for it. Like I think any, everyone can commit to 15 minutes a week. Like everyone could fit that into their schedule or five minutes a day, however you want to chunk it down. Like there's always time for that.

Yeah, I like the phrase, this was the training by the way, just with my managers was how to run practice the right way. And like, you know, he'd gotten away from it a little bit. How to structure, how to fit it in. Because what I opened with is like the idea of being too busy for practice is actually the very reason why we have to practice.

Yeah.

And I was like, I want you to think about that real quick. If they're too busy to practice, practice, that means they are too busy doing it the wrong way.

Right.

That's literally what that means, is that they are doing the thing poorly. More if they're so busy selling that they don't have time to practice. And that's exactly why we have to practice because that means they are losing on deals left and right because they're not getting good at it. So it's like we have 30 minutes blocked for every single rep and then 15 additional with each Rep and their manager every single week. It's built into the calendar. And then we do. We do some daily just. We call them, like, you know, prep more than practice. Hey, Alex, I got a call coming up with super biz this afternoon. Can we spend like 15 minutes? Let's go through a little bit. Let's do some different scenarios and like, you know, practice that out to really ingrain it and. And put that in there. So. So then let's keep going around this, right? What are some of the other common misses that you are seeing at that manager that level? Right, Because I talk to people on this podcast all the time and very few come in talking about, like, management and coaching, which is why I'm so excited. So, like, what else are you seeing that has this so top of mind for you?

Like, it was kind of. It's been my life, you know, like, I was the classic sales rep who was promoted to sales leadership way too soon with no support, and Suddenly I've got 12 people reporting to me and I had no idea what I was doing. So that was like my very first job was in a tech startup. And things grew quickly, and suddenly I'm leading a team. So, you know, and then I moved. Moved into consulting, coaching, and then I had a recruitment company and training company. So I, like, I saw all of this, you know, over the last 11 years and now solving this problem with technology with SaaS. But, you know, I think one of the. There's been a few things I've really observed. Like, number one is we don't support our frontline sales managers.

Right?

We don't. We don't give them love. Like, sounds like you're doing an amazing work with your organization. But that is the exception, not the rule. Like, 95% of sales managers have never had sales management training. Yeah, that's insane. That's completely insane. And then, you know, it's a tough job. So I think that's the first thing is like, organize at an organizational level. We need more senior leaders like you who are investing in actually supporting their frontline sales managers. I think other Mrs. Are just, you know, like, this stuff isn't that complicated. But, you know, simple things like, let's get our team collaborating and helping each other. Like, let's not have 27 individuals in the sales team. Let's get them helping each other because that way everyone improves. If we can get John showing the rest of the team how he's nailing discovery, and we can get Alice showing how she's crushing cold calls, it's a win, win, win because John feels great, everyone else learns and you look like a rockstar manager for facilitating the whole thing. So I think, you know, but, but I do think the biggest miss is, is that we're not supporting our frontline sales managers to be successful.

Yeah, it's what I'm trying to solve, man. Right. Like I've launched the Sales Leadership Accelerator. I've built the full course, right. The same methodologies I use within my own orgs. I've documented, demonstrated, deliberately, practiced. I put it all together. I'm starting to work with companies this year with this, I've worked with HubSpot and Snowflake and Clearwater. Like, because, like to really install this because it's one of, I've described it this way, it's one of like the most commonly accepted, well known unactioned problems in SaaS.

Yes.

Like you talk to any leader out there and you go, so how much training have your managers gotten? And 90% of them, like, yeah, they've never really gotten much training and it's like they know it, but they've never done anything about it. Like I, when I was doing like market research, I talked to some of the who's who on LinkedIn, right? Like I'm close a lot of like, you know, the big names there, you know, and I was talking them through this, like, yeah, like I like this, you know, like, da da da, da da. Then the last question is like, have you ever brought in training for your managers? And this is one of the best of the best. And I'm like, actually no, I never really have, you know, and it's like, it's just crazy. Like people don't think about it. So if you're, if a leader is listening, what would you recommend for them as first steps, right? Like how do you start to enable the managers better?

Oh, before I answer that, I think I'll just give you my take as to, I think why this, I think this has happened. I think it's been certainly as long as I've been in the workforce anyway, it's been like a cheap money environment. So a lot of bad behavior has perpetuated because money was cheap. So it was like, it's okay, you know, like 40% quote entertainment. It's okay, just add another body. And now suddenly it's turned quite quickly and that's not, it's not going to fly anymore. I just don't, I can't foresee that continuing in the current environment. So, you know, I guess, why am I saying that because now is the time to do it. Because if we don't, companies are going to fall over, you know, sales teams are going to disappear if we don't solve it. So. Sorry, what was your original question, Katie? I got myself distracted in that impassioned rant.

Basically how to start, enabling, how to start.

First things first is recognize it's a problem. Like someone in senior leadership needs to just call out that this is a big gap. And I think sales is the place to start because sales keeps the lights on. If the sales team aren't performing, then the organization's in serious trouble. So I think the first thing is recognize it's a problem. I think second thing, start small. Start small Senior leaders who are managing these frontline sales managers, like what you've just described is just start doing it, start coaching them, start imparting some wisdom on them or looking for solutions, capability building programs, whatever it might be, and just carve out a small bit of budget for it. That simple. Really recognize the problem, start doing it and then make, make some budget for it.

Yeah, it's. It's something that needs to be done. Right. Because leaders are leverage. And this is what I think so many orgs miss leaders are your leverage. One leader gets better. That positively impacts 10 to 15 people.

Yeah.

Versus trying to make one rep better with some sales training and hoping it sticks, which it won't, by the way, because the manager doesn't know how to reinforce it and coach to it. Right. So it's just something where it's really, really dialing in, like getting them the help they need. Because this is the biggest lever. Right. Because earlier point, they're busy too. They're doing so many things. Like are there certain things that you see managers spending time on that they shouldn't instead of like the, the stuff that would really drive it.

I have seen managers get too busy in the administrative side of things, sales management, as in they will invest too much time in reporting and spreadsheets and looking at the numbers. And I'm not saying that's not important, like it's an important part of the job, don't get me wrong. But it's easy to get lost in it and forget about what's actually going to drive performance. And is it tweaking that spreadsheet for another three hours or would you be better off spending half that time with your team coaching them? The other one is, and I was talking to BJ earlier this morning who's CRO of art of mentoring, and he said, I got an Interesting insight from him. He said a lot of sales leaders start off with good intentions and they like sales managers, start off with good intentions and they're preparing for their one on ones and they're having them every week or every couple of weeks, depending on the cadence they're running. But then over time that preparation trends to zero. So maybe when they started in the role, it was 30 minutes prep for every 101 and then six months later it's zero because they think they know everything. And now suddenly that one on one that was supposed to be a development conversation has now turned into a weekly pipeline review and that salesperson is stagnant in terms of their development. And I think an interesting thing that I learned recently, I think it was an HBR. I think it was HBR. Where I saw this was that 77% of the employee experience is their direct manager. When you have tenure in SDR land of 11 months and 14 months at an account executive land, we've really got to start asking some hard questions.

Yeah, it's, it's crazy. You know how that, that plays out of just like that 40%. And then people are just going to do the same thing this year.

Yeah.

Gonna just do the same thing this year and like hope that it gets better. It's like, that's not how this is going to work. And to your point, like managers, again, I want to make sure people know we're not bashing managers right now. It's just the reality of how things are to you, how you said, like they have good intentions. I firm, I firmly believe there's actually a lot of managers that get a bad rap that don't deserve it. Like they are doing their absolute fucking best. Right. To lead, to manage with a role that they were never, ever taught how to do. I worked with a company earlier this year and I was working with their managers and their reps and, and actually opened that with the reps of like, look, I want y' all to be very clear. Do you know how much training your managers have gotten on how to do their job? I just, I just want you to think about this real quick. All the time and energy they spend with you to make you better. Do you know how much of that they've gotten? And they're like, well, I was like, I just need you to remember that. And you need to give them some grace here a little bit. They are doing their absolute best. They're absolutely the best. But they've never gotten the coaching right. They are now. But you need to give them some grace here. They are doing their very best right now. Right. There's just learnings that have to occur. Right. So you know, you obviously you have a tool kind of for this, you've worked with a lot of companies. Like so what are some of the best of the best org starting to do? Like how, you know we talked about how to enable, we got into coaching a little bit, blocking the time for it. But like how else then can we make this easier on the manager to work with their reps?

Yeah, look, I think technology is part of it. I think we need to start setting up, we need to start recognizing that this is a problem and supporting our leaders and senior leaders. Like don't get me wrong, we could have a whole conversation around the senior leadership role and similar kind of challenges there. But I think technology is a part of it. I think you know, capability building is a part of it. I think it's a cultural thing as well in sales in particular where we just promote people and expect them just to sink or swim. I think that's not sustainable. So yeah, a combination of those things. But it all starts with recognizing it's a problem and just vowing to do better. And that's, you know, I've been in this world a long time and worked across probably 150 orgs in this part of the world. And it was after doing that and seeing this problem so many times that I just realized like these people need help. And it's like what you said, like we need to give them some grace because they're being set up to fail. Like frontline managers are set up to fail.

It's. And so what I, what I coach like my teams on, right? There's the leadership methodology, right. And then there's all the things that they need to know. How to do, how to run a one on one, how to do issue diagnosis, how to run practice, how to create a coaching cadence, how to design culture for your orgs, how to have the tough conversations, how to do onboarding, how to do hiring and interviewing. Like each one of these is its own like 45 minute standalone module and training that has like worksheets that go with it to run through it. Because like a very common question I get asked especially because I work, you know, I almost do one of these engagements every other month like with a company, right. And a question I get asked very often is like how are you able to do this? Like how do you have time to do this while you still have your own org? And it's like Because I do this.

Yeah, yeah.

Because I have the systems in place with my orgs. The one on ones are documented, the checklists are in place. What good looks like has been defined. We've got the cadence in place. We have the issue diagnosis when things are broken.

Right.

Like it's all documented. That lets the system run. So me being out for a day doesn't break anything. Right. Like at all. Having the systems in place allows it to run. And not enough orgs have leadership systems or leadership methodologies. Right. Like correct. The leadership methodology I teach is bipc. Right. So it's like, you know, if you find the result you want to improve, you end up find the metric behind the metric. You have to define the BiPC. And BiPC stands for behaviors issue, diagnosis, process skill in you.

Right.

Every revenue problem lives in bipsy. Every single one. Either have to change your behavior, you have to do a firm issue diagnosis, you have to change the process, you have to improve the skill or you as the manager are not doing the right things and there's a full process to go through of like, okay, we want to make someone better. What's the issue diagnosis? Is it behavior, process skill or you? Now we have it. What's the coaching plan? Coaching plan connects to the one on one doc. One on one doc flows all the way up to me. So at any point in time I can see my whole orgs in terms of one on ones. Like it's a leadership system that needs to be done in place. But I want to go back to something you mentioned that a lot of people still don't do. Right. Back to the idea of the wiggle. What good looks like is identifying what good looks like. Too often there's focus on what's broken. They're not focused on what good looks like. How did you like earlier you said you captured like oh, one rep was doing this thing differently and was leading to a better result. How, how did you spot that or how do you coach like companies to find those things?

Yeah. Without turning this into a plug. That was, that was something like our platform has been designed so you know, our platform has been designed effectively to get sales manager superpowers and be their team management co pilot to surface those sort of things for them and support them to actually be the best possible leader they can be. And you know, like you said, like most don't have any kind of operating manual. And you know, so really that's kind of what we've given them is like this is how to do it and this is going to put, pick, pick up those things that you can't see because you can't be everywhere. But, you know, if you don't have a platform in place, like, how do you do it? Well, it's hard, right? You got to pay attention. Like, you got to pay attention. And, you know, part of that is making space to, as a leader to do that, not just getting on the hamster wheel every day. It's like actually sometimes you need to get off and critically look at and reflect upon your team and look for the gaps. That's how you find them.

Yeah, we once a quarter, we do what we call scaling greatness. So once a quarter, we sit down, we identify who has the best performance in the key metrics, who's running the most demos, who has the highest close rate, who has the highest acv, who has the highest connect rate, and then we study greatness because again, too often we're always issue diagnosing what's broken, especially when you're busy. It actually matters way more to know what good looks like than it is what's broken, what is my best doing. And like, funny enough, bring this way back. I did a podcast with Brandon Barneson from, from Seamless. This guy, this was six years ago, seven years ago. We're bringing it way, way back here. But we're talking about like, you know, top performers and like, turnover, right? Of like, you know, like, well, a lot of people are scared to hire someone who's a top performer, but it's only worked at a company a year at a time. And I was like, I'm the complete opposite. Give me a year with a top performer and I'll be able to diagnose 80, 90% of what it is they do that is worth its weight in gold. Give me a top performer for a year and I'll be able to figure out what it is they do differently and build a system around it. I believe any skill can be taught within 80%. I don't think you can get to 100. Like, there are certain things that you are naturally better at than me. I could get to 80% of you in almost anything with enough time, practice and repetition. That last 20%, yeah, maybe you still have that right. But if you could match 80% of your top performers, totally, you're there.

Like, if you're, if your team's doing, like, if you get everyone up to the 80%, man, you're winning.

How you lift an org, right? Too much. People just, they cater to the average. Right. Versus, like, how do you lift the entire org.

That's it. And that, that's where coaching comes in. You got to coach and it's got to be regular.

Yeah. So then as we come up on on time here, like, what else, what haven't we touched on when it comes to management and coaching and the gap that we're seeing in the market? What would be kind of like that parting, like leadership advice or tip before we wrap on the live. Better advice.

Look, I would say maybe the final thing I would say is, and it's probably akin to what you were just talking about there is like, you can learn anything and you can get very competent at anything you set your mind to. And if you're not getting that from your org or you're not getting it from your leader, because look, like, hey, like, everyone's had a boss that isn't doing that for them, right? Go find it yourself. Like, sometimes you just have to take charge of your own development. Go find it yourself. And you know, there's enough awesome. You don't even have to pay for it today. Like, there's so much great free content out there. Podcasts, communities, etc, etc, invest in yourself. Like, that would be the big one.

And that's just another place. And I will call managers out on this real quick. Is the very things you tell your reps to do, most managers don't do. You tell your reps to go find out information, but you don't. You tell your reps to practice, managers don't practice. You tell your reps to focus inward, like you need to do it as well. And oftentimes too, we tell our reps to take breaks, but we don't take vacations. But we don't like as leaders, like, we run ourselves into the ground, which does nobody any good at all. But I think that's just so key is, you know, managers need to invest in themselves as well. Right? Like, obviously we're on a podcast. A lot of people have seen, like my background, but like, there's probably 30, 40 books behind me right now on management and leadership and behavior change, language, cognitive theory. Like, just how can I learn how to drive behavior in people, including my managers? Right? Manager invest, y'. All. Invest in yourself. Like, damn it, there are certain. I'll throw these out there. A few books that are mandatory for my leadership. So Cracking the Sales Management Code by Jason Jordan. Sales Manager Survival Guide by Dave Brock. Right. That one is big. And then I've actually switched out a few that I used to do but really do hard things. And the confident Mind, those four are just like, to me, that's the manager stack, right? And then, like, I used to do a lot with, like, Radical Candor by Kim Scott. But, like, there's really one part of that book that I'm like, all right, like, you just really need to learn this part. So we don't always go through it all, all the way through there. But, you know, investing in yourself, y', all, it can change. Change the game.

It really does.

So as we wrap up here, man, right, the name of the podcast is Live Better Sell Better. Because I have this weird idea, right, that if we did, we took better care of ourselves, had more energy, fulfillment, joy in life, that the sales, that the leadership would improve as well. What would you live better Advice be for people listening.

Sleep enough. Try and eat, okay? Do some exercise. Like, look, I'm a bit of a fitness junkie, so I'm a boxer. Like, I work out pretty religiously. I eat pretty clean, but just make some small improvements because it's amazing. Like, when I was younger, I was not so looking after myself and, you know, you know, the classic, like, you know, early 20s, probably drank a little bit too much, too much McDonald's, etc, but the difference in my output and clarity of thought and everything was insane. So I'm not saying, like, you can't have fun, but it's amazing the difference that taking care of yourself 20% better makes in terms of output and quality of life.

Yeah, yeah, it's. It's ridiculous. Like, I noticed the biggest, like, for. For me is like, saying, like, whether it's like the, you know, the one or two glass of wine at night, if I'm not doing that, my sleep is so much, like, it's noticeably better. Like, no. And it's. It's actually annoying how noticeable it is. Totally. Like, I wish it was only like, a little bit of a difference, you know, like, ah, it's not worth it. But if I'm not like, God, like, that's just so much better. The recovery is so much better, you know, to do. I'm just like, we had so much travel over the holidays, so, like, you know, just. I'm like, back home, get into a good routine and everything here. So awesome. My man. Well, this was phenomenal. And it's a topic that's very near and dear to. To my heart. Where can people learn more about you? What is, like, grow? Like, let's throw that out there for people. This can help them, like, wrap us up here a little bit. Where can they get more of your content a little bit more of what you're doing right now.

Cool. Awesome. So best place to connect with me personally is LinkedIn. Alex McNaughton Grow AI we built a team management copilot for sales teams. So give manager superpowers. And then Taylor, our AI performance coach, also can take some of the weight off in terms of coaching the team for you as well. So it's kind of like a hybrid management and coaching platform. You can find that at www.grow.AI GRW AI. And then where else can folks find me? Oh, I've got a podcast as well, the Rev Up Sales podcast. Podcast that I've run for a couple of years and would love to have you on it at some point. We've been, yeah. Talking about these kind of problems on there as well.

I love it, my man. I. I'll support anybody that's trying to support managers because they are the missing link in so many orgs. So really appreciate it, man. Really good stuff today. Great advice, great insights and I'll definitely be taking a look at Grow as well. Learn a little bit more about that, I'm sure. I'm sure we'll be in touch, man. I appreciate you today.

Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed the conversation.

Thanks.

Having me on.