In this episode of Full Throttle Leaders, host Michael Falato interviews Kelly Haddis, founder of Win the Room. Kelly shares her unconventional career path—from a Wall Street risk‑arbitrage trader and theater performer to a communication, sales, and leadership coach. She explains Win the Room’s three‑pronged service model: communication (public speaking, pitching, conflict resolution), sales (prospecting, negotiation, system building), and leadership (behavioral assessments and bespoke programs). Kelly highlights the NBI (Neuroscience‑Based Index) assessment as her preferred tool for increasing self‑awareness and aligning communication styles. The conversation identifies two recurring client pains: ineffective communication/rapport and the absence of measurable sales systems. Kelly discusses how AI is reshaping outreach, advocating for digital twins, adaptive email/LinkedIn sequences, and shorter, more personalized touchpoints. Michael and Kelly compare outreach tactics, critiquing overly long multi‑step sequences and favoring concise, curiosity‑driven engagement. They also explore the concept of roundtables as peer‑to‑peer knowledge‑sharing events focused on go‑to‑market and communication strategies, emphasizing mutual networking over hard selling. Finally, Kelly outlines her ideal client profile—B2B decision makers such as VPs of Sales, HR leaders, or CTOs—and provides contact information (LinkedIn, wintheroom.com). The episode blends personal anecdotes, practical advice, and forward‑looking AI integration for sales and communication professionals.
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All right, everybody, we have a new guest today on Full Throttle Leaders, Kelly Haddis from Win the Room. Kelly, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much. Thank you. It's really great to be here. Thanks for inviting me. I appreciate it. Yeah.
Tell us a little bit about Win the Room and what it does and who you are.
Yeah, sure. Um, so I started this company, uh, many years ago. It actually came to mind like back in 2008. I was like at a crossroads and I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, which area of business that I wanted to go in. My background is as a risk arbitrage trader on Wall Street. I did that for a number of years. And then I have a lot of theater experience studying Shakespeare and Chekhov, and I've just been in a lot of plays, regional, some Off-Broadway, some black box theaters. And I just got the experience. And so what I was thinking of in 2008, and it came together because of all the networking that I was doing, and there were so many people who needed to raise capital, they had asked me if I could start helping them pitch to VCs and angels. And the idea intrigued me because it wasn't only about how do you sound, how do you stand, how do you say something, but it was also the business strategy. So Win the Room really came about from there.
And it's, it's a combination, if you will, of It's like psychology assessments, if I remember. Um, coaching based on that, or tell me a little bit.
Yes, Win the Room does 3 things: communication, uh, everything under that, public speaking, presentation skills, pitching, conflict resolution, and then sales. Everything from prospecting to the sales conversation to the negotiation proposal. What do you do if you don't get what you want? And then leadership. With leadership, there's a lot of psychology, so we do behavioral assessments and we have many leadership programs. I myself have created close to 100 programs, but they're all bespoke for each individual client. So we do coaching. It could be one-to-one and it could be one, one-to-many, right?
What's the normal charge for that?
It really all depends on the situation.
Is it a retainer or just— it depends.
Our best. Yeah, that's what we always go for.
Me too. Me too.
Yeah, yeah, because they're always, uh, you know, there's more invested on both sides. That's what I— a one-off is great. But it's not the same as working with a company for years.
You've been doing this for 18 years.
Quite a long time, right?
So you started at age 4. That's crazy.
Actually 16. Thank you.
And you're based out of New York or you're based out of LA or both?
Both places. I'm currently more in LA, but I, I do come to New York often.
Yeah, I'm sorry. What's your typical ideal customer profile? Is it Ruji, a small company, or— well, tell me a little bit about that.
Yeah, yeah, the ICP, the ideal client profile, that Pretty much is B2B, but it's mainly someone who's a decision maker, someone who's VP of sales, senior VP of sales. It could be an HR, but it's finding that right person in HR who can make that decision, who really understands what's going on for that company or, you know, what, what the issues are and how we can help. Sometimes it's the CTOs. It really all depends, but we try to speak to the right, to the decision makers, because they're the ones who are most connected to what's happening and the pain that we're trying to solve for.
What, what do you see as an overlapping, recurring pain that most people have that you fix better than most people?
Yeah, it's a great question. I think of it in two ways. First, I look at the communication seems to be a pain, uh, that has been throughout since 2008. I see a lack of being able to create that rapport when needed, or it's dropped too soon, or people get into their heads and they think that they know what the other person is about to say, or they overcommunicate. That, that is a big problem. And then the other thing that I see is that the lack of a system, you know, and you know this because you're in sales, when people don't have a system that they can measure, then it can fall apart very quickly. So, we look at the systems and we look at the communication and we often find gaps in there. Now, when it comes to leadership, there's a lot of psychology in leadership because people want to obtain a vision. But how individuals get there, group of individuals, can create conflict because they may have different communication styles, different thinking styles that are not aligned.
Do you, do you work with like the DISC approach at all or any of those personalities and try to figure out who they are so that you can identify how to fix or strengthen?
Yeah, yeah. I mean, our favorite is called the NBI. So when I was studying at Columbia, there was this guy who came from South Africa and his name is Cobus Needlane, and he talked a lot about communication and thinking styles and how people may want the same objective, but how they get there with their communication, it's all different. And so the NBI is this assessment that really brings a lot of self-awareness and it shows you what your communication style is and how others may prefer to be communicated with. And that helps a lot. And we do the NBI often. I know it's not a famous assessment like the Myers-Briggs or the DiSC, but it's one that, that I really love.
And again, for you, then that's what— that's all that matters. It works for you.
Yeah, I love it. I love it. It's great because people get it right away and then they can apply it to so many different areas. It's like Oh, okay. So my client may want this, but how my client communicates may be more strategic, maybe more analytical, and I may be more of a creative. So I need to make sure that my communication aligns with him or aligns with her. So there needs to be a common ground. And that's what the NBI allows us to, to do, to find this common ground, because it increases our self-awareness.
So what's one or two things over the last 6 to 12 months that you learned either by doing or failing or winning?
Yeah, well, AI has come in full throttle.
All right, there you go.
So it's about how do you not compete, but how do you embrace a world that is heading in this direction? And it's going full force and it's not changing. It keeps evolving. And so how do we embrace that? And that, I think, has been our biggest advantage and also our biggest challenge, because there's a lot of noise out there now because of AI, especially like with emails and LinkedIn and all kinds of messaging, even cold calls. Is that person that I'm speaking to really a person or are they—
That's why I use these podcasts and roundtables and event scraping as a way to ask them, what do you think of this? Are you going to this event? Do you want to be on my podcast or roundtable? Because it's a simple yes or no or what do you think? Versus Kelly, I see that you've been doing this for 18 years and you're a public speaker and you teach at Columbia. Well, you just AI my LinkedIn. That's poor. It looks crappy. It looks pitch-slappy. So that's why it's like you got to know how to talk to someone like you teach, but it's also there's a certain way of doing it in LinkedIn and email. So you don't come off as a bot or you're coming off as a pitch slapper.
Right, right. It's very true. And a lot of it has to deal with, you know, sometimes we need to look at the thread, right? If we're not getting the response that we want from this particular email and you find that you're still communicating on it, trying to reach that person, you know, maybe it's time to, okay, shake it up. Write a new email with a new subject line, for example. That's simple.
The 8-step sequence is ridiculous. Like, stop.
Yeah, exactly.
3 sequence, get out, right? How you doing? You doing this? Would you want to do this? Out of my pocket, whatever. And hey, I don't know if this is a good time. I'll try you back in 40 days. That will always get someone to say, no, no, no, please don't. Yes or no versus ghost.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
I don't get these communication skills with some of these folks. And then, uh, it's just crazy, you know, we have like 840 mutual connections on LinkedIn, so we definitely— yeah, we definitely know a lot of the same people and running the same group. So that's pretty interesting. Um, we should— I would think you and I would do a roundtable together at one point because, uh, yeah, what is your roundtable about? My roundtable is around go-to-market strategies, communication strategies, what's working, what's not. Give 2 tactics that worked really well for you, or 1, in the last 6 months that either worked well or you failed miserably and you want to help teach the room. So it's not about full throttle, it's not about 'Hey Steve, what do you do?' Pitch your product and cut and paste your stuff in the chat. More— mine's more like this, like just talk about how we can help each other. Refer business, refer business on your time, not on the whole, not on the round table, because it's going to turn into very cheesy. People like your stature are not going to get on this because they're not going to want to be hit up by a bunch of people that want to sell you something. So just talk about best practices, tactics, strategies, you know, and because it's my roundtable, I can kind of direct whatever I want. I'm not paying an event company, hey, can you put together a bunch of executives? I don't need that. So I eat my own dog food. I have 15 Zoom calls every day doing this.
That's great. I love it. I love it. Yeah, I'd love to be you know, part of it and on it. It sounds great, sounds wonderful. I think networking like this is so important.
Yeah, that's why the whole 30,000 connections of each side's like, uh, we can, we can make a killing as far as attendance, right?
Yeah.
So tell us, tell, tell us who you want to reach out to you, you know, like your ideal. We talked a little bit about this before, your ICP.
Right.
And how to connect with you. Sure. And, um, probably like, like I said, the best tip in tech that you can get, like for me, I just made Delphi AI. I made a twin, AI twin of Michael Falato and load up all my interviews, all my data. And I just found it from the roundtable that someone said, try that for your digital twin. They could talk to me anytime you want. You should have— I don't know if you do a digital twin, but have a little thing that they could talk to Kelly 24/7 a day. If you want a real consultation, then you book, and it might cost you something. But I'm trying to embrace the AI as much as possible without, without killing my business.
Yeah, I hear you, I hear you. And I think that's the way to go, definitely. Um, yeah, so my, uh, again, you know, the people that I love reaching out to are the people who are concerned about how their communication is affecting, uh, their companies, affecting their clients, how it's affecting their teams internally. I, I'm always interested in speaking to people who want to increase their level of emotional intelligence, active listening, how to really engage with, with someone, whether they're a prospect, whether they're a client, whether they're a direct report or senior leader. You know, communication, you can have the same objective, but how we get there, that journey is always we're navigating it. All right. So it's about how do we be more in the moment? And when we do active listening, when we really understand what active listening is about, we're really in the moment. And that's where I believe the magic happens. So for me, I'm always interested in speaking to people who really want to know more about how to communicate with more clarity, more effectively, how to understand and dive deeper into emotional intelligence and understand the idea behind performance, right? And what that means when you're presenting either a demo or you're at a meeting, or it could be to a wide audience. And then it's about the business strategy. So it's like those 4 things.
That's what I learned when I was doing some acting in LA. As well. It's like, I hear what you have to say, I'm acknowledging it, but here's what I have to say, right? Versus let me draw upon a sad time in my life to get in this moment that this— that to bring up the tears. Don't. Be in the moment and take in that message from her or him because you are not just repeating a line. It's the same thing with sales. Like, My best 2 questions, I want to hear what 2 questions you use in business development. Kelly, you booked the time with me today. What grabbed your attention and said, I got to talk to Michael today? I just shut up. That's one. The one I learned 15 years ago from my VP of sales at Monster.com was, Kelly, what I heard you say was this, is that correct? So that to me, I'm like, why does she always say it sounds so good? Because they want— she wants them to know that I heard what you said, I'm acknowledging it, and I'm clarifying it. So those are two things that I learned as a communicator that are probably basic things that you talk about in what you do. But I would love to hear two tips or one tip of something like those two things. I think are beautiful tips in my opinion.
Yeah, yeah, very, very nice. Very nice. I think it's all about the discovery, right? I think it's all about being curious.
Yeah. Yeah.
If you can right away engage with someone emotionally, make them feel good, make them feel warm. It's almost like when you are inviting someone into your home, how do you make them feel? You make them feel good, you make them feel comfortable. And I think it's the same thing in a situation like this. Or on the phone, or if you're at a networking event, you know, right away you wanted to create rapport. And then I think it's about being curious, asking those questions that you— where you find out more about that individual. And then if you're— if you really want to engage with them on a business level, then you ask some deeper questions about what may not be working well and why. And I feel that that opens up dialogue.
Yeah, that's another one I like. Yeah. Well, what have you been doing and why is it working or not working? Because then they'll tell you their pains without pitch-slapping them again.
Yeah, you don't have to pitch.
No, you just got to solve customer challenge. Your customer is a good thing for me. It's like, You have a $6 million problem. I'm going to solve it for $60,000. Yeah.
Yeah.
But yeah, thank you for your time, Kelly. It's a pleasure seeing you again. I look forward to collaborating with you. How did they get a hold of you, Kelly?
Yeah, well, I'm on LinkedIn, Kelly Haddis, and I'm also Win the Room. So wintheroom.com and voilà. That's how you can get in touch if they want to. And thank you so much.
