S1E1 | Adopting a Growth Mindset with Arash Rahimpour & Spencer Tahil

Hey, Raj. So for the listeners that are going to join in on this one, this is a completely impromptu continuation of a conversation I was having with Arash. So we're just going to kind of pick up where we're going on the growth mindset. Completely winged. There's no prep involved. So, Arash, let's like, continue that conversation around the 1080 10, and then the market landscape right now, and then everything regarding kind of like the mindset that we're talking about. And I'm figuring that it's pretty good to touch on everything very transparently.

Yeah, absolutely. And this feels like a WTF podcast where conversation have been happening and be like, I better press record because there's some really good stuff that we're talking about. But yeah, I mean, we were Talking about the 108010 sort of model of running an agency. And I think for context, when we were thinking around what's the best use of our biggest asset, which would be time in managing projects, sometimes the realization that you can't be doing everything. Even as a solopreneur agency founder, your strength may not be in the actual built or the execution. Maybe your strength is really elsewhere. And you and I talked about how, you know, maybe your strength and my strength are better placed with strategy or, you know, other parts of the actual system. And so the 1080.10, really what it does is that it bookends the entire process where in my specific case, what I do is I spend the first 10% of any project, like I'm involved in it. So I meet the client, I talk through the strategy, we talk through the tech stack, we talk about the execution, the outcome, the customer journey. We sort of do all the strategic elements of the actual system built, you know, and I'm involved in all elements of that. But then when it comes down to, you know, building the table, you know, integrating the tools, executing the, you know, the system, really every other part, like the heavy lifting piece, I, you know, I outsource it. You know, I have a couple of pretty brilliant go to market engineers who are really, really good technically. They understand these systems, they understand how to do it. What they may be lacking is direction or the why or what's the outcome we're trying to achieve. They don't have that vision. And so that's where I come in and I'm able to really provide.

You.

Know, the direction, the guidelines, the, you know, what we're trying to achieve. And I, and I really let them run it. And that's the 80% piece that's the heavy lifting. And then before we actually present this to the client, before we go live with anything, you know, the tail end of that project, that last 10%, that's where I come back in and I come back in and I just make sure that, you know, the I's are dotted, the T's are crossed. That, you know, what we have built is exactly, you know, to the liking and to what has been discussed. You know, whether at the beginning of this process or throughout different conversations I would have had with the client before it ever gets presented to the client. And so from, from the client's perception, you know, perspective, I'm involved the entire way. From my own perspective, I'm only involved 20% of the entire process. And so it does a number of things. One, it really allows me to make sure that what is being decided with the client is what's being delivered at the end. Two, it gives me the ability of 5Xing myself. Now I could take on five clients at the same time because I'm not spending 80% of the time building. And I'm able to spend 100% of my time, you know, in those sort of 20% of the projects, which helps me increase my revenue. 5X.

So do you think there's a really big problem with the hiring then? I feel like, okay, so just a background on like for everybody that could be listening or watching. Arasha and I met each other at a boot camp. Actually. I think I would. I think you're a coach or your mentor or you went through the boot camp. I'm a mentor. So is the, is the issue like training the people? Because like a lot of the teams that I work with, I mean, I can't speak for you, is that they come from the market. And the market, we were just talking about this, right? It's like, yeah, the market is here and you know, like it's Q4, it's 2025. Like very personally, like, I'm having a trouble positioning and, and I think like that's what prompted us to go and record this is. Yeah, the market is here. Like Melody and I were talking about like the capabilities of AI and the capabilities of like the go to market engineer. Whatever the role, whatever the tool is, right, Whatever the tool capabilities are like all the way up in the ceiling, right? They're like cutting edge. Everything like this. Our capabilities are not so much trailing behind that. I mean, of course, like we're not like Google developers or anything like this. Like, I think I'm pretty technical. I think you're pretty brilliant as well. But like sales, like being unique about, like understanding the tool, like being tool agnostic, understanding the strategy to connect the different tools in the market, keeping an eye on the market. Yeah, positioning that is very difficult. And like, you just said something to me, so I let you pick up that conversation. This is, this is like the teams that are going to, about to hire and the ones that I'm having conversations with now are saying, oh, we, we saw a LinkedIn agency that, you know, they're doing this. We saw, you know, the tool list of the top 50 best GTM tools. You know, I'm not going to name who, but like, there's a ton of agencies out there.

Like, I wonder who you're talking about now.

Who are you talking about? You know, like, I'm not going to name anybody but like, great on you, you guys paid a PR specialist. Great on you, you guys paid a graphic designer. I want to hire one too, but. Because it's working clearly. But like, I feel like all of this is just fluff and I think it's not like the things that you see online are not, are not what they need. It's what people want to buy. And I think this is a huge problem we're presenting wrong.

So let me unravel what you just said a little bit across a few different things. So I have a huge pet peeve right now with this sort of concentration around. Let me showcase my tool as my sales strategy, as my marketing strategy, as my communication strategy, because I'll tell you, who cares about your tool. And I love, you know, if anybody has heard me or knows me, I love using plumbers as an analogy because I think everybody understands, you know, plumbers. Nobody ever hires a plumber because of how shiny his plunger is or how amazing his wrench is. Nobody. We only hire plumbers for the outcome that we wish them to deliver for us. Like, my toilet doesn't flush. The outcome I want is for my toilet to flush. Do you care what plunger he uses or how great his plunger is or how shiny it is or how it's the best plunger that's ever existed on this planet? If you do, please email me and call me because I want to talk to you. I'm quite, you know, curious about the type of person you are, if that's how you go about picking your plumbers. And in this GTM space, I find that there is this massive marketing or communication or way to position ourselves around, you know, our plunger. So what's our plunger, it's clay, it's instantly, it's LLMs, AI, it's Claude, it's, you know, GPT, it's N8N. And I gotta tell you, whoop de doo, who cares, right? Because the reality is that your clients, your prospects don't care. They really don't care. And if you think that they do, and if you want to have a debate with me, I welcome the opportunity to better understand you. So that's one thing, right? And I think that's a huge issue. The second issue, and this is what we were talking about. You're talking about the market is up here, right? We're just below it and there's this massive gap. And I think it's the trap that we as GTM leaders, we are like doctors, we are experts, we are as high in our field as we can get. And we in reality know very well what our clients need. Problem is that what we think they need isn't what they want. And so I think what happens is that there's this gap in our way of positioning our solutions and ourselves around trying to sell them, try to position what we believe they need versus communicating what they want. And that, I think is the fundamental gap in poor communication and not really truly understanding the pain points and the challenges that our clients face from their perspective. We see it from our perspective. And you see this in so much copy that comes across, you know, I mean, my inbox, I'm sure your inbox. And I'm sure even if you're not in this space in your inboxes, I mean, and here's where I get a. I have a huge pet peeve as well. And I mean, listen, I say pet peeve, but it's like I love it because when there are lots of people who are terrible at something and you are the opposite of that, it does give you a competitive advantage. It does make you stand out in a sea of white sheep being the black sheep. The only problem is that it muddies and makes the industry, you know, standard being a lot poorer in its perception in the market, which makes it challenging for me. When I talk to a client or prospect, they say, well, I've tried this before. We've used digital marketing, we've used lead gen services. It doesn't work. And my thing is that, yeah, it doesn't work because you hired somebody that didn't know what they were doing, not because it doesn't work. Right.

Do you feel like the expectations are skewed?

From whom?

Whose expectations do you Think that there's a giant gap between, I mean, I know that you serve the same clients in a similar way that I do. And for listeners that's usually like B2B SaaS companies or.

Well, I don't actually touch SaaS. Right.

I touch SaaS companies.

I know that's why this works really well is like, you know, we have so many overlap, but so many also. So we're not, we're not competing for the same people ever.

I, I don't like, I. And I feel like that's also a nice point here is that I feel like this whole go to market engineering bubble is a bubble. And like I feel like everybody knows of everyone else, but I was talking with another fat. Not everybody, but like everybody worth knowing.

The main people.

Yeah, the main, you know, the top maybe 20 agencies or.

Absolutely. A small world.

Like you. Like, how many, how many conversations have we had? Right. Like privately. Right. And I think if from what I'm seeing is that there's a giant misunderstanding between buyers and sellers and the market. And I think like the bubble, the layer of the market that I'm sitting in and that I see every day and that I stress over is LinkedIn. And like, unfortunately LinkedIn is the only social media platform that I feel comfortable making money on and that actually consistently brings leads.

Oh, you don't want to do TikTok?

Yeah, I don't want to do TikTok. I don't want to do the, you know, the other one with the feet. Not a fan. But like, yeah, like, I think B2B buyers hang out on LinkedIn and B2B buyers buy with emotion and they validate layer with rationale. So how do we get them happy enough to believe in you and get you on a call? And this was, these are issues that come up, you know. Oh, I saw this. I saw One of your LinkedIn posts. Awesome posts. Which one did you see? Like, let's do a discovery on that. Like, I had a discovery this morning at 10:00am Hey, I saw you come in LinkedIn. Whatever, you know, whatever French guy. What post did you see? I don't remember. Tell me what you're capable of doing and I'll see if you align with what I need. Yeah, that doesn't really work for me because I build everything custom for you, dude. You know, I don't want to put you in a box, but I think that this is, this is a buyer's, a very typical buyer scenario now. It's like they don't know what to look for. And they're just. It's okay to look, but have an idea of what problems you have before.

Yeah, you know, you know, yes to all.

Yes and no.

I mean, yes, exactly. Yes and no to what you said. So, you know, I think fundamentally, and this comes back to just fundamental communication. And that's the thing I think a lot of people forget is sales is just a communication skill. That's all it is. Fundamentally, one of the biggest thing that's lacking in human communications today is the lack of willingness to understand. We typically speak for the purpose of responding, or we listen, I should say with the intent of responding, not with the intent of understanding. Because if we did, then we would be more curious about the other situation. And so that's the fundamental, I think, break that exists in communication. So taking that into sort of what you mentioned, and I think the biggest superpower in any type of sales conversation you can have is come across as somebody who clearly understands the pains and the problems that your prospects or your market has and experiences and be able to communicate it in a way where your audience, your prospects is able to see themselves in what you just said. Even more powerful is if you, in addition to relaying that ability to make them feel heard, which is probably one of the things as human beings, we seek the most in communication, is the desire of feeling, being heard. And if you could layer that, sprinkle an element of, of education that allows your prospects to all of a sudden have an awareness of something they didn't know, that's costing them. That is just pure magic.

I think you're reminding me of a book. I had to look up who it was because I've read the book so long ago. It's called Gap Selling by Keenan.

Yeah, yeah. I love Gap Selling.

This is a methodology I learned a long time ago. It's like, find the problem, build the solution, find the problem, educate along the path. And this is, in an essence, Gap Selling, in my opinion.

Yeah, no, of course, because here's, here's the reality. And this is, and this is again, comes back to the fundamental problem with, with, with, with communication is that, and I'm going to be blunt here, do it. Nobody gives a shit about you. Nobody. Nobody cares about all the wonderful clients you've worked with. Nobody cares about all the awards you've won. Nobody cares about the solution that you can provide at the beginning of the interaction. They do eventually. Not in the first outreach that you do to anybody. You know what? Most people care about themselves, their own fucking problem. Excuse my French.

Right?

That's the only problem people care about is I have a problem. Now here's the thing. Sometimes people don't realize they have a problem because they're stuck in this fallacy that we've created as human being called status quo. There's no such thing as status quo. Right.

So there's, there's two listeners probably in this. There's the, there's the, there's the people that want to do what we do.

Yeah.

And then there's the people that are actually doing what we're doing and maybe the third listener of possibly prospects that want to hire us, hopefully. I think that is, I think that's a lesson though. I think like we talked about this, I think three or four times. Is it all like businesses? Like when you're pitching a solution, when you're doing sales, like we're both good at it, but it always comes down to one of three things. It's revenue, cost and time.

Absolutely.

Right. Like, and like my time as an operations guy, it was like I usually save people time, but I now I've switched over into doing saving time but also making more money. So that's revenue. Right. And it's like if I can save you money along the way, it's like, holy crap, trifecta. So the issue is, and I said this in a, in a boot camp session and office hours was again, nobody cares about what you do or how you do it. But having the conversation with somebody that's self aware is a completely different conversation with talking to somebody that doesn't know what's going on. I tend to not take the calls if you're not pro, if you're not problem aware, if you're not curious of the problems or how to improve this growth mindset, it becomes like even harder to sell. Right. Like you're not that that buyer is not in market. They're not part of the 6% that might be in market or the 3% that might be in market. So the mindset is, are you curious? Are you ambition ambitious enough to chase revenue, save time or optimize in between? And I think like that's the growth mindset for me. Even from a, even from an individual perspective. Right. I don't know if you disagree with that, like wholeheartedly.

I mean, I definitely don't disagree. I think if we're talking in a more general mindset, like general sense, what's a growth mindset? From my perspective, I think a growth mindset is understanding that change is a constant, that things are moving along all the time, and that you need to sort of always be humble around the fact that you don't know everything and that you will need to sort of 10x yourself at different stages of your journey through education, through learning, through adapting to it. And I think, you know, you know, maybe I'm wrong, but I think because I subscribe to a growth mindset, and I think because you subscribe to a growth mindset, the biggest challenge that you and I ever have is to work with clients don't subscribe to a growth mindset. And so those who don't subscribe to a growth mindset, they think they know everything. They know. They think they have the solution. They don't need our services. They're unwilling to change the thing that what's going through. This sort of incredible revenue revolution and, you know, renaissance that's happening because of technology, because of tools like AI and automation is a fad. Right? They're unwilling. I mean, these are people that are probably still buying CDs to listen to music. You know, these are. These are people that probably still watch television on cable, you know, Netflix.

Oh, that's a fun.

That's gonna go away, right? Like, none of that stuff. You know, I mean, I'm old enough that I used to use this analogy with cassette tapes, but I think most of the audience are like, what the hell is a cassette tape?

Is that the thing with the two wheels in the middle?

Yeah, exactly. The one where you use a pencil to rewind. And that just aged me by 20 years right there. Not that the city is much more youthful in that sense. And I think so that's the challenge. And so one of the things I've learned on my journey, and I know it's something you do as well, is learning to say no to clients. You know, I think. I think when you. When you start in your. At the early stages of your. Of your business, you tend to want to say yes to everyone. But what I've learned is that saying no to the wrong client is so powerful. Understanding who my exact ICP is and what their problems are and saying, you know, this is not a good fit for me. Yeah, I would love the revenue, I would love the opportunity, but I definitely do not want the headache.

Yeah. And I think coming from, like, a background of, like, the agencies and like, running agencies, too, it's like I've seen like the 1 million, for instance, like $1 million a year marketing agencies. They run ad, creative direction, whatever, whatever the marketing and advertising. You're stuck because you don't have systems or you're stuck because you're saying yes to things that you should be saying no to. You're not serving a niche enough market. Okay, let's say I'm wrong on both of those things. You go to a 5 to 10 million dollars. If you go to a 5 to 10 million dollar a year marketing agency, your problems are completely different. Usually it's because your, your sales motion is pretty good, but you're either experiencing churn or your offer isn't calibrated to your market. Okay. Or you don't have the demand. Okay. So your channels need optimization. Okay, let's get up to 10. 10 to 25 is a completely different jump.

Absolutely.

Like, and I think like that where scale and flywheel start to happen. I'm just using marketing agencies as an example because like there's some of.

But that's true. That's true across all, all, you know, at least B2B businesses. You know, I can't speak for other, other sort of B2C or B2G but I would say, you know, that's common across all B2B. I think there are thresholds in revenue motions in revenue strategies and revenue execution that need to be in place. Which is why I find companies, you know, that I work with which are, you know, B2B businesses in the 3 to 5 million dollar range, you know, having the same problem regardless of the sector they're in. Whether you're construction, manufacturing, professional services and so forth, your problems are fundamentally all the same. Now the funny part, having worked with hundreds of these types of businesses, is that you speak with the founder of these companies and because they're isolated in silos, they think their problem is unique to them. They think that no other business has the same problem as theirs. Yeah, maybe 4 to 5% of their problem is unique, maybe even less than that. But the reality is that 95 plus percent of their problem is the same across the board. When it comes to revenue. I mean, they may all have different problems. I'm just in the revenue from a revenue perspective. And what is that? Well, it's a reliance on traditional revenue model which is tied into salespeople. I want to grow revenue, I got to hire salespeople. Two, there's no standard operating procedure. There's no actual system or systematized model of revenue. And I don't mean like running, you know, system. I mean having a system that you could then use across the board where you could repeat yourself. Your best salesperson typically is the founder, not for any other reason. That they are so passionate about their business that the prospect feels that emotional passion. That's what makes them want to work with you. Which is why when they bring salespeople, it doesn't translate. And so when, if the foundation is put together with some sticks and glue and you try to build a first and second floor on top of it, well, you're really building a house of cards. It's just going to crumble down so quickly. And then they wonder why they can't get past that sort of 3 to 5 million dollars glass ceiling in revenue. Well, you kind of have to strengthen all of those elements in place. Now that's at the fundamental level of these companies. With everything we know in the GTM space, you and I, the reality is that in about three to five years they're going to have to implement technology into their system selling. Otherwise like I said, they're going to be as relevant as listening to music by buying CDs or you know, it's just, it's going to go away. Your competitors are right now implementing these approaches. They're implementing ways to leverage their revenue motion to reduce their dependency on human capital, to grow their revenue. And what does that translate beyond just revenue? It means that business owners can now take a step back because revenue is becoming predictable, scalable. They don't have to grow their sales team. Their sales team are making 4x5x more revenue for the business based on doing nothing more than shifting their time and their focus on the area that's actually value add and grow revenue. Them as a business founder now have a system. So now if they want to hire somebody, they know how to prepare them and set them up for success because they're growing revenue now. They're passing the 5 million dollar threshold. They're getting into that 6 to 10 million dollar revenue, maybe even more. And now they're attracting better talent. You know, they're able to now grow revenue. And that on top of all of that, the founder of these businesses are spending 30, 40, 50, even sometimes 60% less time and in their business doing, you know, hiring, coaching, those activities. You know, they're, they're becoming less of operators of their own business and more business owners. Now they could take a step back, think about the next three to five year long term strategical plays. They could actually start working on their business so that they could hit 10 million and then they could think about what did they need from an infrastructure to take them from that 10 to the $25 million which is the next range. But without having these fundamental foundational element in place, none of that is going to ever happen for them. And that's just the reality of the landscape. And you know what? You really have about three to five years. Because if you're not being early adopters of these systems, of these approaches, the reality is your competitors are. And in three to five years, you're playing catch up.

Super well said. Very podcast like voice as well. Super great road microphone. I know we both got to wrap up, but I have one question left.

Yeah, absolutely.

And it's going to be the star of the show.

Sure.

If you had to give one piece of advice in less than five sentences to somebody in our space that's adopting, go to market a growth mindset or AI, what would it be?

Be curious about uncovering your prospect's problem before pitching your solution.

And be hyper relevant with your communication.

Be hyper relevant.

Cool.

All right, well, thanks, Spencer.

This was fun.

It was amazing.

Cool, guys, all the listeners, thanks for tuning in to our impromptu recording. And yeah, thanks, Arash, for everything.

I look forward to the next chat we have.

Yes, of course.