Show Notes
"I did a reverse image search, found his wife's bakery in Illinois, and put in an order for cakes with a note inside. He called me at 6:30 the next morning." - Paul Higgins
Paul's sales career started on an ice cream van.
Before that, he was upselling cologne to classmates at school for 50p a spray.
He talked his way out of a post room job after hearing the buzz of the call center floor and deciding that's where he belonged.
From there, it was pensions, then insurance, then recruitment tech, teaching himself HTML and CSS along the way.
A mentor once handed him two VHS tapes: Boiler Room and Glengarry Glen Ross.
He says they changed his career, cutting his daily call volume from 150 dials to just 40 because they taught him something volume never could: how to actually close.
What sets Paul apart today is his ability to sit with a CTO and talk architecture, then walk into the CFO's office and talk about cost savings that same afternoon.
Most reps only speak one language. He learned to translate between technical and commercial conversations by understanding how the products actually worked, not just how to pitch them.
That same mindset shows up in his prospecting.
One unicorn account had gatekeepers he couldn't get past for months.
So he reverse image searched the decision-maker, found his wife's bakery in Illinois, ordered a box of cakes, and tucked in a handwritten note asking for a callback.
It worked.
That single conversation became a five-year, $1.2 million contract.
His research is just as methodical.
Before his team calls a prospect, they already know how many job boards the company uses, how many developers they employ, and roughly what their current setup is costing them.
That level of preparation helped improve SQL-to-close rates by 40%.
Not by making more calls.
By making smarter ones.
"Don't dwell on the things you messed up on. I've lost millions. The more you put in, the more you get out."
More from Do Hard Things Podcast
"People don't change because you give them housing. People change because they're given community, accountability, purpose, work, and people around them who actually believe in them." - Moe EganPreston and Moe Egan came to The Other Side Village from opposite ends of the problem.Moe grew up in East Oakland, surrounded by addiction and crime, and became a lifelong addict and criminal himself. He went through six or seven recovery programs and graduated from every one. Each time he relapsed. Then came his seventh arrest, and the officer who cuffed him was his old football coach. The coach told him about Delancey Street, and facing San Quentin, he wrote a letter begging for help.Preston has spent 30 years in nonprofit work and never lived any of that. He's upfront about it. His problem is with the systems around the work, which measure beds filled and boxes checked instead of whether people reach long-term independence.Together they lead The Other Side Village, a permanent community built on peer accountability, where residents run social enterprises like a donut shop. Preston brings the strategy and Moe brings the lived experience, and neither is enough alone.Recently Moe took a group of people who spent decades on the street to New York. For some it was their first flight. On the way home they asked him how to get a passport."People don't fundamentally change when they feel temporary... When people know they have a permanent place in the community, they start thinking about next year instead of next week." - Preston L. Cochrane
"None of us engage perfectly with technology when we're overwhelmed or stressed. You shouldn't build a system that requires perfect engagement in order to be useful." - Ellie Gordon
"If there's something I can do and should do, then I have a responsibility to do it. That is what I signed up for when I became a nurse." - Melinda Yormick
"It didn't matter what I had accomplished before, what I had achieved, what awards I had. None of that mattered. It only mattered what I brought that day." - Mary Crafts
"Don't make an assumption, ask the question. Ask your senior people two things: what's slowing you down, and what would make you consider leaving. That pattern is your real priority list." - Alex Seiler