May 9, 2026 | Read online
Helping elevate the people and profession of Sales by sharing authentic conversations, practical tips, expert advice, relevant tech, and real-world lessons from my experience selling every day. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday.
Your Decision Lens
I'm not going to lie, it's been a rough couple of weeks.
I've taken a few Ls, both personally and professionally, and they're starting to pile up.
To start, I lost a few deals recently that I felt pretty good about. Well, I didn’t “lose” them per se, but was told, “other priorities have come up, and this needs to be pushed to Q3.” We all know what that means. With things moving as fast as they are right now, 3 months might as well be a lifetime.
Outside of the full-stop during COVID, I’ve never been in a selling environment like this where there’s so much indecision and restructuring of priorities so frequently.
I’ve written about this in the past, referencing the book Jolt Effect, which talks about how the main issue isn’t necessarily “no decision", it’s indecision based on how fast things are moving and how many options people have in front of them.
We’re all selling against risk right now, and risk is high on everyone’s radar. Very few people get fired for not making decisions. Lots of people get fired for making bad decisions.
So with those lost deals, my Q2 pipeline is definitely not where it needs to be. I had a really good Q1, but when I got back from all my SKO travels, it was like my Q2 pipeline disappeared.
With all this, it’s VERY tempting to take revenue wherever you can find it, but I’ve learned my lesson in the past and won’t make that mistake again.
I’ve taken “bad revenue” before and have regretted it every time. It’s usually an opportunity that is in the general range of what my specialty is, which is how I justify doing it, but ultimately takes me away from what I do best.
The resulting solution/service I provided is usually good but not great, and in this world of reviews, back-channel reference checks, and virality, doing mediocre work usually does more harm than good. Also, taking on that type of client/work usually pulls you away from doing the right kind of work for the right kind of client.
There were a few partner and client opportunities that came up recently that I could’ve closed, but decided to turn down because they were not only potentially bad revenue but, more importantly, they didn’t align with my values, which leads me to the main point of this week’s newsletter.
I know a lot of people who are struggling right now, including myself (relatively). Every time I do a coaching call or talk to someone who is struggling with what to do or with a decision they have to make, I recommend the same thing: get recentered on your core values first.
I find that when I’m centered and clear on my CORE values, they act as a filtering lens and compass for me, which makes all my decisions a lot easier.
For instance, as it relates to bad revenue, I’ve had a few opportunities recently to partner with AI companies that are effectively trying to replace the SDR/BDR role completely.
That doesn’t align with my values associated with trying to elevate the people and the profession of Sales for those who are willing to put in the work. As tempting as it was to take that money to do a few LinkedIn posts, I decided to turn them down.
Focusing on values first has helped me make better decisions and has gotten me through a lot of difficult times throughout the past 30 years of my career, which is why I think it’s so important to revisit them every once in a while, and now is as good a time as any. That’s why I decided to put together a prompt pack to help people define and refine their core values.
This Core Values Prompt Pack is meant to be uploaded directly to whatever AI platform you’re using and walk you through a process to help you gain clarity on what’s really important to you.
I gave this to someone recently who said:
“It was like therapy but without an uncomfortable, judgy person in front of me.”
Carve out some time this weekend to go through the process and send me an email with what happened and if it helped. I’d love to hear from you on this one.
By the way, the cover of the prompt pack and image in this post were generated with Luma's new Uni-1 model, which opened its API last week. Now, anyone building a tool, workflow, or product can wire creative reasoning directly into it. You can lock in a visual identity once, and the model holds it across every output. Then you can describe edits in plain language, and the model executes better than any other imaging tool I’ve seen.
The reason I partnered with them is that A) they align with my values and B) sellers and operators can now use it to easily develop account-specific imagery for proposals, branded visuals for prospect-specific decks, and cover art for an entire content series, all generated, all coherent, all on-brand.
Now that I’ve recentered on my own core values, it’s time to get to work.
For those of you who’ve been with me for a while, you might remember that I’ve been through a lot worse than what I’m going through now. Back in 2023, I went from 20 employees and $6M in revenue to 2 employees and almost $0 in revenue in less than 3 months.
I wrote a LinkedIn post about how I was able to generate 49 meetings in February of that year and effectively force myself back from the dead.
During that time, my values kept me grounded, but my effort, activity, skills, brand, and relationships are what got me back on track.
That’s the Iron Man/Woman suit I keep talking about and why it’s now the image I have on my LinkedIn profile (not generated by Luma 🙂). We all need to create our own Iron Man/Woman suit so we’re not dependent on any one specific skill or channel to help drive results. These days, we need to do it all if we have a chance of surviving and thriving in this world of AI.
If any of you are looking for some help building out your own suit, please make sure you’re following me across all the other channels (IG, YouTube, Podcast) and/or join me as I continue to build out my membership for those people willing to put in the work.
I’ve also launched a new Sales Leadership Advisory offering to help GTM leaders navigate through this transition we’re all going through right now, since I get exposed to a lot of different companies and technologies and have been through every major transition myself.
I always say that I live between the world of the Give a Shit Factor and Unconscious Competence. I can’t get you to care, but once you do, I’ll give you everything I’ve got to get you to the level of Unconscious Competence so you don’t need me anymore.
Who’s coming with me?
#MakeitHappen
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