Without this skill nothing else matters

Title: Without This Skill Nothing Else Matters

Read time: 2 min

Today I want to discuss the single determining factor on whether we choose to work with a founder or not. And in my experience there’s a direct correlation between the ones who make it and who doesn’t.

Coachability.

When I started my career in finance I had no business being there. No background, no pedigree, no roadmap for how to navigate that world. What I did have was the self awareness to know that I didn't know, and the willingness to listen to people who did.

Early on I was fortunate to have mentors who were genuinely invested in my success. Our incentives were aligned, if I won, they won. So I made a decision to come in with a blank slate, a sponge to soak everything in. No ego, no preconceived ideas about how things should work. I absorbed everything they gave me and applied it without hedging.

That approach carried me through almost 10 years in finance and produced results I never would have achieved on my own.

The people around me who struggled weren't always the least talented. A lot of them were sharp. But they came in convinced they already had a handle on things. They'd take advice selectively, apply it halfway, and when things didn't work they'd deafult to what felt comfortable.

Coachability was the difference. Not talent, not background. The willingness to trust a process before it produced results.

The ones who are special

Something I've noticed working with founders over the years is that the special ones, you can feel it almost immediately. There's an energy around them that's infectious, almost magnetic. They move different, talk different, and carry a sense of conviction that's hard to articulate. It's something you have to feel. When you're in their presence it's just there.

I get asked often about some of the well known companies we've worked with and how we were able to produce the results we did. The honest answer is they already possessed what it takes to be successful. They just needed the system, the framework, the structure to channel it.

What made them special wasn't that they had everything figured out. It was that they knew where their blind spots were, the limited beliefs getting in the way. They were maniacal about getting better, getting in the reps, and applying what they learned without fear or limited beliefs. They let go of what they thought they knew and allowed us to establish a new foundation rooted in reality from which to grow. Once that was in place they hit their stride fast and didn't look back.

Now they’re big success stories not only in YC, but in the tech space overall.

What gets in the way

Most founders don't show up like that initially. What gets in the way always comes down to limited beliefs. And the tricky part is they don't show up looking like fear, they show up looking like logic.

Some of the things I hear are:

• My market is different.

• My buyers don't respond to that.

• Our customers don’t like to be sold to.

• They don’t want to go through a sales process.

The list is almost endless.

Those beliefs feel like discernment. Most of the time they're all fear based dressed up as reason. And as long as they're running in the background no coaching will land the way it should.

The founder applies things halfway, second guesses the direction, and comes back the following week with the same objection repackaged as a new question, or does not apply the feedback we’re providing at all.

The beliefs are your ceiling. Until you address them directly nothing else moves.

How to address it

The first step is getting those beliefs out in the open to stress test them against reality.

• What does the data actually say?

• What are customer conversations showing?

• What are comparable companies at the same stage doing?

We deal with this situation regularly, where a team will have a strong product, good market, real potential, but seem to be only half in from the start. Before we could build anything meaningful we had to go upstream and deal with what was actually getting in the way.

We took each belief one by one and held it up against the evidence. Real data from their pipeline, market and own customer conversations. One by one the beliefs that were holding them back stopped making sense when confronted with reality.

Once that foundation starts to shift everything changed. They will come in fully coachable, apply the coaching without hedging, and stopped looking for the exit clause in every recommendation.

Within ninety days their pipeline will look completely different and they’ll be closing deals predictably.

What it actually takes to be coachable

To be coachable and trust a process, three things have to happen.

First, you have to admit that there are beliefs around sales that are holding you back.The way we surface these with clients is simple, we have them write down every objection they hear from customers and their personal beliefs around those objections. That exercise alone will help flesh out where your limited beliefs live. Until you can name them you can't move past them.

Second, you have to find someone who has done this before and can help you get where you're trying to go. Three things tell you you've found the right person. First is track record, they need to have receipts. Results they can point to that prove they can do what they say they can do. Second is vibe and energy, you're going to be working closely with this person so you need to actually connect with them. If it feels off it probably is. Third is their operating system, the way they work should be easy to understand and easy to apply. If you can't follow the framework you can't run the feedback loops that make coaching actually work.

Third, you go all in. No conditions, no halfway. You get in the reps, you implement the feedback, you learn from what's working and what isn't. The beautiful thing about full commitment is that results start to stack. Every win builds confidence, every rep sharpens the skill, and before long you're trending in a direction that would have felt impossible six months earlier.

This is not only applicable in sales. It applies to every area of life where growth requires letting go of something that’s holding you back to achieve something better.

Key Takeaway

The founders who scale fastest aren't always the most experienced or the most resourced. They're the ones who made a decision at some point to stop letting their beliefs run the show and started doing the work to replace them with something better.

That decision is available to every founder reading this right now.

What's holding you back typically isn't your product, your market, or your timing. It's something deeply embedded in your operating system. A set of beliefs you've been carrying that are capping what's possible for you and your company. The good news is those beliefs aren't permanent. They can be identified, stress tested, and replaced with a foundation that actually supports where you're trying to go.

That's the work. And when a founder is willing to do it, really willing, the trajectory of their business changes fast.

If this resonates and you're ready to have an honest conversation about what's getting in the way, reach out. This is a big part of our work with founders.

That’s it for today, peeps.

See you all next week!

Darren




P.S. If you're selling AI and your pilot to close rate isn't where it needs to be, the fix is almost never the product. It's the sales motion underneath it. Let's build it here.

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