Stay ConnectedMeet Gabe Lullo.
Gabe Lullo is the CEO of Alleyoop, a sales development agency working with industry giants such as ZoomInfo, Salesloft, and Adobe.
He has trained over 8,000 salespeople across diverse businesses and, during his tenure in Alleyoop, he has personally hired and managed more than 1,500 SDRs.
With over two decades of experience in sales, marketing, and executive recruitment, his strategies have significantly driven Alleyoop’s growth.
"No one has ever asked me for my diploma or my GPA. Show me the journey, not the destination." - Evin Schwartz
Evin never worked corporate for more than two weeks.
He built his first agency straight out of college, then found himself drawn into K-12 education after watching schools hand kids the same outdated curriculum he'd grown up with, decades removed from the world those kids would actually enter.
His question was simple: what if instead of building a new curriculum, we just helped kids connect with each other as humans first?
That question became Beluga, a global social learning platform now used by learners in over 120 countries.
It started with cold DMs to 50 award-winning teachers. Five responded.
Those five became the platform's first users, and Beluga has never spent a dollar on external marketing since.
One of the earliest moments that proved the model: a classroom in Missouri video-called a classroom in South Korea at nine at night.
A kid in South Korea said he loved basketball.
The room in St. Louis erupted like they'd won a championship, because a kid an ocean away had just become instantly familiar.
That's the wall Evin has spent his career trying to bring down.
His argument for reimagining education isn't anti-testing, it's pro-human.
"Jamie looked at me and said, 'Get the SDRs to call on Saturdays. You're an idiot.' We doubled our revenue because of that one sentence." - Ned and Jamie Arick
Ned and Jamie are married and both run revenue at a high level, in different companies, at the same time.
Jamie's first SaaS job came from a Craigslist ad that sent her to a sketchy beach house where the whole team worked out of the attic.
Ned left a comfortable consulting career to start an HVAC company in Greensboro, North Carolina, a business neither of them knew the first thing about.
Eighteen months later, it had scaled to eight figures and exited for real money last July.
What got them there wasn't a clever trick.
It was refusing to overcomplicate things.
When deals stopped closing on Mondays and Tuesdays, the fix wasn't a new methodology, it was simply having reps call on Saturdays so the calendar was already full by the start of the week.
When something breaks, Ned's first move is never to blame the person, it's to look at the process.
Jamie brings the same philosophy from competitive bodybuilding: if something is working, you don't touch it for the sake of touching it.
You stay the course instead of quitting the moment it gets hard.
"You attract what you are. If people don't understand why you work as hard as you do, you don't cut them out, you just spend less time with them and more time around people on the same path."
"Jamie looked at me and said, 'Get the SDRs to call on Saturdays. You're an idiot.' We doubled our revenue because of that one sentence." - Ned and Jamie Arick
Ned and Jamie are married and both run revenue at a high level, in different companies, at the same time.
Jamie's first SaaS job came from a Craigslist ad that sent her to a sketchy beach house where the whole team worked out of the attic.
Ned left a comfortable consulting career to start an HVAC company in Greensboro, North Carolina, a business neither of them knew the first thing about.
Eighteen months later, it had scaled to eight figures and exited for real money last July.
What got them there wasn't a clever trick.
It was refusing to overcomplicate things.
When deals stopped closing on Mondays and Tuesdays, the fix wasn't a new methodology, it was simply having reps call on
Saturdays so the calendar was already full by the start of the week.
When something breaks, Ned's first move is never to blame the person, it's to look at the process.
Jamie brings the same philosophy from competitive bodybuilding: if something is working, you don't touch it for the sake of touching it.
You stay the course instead of quitting the moment it gets hard.
"You attract what you are. If people don't understand why you work as hard as you do, you don't cut them out, you just spend less time with them and more time around people on the same path."
"If you believe in the phone, you know that when you get people on it, it works. We just have to get you talking to the right 20 percent instead of wasting effort on the rest." - Joey Gilkey, Founder and CEO of Titan X
Joey launched Titan X in June 2024 with no venture capital.
He hit $5 million in ARR in year one, acquired FrontSpin, and closed a $27 million Series A, all after proving the model worked, not before.
His thesis is a vote of confidence in the phone, not a eulogy for it.
While the industry chased parallel dialers and higher call volume and watched connect rates slide anyway, Joey bet on the opposite: the phone still works, and works well, once you know who's actually going to pick up.
His guarantee backs that belief with real money: 300 percent higher connect rates in the pilot, or he pays the client $10,000, no questions asked.
Out of roughly 500 contracts with that guarantee attached, only two clients ever tried to collect, and both turned out to be measuring their results wrong.
The phone delivered every time.
The case he makes is refreshingly hopeful once you follow the math: when connect rates quadruple on the same number of dials, cost per meeting and cost per deal drop dramatically, and the phone becomes one of the most efficient channels a sales team has.
That's the argument that turned skeptics like Kevin Dorsey, who once dismissed the whole idea as too good to be true, into the platform's loudest advocates.
"Only about 20 percent of any market will answer an unknown number. Find that 20 percent, and the phone becomes the highest-leverage channel you've got."
"If you believe in the phone, you know that when you get people on it, it works. We just have to get you talking to the right 20 percent instead of wasting effort on the rest." - Joey Gilkey, Founder and CEO of Titan X
Joey launched Titan X in June 2024 with no venture capital.
He hit $5 million in ARR in year one, acquired FrontSpin, and closed a $27 million Series A, all after proving the model worked, not before.
His thesis is a vote of confidence in the phone, not a eulogy for it.
While the industry chased parallel dialers and higher call volume and watched connect rates slide anyway, Joey bet on the opposite: the phone still works, and works well, once you know who's actually going to pick up.
His guarantee backs that belief with real money: 300 percent higher connect rates in the pilot, or he pays the client $10,000, no questions asked.
Out of roughly 500 contracts with that guarantee attached, only two clients ever tried to collect, and both turned out to be measuring their results wrong.
The phone delivered every time.
The case he makes is refreshingly hopeful once you follow the math: when connect rates quadruple on the same number of dials, cost per meeting and cost per deal drop dramatically, and the phone becomes one of the most efficient channels a sales team has.
That's the argument that turned skeptics like Kevin Dorsey, who once dismissed the whole idea as too good to be true, into the platform's loudest advocates.
"Only about 20 percent of any market will answer an unknown number. Find that 20 percent, and the phone becomes the highest-leverage channel you've got."
"When I say it cost everything, it also cost a lot of relationships. People said, 'This is the dumbest thing you can do,' and family and friends stepped away from me." - Robin Dimond, CEO and Founder of Fifth & Cor
Robin built Fifth & Cor fully self-funded. No investors, no safety net.
She leveraged her home and her car to get it off the ground, because loans weren't accessible and private equity meant giving away decision-making before she'd even started.
When people asked how they'd know she'd show up, her answer was simple: she wouldn't have a house if this didn't work.
The early years cost her more than money.
She's been the janitor and the CEO in the same hour.
She's had trusted employees steal from her, one of them someone she'd stood beside at their own wedding.
She still hasn't stopped apologizing for the missed family moments, and says she hopes she never does, because that's what keeps her honest about the cost.
What kept her going wasn't willpower.
It was knowing how many other lives were tied to the decision: employees with mortgages, clients trusting her with their brand, partners counting on the relationship.
On the days she wanted to quit, that ripple effect was the reason she got up anyway.
"I've started over from zero more than once. What's the other option? Sit in bed and cry? You build, and you build better, even when you're scared to lose it all again."
"When I say it cost everything, it also cost a lot of relationships. People said, 'This is the dumbest thing you can do,' and family and friends stepped away from me." - Robin Dimond, CEO and Founder of Fifth & Cor
Robin built Fifth & Cor fully self-funded. No investors, no safety net.
She leveraged her home and her car to get it off the ground, because loans weren't accessible and private equity meant giving away decision-making before she'd even started.
When people asked how they'd know she'd show up, her answer was simple: she wouldn't have a house if this didn't work.
The early years cost her more than money.
She's been the janitor and the CEO in the same hour.
She's had trusted employees steal from her, one of them someone she'd stood beside at their own wedding.
She still hasn't stopped apologizing for the missed family moments, and says she hopes she never does, because that's what keeps her honest about the cost.
What kept her going wasn't willpower.
It was knowing how many other lives were tied to the decision: employees with mortgages, clients trusting her with their brand, partners counting on the relationship.
On the days she wanted to quit, that ripple effect was the reason she got up anyway.
"I've started over from zero more than once. What's the other option? Sit in bed and cry? You build, and you build better, even when you're scared to lose it all again."
"I slept with my snorkel gear every night. I thought I was going to have to swim my way out when the boat capsized." - Dean Harrison, The Yacht Chef
Dean started at 15, chopping parsley for five hours while chefs laughed at him from the back door.
He was physically assaulted in that first kitchen, called his mom crying, and quit.
A second restaurant with real mentors brought him back and reminded him why he loved cooking in the first place.
At 18 he bought a one-way ticket to Europe, ran out of money in the French Alps, and stumbled into a conversation with a yacht chef who spent every winter off because the summer pay was so good.
That was all he needed to hear.
The decade that followed is hard to summarize.
He survived a six-day South Pacific storm where two people on other boats died and the stabilizers failed on his.
He was held at gunpoint by Libyan armed forces for ten hours before the embassies got involved and they finally let the crew go.
He came out the other side of both and kept sailing.
His take: when else would a chef get to do any of this?
The hard moments are the ones he looks back on most, and the reason he started documenting everything, to show the next generation of yacht chefs what the job actually looks like, not just the glamour, but the storms and everything in between.
"I don't chase jobs for the money. I chase them for the experience and for where they take me."
"I slept with my snorkel gear every night. I thought I was going to have to swim my way out when the boat capsized." - Dean Harrison, The Yacht Chef
Dean started at 15, chopping parsley for five hours while chefs laughed at him from the back door.
He was physically assaulted in that first kitchen, called his mom crying, and quit.
A second restaurant with real mentors brought him back and reminded him why he loved cooking in the first place.
At 18 he bought a one-way ticket to Europe, ran out of money in the French Alps, and stumbled into a conversation with a yacht chef who spent every winter off because the summer pay was so good.
That was all he needed to hear.
The decade that followed is hard to summarize.
He survived a six-day South Pacific storm where two people on other boats died and the stabilizers failed on his.
He was held at gunpoint by Libyan armed forces for ten hours before the embassies got involved and they finally let the crew go.
He came out the other side of both and kept sailing.
His take: when else would a chef get to do any of this?
The hard moments are the ones he looks back on most, and the reason he started documenting everything, to show the next generation of yacht chefs what the job actually looks like, not just the glamour, but the storms and everything in between.
"I don't chase jobs for the money. I chase them for the experience and for where they take me."
"Most sales teams don't have a tactics problem. They have a trust problem. For decades, we have taught our buyers to not trust us." - Leslie Venetz, Founder of Sales-Led GTM and USA Today Bestselling Author
Leslie was on track to become a CRO by 40.
The offer was on the table: $460,000.
She turned it down the same day, walked away from the goal she'd spent her entire career building toward, and paid herself $50,000 in year one of her own business.
The philosophy behind her agency came from a mistake she made early.
Six months into her first corporate job, her manager got fired and she inherited a team ten years her senior.
She assumed the title came with trust. It didn't.
From that experience she built what she now calls the earn the right framework: before you do anything, ask yourself whether you've actually earned the right to ask for this person's attention.
Most teams skip that question entirely, which is why their pipeline looks like a tactics problem but is really a trust problem.
On curiosity, she doesn't accept "I'm just not naturally curious" as an answer.
If someone told you that you needed a 50% free throw percentage, you'd know immediately the path there was practice.
Curiosity works the same way.
"Grit isn't doing one hard thing for two weeks. It's showing up for months and years toward a bigger purpose, even when it doesn't feel like it's working."
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