Compiled musings and notes on leadership philosophy, working, parenthood.
To become a clearer communicator, use the rule of 2’s and 3’s, which means that wherever possible, frame your comment as 2 or 3 parts.
"You have to care. It sounds simple...you cannot do superior work if you're indifferent."
William Albert Allard
“Self doubt can be an ally. This is because it serves as an indicator of aspiration. It reflects love, love of something we dream of doing, and desire, desire to do it. If you find yourself asking yourself, “Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?” chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death”
-Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
Be forewarned, *language and since then, Kanye has gone pretty nuts…not an endorsement, just a story that I love about the first time Dave Chappelle met Kanye.
The first time Kanye West was on television was on the Chappelle’s Show. It was the week that The Black Album came out. I’ll never forget. We were all sitting in the trailer listening to The Black Album, and Jay-Z says on the record, “Kanyeezy, you’s a genius. You did it again,”* and Kanye stopped the tape and pressed rewind.
He had that energy. You knew he was gonna be somebody. And then they did the show, him and Common did it. And you remember that song The Food? “You love to hear the story, again and again. About those two brothers from the City of Wind.”
The crowd, “EGHHHHHHHEEEE.” Motherfuckers go nuts. I said, “Hey Kanye, look, we’re going back to the studio. We got to edit some sketches, but if you want, you can come with us and check out some of the stuff we’re working on.” He says, “Oh that’d be great!”
He comes to the studio we’re all sitting and there watching all these crazy sketches. Nobody had seen any of this shit before. It was Rick James, all that shit. All on there. It’s on footage, we was all cracking up and then in the middle of it all, Kanye’s phone rings. This is when I knew he was gonna be famous.
He answers the phone, he goes, “Hello. Huh? What? Uh uh, I can’t. I can’t. Cause, I’m at Dave Chappelle’s show watching sketches that nobody’s ever seen before.”
And then he says, “Cause my life is dope, and I do dope shit,” and then he hung up the phone.
“Cause my life is dope, and I do dope shit.”
“You either have an eye for talent or you don’t. You can do all your homework and have everything properly organized, but when it’s draft night and you’re on the clock and your coconuts are on the table — when it’s nut-cutting time, as we say — that’s when you separate the boys from the men."
— Donnie Nelson
There are times when I am in really good standing with my boss where it is not my fault. At the end of the day, my REAL concern needs to be that I am in good standing with the Lord. Good standing and don’t deserve it, bow your head, good standing and do deserve it, bow your head. If you are not pleasing God, it is impossible to please anyone else, because it will not matter.
Right Standing Before Men
Right Standing Before God: I take care of my character and HE manages my reputation.
At the end of our year together, I am constantly framing things up in the Spiritual dimension because of Kelly.
Have you ever had to deliver tough news? Or provide feedback that could be challenging for the other person to hear? A rule of thumb, that has helped me immensely over the years: If you’re going to say something that could be interpreted as hard, ALWAYS ask for permission. An observation softens the blow and the request being granted helps with the message being received:
Example Scripts (Memorize These and say them until it’s natural)
“Hey, can I make an observation"
“Thank you so much, I would really like to make an observation, if I could”
“You know, maybe you could help me sort this through because I am having trouble seeing how this is equitable"
“This looks a little foggy to me, would you mind if I ask a question"
“I am having a hard time understanding that position, would you mind if I made an observation?”
80% of any coaching session is spent in the area of perspective (getting them to see in a different way)
- Framing the conversation for how it looks different from perspective
- “I need someone in that seat who can do X, and I would really like it to be you. I am here to help you move up or move on, but I am not here to empower you to stay stuck”
- When we fail to tell people what is really in there best interest, we are cheating and shorting them.
Spoke with my mentor and good friend, Kevin Gaither about being laid off and what that looks like
- Get incredibly clear about what I want in the next season of my life / career
- Shamelessly activate my network
LoVellette Job Seeker Mission Statement:
I’m looking for my next opportunity to work at an established, fast-growing company, either public or pre-IPO. Strong preference for in-person or hybrid roles, ideally in the Phoenix area but open to relocation for a compelling opportunity, along with remote opportunities. Desire to apply my 12+ years of sales experience as an individual contributor and people manager towards building an excellent sales organization, while working for a company that 1. values employees, 2. pays well (Cash + Stock) and 3. rewards excellence with opportunities for advancement into leadership.
My next opportunity is defined by:
- Territory sales role, combining account management via existing book growth and closing new business / referrals, allowing me to utilize interpersonal, sales and negotiation skills to drive revenue and exceed quota by building trusted business partnerships across a group of top accounts.
- Historical and Targeted Average Deal Size
- Renewals: $800k - $1.8m
- Growth / New Business: $150k-$200k
- Enterprise Sales Motion: Building champions at all levels of an organization and driving process change across large, matrixed organizations involving multiple decision makers and budget holders, alongside trusted partners and internal technical experts.
- Preferred industries are Advertising, or advertising adjacent (DSP, Cloud, Data Analytics) or a rapidly growing SaaS company.
- Sample Job Titles I’m Targeting: Enterprise Account Manager, Strategic Account Executive, Enterprise Account Executive, Enterprise Partnerships Manager
LoVellette Condensed Job Seeker Mission Statement:
I’m targeting Enterprise Account Manager or Strategic Account Executive roles in either Advertising / AdTech or fast-growing SaaS companies. I have a strong preference for in-person / hybrid roles (local to Phoenix) but open to relocation / remote for the right fit. The average deal size I’m targeting is $150- $200k new business and $800k - $1.8m renewals. Looking to leverage my history as a top-performer, along with enterprise sales and negotiation skills at a company that values employees, pays well (cash + stock) and offers leadership paths.
Example Outreach On LInkedIn:
“The job of an NBA head coach is to 1. get your team to play hard and 2. get guys to play together. It really is that simple.” -Don MacClean
I’m getting closer to 40 and have been thinking a lot lately about 1. What I want to priorities, 2. Who I want to become 3. What is most important to me. Perhaps it’s just me, but I often struggle with comparison and at times, being envious of others who’s career has accelerated faster, who seem to be going on better vacations, buying a bigger house, have a truck, and the list goes on and on. The reality is that my comparison leads directly to a decrease in joy. So, to combat, I put together of what I care about and what I’m intentionally pursuing, so I can get really clear on what’s important.
I am in control of my life
My
What I Value and am pursuing:
- Closeness with God that is consistent and growing over time. How do I do this?
- Regular church attendance
- Bible Study
- Surround with like minded men
- Happy and fulfiled marriage
- Consistent investment and proactive engagement
- Closeness and partnership
- Dreaming about the future, enjoying the now and adventuring with the family
- Raising Kids
- Solid education (we have chosen Christian education)
- Engagement outside
- Trips
What we aren’t prioritizing
- Keeping up with others
- Competing with friends
- Driving nice cars
- Upgrading house
July 23, 2025
Met with a new friend, Jeremy Podany, who shared a framework for stages of life that has proven to be immensely helpful as I’m looking forward to what’s next in my life and career.
Heading into the next season of my life (for me, it’s my 40’s) take time to stack rank below, based on priority.
- Advancement
- Freedom
- Adventure
- Balance
- Security
From the age of 20-39, I would have prioritized like this:
- Advancement
- Adventure
- Freedom
- Security
- Balance
Heading into my 40’s, with 3 kids that are growing quickly, my list is updated:
- Freedom
- Adventure
- Balance
- Security
- Advancement
It’s been an interesting exercise and has caused me to think in a new way about a new season (this new season, heading into my 40's has proven to be quite daunting and anxiety inducing). This framework provided structure around what I’ve been wrestling with for some time and gave me space to vocalize that career advancement is no longer motivating or compelling. Allowing myself the freedom to say I don’t aspire to becoming a VP of Sales (which is the aspirational, upward career trajectory for for me in my field) has been terrifying, and also freeing.
Anyways, give it a shot, let me know what you think and feel free to reach back out and AMA.
Jeremy Podany
Narrative: pause, take a breath, come back with renewed energy
Framework / Umbrella Question
In the next season, I would like:
- Advancement
- Freedom
- Adventure
- Balance
- Security
Three Things:
- you will build a successful business based on who you are and what you know
- create a service or purchase path based on what people already buy, don’t try to create a new line item in their budget
- pray for favor….nehemiah, passion to go do something, unless I get favor from God, I’m not even going to go rebuild the wall.
- Other people give you access to serve them (What it is)
Leadership Philosophy:
- Clarity is Kindness
- Leaders have a Vision and Lead
- Bigger Isn’t Better, Better Is Better
- Execution is the Expectation
How to Win On This Team
- With Integrity
- Serve others with their best interest in mind
- You will have lots of autonomy, your work shouldn’t be in the grey area, keep it clean and above-board.
- Lead with Respect
- Respect Yourself
- Respect Each Other
- Respect This Opportunity
- By Working Hard
- Success is a by product of effort, focus and determination. Do your best and success with follow
- “To give anything less than your best, is to sacrifice the gift” -Steve Prefontaine
- Owning Your Time
- Activity based metrics will be clearly defined
- Manage your time and energy around hitting those numbers
- Be on guard for anything or anyone that steals your time
- By Turning Pro!
- Professionals
- Take Their Work Seriously
- Take Their Clients Needs Seriously
- Take Their Goals Seriously
- Works First, Plays After
How I Can Help You
I am here to help you grow, develop, and become successful. The clearer you are about these things, the better I can serve you!
- Know Your Purpose: You chose to work here for a reason, what is that reason? Being passionate about why you’re here can get you through challenging times. Keep your WHY in mind.
- Know Our Mission: We are here to do a job in which you have a part. We want a good fit! Know how you fit into what we do.
- Know Yourself: There are 3 basic skills needed to succeed here. 1. Urgency, 2. Attention to Detail and 3. Respect. You won’t crush all of them. That’s OK! As you work you way through a day, be aware of what comes easy and where you may need work.
- Know Your Coach: I can do a lot of things. I can’t read minds. Talk to me!
Where should you focus your efforts on this team, paying attention to these areas will get you where you want to go!
- Mindset: Your biggest asset is a determined mind. “I’m here to..” Whenever you’re stuck, , frustrated, or in the weeds, ask the WIN questions… What’s Important Now. Do that next and you’ll be fine.
- Call Numbers: our goal here is…Block out your time accordingly
- Client Engagement: greet and engage with the customer in mind. It’s their world, we’re just here to make it better
- Attention to Detail: Sloppy work can kill your awesome call and frustrate the other teams that depend on us. Avoid cutting corners, over-communicate and hand off excellent work to the best of your ability.
My Perspective On Sales:
Weekly Pipeline Calls
Sales Training / Methodology
Pipeline Naming Conventions
Hiring Top Performers
Firing Under Performers
Performance Improvement Plans
Objection Handling Techniques:
Objections are constantly happening throughout the buying cycle and it’s your role to coax them out and eventually you learn to anticipate them and respond accordingly. The best framework I’ve heard, and used for years is below:
- Isolate
- Check
- Give / Get
Isolate: What is the actual objection?
“If I’m hearing you correctly, you’re saying the hinderance to this deal being done is X, Y, Z (ideally, only single out 1-2 objections, don’t want to make this step too complex)
Check: Make Sure It’s Exactly What They’re Saying
“To confirm, if I can update pricing to THIS number, increase payment terms from net 30- net 45, are you prepared to move forward with this solution”?
Give / Get: Always receive something in response, which drives mutual respect and puts skin in the game from your prospect
“I’m going to do my best to XYZ approved (tie to isolate and check). If I can get that approved, I’m going to need this and this back from you, how does that sound?
The Get could be many things, but make sure you get something in return, always.
- Expedited Signature Timeline
- Term Extension
- Additional Products / Services
- Case Study
When negotiating, frameworks help. The older negotiation tactic was Feel, Felt, Found
I totally understand how you would FEEL that way about XYZ, I work with a lot of clients who have FELT the same way and expressed that to me. What they’ve FELT is XYZ is actually the case, etc
Another one, that I actually prefer is Obviously you, Obviously I, Typically We
Obviously you want the best price, obviously I want to deliver a solution at a price that works for us, typically we do XYZ to meet in the middle
Why should you set up Server-Side Tagging on your site? Why should you care?
I consistently help Fortune500 and 100 companies with consented, 1st party data collection and architecture. It’s a common request, how do we get assistance with making the shift from Client-Side to Server-Side tagging on their sites and various entities and properties. So, why should you invest in Server-Side tagging?
- Capture Consented 1st Party Data: Clean, consented, structured data
- Activate Data Using MDW, such as BigQuery or AWS: Now that you’re through step 1 and you have data flowing into your marketing data warehouse, it’s time to take that data, pipe it over to your marketing platform and use it to drive marketing and business ROI. As an example, how do we segment our audiences based on their propensity to purchase, propensity to churn or segmentation by product category
- Improve Site Speed: This is a common by-product of Server-Side tag management, your site is no longer reliant on individual browers or various consent conditions, the data is captured automatically on your side and passed through to your servers, which causes a decrease in the overall site speed.
Why Should You Choose GA360 Over Free
One of the main products I currently sell is GA360 licenses, which my company resells from Google. When dealing with a new prospect, typically an enterprise who is considering Google Analytics as opposed to competitor, Adobe Analytics, the refrain is let’s start with free and then decide if we want to upgrade to enterprise grade 360 license at a later date. While that’s not really a bad place to start, I do think there is value to considering jumping in with 360 right from the jump, for reasons below:
- Data Management & Overall Integrations: when purchasing an enterprise level analytics platform, like Adobe or GA360, actionable insights are key. With 360, you are able to provide company wide visualization into insights from your various web properties, which ultimately tie to business outcomes and success
- Roll-Ups & SubProperties
- BQ Fresh Daily Export
- Enhanced Integration Capabillites
- Higher Data Import Limits
- Expanded Data Sets
- Compliance & Reliability (SLA’s): Guaranteed uptime and compliance peace-of-mind with advanced privacy measures
- Service Level Agreements
- Data Access History
- User Assigned Collections
- Privacy-Centric Settings
- Enhanced Analytics Capabilities: Revenue driving insights via enhanced analytics, expanded event tracking and upsampled data
- Higher Data Retention
- Increased Unsampled & API Limites
- Higher Data Collection Limits
- Improved Explorations
A Hill I’ll Die On: Online gambling is bad, really bad. Almost no-one should engage in it unless you have full transparency with a spouse or trusted friend.
Email Tips:
- Never start an email with “I”
- Always use a question to elicit a response
- How does that sound to you?
- Does that align with what you were thinking?
- Would that be of interest to you?
- How does next Wednesday, 1pm EST look for us to connect?
- Two Paragraphs Max
- If you aren’t using Gemini to re-write your emails, you’re missing out. Make sure to edit the final version and make it in your voice, but this is an incredible resource that I use constantly. Quickly draft your thoughts with limited formatting, have Gemini polish, insert and then final edits to make it your voice.
- Cut out 90% of pleasantries:
- “I hope this email finds you well”
- Happy Hump Day”
- “I’m glad we could connect, it was great meeting you and discussing XYZ”
- Simply say “Please see below for an overview of what we discussed, along with next steps. Thank you”
- Always leave your phone number and suggest a quick call to get on the same page, you’d be surprised how many people just call instead of writing back, I certainly do. “My cell phone is XYZ.XYZ. XYZA, give me a call if easier and we can quickly get on the same page”
Should You Go Into Sales:
Track Transactions: At minimum, every week you should look through every single transaction and categorizing using some sort of budgeting tool (I recommend TillerHQ). Look, I don’t love it, never have, probably never will. But I simply don’t know of any better way to get your hands around your spending and budgeting than tracking your spending.
Weigh Yourself Every Day: I’ve struggled with my weight my entire adult life, often ballooning 20 lbs, only to lose that weight with a burst of motivation. I’ve also spent majority of my life worried about what will be on the scale. Every single day I weigh myself first thing and what you quickly realize, is it’s just a number. It goes up, it goes down, sometimes it correlates to diet, excercise, often times it doesn’t. Weigh yourself every day and you’ll quickly learn that freedom from worry comes from visibility into your weight.
Clarity is kindness: Your job is to be crystal clear - with expectations, goals, outcomes, company vision, in your overall communication. You have to assume people won’t understand, won’t remember and won’t care, and tha’ts okay. Make your vision and overall communcation simple, repeat it often and keep it in front of your people regularly.
As your career grows, your communication ability becomes your superpower, or a limiting factor. Early career focuses is on passing information along, ensuring accuracy and relevant details are included. Leaders consolidate, synthesize and recommend. Meaning, you take all the information, make it concise, understandable and provide a recommendation using 2-3 point frameworks. Once you understand these fundamentals, you’ll use them for the rest of your career.
Example:
I see two important takeaways from this discussion
The first is X
The second is Y
I recommend we proceed with this because of that
Consolidate, 2-3 points of emphasis and then say “I recommend” followed with your stated best course of action, to level up your leadership communication.
Significant market pullback this morning and having lived (and worked) through 2 others, the best advice I can provide is:
- Stay Employed: You have to do whatever you can to keep your job. Now is not the time to talk about work / life balance, it all has to be focused on delivering very real, tangilble results and documneting them.
- Keep Buying: At the very least, increase your percentage 401k contribution. If you’re able to save elsewhere, chip away at that, even if it’s a small amount.
Be Interested: In others, what they care about, focus on and prioritize, be genuinely interested in those things.
Be Interesting: Have hobbies, go on adventures, read books, live an interesting (to you life) not for the sake of clicks, likes, social status, but because you get one shot at this life, so make it count.
The amount of people I come across who have no interest in others and are not interesting at all themselves is astounding. Start by being interested in others and also live an interesting life, this will set you up well.
April 10, 2025
Wherever possible, detach yourself from the end result, especially when in performance based professions like sales.
April 1, 2025
I’ve gone through seasons of work where I was crushing it, successful, things going my way and many seasons where the opposite was true and nothing seemed to go well. It’s vitally important to be likable, across the board but even more so when you aren’t crushing it. When things are bad and you aren’t performing, when the team isn’t performing, when everything is broken, that is where you differentiate yourself by being optimistic, helpful, hard-working, not complaining and focused on what’s next. This will put you far ahead of others, in good times, but especially during tough times. It always blows my mind to come across not top performing employees who are also challenging to work with.
March 25, 2025
The most powerful words to use as you grow your leadership career is “I recommend” which pushes you to have an opinion and a course of action ready. Wherever possible, interject “I recommend” followed by what you believe to be the best course of action. It forces action and decisiveness and is a critical skill if you want to lead people or a team.
March 25, 2025
If you’re looking to hedge your bets on a new hire, the most reliable way is to analyze past performance, as that’s the best predictor / indicator of future success.
Example Questions to Get to Past Performance
March 25, 2025
It’s important to outline clearly and concisely who you are, why someone should hire you and your core values. I’ve listed mine below, and these do evolve over time but this sets up a framework for how I communicate what I’m good at, what I care about and gain alignment when exploring a new opportunity.
Why Hire Me?
- Proven Results: Documented, measurable track record of success in the critical profile areas of 1. Sales / Business Development 2. Driving sustainable outcomes and 3. Joint Business Planning. As my previous VP told me “Past performance is the best predictor of future success.”
- Trusted Business Relationships: Relationships are my superpower. I love building long-term, trusted business relationships to solve complex problems that enable client growth & success. I love building and gain energy from creating solutions that drive business success
- Complex Made Simple: Able to uncover pain points and organize / simplify technical and complex message into actionable next steps. Solid sales fundamentals, confidence getting up to speed in self-directed manner, possess wide-ranging Google knowledge.
My Core Values:
- Integrity Always: Honest and trustworthy in all my dealings. Represent myself, my family and company I work for well. Never cut corners, always tell the truth, play the long game
- Owns It: Accept full responsibility for my work and the results. Never blame the team, never comlain, always looking to improve.
- People > Everything: I want to work on challenging problems, build a business, make a lot of money and do all that with excellent people
March 19, 2025
Example 30-60-90 Day Plan Lives
The first 90-Days: People & Culture > Focus Externally > Launch & Accelerate
30-Days: People Culture, Tools
- Learn the Team: People > Everything. Learn motivations, goals, aspirations, strengths and weaknesses (see here for sample info sheet). Individual lunch with every team-member and a team building activity with larger group.
- People + Culture = Can’t Lose: Outline 3 core expectations and lead team through best practice session for success.
- Urgency
- Respect
- Together
- Deepen TikTok Understanding: On day 1, I’ll have a working knowledge of the TikTok narrative, will need to hone and adjust my self-study through formal training, shadowing and enlisting a manager mentor to assist.
- Metrics Overview: Learn dashboards, analyze win rates, in-quarter pipeline, revenue growth and how we track seller success.
60 Days: Shift External
- Clients Are the Focus: Relationship map top agencies / opportunities, CXO outreach to key stakeholders in order to understand current landscape and working relationship with TkTok. Start / Stop / Continue to deepen partnership and prioritize what’s working well and where we can improve.
- Understand What’s Working: Analyze top success stories, shadow successful reps, evaluate impactful collateral to layer my own sales knowledge.
- Pitch With Sellers: Co-Pitch top opportunities, unlock relationships and showcase outreach techniques. Shadow pitches with sales team and begin creating a culture of feedback (manager feedback sheet here)
Day 90: Launch, Accelerate
- Create Development Outline for sales team. For top agencies, create focused plans for growth outlined by objectives and deliverables.
- Lean Into Hiring Plans: Learn how TikTok hires and recruits, build trusted relationships with internal recruiters, provide recommendations for characteristics of hires we should pursue (sample hiring framework that I built located here)
- Chart the Course: Recommend a team operating plan addressing the most pressing issues that team faces in short - medium-term with scaled impact assessment for long-term heading into 2023.
March 18, 2025
I’ve moved around quite a bit over the last decade and the hardest part about moving is often making friends (and missing old friends). The best and quickest way to make friends is to become the person that outreaches and connects. Texting just accepted the role of the outreach person, texting, calling, inviting, and never take it personally if people don’t respond, are slow to respond. Find another time / way to reach out, engage well and move on.
March 25, 2025
The quickest way to lose brand loyalty with your customers (especially those that aren’t as tech savvy) is to make it very challenging, or worse, to charge them (looking at you, Verizon) to speak with a real person for customer support.
March 14, 2025
I’m skeptical of parenting advice that comes from someone under the age of 50, who hasn’t raised at least 1 solid, well adjusted, functioning member of society. Even with that, most parenting advice is terrible. The best parent for your child is you and the best gift you can give your child is your time, attention and instruction / correction where necessary.
March 15, 2025
If you’re young and aspirational, living in a top 5 city should be a priority. Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Austin - pick one and move. If you can hack it in one of those areas, you can go anywhere and succeed and you’ll gain an incredible network and confidence for the rest of your life.
March 14, 2025
If you aren’t able or confident in your ability to sell, you should change that, now. Being able to sell is a superpower and should be a skill honed by all. If I were to go back in my career and change anything, I would have started selling earlier, in more challenging situations (door-to-door, all outbound prospecting, software).
March 13, 2025
Remote work is nice -
For parents
For late career
For saving money on commute…and that’s about it.
Remote work is a killer
Young Career
Aspirational People
Career Development
It also breeds paranoia, mental health challenges and really weird / toxic workplaces. If you’re under the age of 40, avoid remote at all costs, go into the office 5x per week, never eat lunch alone and thank me later.
March 12, 2025
As AI advances and becomes more ingrained into our daily existence, opportunity grows for bespoke, highly competent, friendly, helpful, personal, human support agents. Nothing is more frustrating than dealing with an AI chat bot that cannot provide the full context or help that a human agent could. The best brands will leverage AI but quickly transfer interaction to human agents to answer questions and provide excellent customer service.