How to Escape Founder-Led Sales and Scale Your Agency with Corey Quinn

https://www.coreyquinn.com/anyone-not-everyone-book

Leading an agency through growth is tough, but nothing bottlenecks that growth like founder-led sales. In this episode, I sit down with Corey Quinn, a seasoned expert in scaling agencies, to discuss the painful challenges of agency founders trapped in founder-led sales and how to break free. Corey shares his journey, from micromanaging leadership driven by ego to guiding a team that grew an agency's revenue 8X, scaling it to $150 million.

We dive deep into the pivotal moments when Corey realized his leadership style needed to change, and the steps he took to foster an environment where his team could thrive. He also breaks down the power of niche specialization, explaining how the right data-driven focus can exponentially improve agency growth. Finally, Corey unveils his game-changing gift-based outbound strategy that played a significant role in building Scorpion's success, offering actionable steps for agency founders to implement today.

If you’re struggling to escape founder-led sales or scale your agency, this episode provides invaluable insights and practical strategies to set your business on the path to sustainable growth.


Connect with Corey Quinn:

Corey Quinn generously offers listeners a free copy of his audiobook, Anyone Not Everyone, along with helpful workbooks and videos. Head to AnyoneNotEveryone.com to grab your copy and start building a scalable agency today. 

Books Mentioned:

• Anyone Not Everyone by Corey Quinn 

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Chapters

• 0:02 Starting with Founder-Led Sales
• 5:00 Leadership Evolution and Mistakes
• 13:29 Scaling Scorpion’s Success
• 21:29 Specialization and Niching Down
• 27:29 The Power of Gift-Based Outbound Strategy
• 34:29 Leadership Today and Long-Term Success

Transcript

Dr. William Attaway (00:02.242)
I am honored today to have Corey Quinn on the podcast. As the former CMO of Scorpion and now a dedicated agency coach, Corey specializes in helping agency founders scale revenue. At Scorpion, he played a pivotal role in growing the agency's revenue 8X in five years to a remarkable $150 million. Corey is also the author of Anyone Not Everyone.

comprehensive guide for agency founders looking to simplify growth and escape founder led sales. Corey, I'm so glad you're here and thanks for being on the show.

Corey Quinn (00:43.399)
Dr. William, excited to be here. Thanks for having me on.

Dr. William Attaway (00:47.528)
Absolutely. I'd love to start with you sharing a little bit of your story with our listeners, particularly around your journey and your development as a leader.

Corey Quinn (00:53.712)
Awesome.

Corey Quinn (00:58.117)
I love it. my my my career, my journey starts when I was about five years old. I've been in a little bit of context. I've been in advertising marketing my whole career started in sales. But before I even started in sales, I was a I was in the advertising business at the age of about five years old. I was a childhood actor. So I starred in the very first chicken make nuggets commercial and

Dr. William Attaway (01:24.651)
awesome.

Corey Quinn (01:24.679)
continue to do, yeah, that while, I did continue to do a handful of national commercials for big brands that we all know, like and trust. That was a wild, fun experience. I grew up in LA. So I got, I guess, poached from one of these headhunters as looking for cute kids, I guess, in any event. So I started my career in advertising super early. Of course, I decided not to follow the acting career, went back to school and had a normal childhood.

for all intents and purposes. But, you know, the first real business slash leadership opportunity I had was out of when I graduated college, my best friend and I, Simon Talbot, we raised six million dollars to launch a company called Cast Pro dot com. And that was a wild time because my myself and my business partner were just really young kids. had no experience.

having $6 million in the bank and a lot of trust by, you know, investors and then all of a sudden having employees. And I will, I'll be honest with you, William, that during that brief period of my life, when I had that business, I did not know what I was doing because I didn't have the life experience. And I probably burned a few bridges because I was not a good leader. I led with my ego.

Dr. William Attaway (02:45.012)
Mmm.

Corey Quinn (02:47.279)
I'll never forget one thing. I hired my best friend at the time. Another gentleman by the name of Max. And because I treated him more like an employee than a friend, that relationship went down the tubes. I lost that friendship even till today. And it makes me sad about that. So I made a tremendous amount of mistakes. After that business folded, I got into sales and I learned a lot about the art and science of sales. I love sales and I really went deep.

got professional sales training through a couple of different workplaces I went to. became a financial advisor. And I guess I found leadership in kind of an indirect way through leading myself. When you go into a sales role, you have to do things that are potentially a little uncomfortable, like picking up the phone and talking to strangers, cold calling, and proposing.

Dr. William Attaway (03:29.367)
Yeah.

Corey Quinn (03:39.823)
multi hundred thousand dollar proposals to people that you know that you're trying to build trust with like all these things are really difficult to do without really learning how to lead yourself. I think it was Tony Robbins that said you can't lead others so you can lead yourself. And so I really bought into that philosophy. I became really disciplined as a salesperson, as a business person. But my first my first role as a true leader.

was as I graduated from a sales role to a sales manager role, hired a couple of salespeople. And the way that I managed in the early days was what I think Dave Ramsey in his in his book talks about on to entree leadership. He talks about how you have the the the the fry cook who's also like in everyone's business type of thing where I was very micromanaging everything my employees would do was in their business.

Dr. William Attaway (04:29.311)

Corey Quinn (04:33.939)
and I did not give them the freedom to really be, be, successful in their role. So I made a lot of mistakes, but the, the big sort of shining moment, I thought that when I look back now on my career so far was as my, at my last in -house role at an agency called Scorpion, you mentioned it in the intro. I grew, I helped the company to grow from 20 million to 150 million in six short years. I went from a team of myself to a team of 30 people. and luckily I figured out a few things along the way.

I read a lot of books. had some leadership coaches that I hired who helped me along the way. And I look back on that experience and I'm very proud about how I led.

Dr. William Attaway (05:13.378)
Mmm.

Those are remarkable results. I mean, six years to 8x, I cannot imagine the pace of change that you were navigating there as you were in the middle.

Corey Quinn (05:18.568)
Yes, I know.

Corey Quinn (05:23.536)
Hey Dax, baby.

Corey Quinn (05:31.123)
So I'll put some numbers to it. Yeah, so we were a company, we started with 100 people when I joined. By the time I left, we were 1 ,000 people. We started, I had 1 ,000 clients. When I left, it 14 ,000 clients. And myself, I was a team of one. I had 30 people by the time I left the company. So you could talk about a lot of...

just organizational change, lot of identity change, ego shifts, and all the things that go along with that kind of transformation. It was wild.

Dr. William Attaway (06:03.138)
You said a minute ago that at the beginning you led with ego. And boy, I can relate to that. That was me at the beginning too. I mean, you go back 30 years and that's exactly where I was because you think that the title on the door is all you need.

Corey Quinn (06:07.249)
Yeah.

Corey Quinn (06:12.679)
Yeah.

Corey Quinn (06:22.803)
My head did not fit through the door, the front door. was so full of myself. I thought I was going to be the next guy, .com superstar, mega millionaire on the front cover of Forbes, and no one could tell me what to do. I had all the answers, not humble at all. And I think, honestly, if I look back on that time, I didn't like myself very much. I didn't like who I was being, but I was really consumed by this.

Dr. William Attaway (06:47.116)
Hmm.

Corey Quinn (06:52.191)
false promise of this sort of material success that really just caused me to be drunk with ego, I think. Yeah.

Dr. William Attaway (07:00.866)
So that guy then could not have led at Scorpion the way that you did.

Corey Quinn (07:06.853)
No, I would have failed. would have been let go a long time ago because that was not a way to truly grow a team. And I think about it in terms of how do I create a team, an environment where people can show up and give and do their best work? Like that's the sign of a great leader in my book is how do I create the conditions where people are really thriving and they're really contributing and they're

Dr. William Attaway (07:28.77)
Yes.

Corey Quinn (07:34.151)
feeling fulfilled and actualized and all those things. see that as definitely my role at Scorpion is the goal of leadership or one of the big goals.

Dr. William Attaway (07:43.458)
That's what came through recently. We met, we were both speaking at the same conference down in Miami. I heard you talk about this in a different way. This was from your book, the one that I referenced earlier, Anyone Not Everyone. Phenomenal read first, so thank you for writing it, because this is one way to touch so many people that you may never meet, but who get to benefit. Your talk really centered around thinking about other people.

Corey Quinn (07:48.637)
Yeah.

Corey Quinn (08:00.999)
Thank you.

Corey Quinn (08:12.668)
Yes.

Dr. William Attaway (08:12.822)
Right? Thinking about their experience, thinking about what their needs are and how you can add value to them instead of what you get out of it. That was so refreshing. I love that.

Corey Quinn (08:19.357)
Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. There's a saying out there that everyone's listening to the same radio station, WIIFM. You heard this, right? It's an old timey saying. And it's what's in it for me. I'm also just remembering Donald Miller. He wrote a book called Building a Story Brand. in it, he so elegantly talks about something that we did really at the...

Dr. William Attaway (08:33.43)
Yes, that's right.

Dr. William Attaway (08:43.042)
Mm -hmm. Yep.

Corey Quinn (08:50.967)
And we were ineffective in the early days of my time at Scorpion, even around who we were confused about, who was the hero and then who was the guide. Right. And I think that translates into the leadership role as well as relates to the Donald Miller thing. I'll just I'll just mention in case people are not familiar. We used to think in Scorpion that we were the hero. We would promote ourselves as the solution, the best company, the ones that would come in, swoop in and solve all your problems. And

Dr. William Attaway (09:00.736)
Yes, yes.

Corey Quinn (09:20.433)
the way that Donald Miller talks about, which I love is that your client is actually the one that is the hero of their own story. And you don't, you don't have to any, any good story. You don't have two heroes fighting for the spotlight. And so what we learned is that we had to take the photos of our building off of the slide deck. had to stop positioning ourselves as the hero, but as the guide. And we really, really, we went deep into really re thinking about how do we show up as the guide for our clients.

in their journey versus them showing up on ours.

Dr. William Attaway (09:52.642)
That's so good. I think that's the right framing. And I think every leader who's listening needs to adopt this and understand it's not about you. Because I think that's a trap. I think that's a ditch that way too many of us drove into early on, but hopefully learned to get out of and stay between the lines.

Corey Quinn (09:57.361)
Yeah.

Corey Quinn (10:10.865)
Yeah.

Corey Quinn (10:14.651)
Yeah. And I think it's a great way for leaders who have this sort of awakening that it's not about you, that you will be able to attract better employees because the best employees know what good leadership looks like. so being able to live that and be able to demonstrate that you're there for their success, that will attract A plus talent.

Dr. William Attaway (10:25.826)
Yeah.

Dr. William Attaway (10:30.205)
so true. So true.

Corey Quinn (10:44.18)
which is of course the best thing a leader can do.

Dr. William Attaway (10:50.282)
I'm so incredibly sorry. Somebody just rang my doorbell and my dog decided to go nuts right now. Give me just one moment. I'm so sorry. I hate this. Usually my wife and daughter are here and they are not. So it's me and the dog.

Corey Quinn (10:52.435)
I've got two of them. If my doorbell went, would be the same thing.

Corey Quinn (11:02.535)
Yeah, it's all good.

Corey Quinn (11:12.817)
All good.

Corey Quinn (11:21.205)
Ha ha.

What kind of dog you got?

Dr. William Attaway (11:26.274)
She is a Havanese, so about 16 pounds. Originally from Cuba is where they were. about 16 pounds, just a little dog. We've had her for about 12 years. She's about 12 years old now.

Corey Quinn (11:28.876)
I don't know what that is. OK.

Corey Quinn (11:33.765)
how many? yes, Havana, yes.

Corey Quinn (11:43.045)
that's awesome. We've got two little Brussels Griffons, know, Brussels Griffon is. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. William Attaway (11:46.816)
Nice. Yeah, absolutely. That's awesome.

Dr. William Attaway (11:54.923)
All right, let's go.

Give it a go. Here we go. So in your book, you talk about a system to escape what you describe as founder led sales. Why do you think agencies struggle with founder led sales?

Corey Quinn (12:09.436)
That's right.

Corey Quinn (12:13.337)
It's such a good question. So the typical way that an agency founder gets into business, and this is true for most professional services, is that a entrepreneur gets into business by going on LinkedIn and saying, hey, I'm opening up an agency. I want to help businesses with SEO or with online marketing. They reach out to their college alumni or their high school buddies. They let everybody know that, hey, I'm here to help. And of course, as a result of that personal network, they're going to get some business.

This is the typical way that people start these, these, these businesses. And of course they continue to see success by saying, yes. I'll give you an example. There's a friend of mine, Alex, he's an agency owner started off as kind of like this generalist, right? Same thing. He really wanted to be in business. So he put a shingle out and put the word out. And as a result of that, he started saying yes to the local furniture store, to the local dentists and attorneys and CPAs and all these local businesses.

And that was great. He was really happy because he was in business, right? And he was getting revenues, hiring employees. And that was, that was, you it was, it was perfect for him until the days, weeks and months and years past where he realized that he'd be going into walking to these sales meetings. Cause by the way, he was the sale only sales guy. he'd be going to this sales meeting and like be scratching his head saying, okay.

What does this person need again? Do they need patients to need cases? Do they need foot traffic into the store? Like what, what exactly am I selling and go into that sales meeting, sell a completely custom package to match their specific needs. We'll bring that back to the agency and everybody would be like throwing up their arms saying, what'd you sell now? You know, what do we got to do now? Right. And it got to the point where there was just too much custom work, too much bespoke work. Everything was one off.

Dr. William Attaway (13:54.528)
Hahaha!

Dr. William Attaway (14:04.215)
Yeah.

Corey Quinn (14:06.631)
And he realized that that was ultimately a bottle, a bottleneck, right? And what he, what he was unable to do in that moment was to really escape founder led sales. had no repeatable process, no repeatable system that didn't require his direct input. So the, the, is a common story. It's a common sort of path. The only exception William is that if you are an attorney or you are, let's say you work in, I did a podcast episode of

Dr. William Attaway (14:17.858)
Hmm.

Corey Quinn (14:35.303)
this great agency founder who he is. He used to work in the pharmaceutical industry as a marketer, and he would he was fed up with how all the agencies they worked with would service them. So he said, forget this. I'm going to quit Pfizer or whatever pharmaceutical was, and I'm going to go start an agency. Right. So he knew exactly where to start. But most agencies start in this sort of a generalist approach. And by the way, I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good thing because.

As they say, there's a saying that says that slow is smooth and smooth is fast, right? And the point is that as a result of being in business for a year or two years, working with a variety of different types of businesses, you're going to get a lot of reps. You're going to understand like, Hey, I really like working with this type of business or this type of industry. These people really benefit from my service and Hey, I'm really good at this. You'll have a lot of really great data so that when you're ready to make a decision to specialize.

Dr. William Attaway (15:10.529)
Yes.

Dr. William Attaway (15:24.652)
Mm.

Corey Quinn (15:33.895)
you'll be able to be making a high quality decision. There's a there's a famous entrepreneur guy. His name is Paul Graham. He founded a company called Y Combinator. And he said when he advises startups, he says, you know, do things that don't scale. I do a lot of things as you're as you're in the startup mode. Just do a lot of different things and just see what see what works before this instead of just trying to figure it all out in your head. Right. And so the the when you're in that

Dr. William Attaway (15:55.766)
Hmm.

Corey Quinn (16:03.645)
two to three year space where you said yes to a lot of people, you're ready to start specializing. Again, you have a lot of really great data and you're really well, I think, positioned to specialize at that point.

Dr. William Attaway (16:15.308)
think database decision making is not talked about enough, and I love that you're talking about that. think that's brilliant. Everybody talks about the importance of niching down, niching down, and that's a great thing, right? What you call in the book a vertical market specialist, right? But not before you're ready. You need the data. I love that.

Corey Quinn (16:19.838)
Yeah, right.

Yes.

Yeah.

That's right.

Corey Quinn (16:34.663)
That's right. Exactly. Yeah, right. Because you end up doing what most people do and they get it when they get it wrong, which is they say, well, where where are all the budgets? Which vertical market has all has a ton of people with a lot of money, right? And the challenge with the thing that they miss. That's a good question, but it's not the only question. OK, the big question is what I call you have to get a gauge on whether or not you give a damn.

Dr. William Attaway (16:56.672)
Yeah, right.

Corey Quinn (17:03.483)
or you really have empathy, you care about these people. Because here's the formula for being successful. You need to spend a lot of time with these folks. You need to go to their conferences, need to go to their associations, want to become intimately familiar with their problems and solve their problems, right? And so the agency founders who have, let's say, niched down, who have specialized, have been successful due in part to the fact that they actually have empathy for the

Dr. William Attaway (17:11.842)
Hmm.

Dr. William Attaway (17:20.748)
Yes.

Corey Quinn (17:30.931)
the vertical market that they're serving. They care about these people. And that becomes a real differentiator for long -term success and longevity in this type of approach.

Dr. William Attaway (17:43.616)
I love the caring and the empathy there. think that's brilliant. Are there other criteria that as somebody is considering, I've done the generalist thing for a bit. I'm ready to do this. What other criteria should they look at?

Corey Quinn (17:46.13)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Corey Quinn (17:52.776)
Yep.

Corey Quinn (17:56.167)
Such a great question. So the real, the first step, would say, even before the, the, the give a damn gauging, is going to be to really go back and we made this point a little bit earlier, but we want to go back and really extract all the wisdom that exists in our businesses. We want to go back and we want to look at all of the client data to see where are the trends when it comes to the verticals. We line all of our clients up by vertical. Where are we getting the most revenue? Where do we get the best retention? Where's our, where are profits coming from?

Where are referrals coming from? Which verticals are really resonating with us from a data perspective? That's one piece of it. Another piece is you want to do more of a qualitative research. You want to talk to your salespeople if you have them say, well, who do you like selling to? Like, who do you who do you enjoy selling to? Who do you tend to close the best? Guess what? They'll be the people who the sales team like selling to people who are going to get a great result. Right. They they sell differently when they know it's going to work out for the prospect. Right.

Same thing with the client services. You want to ask them, who do you like servicing? Who gets the best results with us? As a result of that qualitative analysis and figuring out, you know, who, who are we a good fit for? And you combine that with the data that you look at, you're able to make, you know, again, be able to make a good decision. The last step is you want to truly ignite. I find that this ignites a commitment. This last step, which is going out and doing a market opportunity analysis.

Which means that, okay, if we're saying we're going to focus in on plumbers or whatever that is for your audience, you for you listening, if you're considering one, you need to go out and you need to do market research to see what is the, what they call total addressable market. What are the total number of businesses that have a pain point or potentially have a pain point that we can solve that by the way, they have to be able to afford your services. We could talk about that in a minute. And that gives you what they call the total addressable market with focus.

And by by taking a vertical specialization sort of strategy or approach through specialization, you're going to start winning clients in that area. And eventually you're going to start winning a lot of clients. And the target really is three percent of the total addressable market. If you're at three percent of the total address market, you can do the math and figure out, well, how much revenue does that make? Does that mean we're going to make? I'll give you an example. Do you have any guesses? Out of the blue, put me on the spot here.

Dr. William Attaway (20:10.326)
Hmm.

Corey Quinn (20:23.667)
Do you have any guesses about how many residential plumbing companies there are in the United States right now? Roughly.

Dr. William Attaway (20:29.314)
my, no clue, let's say 50 ,000.

Corey Quinn (20:33.651)
Okay. So a little more. It's 157 ,000 plumbing companies. Okay. Let's, let's just, you know, let's do a thought experiment. Let's say that, that you and I were business partners. We're going to go after plumbers. We believe that plumbing is an interesting vertical. Maybe my, my father was a plumber and I really love that industry and I want to help them out. and we were, as a result of focusing, we were able to capture just 1 % of the total addressable market. There were 157 ,000 plumbing businesses.

Dr. William Attaway (20:37.334)
Wow.

Corey Quinn (21:00.979)
1 % of that is 15, 1570 businesses as clients. Sounds like a lot of clients, but if you only charge $10 ,000 a year, you would have a $15 .7 million business serving one client, solving one problem over and over and over again. Guess what's going to happen to the quality of your product? Guess what's going to happen to the back end of your business? You're going to be able to create a very streamlined, profitable business and become the best of the world because you're

Well, what did Bruce Lee says? He says, I fear not a man who practiced a thousand kicks a thousand times. I fear that man who practices one kick, you 10 ,000 times, right? Doing it over and over and over. You're to get excellent at it. And so the, when you run the numbers like this and apply it to your market, that's usually when the founder goes, okay, I'm in, if I can disclose 1 % or 3 % of the market, I'm going to have this wonderful business. I'm in. Where do I sign?

Dr. William Attaway (22:01.932)
So good. That's so good. One of the things that I heard you talk about was a gift -based outbound strategy. You are one of the first people I have heard talk about this in this way. I'd love for you to share just a little bit of that.

Corey Quinn (22:03.027)
You

Corey Quinn (22:07.464)
Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Corey Quinn (22:17.194)
Absolutely. So in the world of outbound, traditional outbound today is more of like a shotgun approach. People will go out and they'll buy a list of, let's say, plumbers. Maybe they get all 157 ,000 plumbers. Every one of them have on a list. And let's say they just send, they get all the email addresses and they start just sending out emails. Well, that is a volume based sort of traditional outbound strategy. And you hope that something comes back in.

gift based outbound is really the opposite of that. What we're trying to do is instead of qualifying when the leads come back into the sales team, we want to qualify first. We want to create an amazing list. Many of us probably have heard of this concept of your dream 100, which is a term from Chet Holmes, the ultimate sales machine. I call it your 20 % list. The same concept. Effectively, who are the most valuable prospects in your target vertical market?

that you want to, you would love to have as clients. Like they would be great referral partners. They would be great revenue for you. It'd be just a really, really fantastic clients. You want to build a list like that. So it's not a shotgun approach. It's what I call spearfishing. That's step number one. Super important. Step number two is you need to pick a great gift. You cannot pick a gift that is, you know, forgettable or every day. It must be unique. It must be striking. So by striking is

that you, me and all everyone that's listening here, we're all walking through our lives and sort of a half hypnosis, right? And so what we want this gift to do is kind of just wake us up a little bit, right? And that's one of the reasons why I love sending gourmet cookies, because when you eat a gourmet cookie, you are present in your body. Like, wow, this is an experience, right? And then the third criteria for choosing a great gift is going to be that you want to leave an impression.

At my last company, Scorpion, we really cared about the client experience and we wanted to extend that into this gift. Like what's the experience of unwrapping this gift? What is it like if you've ever opened up an Apple phone box, right? That's a, it's a wonderful sort of curated experience. We wanted to tell that story with our gift. we, you choosing the right gift is really important. the third step is following up. have to follow up. You send an amazing gift to a VIP prospect.

Dr. William Attaway (24:23.458)
Hmm.

Corey Quinn (24:33.715)
Guess what's not going to happen. They're not going to call you. You have to call them. So you do this follow up sequence, six steps and 14 days. It ensures that you maximize the gift. and then the last step, which is kind of a mic drop, you know, people don't really think about it this way, but you really, this is a three year campaign. This is not send one gift. And then that's it. You have to send a gift every quarter until you get that discovery call with them. The results of all of this craziness.

Dr. William Attaway (24:36.546)
That's right.

Corey Quinn (25:01.299)
may sound crazy, but I'll give you some context about why I'm so excited about it is number one out of every, let's call it a hundred gifts that you send, you should get a minimum of 10 appointments. Right? So if you have your dream, 100, imagine getting appointments with 10 of them in a very short period of time. That's just on the first send. If you do the gift, right. 10 appointments with your dream, 100 amazing, right? And if you're good at closing deals, you should get, you know, four or five of those potentially.

At Scorpion, where we we leverage this idea, we built a lot of the growth that we talked about this 8x on this idea outbound, which was new before it was wasn't there when I got there. It went from contributing zero percent of our revenue to 50 percent of our new revenue came just by sending gifts to cold prospects. That's how powerful it was. We had a hundred person sales team, about 60 salespeople.

Everyone in that sales team had prospects every quarter getting gifts we spent. I shared this in the presentation. I'll ask you, see if you remember out of my $6 million annual budget, which went to like paid media content, conferences, associations out of the total, total, total budget, including gifts. How much of that do think we spent in gifts? Any guesses? Half it was good. Good memory. So

Dr. William Attaway (26:20.096)
It seems like it was half, wasn't it? Yeah.

Corey Quinn (26:24.883)
We spent $3 million a year on sending cold gifts to cold prospects because it was that strategic for us. So that's why I'm so excited about it. works extremely, extremely well. As long as you get the list going right and you get the gift right, do the follow -up. It's very profound.

Dr. William Attaway (26:42.956)
So good, so practical, and every business owner listening can take and apply this. And my challenge to our listeners is going to be to do just that. But first to get your book and read this, because I think understanding the why, understanding the system is so important here. And then to execute. Don't just become a bobblehead where your head gets bigger and bigger, but your body never moves. Begin to take action here. I think that's so, so important.

Corey Quinn (26:48.839)
Good.

Corey Quinn (26:52.229)
Okay, let's go. Yes.

Corey Quinn (27:00.797)
Yes.

Yes.

Corey Quinn (27:10.075)
Yes, yes. I agree and I thank you. think, know, gift -based outbound is a powerful strategy. But like any other powerful strategy, there's lots of them out there. You have to have your positioning right, your messaging right. You have to have a great sales process or you're likely to be spinning your wheels even with this great strategy.

Dr. William Attaway (27:33.036)
So true. Corey, I want to talk about you for a minute. How do you stay on top of your game? You your business needs you to lead at a higher level today than it did five years ago. And five years from now, that's going to be even more so true. How do you level up with new leadership skills that you and your team and your business are going to need you to have?

Corey Quinn (27:40.563)
Yeah.

Corey Quinn (27:45.789)
Yeah.

Corey Quinn (27:50.151)
Yeah.

Corey Quinn (27:58.555)
It's such a great question. I'm going to reflect back a couple of years ago when I was at Scorpion, because I had a bigger team then than I do now. And then I'll share what's going on for me now. One of the best things that we did as a leadership team is we actually went to the Disney Leadership Institute. It was right. So good. So we did like a multi -day leadership training, because I'll be honest, like we were a bunch of upstart entrepreneurs who, you know, didn't have a lot of

Dr. William Attaway (28:14.248)
I love that place. so good. Yes. Yes.

Corey Quinn (28:27.751)
formal training and leadership are a lot of experience leading big groups. And so I think that's one of the things that I loved about the company culture there was that we were always learning. We always were reading some book about leadership or growth, but the investment of going to the Disney Leadership Institute was that we got access to world -class leadership training. That was helpful as an executive team for us all to not only go through that together, but to walk away having a similar language and having

Dr. William Attaway (28:48.971)
Yes.

Corey Quinn (28:57.723)
a way, a framework to work again. So whether it's a Disney Institute or I imagine some of your programs, I am a huge, huge fan of getting help from an expert who knows how to solve and how to take all of us. We're all always learning from where we are to where we want to be. We can always, always get better.

Dr. William Attaway (28:57.91)
Yes.

Corey Quinn (29:19.589)
And as I mentioned along the way, we read a tremendous amount of books. I became obsessed with Patrick Lencioni's books. read Entree of Leadership, which is another book I love. I love John C. Maxwell. I saw him talk a couple of times. I read all of his books. So just a big, big reader and just really being open to improvement, continual improvement, I think has been a big part of my ability to ascend, at least my skill set as a leader. I wouldn't say I'm perfect.

Most recently, after leaving Scorpion, I, as I mentioned, I had a 30 person team. I have a two person team now. I have a much smaller team. And that is by design. I am growing my business. My intention is to hire more people eventually, but it is definitely different. You're managing a two person team versus a 30 person team where you have layers of management and whatnot. The way that I manage her right now, my primary employees, the two of us is

And I'm not perfect at this, but my intent is to always ask her what's the bigger context for her in her life as relates to work? What are the big dreams that she's going after? What are the things that, are the transformations that she wants to have in her life? And part of my job as her leader and as her boss is to create an environment where she can achieve those outcomes. Right? That's my job. I have to go out and I have to create a business, a container for her to be able to achieve those outcomes.

Dr. William Attaway (30:43.784)
Mmm, so good.

guess.

Corey Quinn (30:47.941)
So knowing it, is communicating that and letting her know that, you know, I care more about her and her growth than just her straight output.

Dr. William Attaway (30:59.168)
Hmm. That's good leadership. And I want the folks listening to understand that when you are a leader, you're no longer the individual contributor you used to be, where it was about getting things done. Your job now is to get things done through other people. And the best way to do that is to care for them, to take care of them. And when you do, they lean in and it helps everybody.

Corey Quinn (31:17.555)
That's right. Yes.

Corey Quinn (31:23.571)
That's right. They say that people don't leave companies, they leave leaders, right? When the employee has no longer, has a future, doesn't see, like they're no longer able to get to the future through that leader, then they're going to find another leader that does have that future available to them.

Dr. William Attaway (31:27.286)
That's exactly right.

Dr. William Attaway (31:36.151)
Yeah.

Dr. William Attaway (31:41.388)
So true. Corey, I think a lot of people listening are looking at you, maybe they've seen you through Scorpion and now in your own thing, and they're like, yeah, but you know, he's not an entrepreneur like I am. He doesn't deal with the same struggles that I deal with. His journey, it's just been up and to the right. Like he's never had any challenges. If they were sitting across from you, across the table, and they said that to you, what would your response

Corey Quinn (32:00.199)
Bye.

Corey Quinn (32:05.747)
Yeah.

Corey Quinn (32:09.415)
Well, I think I'll tell you if I wanted the easy route, I'd go get a job. That's not that's not the that's not the path that I am passionate about. And even even with success in the world of social media today, what matters is your ability, in my opinion, to really continually add value in the marketplace. You can't just be a.

Dr. William Attaway (32:14.748)
Yes.

Corey Quinn (32:37.137)
You write a book and be done. You have to continually put yourself out there and add value and to do so in a way that really resonates requires you to really try. There's no easy street. There's no, you know, one hit wonder. It's very much like sales. It's funny. Actually, William, I think about like in sales, you may have a killer month, but as soon as the month turns into the next month, the sales sales manager comes over and says, what have you done for me lately? What have you closed so far?

Dr. William Attaway (33:01.462)
That's right.

Corey Quinn (33:05.841)
doesn't matter. so that's part of the reason why I love entrepreneurship is because it's always there to be successful. It is a muscle that you continually need to work in order to achieve success. And that's why it's a challenge. That's why it's fun.

Dr. William Attaway (33:22.626)
You you've referenced a number of books so far in this conversation. You're a continual learner. You're constantly growing and learning. Is there a book that has made a difference in your journey so far? One that kind of stands apart from the rest that you would recommend to the leaders who are listening?

Corey Quinn (33:30.834)
Yes.

Corey Quinn (33:39.523)
Yeah. 100%. I did mention it briefly. is, I mentioned the author, John C. Maxwell, the law, the, I think it's the 12 laws of leadership. Is that right? 21, excuse me. 21. I only read the first 12. No, I'm kidding. I got it. So the reason why that comes to mind and it always comes to mind in this is that it's one of those books, it's like,

Dr. William Attaway (33:51.234)
21.

Dr. William Attaway (33:56.514)
That's right. That's all I needed. I got the 12, I was good. That's right.

Corey Quinn (34:06.771)
It's a perennial seller. If you're an author, what it basically means is that it is just based in truth, right? It's not about what's new. It's about what's true. And this book reflects reality and it basically breaks down these 21 irrefutable laws of leadership. We read it as an executive team at Scorpion, by the way, again, I think if you have an executive team or team of leaders, reading a book together is a powerful way to bond and to really sort of bring these concepts and books to life. We found ourselves.

Dr. William Attaway (34:12.438)
Yes.

Dr. William Attaway (34:23.894)
Hmm.

Corey Quinn (34:35.365)
In the books, there are different laws of leadership. Of course, there's one of them called the law of the lid, which is that the business will only grow as fast as the capacity of the leadership. And we would call each other out in meetings about like, you're enacting the law of the lid right now, William. I see this right now. Right. In a way that was more supportive, like, Hey, we have, we all have blind spots and biases. And so it became a part of our vernacular in our desire to get better as an executive team.

Dr. William Attaway (34:52.674)
Ooh, so good.

Dr. William Attaway (34:59.82)
Yes?

Dr. William Attaway (35:06.498)
I love the intentionality of that. I love the sharing the last 10 % of honesty in that for the good of the whole, for the good of the team, and for the good of the individual. this has been so, so good. I want to challenge every one of our listeners. If you have not picked up Anyone Not Everyone, go pick it up. It's worth it. This is a great book to read with your team, as we were just talking about. Corey.

Corey Quinn (35:08.241)
Yeah, yeah.

Corey Quinn (35:12.519)
Yeah. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Corey Quinn (35:31.315)
That's right, many, people do.

Dr. William Attaway (35:33.468)
If people want to stay connected to you and continue to learn from you and learn more about what you do, and I'm sure many will, what is the best way for them to do that?

Corey Quinn (35:43.227)
The absolute best way is going to be tied to an offer. I'd to give your audience, which is I'd love to give them a free copy of my book, but the audio version, the same audible version that's on audible on Amazon, but it is that same exact audio book on my website. Go to anyone, not everyone .com and you can get access to it right now. You can start listening to my voice because I was the one that narrated it.

and also a bunch of workbooks and videos and so on and so forth. So you can really bring some of the concepts we're talking about here to life around escaping founder led sales and becoming a vertical market specialist. I hope you do and I hope it adds value and as a result of that you'll begin to, you'll be added to my email list and you'll get some more insights from me as well.

Dr. William Attaway (36:31.82)
Court, thank you for that, for the generosity that you've displayed, not just in the free copy of your book, but also today in sharing some of the insights and the wisdom that you've gained along the way. We so appreciate that.

Corey Quinn (36:33.107)
Yeah, 100%.

Corey Quinn (36:39.367)
Thank you.

Thank you. appreciate it. Yeah, I And I appreciate you. I appreciate you this opportunity. I rarely get to talk about this topic of leadership. You know, we grew very, very fast at Scorpion and when I left there, I made a decision. said, I'm not going to, I'm not going to hire people. I'm not going to join another company. I want to be a sole opener. And that lasted for about 18 months. Right. Because I think it was, I needed a break and it was too much. And one of the things that's

Dr. William Attaway (37:04.969)
Hmm. Hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Corey Quinn (37:12.467)
pulled me back into building a true business instead of just being a consultant is my desire to lead others and to help them to become fully actualized. So this is just reinforces my excitement about that. And I again, appreciate the opportunity to share some of my experience with your group.