A little about myself
My personal background
So if you’re here, you’re probably curious who I am, what I’m about, and most importantly, what makes me qualified to help your business grow. Here you’ll find all three. Let’s get into it.
The Origin Story
Born to Sue and Walt Kado in 88′, I joined the party just in time to see the Berlin Wall come down.
Didn’t talk until I was 4 and even after that, I had a severe mumble. Now, many years later, I’m a professional salesman. Makes me realize, you can do anything if you put enough work into it.
Graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Communication from Arizona State University. 3 weeks out of school, my first job was hardcore cold calling at CDW. For $12/hour + commission, I called anyone who would talk to me within IT departments at medium to large companies. It was a grind but in 2011, I was just happy to have a job and I went into it with an unstoppable positive attitude.
Despite how little money I made and how hard the job was, I loved it. I knew from then on that I loved the revenue-generating side of business. There’s a saying, “Nothing happens until somebody sells something.” That saying to me describes how necessary the sales profession is to the global economy despite being told no by prospects 98% of the time.
At 27 years old, I got exposed to marketing when someone asked if I could build them a website. I bought a HTML/CSS course on Udemy for $26 and pretty quickly, I was getting paid to be creative.
My Professional Achievements
I’m a total nerd for sales, marketing, and process optimization. I absolutely live and breathe this stuff. I love thinking about the macro-level effects of things, and I’d like to think that by helping companies grow their sales, hire more people, I’m helping the American economy by some microscopic fraction.
If you’re wondering if I’m legit, I myself still wrestle with that one daily but here’s a few of my professional achievements.
- At 22, I was the #1 new salesperson (by revenue) in 2011 out of 600 new hires at a Fortune 250 company called CDW (Computer Discount Warehouse).
- At 24, I was in the top 10 of 1300 salespeople at a little internet company called GoDaddy.
- At 26, I was the first American hire at a San Diego live chat service and grew it to $120K MRR.
- At 27, I taught myself HTML and CSS and began building websites.
- At 30, I started offering lead generation consulting. Within 6 months, I was booking 6-7 sales appointments for the in-house salesperson each day. The deals I generated for my client equated to $57k one-time revenue AND $9k recurring revenue each month.
- At 31, I joined an event tech startup based in NYC as their first sales hire with the title of Chief Evangelist. I started in November 2019 and the pandemic completely crushed our primary market but we pivoted and landed some huge clients like Harvard, the US Department of Defense, and Nike.
- At 32, I took on the struggling Santa Barbara Symphony as a consulting client in April 2020 as coronavirus ravaged the arts industry. With the regular season cancelled and a massive $1.4MM budget deficit looming, the CEO and I got to work and created a new website and innovative virtual concert experience. The patrons and financial backers loved it so much, we ended up raising $1.86M in the fiscal year to end with a $486k budget surplus.
My Core Values
- Trust – The world runs on trust and in the belief that people will do what they say they will do. If we can’t trust one another to stick to our word, then civilization completely collapses. Tell the truth, always. Omitting the truth is the same as lying.
- Truth – Facts matter. Truth matters. The entire world runs on trusting that something is true or not. If people can’t agree on something because some people won’t acknowledge the truth, civilization crumbles.
- How to treat everyone – Just treat EVERYONE the way you want to be treated. It’s not hard. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes and think if you would like how you’re treating them. If we were collectively better at empathizing with one another, I believe most violent conflict could be avoided.
- How to treat business associates – Succeed at the expense of nobody.
- Trust in the experts – Respect expert opinions over your own. Just because you saw a YouTube video doesn’t mean you should form your own medical opinion counter to those of the vast majority of medical professionals. Science is not facts, it is the ongoing process of factual discovery through constant scrutiny of data by trained professionals. Trust the process and trust the real experts.
- Practicing Empathy – Our social issues come from a lack of empathy for our fellow man. The more we empathize with one another’s struggles, with one another’s pain, with one another’s hopes and dreams, the more we realize we’re all the same. We’re all just humans trying to make it another day. We have far more in common with one another than we do differences. We should treat everyone accordingly.
- Money – Money is just a means to an end, not the end itself. Money itself shouldn’t be the goal, a life full of rich and rewarding experiences should be.
- Planet – We have ONE planet, it is your duty to leave the world better than you found it. Don’t litter, drive low emission vehicles, reduce/reuse where you can and buy carbon neutral or buy carbon credits to offset your own impact on the planet.
- Elect politicians that aren’t complete f****** idiots – As of August 25th, 2021, 26 people in New Zealand have died from COVID-19. In the United States, over 632,000. Elections matter. It’s literally a matter of life and death.
Let's Work Together!
If you’ve made it this far, I’m guessing you’re at least somewhat interested in working with me. If that’s the case, let me offer this.
I hate being “sold to” just as much as the next guy. Instead, I just try to offer value in my initial consultation in two ways.
- Point out what I think is holding you back (which you probably have some inkling of but want a second opinion)
- Offer actionable advice on how to address these issues.
That’s it. No pressure, no obligation, no spam. If that sounds good to you, let’s chat!