Firing people is the kindest thing you can do.

Barrett Brooks spent years as COO of ConvertKit, scaling the company past $30M before becoming an executive coach to founders and leaders. He joins hosts Adam Jay and Dale Zwizinski for a conversation about the uncomfortable side of people-first culture.

They get into what most leaders get wrong about kindness, accountability, and the gap between what a company says it values and what it actually rewards.

We discuss:

• Why a "people-first" culture can quietly protect your worst performers
• The real reason firing conversations get avoided, and why that's not kindness
• How to close the gap between stated values and lived behavior
• Building comp plans for intrinsically motivated, creative salespeople
• A simple exercise to learn what actually drives the people on your team

Chapters:
(00:00) Treating coaching like an athlete's craft
(01:29) Talent as a Culture Multiplier
(02:18) The hidden cost of an overly people-first culture
(05:00) "We should have fired more people"
(06:17) Setting boundaries like you would with a toddler
(09:14) The 1% of managers willing to have the hard conversation
(11:28) Where values collided with P&L at Kit
(14:50) What actually builds a winning culture
(18:46) Rebuilding a team after burnout
(25:56) The unsolved psychology of comp plans
(31:55) Monday Morning Move: closing the culture-phrase gap
(38:40) The Craft & Commerce speaker equity story
(41:48) Uncensored Questions

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Most MSP programs don't fail because of bad partners. They fail because nobody built the foundation before trying to scale.

Jon Purcell is the founder of Untapped Channel Strategy and spent 13 years building channel programs inside Apple, VMware, and Workiva. He joins Adam Jay and Dale Zwizinski to break down why so many channel programs look busy on paper while producing almost nothing.

They dig into comp plan misalignment, pricing mistakes, and the expectations that sink MSP programs before they launch.

We discuss:

• Why signing 20 MSP partners on day one guarantees chaos instead of momentum
• How a mismatched comp plan quietly turns reps against your own channel program
• Why Apple's MSP program was built backward, for the vendor instead of the partner
• What it actually means to turn an MSP into a "super user" of your technology
• Why enterprise pricing models break the moment you apply them to MSPs
• The MDF trap that forces partners to spend first and wait to get reimbursed

Chapters:
(00:00) Jon's lawn analogy: why some companies won't buy no matter what

(00:48) The Grumpy Walrus Cloud story: 20 MSP partners, 8% close rate

(02:08) Why companies skip foundations before building MSP programs

(04:09) How comp plans quietly break channel programs

(05:22) Turning MSPs into super users

(10:00) The biggest mistake vendors make in the first 90 days

(13:33) Why Apple's MSP program was broken from day one

(15:54) Why enterprise pricing models don't work for MSPs

(21:33) The MDF trap that breaks channel programs

(24:14) Why leadership still treats MSP programs like a side project

(28:52) Monday Morning Move: audit your MSP program in one week

(34:44) Uncensored Questions: VMware, Broadcom, and ConnectWise

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Every homepage on the internet just added "AI" to it. Anthony Pierri says most of them didn't need to.

Anthony Pierri has looked at more B2B homepages than almost anyone alive. As co-founder of FletchPMM, he's run positioning sprints for 500+ SaaS companies, and this week he sits down with Adam Jay and Dale Zwizinski on the decision every GTM team is dodging right now: is your AI feature making the product you already sell better, or are you quietly becoming a different company? Anthony breaks down why Klaviyo's repositioning worked, why Gong's homepage keeps changing every year, and why founder-led sales collapses the moment you try to scale it. If your traffic dropped after your last rebrand, this episode explains why that might not even be the real problem.

We discuss:

• Why AI features confuse buyers when positioning isn't decided first
• What Klaviyo's repositioning reveals about trading old customers for new ones
• Why creating a new homepage category every year might mean it isn't working
• How founder-led sales narratives fall apart at scale
• The one question every exec team should answer before a rebrand

Chapters:
(00:00) Are your customers really asking for AI agents

(00:50) The Waffleboard Analytics scenario: an AI rebrand gone wrong

(01:42) Why Klaviyo's CRM repositioning was worth the traffic hit

(03:36) The Paramore problem: you don't keep the old fans

(06:50) What happens when founders ignore repositioning advice

(08:20) Does every buyer expect AI built in now

(10:37) HockeyStack's pivot from attribution to AI agents and back

(15:47) Why AI tools still can't out-write a fast human

(19:44) Why founder-led sales narratives collapse at scale

(22:43) The Monday Morning Move homepage exercise

(24:00) Categories, platforms, and the confusion they create

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