What does it actually cost a company when the CEO keeps running sales long after they should have let go?

Jason Barnaby runs Fire Starters Inc., and companies pay him to do the job their founder is already doing badly — running sales. A fractional sales leader, Enneagram-certified coach, and storytelling sales trainer, Jason has worked with teams ranging from 50-person shops to 100,000-person enterprises. Before all of it he was a college professor, a corporate sales leader, a ski bum in Colorado, and the owner of a coffee shop in Poland. He hosts The Sales Spark Podcast and has strong opinions — and, as he puts it, the older he gets the less he cares who agrees with them.

In this conversation, Jason walks through the “toy box” handoff founders give a new sales leader, the golden spreadsheet locked in a drawer that only one person has the key to, the $20M pipeline he audited that was really closer to $10M (with half the deals already past their close date), why hiring one sales-enablement person can lift sales in a single quarter, how the Enneagram exposes what your best rep does when they go quiet under stress, and the caveman logic of paying a salesperson more than the CEO — “what they kill, we eat.” It closes on an unusually honest exchange about depression, psychological safety, and why the people who look most “on” are often the loneliest in the building.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Cold open — “if you don't like my opinions, keep scrolling”
01:33 Founder-led sales: the two sides of the business, and when it gets sticky
03:50 Why a fractional leader in 8–12 hours beats a founder's 40
05:00 “You're my VP of sales” — the client who did it right
06:40 Giving busy executives a week of their life back every month
08:16 The breaking points: access to leadership and the “toy box” handoff
10:54 Who owns what? Mapping the internal process
11:55 One approver for every quote, $500 to $500,000 — the bottleneck
12:20 The invisible buyer process: why “yes” doesn't mean three weeks
14:17 Territoriality and the golden spreadsheet in the locked drawer
15:40 When collaboration breaks down — binders are where information goes to die
16:30 The 15-minute room: agree on the three things, then let go
18:16 Hire one sales-enablement pro, own the data, watch sales rise
20:00 The $20M pipeline that was really $10M — closed dates in the past
22:27 Stages vs. gates: “you're not in negotiations until you're redlining”
23:20 The Enneagram: core drivers and how people behave under stress
25:05 The micromanaging story — three weeks of a teammate thinking “does Jason not like me?”
27:30 When your best rep goes dark, pick up the phone
30:04 Compensation as a coordination tool — and job-shadowing every role
32:18 The birthdays missed, and “throwing the grenade over the fence”
33:23 “I'm okay with my salesperson out-earning me” — what they kill, we eat
35:57 The human layer: depression, meds, and dropping the mask
40:00 Psychological safety and the “me too” moment in the room
43:13 Closing advice: run a time audit — if you're not doing monthly 1:1s, the smoke is already there

Guest: Jason Barnaby (Fire Starters Inc.) · Host: Kristian Luoma (In Parallel)

GUEST & SHOW LINKS
Jason on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jason🔥-barnaby-252a68/
Fire Starters Inc.: firestartersinc.com
The Sales Spark Podcast: firestartersinc.com/the-sales-spark-podcast/

How do you keep a global organization aligned when the numbers say everything's fine but the reality on the ground says otherwise?

Jim Fielding — former President of Disney Stores Worldwide, CEO of Claire's, and President of Consumer Products & Innovation at 20th Century Fox — walks through what actually keeps big organizations honest about what's happening.

Jim Fielding took over Disney Store during the 2008 financial crisis and reinvented its global footprint across Europe, North America and Japan. He went on to serve as CEO of Claire's — a $1.5B specialty retailer across 3,500+ stores in 44 countries. Then Global Head of Consumer Products at DreamWorks Animation. Then President of Consumer Products & Innovation at 20th Century Fox, where he hired a five-SVP leadership team before he'd even started. Today he's Founder of the League of Radical Kindness, Executive Coach at The ExCo Group, and author of All Pride, No Ego.

In this conversation, Jim walks through the airplane-hangar prototype behind the Disney Store turnaround, the "glocal" model that let stores feel local while sharing most of their catalog, the two sentences that kill innovation inside any company, and the diagnosis he gives every founder who tells him "my team can't execute" — a diagnosis most CEOs don't want to hear.

Chapters:
Taking over Disney Store in 2008
Coordination through travel, listening, and physical presence
The airplane hangar prototype and 350 tours
'Glocal' — 70–75% global, 20–25% local
Test-and-scale: Japan plush → global bestseller
Building Fox Consumer Products with 5 SVPs
'All Pride, No Ego' — controlling ego, not erasing it
The best leaders aren't the smartest people in the room
Truth tellers, vulnerability, and the open-door discipline
The two phrases that kill learning
Diagnosis for the founder whose team 'can't execute'
Closing advice: phone a friend

Jim in LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jimfielding/
Book (All Pride, No Ego): https://www.amazon.com/All-Pride-Ego-Executives-Authentically-ebook/dp/B0CF823KM8