Scaling Without Selling Your Soul: The No-BS Guide to Culture-Driven GTM

Welcome back to another episode of the Bridge the Gap podcast powered by, you guessed it, Revenue Reimagined. Today's guest is Earl Foot, founder and CEO of Nexus IT Consultants, host of the Techbe podcast, and someone who's been running a values-driven GTM operation longer than most people have been in SaaS. Earl scaled Nexus from a solo consultancy into one of the top managed IT and cyber security providers in the country, which is super cool. But he's best known for how he leads with character, conviction, and my favorite: zero tolerance for BS. What are you in for today? A master class on what happens when you don't compromise and why that is actually a go-to-market strategy. Earl, welcome to the show, man.

Yeah, thanks Adam and Dale. Such a pleasure to be here with you guys. I really appreciate the invitation. I mean, with me, not with him. But let's do it.

Hey, you did the best part of the show. Now we can just end your part since we have fun.

I can see Earl taking his guitar out and like strumming to that walk-on music.

Hell yeah.

There you go, Adam. You're quite the spinster there. I mean, I appreciate the kind intro, but it's probably, you know, that's a tall order to live up to there. I spent about five years in radio. If I could do one thing, it's an intro. I often say if we could just record podcasts all day long and do nothing else, I'd be a very happy person. Unfortunately, we can't do that. You have to work for a living.

Come on, Dale. Kick the show off, man.

Yeah. So, the first part of the show we'd like to talk about scaling the business without selling your soul. That's kind of where we're going with this. So you've been running Nexus for over two decades. That's really rare in this day and age. You see a lot of people coming in and out of things. What keeps you in it, and what keeps the business growing as you're navigating it, especially through these different times with all these AI and business-driven kinds of things?

Yeah, very good questions, Dale. You're right. I mean, entrepreneurship has taken on kind of what I call the churn and burn model, you know, where it's a three to five-year venture. Let's start something up, get it to zero to ten million, and sell it, right? And I don't discount that in any way. In fact, I deeply understand the pros of that model. I have plenty of friends that have been in B2B SaaS or other types of ventures, consumer goods, and that kind of stuff. And I totally see the value of taking off one to two or three years in between to regenerate yourself, because building a business is a serious commitment, right? Having that time off to regenerate, get clear again, come back with some fresh ideas, and solve some new problems—I totally see the value in doing that sort of model.

I have been a long hauler. In fact, Dale, 27 years—actually this September it will be. So almost three decades.

Almost three decades. Crazy.

Started at the age of 23. And yeah, we've been deeply committed from the beginning to build a business with what we call heart and soul, right? Values-aligned, purpose-driven, mission-driven type of organization. And that's really been a big part of our secret to success. Our team believes in what we're doing because we have a mission that's larger than the sum of our parts. That mission specifically is to elevate IT. And when we say that, we mean it. Of course, first and foremost for our clients—we're committed to a world-class experience for them across the board.

In order to create that world-class experience, the predominant formula I've used over the past nearly three decades is this: rewarded, fulfilled, happy people create happy clients, and happy clients create healthy revenue, right? So we, as leaders in this organization, understand and know that culture is leadership behavior at scale throughout the organization. Top-level leadership starts by modeling the type of behavior that we want and the culture that we want within this organization. We are not exceptions, and I see that error very often. Oftentimes in executive roles, we feel like we've earned a bit of a pass on some of the intricacies of day-to-day interactions and duties. We at Nexus don't believe that. We believe that we set the tone and we set the bar. So we're here to set that stage of what we're building, why we're building it, and the type of environment we want to create.

Adam, did you hear that? You actually should be doing some work, too. Not just barking orders.

And I listen, I'm a—

Yes, agreed.

I was going to say something that you would have been able to misinterpret. So we're not going to do that. We talk about, gentlemen, quickly—we talk about building an environment where people can do the best work of their career here. Because our team believes in providing that environment to each other and then really providing a world-class experience to our clients and building something extraordinary. We're aiming for the stars—top ten MSP/MSSP nationwide for regulated industries. That's what we're aiming for. The team's aligned. The team shows up. They take care of our clients. They're aligned to grow—grow themselves while we're growing the business, which is not easy. When you're growing at a quick pace, everybody in the organization has to grow professionally and personally at a commensurate clip, or we don't keep up with the growth curve. Anyway, sorry to interrupt.

Yeah, no, I love what you were saying. When you talk about making sure the people inside the organization of Nexus are actually taken care of first because they're taking care of your customers, and those customers then generate revenue for the organization. I think sometimes there's a disconnect, especially on an executive team. We need more customers to generate the revenue, but then they forget about the people that are actually servicing the clients that are generating the revenue. So I just love that perspective that you guys are running on.

I may have written it down.

And if Adam writes it down, he's probably going to write a post about it. So look for a post later on.

All right. Well, Adam will make it high enough.

I always look for that one nugget.

Yeah, I love that. I think it's missed way too often, and it actually starts very early. As you said, you've been running almost three decades now, and it's obvious that if it comes from the top, that's going to be the culture you're driving through the organization. So I was curious—early on, as you guys started building the organization, you started as a solopreneur. What were some of those early decisions that you made that still impact how you run things today? Like, what are one or two things that you did early on to say, yes, people are important, but what in that people-management side did you do early?

Yeah, really good. And I would say, Dale, early on, I wasn't nearly as adept at understanding how to operate a business, but really how to build constructive, productive cultures. I was 23, right? And I didn't study business. I studied civil engineering. Started my career studying architecture, pivoted into civil engineering, then pivoted into technology, right?

But there was always something that was just core to my own personal way to show up and believe in people. At my core, I'm a humanitarian, right? At my core, I believe in humankind's ability to show up and do extraordinary things, our ability to grow and evolve, right? And I always, from the very beginning when we started hiring teams—my brother and I started the business together. We're not in business together anymore as of 2012, but we started the business together in 1998. We were the first two employees, but over the first 12 to 18 months, we started to hire some additional employees. And we just, from the beginning, looked for people that got what we were doing, that wanted to be involved, aligned with purpose—not just wanting to show up and punch the clock, right? And whose core values fit the DNA of the organization, the core values that we use to determine how we show up and behave within the organization.

The organization. We looked for people that were aligned with their inherent personality, and who wanted to have a good time. Because building a business, at times, can be rough, right? It can be very fun. It can be very rewarding. And then there are those times where it gets a little bit challenging, right? Maybe not a little bit—it can get really challenging. So, having people who don't get psyched out very easily, who want to show up and have fun, who want to have a positive attitude despite whatever challenges you're trying to solve, right? We always look for that stuff from the beginning and then we just continue to build on it.

I will be the first to admit I've made several cultural errors throughout my tenure in nearly three decades as a founder and CEO. Early on, the culture was too broke, too lenient. You and your brother, there's no HR.

Exactly, right. A bunch of twenty-something year-old techy guys, right? It was a very different sort of environment, but we didn't set the bar well enough. Then I overcorrected. I thought I had to go from being the very lenient, likable boss to the boss, right? And that wasn't the right move either.

Ultimately, I found I have to find the happy medium. We have to set the bar of excellence within the organization and set expectations very high, and make those very clear in terms of what we measure, why we measure it, and what our purpose is behind that. And then, of course, looking for the people who want to perform naturally. You always want to be helping people stretch and grow, but if they're thirty percent of the way there to where you want them to be, you're not going to get them there. If they're seventy or eighty percent of the way there, then you're going to be able to coach those people and stretch them to continually achieve new heights, right?

So, that's some of the methodology that we've used. I wouldn't say that we have it absolutely perfected today, but we're pretty damn good at what we do. Our Chief People Officer has deep expertise in how to build high-performing, constructive cultures. He's been a game changer for us over the last four or five years since he's been involved in the organization. And it's still stuff that we're assessing on a weekly, monthly basis as an executive team. We anonymously poll our team at minimum quarterly to get their feedback on what's working and what's not—what's empowering their success, what is undermining their success. So we're constantly assessing and tweaking what needs to be changed so that we can improve the experience for our people and thereby improve the experience for our clients.

Let's talk about HR and people and culture, and there's this myth of work-life balance. You've made a public comment that work-life balance is a fallacy. Unpack that for me a little bit.

Yeah, I think that title, Adam, is clickbait, right? But it got some pretty angry responses, I can tell you. Overall, though, I think that particularly in leadership chairs, we have to recognize we know what we signed up for. Rarely is that a forty-hour week, right? More often than not, it's going to be fifty, sixty hours. You know, in really demanding industries, it's seventy or eighty hours a week, right? That's pretty normal.

So Dale shouldn't only be working twenty hours a week.

No, not unless I let AI do the rest of it, which is fine. It's like if you can send me that agentic AI, you know, we can replace you. I mean, I'd love that. Anyway, man, I totally got lost. What was the question, Adam?

Work-life balance, being a fallacy. We were talking about how as a founder you might have to work fifty, sixty, seventy hours depending on the industry.

Yeah. So Gary Keller, who built Keller Williams Real Estate, in his book The One Thing, which I think is a fantastic book, really talks about the power of hyperfocusing, which has been part of our success at Nexus. He talks about doing away with the concept of work-life balance and thinking of it in terms of counterbalancing, right? I do believe that predominantly in today's work society, we've required and asked too much of people for a long time. When we were asking frontline contributors to consistently work sixty-hour weeks or seventy-hour weeks, that's not fair, right? It's not fair and it's not sustainable. You're going to burn them out.

So again, I think we're pendulum-correcting to the idea that work-life balance means I get to work anywhere, when I want, how I want, and the hours I want, which is about ten hours a week, but I want to get paid for fifty with a full package. And that just isn't reality, right? A business, in order to be financially sustainable, has to have people that produce, at minimum, a forty-hour work week, right? And a quality forty-hour work week.

Gary Keller in his book talks about time blocking and making sure that you define your roles, what's important to you in life, what do you want to do? Fitness, family, faith, spirituality, whatever that is. I'm a yogi. Meditation, yoga, and breathwork are a big part of my life. Chanting, which I know is a little off and kind of funky, but I enjoy chanting quite a bit. You've got to find those things that are really important to me, and I'm going to be very disciplined about making sure I set aside time for those things. And I'm going to flex. Sometimes that means as leaders or founders, we may have to do our work hours outside of normal nine-to-five work hours.

Particularly when my kids were younger—they're all grown up and adults now—but when they were younger, they played competitive sports, particularly competitive soccer. I even coached rec soccer leagues during the winter and stuff like that. So there were often days I'd have to head out of the office at two-thirty or three p.m., pick them up from school, take them to their soccer games, right? And then we'd get dinner and all that, and then I'd come home and work another three or four hours into the evening.

So, time blocking and figuring out where the things that are important to me fit in, and I'm going to take a disciplined approach about making sure that I stick to that scenario. For me, that's what creates work-life balance. Understanding how to manage your schedule and your priorities and counterbalancing those with each other. The expectation that I can work ten hours a week and get paid for fifty isn't realistic. There are a few people in a few industries that have figured that out—kudos to them. But in services, you have to show up for forty hours a week and take care of the client. That's just the reality, right?

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I like the counterbalance part. I think that makes a lot of sense. I think the enabling to be in a place where you can do the things that you want and like to do. There's a saying my wife says to me all the time because I'm like, "Oh, I have to go do this." She's like, "No, you want to go..."

# Transcript

"Do this," right? There's that subtle transition from "I have to" to "I want to." Back to, you know, deep breathing, meditation, chanting, that kind of stuff from a mindset perspective brings people into a place of not feeling like this is a task, but more of like what you enjoy doing. And I think that's the other part of it. Like, when you get to a place where you're really enjoying and doing what you like and enjoy to do, do you really need work-life balance? Because if you are doing that and you find people in your organization—back to the first question on culture—if you find people that have that same passion in the place that you're going, it's going to feel less like work. And you're not going to have to convince them of this counterbalance that you're going to have to run in the organization.

**Yeah. Aligning people around the purpose, and again, that being inherent to them. You know, it totally makes sense. For some people, they want to work 50 hours, right? Because they feel aligned, they feel fulfilled, they feel like they're doing something meaningful and impactful. And particularly, you know, in the services industry again with engineers—most engineers are motivated by making an impact that is larger than themselves, right? That's like when you do all those StrengthFinders tests, you know, DISC or whatever methodology you use, engineers predominantly want to be part of a team that makes an impact that is larger than themselves. Sales people—and of course, this is a go-to-market podcast—most sales people are coin-operated, right? They are transaction-focused. They get the win, they get the hit, they get the commission. Yeah.

But that isn't the way that engineers think, right? There are those who are hybrids, of course, but engineers predominantly want to show up with purpose and do something impactful and meaningful. And if they feel aligned, many are willing to put in 45 or 50 hours a week without feeling like they're being abused or without it burning them out.

**Yeah. So burnout generally is a sign of misalignment. That's one of the things that we've really learned over the years: if somebody's not aligned, you don't want them to be part of the organization. They're an energy drain. If they're burnt out because they're misaligned, they're sucking energy from the rest of the organism, right? And that becomes toxic over time. So hiring for and managing to alignment, with everybody being part of the vibe you're creating together, is one of those secrets to creating a thriving organization in my opinion.

**I love that. Burnout is a sign of misalignment.

**Yeah, I like that a lot as well. What, along those lines—so like, work-life balance, needing to work real hours—what are GTM leaders doing that they just need to stop apologizing for and get with the program?

**Yeah. I mean, first and foremost, if you're in a sales role, the expectation is production. That is your reality. And predominantly, what happens in business where people are unhappy, where they don't feel fulfilled or they're not hitting the mark comes down to cognitive dissonance, right? If you're in a sales role and you don't believe that you have to show up and do everything you can every single day to produce leads—because not all marketing or not all SDR or BDR teams are going to be able to fill your funnel all the time—if you're a closer, you probably have to be a hunter as well, right? You've got to be prospecting, getting out there, connecting with your network and all that kind of stuff.

So in a sales role, you just have to connect to the reality of the role. I have to show up, I have to produce leads, I have to work those leads in a disciplined manner. I need to close, and I have a quota to hit. And while I'm working those deals, I have to continue to prospect because we all know that cycle of death that reps get on where they prospect, they fill their funnel, they close a whole bunch of stuff, and they have this big win. Then it's this huge fall because they didn't prospect while they were working all the deals. And now they've got a quarter or two to try to get back on track, and most of them are going to get fired for missing a quarter or two before they ever are able to fill their funnel again.

And so that discipline—in fact, I think it's Jeb Blount's "Fanatical Prospecting." You know, that's a fantastic book. That's like, everybody on our GTM teams—that's the Bible. When you join us, here's your Bible. Study it, know it, live it, right?

So if you're in a go-to-market role and you're just not connected to that reality—like, my job is to help grow the organization so that there is financial well-being within the organization that allows us to service our people and service our clients the way we want to—then you're disconnected from the reality of the role and the career, and you probably need to get out of it, right? That's my opinion.

**Well said. Very well said.

**Yeah. So let's shift gears a little bit. Leading from the front, even when it's lonely, is a big thing. You've built a strong community presence, you know, from podcasting, which I think is amazing because I think many founders or CEOs have this challenge with podcasting, being on board seats, but leading from the front does have a cost. So what does that look like for you? What does that cost you, Earl, in all that work?

**Yeah, that's a good question, Dell. It is a mindful commitment to wake up every day and be committed to showing up as the best version of yourself that you can for that day, right? And some days that looks like you're a total rock star. Some days it looks like you want to close the door to your office and curl up in the fetal position, right? That's just the truth. Us founders, building a business is a mental, psychological, and emotional roller coaster. Being the yogi that I am, I focus a lot on self-mastery. I focus on emotional regulation. But that doesn't mean that I'm perfect at it, right? And there are most certainly those days where you're thriving, where you're in your groove, right, and you're really feeling like you command the chair that you're sitting in and things are going really well. And there are days where you feel like the chair is way too big for you.

And you still have to figure out how to show up and lead. You have to figure out how to get centered, how to help the team feel your presence because that can't be underestimated. Leadership presence—when the team feels like the core leaders, particularly the CEO, but then the executive team—when they feel like there is a lack of confidence, a lack of certainty or trust in the team or the mission and what you're building together, you know, subconsciously we pick up on all this stuff. The team picks up on it. When a leader doesn't show up with presence, mastery, and command, you can bet that team is going to have challenges.

**So I want to pause you, and I'm sorry, but that is the truest thing. You've said a lot of things that I'm going to steal and repost and give you credit for, but if you as a leader—if you as a leader don't have the mastery, how can you possibly lead, coach? I talk about a culture of coaching a lot. Coach and guide someone. Now, does that mean I'm going to be able to do a better cold call than a BDR? Absolutely not. They do it a million times a day. But if I'm going to coach on it, shouldn't I have mastered the principles, the basics, the fundamentals, the format to be able to give them intelligent insights? Absolutely. And I think that applies to all aspects of everything that you're leading.

I say often, you know, when engineers try to provide guidance on selling—guidance is one thing, but like, "Oh, you need to sell this way." I don't know how to code. I've never been trained in how to code. You do not want me telling you how to go build your product. I'm not skilled for that. You wouldn't want me coming to your team to do that. It's the flip, right? You have to earn that cred and have that cred. So I very much appreciate that you called that out.

**Yep. Yeah, yeah. And it's, you know, having...

# Transcript

Confidence in the function that you're leading, right? The knowledge and background is important, but it's more than that. It's having confidence in yourself and in the team, you know? Trust in that team. Because gentlemen, I think that we're seeing the greatest shift in the market and the working environment of the market that's ever happened, right? At least in recent history that we know of over the last several years, right? Post-COVID, post-Gen AI, right? The workplace is evolving and changing, and I believe the human race is evolving and changing, right? We're looking to do business in a different way, and people who are not realigning their businesses right now are struggling.

Your traditional B2B SaaS businesses that are not becoming very value-aligned are struggling, and you're seeing it all over, right? Fire sales from VCs, down rounds that are happening, massive layoffs and that kind of stuff. I mean, we have several of those stories here in Utah—B2B SaaS companies that became unicorns and over the past couple of years have had to strip down to a quarter of their team size. Some of them have sold off their massive office buildings, moved out of state, or gone fully remote. We're going through a compression stage in the market. And what I'm observing is that companies who are not delivering real value are struggling. Companies who know how to deliver real value for their clients and their people, and if they can do so with a broader mission for the community, are thriving, right?

And that for me is part of this formula to success right now. You've got to show up and do real stuff that helps people, right? That helps your client. That helps your employees. And if you're just showing up for the financial metrics and boosting EBITDA and shareholder returns, candidly, you're misaligned. And people pick up on it right now. Clients pick up on it. Employees pick up on it. They don't want to be involved with it, right? It's time to get values-aligned in my opinion.

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Couldn't agree more. Let's shift gears a little bit. We're running up on time, which is always not fun. We're going to go a little rapid fire. Ten words or less is the goal. I say that because Dale struggles to do anything in 50 words or less. But we're going to try here. What's one leadership quote that you actually live by? It isn't just a quote—you live by it.

Man, you did put me on the spot on that one. I know there's one, but I'm just drawing a blank, guys. Pass. Let's go to the next one.

That's okay. Who's a leader most people overlook but should deeply respect?

Yeah, I mean it's hard to say, but I think just in terms of somebody who has figured out how to disrupt—regardless of how they do it or not—it's Elon Musk, right? Whether you like the guy or you hate him, it's very polarizing, right? But has he disrupted? Has he shifted reality for the market and for the modern world? Absolutely. So I would say that's somebody who I think's been underestimated and who's had an impact that is far deeper than any of us really understand.

What's one trait you look for that always signals a strong hire?

A personal commitment to ownership and growth. In my opinion, in business you do not thrive unless people hold themselves to a high bar. It's one of our core values—absolute ownership. Like, if you've accepted a position and the duties of that position and the deliverables of that position, it is yours to deliver on, right? And if you're not going to deliver on it, then you're not in the right chair.

Nobody wants to micromanage, right? And nobody wants to be micromanaged. So we look for people who have a track record of showing up with absolute ownership who say, "Look, I know what's in my purview and I will give it my best." It doesn't mean that I'm going to always hit the mark 100%. But if I'm not hitting the mark 100%, I'm working with my manager, my supervisor, my leader, whoever, on rectifying that and how I'm going to get there for the next measured period—whether that's a week, month, quarter, whatever it is. And I'm being proactive at owning where I have gaps, right? And growing as an individual.

Growth mindset is the other piece to that, right? That is part of our organization. One of our other core values is growth mindset. And if you—particularly in a high growth organization—if you hire people with fixed mindsets, you're constantly going to be churning those people. If you hire people with growth mindsets who want to learn and grow and challenge themselves to do it at a significant pace so they can keep up with the business's growth, fantastic. If not, they're not going to work out.

Agreed. Last one as we wrap this up. What's your favorite song to play on guitar? And can you riff it for us here?

I mean, I got an acoustic back there. I'm more a bassist actually. What's my favorite song? I really like "Come Together" by the Beatles, you know?

I like that baseline. I'm a '90s kid, you know, so I grew up listening to Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Les Claypool from Primus, who are like bass gods, you know? And then there's guys like Victor Wooten and all those guys out there. I can't play like those guys. I'm not that talented. But yeah, "Come Together" is a great baseline. I've always enjoyed playing it.

I love it. Good song. Thank you so much for joining us on Bridge the Gap. Where can people go to learn about Nexus?

Yeah, nexusitc.net or look us up on social media—Nexus IT. Thanks, guys. It's been a lot of fun. I appreciate the time.

Likewise. Cheers. Thank you.