Why Top Revenue Leaders Are Ditching Standard Conferences

# GTM Uncensored: Live from Arcadia Leadership Experience

AI is a thought partner, not a thought leader. We are all part of this marketing machine. And we see all this doom and gloom. How AI is taking over the world and how the machine wants you to believe that you are dumb and stupid and behind. And you're not. It's the machine. Everyone just about has imposter syndrome when you actually think about it. Is it really imposter syndrome or is it just the way we're wired?

>> It's just self-sabotage.

>> We are sitting in the middle of nowhere Montana.

>> I don't know about that.

>> No, it's nowhere, but I mean that literally in the best possible way.

>> Yeah. This is stunning. So we are recording live from the Arcadia Leadership Experience, I believe.

>> 2026.

>> And there's a little backstory here, and then we'll get into how this ties into GTM Uncensored. But I've heard, and I'm pretty sure you've heard about Arcadia, certainly for the past three years. It's been three years old. And when it started, I remember seeing it online and I remember thinking, who wants to go spend four days in the woods with sixty-five other people in tents at an event? And I knew Jason and I knew Sam, and they're great people. And I was like, there's absolutely no way I'm going to this thing.

>> Well, especially because you're so bougie.

>> I am a little bougie. And then year two comes and I hear how great it is. And then year three comes and we were blessed enough to be asked to come speak in front of the group at the event. And even before that, based on all the feedback that I'd heard, I knew I wanted to go to this event. And to be very clear for everyone that's listening how much I believe—and I don't want to speak for Dale, but how much I believe in this—not only did we come to speak, but we actually told Jason and Sam like, "Thank you so much for inviting us to speak. We still want to pay our share to be here." That's how much I wanted to be here for this.

>> Yeah. And you know, I didn't know what to expect. I heard a little bit about Arcadia. Actually, I wanted to go the first year I heard about it and I was like, "This is really amazing."

>> But you couldn't convince yourself to take time away from the boat.

>> Well, I think I couldn't. And I've always wanted to be in Bozeman, Montana, but when I originally heard about Arcadia, I thought it was more on the partnership side, which Jason talks about a little bit. And I was like, does it really fit into what I like, what we're doing, how we're doing it, etc.? And we spoke with Jason. He was like, you know, trying to expand more into complete GTM. And I have to say, beyond my expectations—like, I can't even explain. It's not an event.

>> It's not even like an experience. It's like beyond an experience. I don't know how you go beyond an experience.

>> So there's sixty-some odd people here. I could say confidently I've had a one-on-one conversation with every single person here. I could say confidently I know something deeply personal about every single person here.

>> I think everyone has laughed at one point, cried at one point, gotten vulnerable and shared at one point.

>> And I was talking with Sam last night, and I wish we had video of this to share with the viewers, but like, there's a giant teepee, everyone's under it. You know, there's a fire in it and all this knowledge being shared. And Sam says to me, "What do you think?" And the first words out of my mouth were, "How do I sign up for next year right now?" And I don't think that way. Like, listen, we've done a lot of events. We've done Pavilion, we've done Dreamforce, we've done Saster, we've done Inbound, Unbound. Name it, whatever you want.

>> And ninety percent of them, one of two things happens. I either never want to go back because the conversations—the only ones that matter are the ones that are when you're checking in, when you're checking out, or certainly not in the sessions. Or I feel an obligation to go because I want to speak, I want to get on stage, do what I have to do, and not talk to a human being.

>> I think the sessions here, forget about the other experiences and where we are and where we're located, but the sessions were amazing. From Lindsay to MK to Barrett. Like, MK—if y'all don't know MK, and we'll drop some links in the show notes—like, that session moved me in a way that I can't even tell you.

>> I think the thing from a content perspective that I really appreciated is when Jason and Sam at the end had a completely scripted podcast they were going to run. And they said all of the speakers hit every point that they wanted to hit. And what I really appreciated—while we spoke about go-to-market and there are sixty-five-plus go-to-market leaders here—a lot of it was interpersonal. It's about how you're going to execute when you go back.

So one of the things I'm curious about tonight when I go around and talk to a few people is, how do you continue this on? Sam talked about it at the end, but we come to experiences or events and processes like this. Now you've got to take all the knowledge that we've gained from the people here and bring it into Monday when we come out of here. It's been great. We actually have not had much connection, much internet. So we've been able to really focus here.

>> Dude, like, you know me. Have you ever, ever in the four years you've known me, seen me disconnect like you have on this?

>> Anyone who knows me, like, I don't disconnect.

>> It was wild. It was such a freeing experience.

>> But to your point, the world does start again.

>> And I think that's the hardest thing for these events: how do you take what you learn at these events—assuming you actually learn at them—and put it into action on Friday, Monday, Tuesday morning? So I think that's my question to you with everything we've learned: what's the first thing you're going to take Monday morning that you're going to bring to not only our business but to our clients?

>> I think Lindsay's conversation on brave conversations or brave decisions and making sure they're aligning with the brand and the relationships and your accountability through the process—what your values are, you know, all of these things and her four-by-four matrix. I think when we start to make decisions around the business, are they brave decisions? Are we aligning with our values and what we are as a revenue organization or are we not? And I think for people that are not here, we're not showing the four-by-four matrix. It's like trying to stay on your trail and where your trail is versus the highway. And maybe we can get Lindsay on the podcast and she can explain that to the viewers when they see this. And so that's kind of where I would go with you.

>> How often do you feel we're on the trail versus on the highway? Like, so GTM Uncensored, right? I think one of the things we do really good is we get our listeners to be vulnerable. I don't think you and I—like, we banter and that's great, but I don't think we've really been vulnerable with our listeners.

>> Yeah, that's a good point.

>> Do we stay on our trail or do we stay on the highway? So if I reflect just on the last year, okay, which I think is the easiest way since the beginning of the year, I think we have—we started on our trail and then we got pulled off onto the highway.

>> And we were going on the should-have. You know what, it's what I love what she said about the should-haves. Everyone wants to tell you you should have done this, you should have done that, you should have gone here, you should have gone there. I love that. And at first I thought she was saying something else, but it's should-have. I love it.

>> But I think we're getting back to our trail on where our north star is and we don't have it all figured out yet. But the other part was the AI backpack session that we had. And because it is an intersection on where we're going within the business, that got me really excited. And the last thing on Lindsay that I would say on her session is the one percent. Like, if you're one percent off on an ongoing basis, now you become twenty percent off. Or one degree off becomes twenty degrees off. So I think that process of going across and losing one degree at a time. So I think for me it's when we're making decisions putting them against her brave framework and seeing how that's going to work.

What's your Monday morning move?

>> Ooh, look at you tying that in. My Monday morning move is similar, but I'm going to dwindle it down a little bit and say it's to be intentional with every decision, every word, every email, every phone call. And you certainly have to tie it back.

I am not as balanced as you. You have taught me over four years to sleep on it. I tend to be the one—whether it's a good email or bad email—I have gotten such a reputation for that instant response that I feel the need to respond. And when I look back and I reflect, often times the response is great, but is it intentional? Am I saying exactly what I want to say and how I want to say it? And whether it was Lindsay's session or MK's session or even Barrett talking a little bit in morning one about being very deliberate with my actions and what I'm doing and how I'm doing it, I think is something that is absolutely critical to me.

>> I love it.

>> What didn't you like?

>> Other than the cold showers and the porta-potties? Yeah, actually it didn't bother me because I came up to the lodge. But um, the truth is yes. Um, what didn't I like? I wish I had more. Like, I'm craving more of it. And so I'm in this weird place because we came in the Thursday before, my wife and I, and like I'm ready to go home, but I'm still going to miss the camaraderie.

>> You don't like to be gone for long.

>> Yeah. I mean, I love my house. I love where I am. So my boat. [laughter] Um, but I think I wish I had a little bit more session. I like the experiences, but I think Sam and Jason did a really nice job of getting the right guests at the right locations in the right sessions.

>> And I could. Yeah, I think a little bit more.

>> So it's what—two days, two nights, and a happy hour the night before? I arguably think it could be three full days. And that's hard, right? It's hard to go away from cell phone and internet and all these things for three days. And don't misunderstand me, there are ways to get some Wi-Fi for short periods of time in the lodge, but generally speaking you're disconnected. And it's freeing. I think when I look at where go-to-market is going, we've said for a long time events are the way. I'm home six days this month because we're all over the country doing events. And events mean different things to different people. And I think for us, like the small dinners are good, but this was truly an experience. And I think if more brands or companies or people tried to deliver experiences, you would see business move more. And here's the interesting point about that to me from this conference, and I'm super curious your take—I don't think I had one, maybe one, very intentional business conversation, but I don't think I spoke the words revenue or reimagine once, other than during our session. I wasn't talking about what we do. No one asked what we do. I didn't ask anyone what they do. I felt like the deeply personal connections that tied into natural conversations will lead to a level of trust that will lead to a level of business referral, partnership, et cetera. But it's almost like the anti-business, anti-conference conference.

>> Yeah. And I'll give you another example. I didn't really pitch us either, but we also had a speaking part, so I think a lot of people got to know what we did. So I think that would be a little unfair for me to say. But um, I went on a hike yesterday as one of the activities with one of the sponsors, and we were just talking about music. We were talking about a bunch of other things. He was sitting in the front seat, and it wasn't until today when they were talking about him sponsoring the lunch that I knew what he did. And I was like, "Hey, we could use you. We have this challenge. We have things that we need to bring in to our clients. Let's have a conversation." So that's kind of back to your point. It's like no one's pitching themselves. It's all about building a deeper relationship, deeper community. And this is almost like a community experience, which is an odd thing to say, but I do feel, and there are many times I'll go away and not be involved again in the community, but I definitely feel like the connections I made here, I will continue those conversations and help any of the people out here that need help.

When you think about the future of go-to-market, and I'm going to piggyback off the AI backpack session that we had, there are a couple interesting things that I think were said over the course of this week. Number one: AI is a thought partner, not a thought leader, which I think is great.

>> Why are you taking my saying?

>> Definitely isn't your saying. Um, but one thing MK said that really stuck with me is we are all part of this machine. We're part of this marketing machine, and we see all this doom and gloom about how AI is taking over the world, and how the machine wants you to believe that you are so dumb and stupid and behind, and you're not. It's the machine.

>> Okay, let's talk about fly fishing because this is huge in Bozeman and in Montana. You know, A River Runs Through It was filmed in Bozeman.

>> Ah, see?

>> There's plaques where like Robert Redford stood and Brad Pitt.

>> So what kind of fish do you guys catch here? Because we were talking about it yesterday. Is it trout?

>> Yep.

>> Okay.

>> So trout. Today I caught a rainbow trout and three cutthroat trout. I don't like the taste of trout, so I don't mind putting them back. So you can catch rainbow, brown, cutthroat, and brookies.

>> Brookies.

>> Brook trout. Brook trout are my favorite because they're the prettiest.

>> Ah, so you caught four today. I know we were talking to some other people. Was it Ellen? One of them caught her first fish.

>> Yep. Ellen caught one yesterday. It was awesome.

>> Like, back to the experience we were just talking about, what do you call this thing? It's not an event, but it's an experience, but it's a community, but it's a gathering.

>> It's hard for me to put my words around it.

>> Yeah. We named it Arcadia Leadership Experience on purpose. Like, you've got to be a director level or above to attend. It's an investment into leaders, but also like, we were going anti-conference, but that just seemed overdone. So we thought experience was the best way to put it because you've got all these things that are happening on the property that we rent out. So experience is the best way I can put it. We also use gathering.

>> Yeah.

>> Because it's not very conference-like. It's more of a family gathering most of these days.

>> My wife and I went to Yellowstone one of the days when we came in early, and I said to her like, "You can't take a picture of Artist Point. You have to actually be there and experience it." And I feel the same way about this event, this gathering. A bunch of people will take pictures, we'll post video, we'll do all this stuff, but if you're not here, like, it doesn't happen for you.

>> No, I think we had about three or four new people today walk up to me like, "All right, I get it now."

>> Yeah. Like, what do you mean?

>> So I was saying last night I was talking to Sam outside the tepee. And she asked me just, "What do you think?" And the first words out of my mouth are, "How do I sign up for next year?"

>> Amazing.

>> [laughter] Right, right, instant.

>> I'm curious. So three years in, what's been the biggest learning lesson? Because I'm sure you do something different every year, and I'm sure you learn something every year, but like, when you look back from year one to now, what's the biggest thing that you're like, "Man, that was wrong and we changed it?"

>> Oh man, great point. I think year one we felt like we had to do all go-to-market sessions and topics. Yeah. So the sessions were all around go-to-market. The whole point first year was like, "We're going to have this go-to-market conference, but we're going to come at it from a partnership angle."

>> Yeah.

>> Because Sam and I both come from the partnership world, and we felt like it needed to be tech stuff. The cohorts facilitated conversations started out as tech conversations, but they somehow naturally gravitated towards the personal stuff. And like, that was a lot of us wanting to move in that direction, wanting to have that. My cohort went completely off script and was just talking all personal stuff. And then we were encouraging that to just go off and have these conversations naturally. Then year two, last year, we said, "Let's put a little more of the personal stuff in there." And this year, as you saw, one full day was all about you the person.

>> Yeah.

>> It's like we believe better people make better leaders. And so if we want to help people become better people, we've got to put the content out there for them. And you know, we've been in this go-to-market landscape for a while. We know the stuff. We can get the stuff, but like, I think people really need to feel like valued and nurtured and invested in.

>> I think the hardest thing in go-to-market that—

# Transcript

I see, we can blame sales people, we can blame marketing, but it's the leaders. If you have shitty leaders, you're going to have a shitty organization.

I was talking to someone here during one of our cohorts and he was trying to figure out, "Do I stay with my company? Do I go?" They're trying to figure it out. And my advice to him was, "Forget about the product or service. Find a leader, find a CEO, or someone that you really appreciate and you want to follow and go get that job, whatever they're selling."

Because it'll just be a much more fulfilled experience for you.

I've worked for a couple of great companies, and to your point, there's one bad leader and it just kind of ruined the whole company.

Toxic.

Yeah.

It doesn't matter how good the product is. If you don't like who you're working for, it doesn't really matter.

And he wasn't just toxic for the sales team. He was the CRO. He was toxic for the whole company. It was wild how bad it became.

It's a cancer. It's a cancer. And I almost felt bad on our presentation because I felt like we were talking business, but I learned so much from Lindsay today. We were just talking about the brave framework, talking about MK and resonance, and getting into your resonance. And I just think if you can satisfy and fulfill yourself as a leader, then you can pour into others.

100%. And I don't think we do that enough. We always pour into others and then we pour into ourselves. And they say it for a reason on airplanes: put your own oxygen mask on first and then put on your children's.

You're no good to anyone else otherwise.

Right?

I want to shift gears a second because it is GTM Uncensored. So Arcadia's community. There is definitely a sense of community. Dale and I were talking that I think of the 60-some people here, I've probably spoken to every single one of them at some point. None of it business. Like, no one said, "Oh, who do you work for? What do you do?" or any of that. There's genuinely amazing people here. Over the three years, have you ever had to rein someone in or tell someone to calm down or ask someone to leave?

Oh, and we don't have to name names.

No names.

Yes. I mean, calm down, tone it down a little bit. Not we haven't made anybody leave.

Yeah, we're not those kind of people. We're just like, I'm not afraid.

I've been at conferences where people need it to be.

We've had a few that are like, you know, get a little too rowdy. Altitude can get to you real quick when you're drinking.

So about pitching, I think that's what you're asking, right?

No, I'm just asking in general.

Okay. I would imagine the way the experience is built, I would hope you don't have people who truly come in and try to pitch themselves. You know what the experience is walking in.

Yeah. We make it pretty clear. It's an application process to attend. And we're very grateful we know a lot of people in our network. So if they apply, we can kind of say, "Oh yeah, okay, we know who that person is. They're good." If we don't know them, we'll jump on a call with them to kind of feel them out, hear what they're thinking, how they heard about it, why they want to attend.

Just like Unbound and Dreamforce.

Yeah. If you've got a heartbeat and a poll, send $1,000 credit.

Yeah. We've had to turn a few people away because we didn't feel like it was the right fit. Vibe, people, position. I don't love confrontation, so it's a bit challenging for me, but if they're in a junior position, I've said, "Hey, look, we reserve the rights for this to be a director level or above." And each year we do allow one non-director to attend.

If we feel like they're a rising leader. I see Ferris over there. He came two years ago, and then Clint is here this year as our kind of rising leader. That's awesome.

And it gives them a chance to get around leaders and be a part of it. And we've had a couple of people that are in a completely different industry and space. This is a bunch of tech leaders. We don't really know what you're going to try to fill in here. So we're just going to say, "Let's wait until we maybe do an event that resonates with your industry."

We're at the end of Arcadia 3.

Yep.

The third year.

What's up for four? Like, have you thought about four? Have you been thinking about the things that worked in three where you want to bring this?

Probably more of the stuff around day one. I think we've made a shift to like 80% people content. It feels like maybe more like 90%. Maybe next year there'll be one sort of workshop around GTM something, whatever we call it next year.

Yeah.

Can we convince you to go one day longer?

Yeah, we talked about this before. You walked out before.

Yeah.

It's two full days, which is great. You have a balance of cohorts and experiences, which is great, and workshops and group sessions. I truly feel, and I'm saying this as someone who hasn't spent any time at home this month, I could do one more day.

I think I felt the same way. We were in an AI backpack session, and even in that session I felt like I wanted another hour or something, a little more time in certain things. And I think year four we could lower the index on sessions.

Yeah.

Like I could do away with sessions completely and have more opportunity to chat in smaller groups.

Yeah, and get those together, provide more experiences, or have them come back with the experience that they brought in. Because I do think a big group helps a lot because it greases the wheel. And not everyone's going to speak in the big groups. I think that's a challenge because people will speak more in smaller groups.

One of the best things I enjoyed was going down with a smaller group in the creek and just sitting there and having that conversation. That was incredible.

What was one big takeaway from that conversation for you?

There was a person in our group that is trying to bring a product to market and felt like we all kind of talked about imposter syndrome. I heard that a lot in this conference. And there's like really great leaders and great people, and people that you wouldn't expect to say that. So I think it just brought me to a place of stop being fearful of things and fearful of not doing the right thing. I think imposter syndrome is a very interesting perspective that a lot of people have. And I think for the audience, if you feel that way, you should just reach out to people and have conversations because it's holding you back. I can see it holding people back.

Someone said something this morning, if you remember, and I don't remember who it was, maybe you do. Everyone just about has imposter syndrome when you actually think about it. Is it really imposter syndrome or is it just the way we're wired?

I think it's kind of the way we're wired. I was working with a coach for a while and we kind of went down that track of talking about imposter syndrome. And really, it's the way he framed it for me and it made a lot of sense. It's like it's just self-sabotage, right?

And I think to your point, it's like the way we're wired and the way everything comes at us from a media standpoint or leadership standpoint. And we're hardwired now, or we've evolved to be wired that way, to just kind of sabotage ourselves and think that things aren't good enough, right?

And so now my trick is when I started feeling that way, I play Sabotage by Beastie Boys. It gets me out of that funk. So it gives a framing like, "Oh, I'm doing this myself. Let's play the damn song and play it loud."

I think I felt that way on Sunday when we played golf. That was self-sabotage.

The first five or six holes, I think we...

Struggled, and then in the back half I think we got our stuff together, but amazing course. I appreciate the opportunity.

>> This is great.

>> It was great.

>> So, let's go off the fly and do some GTM uncensored questions off the fly. Um, so hopefully Dale can help think of some. Where is the state of partnerships going? Partnerships has changed over the past several years. As AI comes into play, as go-to-market changes, what does partnerships look like over the next 12 to 18 months?

>> I'm still surprised that it's still not a native function of the GTM motion. The amount of companies I still work with and talk to, they still seem to treat partnerships like that's a silo. So Arcadia means harmony. I used Arcadia because I wanted to build harmony between the sales and marketing teams and all the functions. I've done it at companies and it's been extraordinarily successful—300% growth, 500% growth. But when I go talk to these companies, they're like, "What? How do you guys work with your partner team?" It's like they're not even talking to a company right now. "Well, how often does your sales team meet with your partner team?" They're like, "They don't."

>> I'm like, "When do they meet with them?" "When they have a lead."

>> "Well, what good is that? Like, you might as well just put them on the BDR team."

[laughter]

>> Like, they're just a glorified BDR at that point. And so it's got to be integrated into the go-to-market function at large. And I think the AI and the tools and everything that comes into play has got to allow all that to push into the tools that the field team is using on a daily basis because if it's not natively integrated, they're just going to consider them to be glorified BDRs.

>> So in the partner channel, where's the best place to use AI? We talked a little bit about AI, but where is that in the partner channel?

>> I guess it depends on the stage of your program. I've been working with a lot of startups—we'll call it zero to 20. And helping them build their foundation. I've kind of put everything on automation: from partner identification to even creating all the materials that they bring me in. I'm a team of one. What usually would take me three weeks to six weeks, I can now have done in a couple of days. I can deliver that, I can provide my enablement, my training, and I can tweak it to be whatever the team needs based on what feedback I get.

Partner identification—even down to like one thing that a lot of these companies struggle with because they don't understand partnerships, right? I'm even automating the communication to the leadership team: to the CEO, CRO. They love it when I can gather all the information that I've been talking to partners about all week, instead of me having to kind of come back through like, "Who did I talk to? What was that agency?" They can just pull all that from Gong or whatever, have an AI create this recap, push it out to them every Friday.

And I think for the higher growth companies, there's going to be all sorts of different modes, models, and motions. I think there's got to be a lot more new AI functionality within Crossbeam to allow a lot of that data to push into the sales teams, their daily activities. I've done a lot of that manually. And I see a world where a lot of that activity can begin to push to the sales team so they can take action on it and begin to prospect into their accounts using partner data strategy and tactics on their own because the AI has to push into those platforms.

>> Awesome.

>> Even into Gong and whatnot. And right now they still struggle with that from a manual perspective.

>> So you built and run Arcadia with your wife.

>> Yep.

>> I love my wife dearly. I cannot ever imagine working with her. When a decision has to be made and when there's an argument, who wins?

>> We work pretty well together. I'm always quick to say, "All right, I'm team Sam. You can have the right away here."

>> Smart husband.

>> Yeah.

>> But we have a clear understanding of, let's talk about this and work it out. We communicate very well. We have a lot of fun together. We always joke that I've got all these crazy ideas and she's like, "All right, let's go make it happen and figure it out." Like, this is one of them. And so we don't fight. We never argue—not even about work, not about home. It's like we have a great relationship. So if someone's like, we're trying to work through something, try to figure out what the best path is—I would say more times than not, she's right.

[laughter]

>> They usually are.

>> Dale's wife is always—something about that logical thinking that we don't have.

>> Yeah. I think it takes us a little bit more time to grow up.

>> Yeah.

>> So you have a couple of younger children—Jack and Nora, seven and five?

>> Yeah.

>> What's harder: managing the two younger children or partner managers?

[laughter]

>> Good question.

>> I mean, it's kind of the same.

[laughter]

>> It's definitely a lot more fun with the kids, right? So maybe managing the partner managers is harder.

>> Depends on how big of a team you've got as well.

[laughter]

>> When you look at Arcadia at 4, 5, 10—do you cap it and does it stay intimate at, call it, 65 to 75, or do you envision this getting bigger?

>> Not at all. I envision it getting smaller actually. I feel like this number is like five too many, to be honest. Like, I don't get a chance to have those really in-depth conversations with everybody. First year we capped it at 50, sold out, and by then I knew everyone very closely and intimately. Everyone was talking. Here, 65 is a bit bigger flex, but I don't feel like I get the chance to be that involved with everybody.

>> This is true. That's a very valid point.

>> I can't speak for everyone, but one of the things—and there's a deer right over there for the listeners to capture that—but one of the things that I shared is, you know, we are incredibly grateful that we were invited to speak, and one of the things that was important to us is we still wanted to pay our way to be here. And I think when I look at going from 65 to 60 or even 50, I don't pay to go to conferences. I normally want people to pay me to go to conferences. I would pay more to be here with 50 people than I would 65. I don't envy—I wouldn't want to have to figure out how I determine who, because that's hard, right? There's a point where you're going to have to say no to people.

You have—one of the things I loved was when you asked like, "Who's been here two times, three times?" The rate of repetition for such a small event. Listen, people go to Dreamforce and Unbound because they have to. People don't have to be here. So the rate of repeat attendees I think is really impressive. And I'd imagine that having to tell someone, "No, like, I don't know where you draw that line," and I don't envy you.

Um, obviously, you know, this is a lot to put on and a lot to pay for, like you shared with me—just what the tent costs. I can't imagine everything. I would pay more, and I don't know if you feel the same way, to have that more intimate group because I think it would be that much better.

>> Or you can kind of like, one of the things I was thinking about while we were doing the sound bath piece in there—um, which by the way, Dale thought he needed a bathing suit for—

[laughter]

>> —separate topic. I thought we were all getting in a bathtub.

>> Just listen to music.

>> Yeah. Hey, Pink Floyd.

>> That would be very awkward.

>> Or Sabotage.

>> That's it. That's it.

>> Have you guys thought about doing different events in different places?

>> Yeah.

>> So maybe it's that way.

>> We're talking to a guy who's here now. He has 80 acres in California. We're talking about how we do an Arcadia on his property. We've got a lot of requests to come do it in Europe, which sounds like a logistical nightmare, but it would be amazing.

>> It would be amazing. It would be incredible to do one over there, even on the East Coast. Like, I was thinking, where could we pull one off in Florida? Like, you know, where you have the experience of the beach and the water and, um, because this is an amazing property and experience. I think to me, if you guys were doing it, it's like it has to be this beautiful on the nature side as it is on the experience side.

>> Absolutely. Yeah. That's part of it. One either needs to be remote or there needs to be cell phone jammers.

>> Yeah, absolutely. And it's got to be in nature. It's got to be outside. Like, part of what I love about this and

There's a lot of studies and principles around biophilia, which means we are wired for nature. We are connected to nature very much, what Stephen Davis was talking about while he was here.

But there's also a lot of psychology that says two and a half hours in nature can begin to rewire your nervous system. So what can two and a half days do for people that never see nature? They never touch grass. They're in offices. They're in the concrete jungle. They're wherever, but they never get out in this. They never see it. So there's a certain special thing that happens when you go home. And it's the rewiring of your nervous system that I think people just don't think about until they get back home. They're like something feels different.

Our final question we always ask everybody, and you live in an amazing place. Where's your dream vacation destination?

I kind of live in it. It's fun because we can go places here and feel like you're on vacation.

Yeah. But living here, like we always want to vacate to like a beach.

Yeah. I don't have access to beach. I used to live in North Carolina. I had access to Charleston. I lived in Pensacola and I had access to the beach there.

So I would say like Hawaii sounds nice about right now.

We were talking, really right now we would want to go visit Portugal and visit some of the beaches over there.

Yeah. I'd imagine there's a ton of work that goes into building this.

I would imagine it's months, not weeks.

There's got to be a high when you're executing it, but tomorrow morning everyone leaves. What do you and Sam go do other than go back to being parents? But like, what do you do to decompress and reflect on the amazingness that you just put together?

Yeah. Tomorrow's a little special. I get to go play golf. It's my birthday, so I'm going to play golf. And then we're going to the rodeo with thirty people from the event tomorrow night. And then Friday, we will probably take the kids to camp and then come home and sit on the couch.

My classic move like the past few years, I would take people to Yellowstone for a guided tour in the last day, and then the next day I would go fly fish or just get in the river.

Were you the guide?

I was not.

Okay. So a guided tour by a guide.

Yeah. Okay. Yep. So my move would be to go fly fish by myself in a river and just kind of get some quiet time. Decompress. I love that. Love being in the river and just the quietness and stillness of it all.

The one thing we didn't do today is our Monday morning move. I normally do the Monday morning move because you were so gracious to host us. I want to hand off the Monday morning move to you. So here's what we want. It is a practical takeaway that our listeners can put into action Monday morning and we're going to reverse roles. Your job is to tell us, tie it to channels, tie it to partners, whatever you want. What is one takeaway that our listeners can actually put into place Monday morning and then Dale will either agree, disagree, or push back and we rate it from one to ten.

Okay. I'm going to pull a card from something Jesse said earlier that I do everywhere I go. Every partner, talking about every partnership I talk to and when I'm trying to reinvigorate a channel, I go and I ask partners four questions: What's right? What's wrong? What's missing? And what's confused? So go talk to your partners and like, "Hey, I need to hear. I need some honest feedback here. What's right? What are you liking? What's wrong? What's not working? What's missing? What's confusing?" And I guarantee you they'll give you some solid feedback. I've revamped an entire enablement program to meet the needs of the partners. They gave me that feedback and we scaled that thing to a million dollars in six months.

I love that. So I'm going to say I was going to say I'm going to steal that for our engagements. Um, and I love that.

I am right. I did the Monday morning move.

Did the Monday morning move right. I'm going to—I don't believe in tens. Um, I'm going to give you a nine point five. That was amazing.

Wow.

Nine point five on the GTM Uncensored podcast.

What's the confusion? So what do you get for information on confusing? I love that question. What do we get?

Yeah. Um, let's see. I'm trying to think back to a recent conversation. See what's missing, training, confusing.

I think you come on and join the party.

Hello.

Hi.

Can I have a sip of that?

It's Vernors.

But yes.

Yes.

So Jason just shared with us, we do every episode, we do what we call the Monday morning move and it's a practical takeaway just to catch you up on what our listeners could actually do within their go-to-market on Monday. And what he said and we're going to steal it because it's that good is when you are going into an engagement or a new role, et cetera, et cetera: What's right? What's wrong? What's missing? What's confused? And I love that. Where we were is Dale asked what are some of the answers you've gotten when you've asked what's confused other than Dale, who thought a sound bath was literally putting on his swim trunks and we were all going to get in a bathtub together.

That was a surprise for you then, huh?

I thought I was going. These tubs are small but I'm into it. Anything suited as a towel.

The answer I would say, one of the answers I really appreciate from partners, they were very honest with me. They're like, "We don't know how to go to market with you. We're very confused around how we position your product and this messaging, the work we're doing. Can you help us better understand how to go to market with this product?" And I think after some conversations and questioning, one of the things it came down to was like they were just confused about the product at large and how they sold it. And they're one of the ones that over the next six months they became my number one partner as a result of all this training and enablement stuff that we built out. It was simply just listening to them and giving them what they wanted. They were like, "No one's ever done this for us. No one's ever delivered." I'm like, well, it's classic, you know, trust building.

I was talking to—I forget who I was talking to yesterday. Um, but one of the things that they said is it's amazing how rare it is for someone to listen.

Yeah.

And deliver. If you can do those two things, you are heads and tails above everyone else.

I think those questions are hard for people that aren't good at listening because it requires you to not get defensive. You have to just sit there and listen and you got to be willing to take it and like, "All right, yeah, that that does suck. You're right. We will fix that." And if you don't fix it, they're not going to come back as a partner.

Yeah.

Or your new ones aren't going to come in as hot as you want them to.

Sam, what's your favorite part of Arcadia? It's three years in. You've had fifty the first year, give or take, what, sixty the second year, sixty-five this year. Lots of experiences. I shared the story how last night you asked me how it's going and my immediate answer was how do I sign up for next year? What's your favorite part? Because there's so much goodness.

I think that maybe in this moment it boils down to what you just said, but trust. Um, I think it's such a unique situation where people come into Arcadia and they leave trusting themselves more. Um, they leave having a trusted network, like a truly trusted network that they're going to call for help, not only for their business, but for their lives. And it's just we get to witness that like over forty-eight hours and that's a gift.

I thought you were going to go a different direction with that. I think it is also a really great direction. It's like how much they trust us to do this type of event.

I want to echo your trust. I've spoken with every person here at some point over the past forty-eight hours. Um, no one I haven't liked. I think everyone's amazing. None of the conversations revolved around professional what I do, what they do, which I think is actually magical. Um, I've disconnected for the first time in I can't even tell you how long. I don't disconnect. Um, but when you look at the event—two days, forty-eight hours—we were both saying we want another day.

Yeah. You might want to—can we—can we have? Is there a possibility that Arcadia becomes three full immersive days?

I mean, anything's possible.

Spoken like a true GTM leader. Anything's possible.

We can do. I'm kind of—I'm like shocked to hear that honestly.

I don't want to leave and I have not been home at all this month. Um, and I truly feel I could get value out of another day for what it's worth.

Wow. Okay. Yeah, I'm pretty shocked to hear that. That's great to hear.

My assumption is that people are tired at this point, but you're proving that to be wrong.

I'm tired because I've been here since last Thursday. But I do feel like some of our sessions I could be and do more. And I feel like even the AI backpack session—like another hour would have been amazing.

Good. Okay. Well, I'm glad to hear that.

We always want to leave you wanting more.

One of my questions on the whole event, and we were talking a little bit about this: if there's a disagreement, who wins, you or Jason?

Me.

I want to clarify for a moment. So Sam turned around and immediately said "Me." Jason, well ultimately his answer with you was very much how I would answer. You know, we get along really well professionally and personally, and we don't argue.

But Sam, you're just like my wife would instantly say "me." I love that.

So three years in, I think we've gotten better. Not that we were ever bad, but we've certainly found our lanes in how to work together. Jason has a lot of really crazy ideas and I am a get-things-done person, so we just figure it out.

So Jason has the ideas and then you're like, "How do I solve for this idea?"

Kind of, yeah.

Which is a good partnership.

Yeah. I don't think there's any issue. The only idea I shut down was bringing a live bear.

What's next for Arcadia? That's the million-dollar question. I think Jason and I are trying to figure out how to create more intentional spaces like this more frequently. We talked about this today, but this event is so transformative for people.

One hundred percent.

They leave feeling changed. And we have an online community which we do really awesome, amazing work in, but as we all know and have witnessed, in person is where real magic happens. So hopefully more of that. And then one thing Jason and I were talking about last night, but it's been really cool to watch—we've had several repeat guests take ownership in this.

And so, you know, that's one of the main things about great communities: they're owned by everybody.

Yeah.

So how can we give more ways for those people to step up and lead chapters, whatever that looks like? We're exploring a lot of things right now.

I love that. I love that. I think that is a great place to end. I can certainly say for me it was transformative. I don't put devices down. I don't do a lot of introspection. He does that. Definitely the one who does that. He's not self-aware.

Oh, sorry. I said that on camera.

It's all about how I can help others and what I can do for you, and I don't often take time to focus on myself.

Yeah.

From MK to Lindsay to Stephen to every single person that spoke, I took something that I can take home. There are certain decisions personally and professionally that I've been toying with one way or another. And I definitely feel like I got clarity here. Good, bad, or indifferent, I absolutely got clarity. And for that I am eternally grateful to both of you for inviting us and allowing us to take part in this.

Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Well, can I just thank you guys really quick because you guys came here. You offered so much to our guests and they all took so much from it too. I've heard so much good feedback from your sessions. In fact, we were giving people rides back to the tents last night and they were like, "Why won't our leadership team do that?" Thank you to you both and Jake as well, but for showing up here and being open to trying new things and sharing your talents with us.

I'll recommend this event to anyone. It's not an event. We're trying to—I don't even know what to call it.

We don't either. If you have ideas.

I told my wife, I was telling Jason, when we went to Yellowstone, we went to Artist Point and saw the waterfall and you can see pictures and be all about the picture of it, but until you're actually there and experiencing it, it's totally different. And I felt the same way. We were walking down to the tent last night and I'm like, I don't even know. I can't articulate it. Like, you have to be here.

If you're not here, it doesn't do it justice.

Yeah.

Arcadia 2027.

Yes.