Do Hard Things A Podcast With Gabe Lullo Ft. Paul Higgins

"I did a reverse image search, found his wife's bakery in Illinois, and put in an order for cakes with a note inside. He called me at 6:30 the next morning." - Paul Higgins Paul's sales career started on an ice cream van. Before that, he was upselling cologne to classmates at school for 50p a spray. He talked his way out of a post room job after hearing the buzz of the call center floor and deciding that's where he belonged. From there, it was pensions, then insurance, then recruitment tech, teaching himself HTML and CSS along the way. A mentor once handed him two VHS tapes: Boiler Room and Glengarry Glen Ross. He says they changed his career, cutting his daily call volume from 150 dials to just 40 because they taught him something volume never could: how to actually close. What sets Paul apart today is his ability to sit with a CTO and talk architecture, then walk into the CFO's office and talk about cost savings that same afternoon. Most reps only speak one language. He learned to translate between technical and commercial conversations by understanding how the products actually worked, not just how to pitch them. That same mindset shows up in his prospecting. One unicorn account had gatekeepers he couldn't get past for months. So he reverse image searched the decision-maker, found his wife's bakery in Illinois, ordered a box of cakes, and tucked in a handwritten note asking for a callback. It worked. That single conversation became a five-year, $1.2 million contract. His research is just as methodical. Before his team calls a prospect, they already know how many job boards the company uses, how many developers they employ, and roughly what their current setup is costing them. That level of preparation helped improve SQL-to-close rates by 40%. Not by making more calls. By making smarter ones. "Don't dwell on the things you messed up on. I've lost millions. The more you put in, the more you get out."