Revenue Remix - Inspiring Visionary Leaders

This is the published recording of the live LA Tech Week panel "The GTM Wall Nobody Warns You About: Getting Paid in Health Tech," hosted virtually by Rise of Us on Tuesday, October 13, 2026. It is Part 1 of 3 in the GTM for HealthTech panel series, a tour of California tech weeks. Part 2 is the OC Tech Week panel on October 22: [PART 2 LINK]

Health tech go-to-market is not SaaS go-to-market. The user, the buyer and the payer are of...

How do you grow revenue without growing headcount? Automate the admin work sellers carry, then spend the time you free up on accounts that are ready to buy. Four go-to-market founders show how in this Revenue Remix panel on sales automation, intent signals, ICP, and B2B outbound that books meetings that close.

Host Summer Poletti, founder and chief growth strategist at Rise of Us, opens with a stat: sellers spend about 40% of their ...

Most founders blame the person. In this bonus episode of Revenue Remix, Summer Poletti, founder of Rise of Us [link], continues her conversation with returning guest John Mason-Smith [link] to explain why new sales hires fail — and it's rarely because the company hired the wrong salesperson.

JMS spent years inside ADP and Paycheck watching the same mistake repeat itself: a great salesperson gets promoted into sales management,...

Every growth-stage company reaches a point where the next revenue lever isn't another hire — it's a partner. In this bonus episode of Revenue Remix, Summer Poletti, founder of Rise of Us [link], sits down with returning guest John Mason-Smith [link] to break down what it actually takes to grow revenue without growing headcount through a systemized partner network instead of a bigger payroll.

JMS built his entire business &mdas...

Scaling From $5M to $20M: What You Can No Longer Ignore

If your B2B company is scaling from $5M to $20M in revenue, this episode breaks down exactly what you can no longer ignore. Summer Poletti, founder of Rise of Us, brings together three experts for a panel on what actually breaks once a company moves past $5M ARR: sales-turned-marketing operator Brandy, referral and partnership strategist Dave Plunkett, and customer success lead...

Another Reason Why New Sales Hires Fail. There's an infrastructure gap in almost every scaling org that sabotages growth investments before they even get launched

When a board pushes for investment in growth, the conversation almost always lands on headcount — hire another salesperson, hire a VP of Sales, fix the pipeline. But most growth-stage CEOs are about to learn the hard way why new sales hires fail: the problem was neve...

"You are putting your deal in the hands of people you're never meeting, doing research you have no control over, trusting sources you've never vetted, and hoping for a good outcome." — Glen Torregiani, Founder, EnAIbld

The average B2B buying team now includes 8 to 14 stakeholders. In a typical SaaS deal, sales will talk to three of them. The rest are doing their own research — opening Claude, checking Reddit, showing up ...

"Bad enablement is worse than no enablement. A frustrated prospect is worse than one that didn't get quite enough." — Glen Torregiani, Founder, EnAIbld

HubSpot called it a traffic apocalypse. Neil Patel confirmed it earlier this year: bot traffic has surpassed human traffic for the first time. Inbound leads are dropping. Buyers are arriving later, with a shorter list and less patience — and most sales and marketing teams...

Most companies stuck between $5M and $20M ARR aren't failing because of one broken thing. They're failing because the team, the pricing, the messaging, and the offer all quietly stopped matching the company they've become — and nobody stepped back long enough to notice.

This episode continues the Messy Middle series, expanding on the $5M-to-$20M wall conversation from a few weeks back. Today's focus: what actually needs to shi...

Trade shows and conferences can eat up to 30% of a B2B marketing budget — and for growth-stage companies, a single industry "Super Bowl" can run $150,000 before the booth footprint is even built. So why do so many teams fly home with a stack of badge scans and nothing that looks like pipeline? Summer Poletti sits down again with Sandi Green of Miracle Max Marketing to break down the full event lifecycle — pre-event plan...

A CEO at roughly $6M ARR came in wanting to grow his small sales team. He had a specific revenue goal and he was willing to spend to reach it.

Summer Poletti — founder and CRO of Rise of Us — took the project, looked at the system underneath it, and found every profitability gap covered in the previous episode of this series sitting inside the company. So she told him something most people brought in to build a sales tea...

Doubling your sales team doubles your payroll. If the new reps bring in just enough to cover themselves, you end up with more revenue, more headcount, more headaches — and the same profit line.

In this bonus solo episode, Summer Poletti — founder and CRO of Rise of Us — walks through what she looks for inside a $5M–$25M ARR company before anyone signs off on new sales headcount. Not the sales-readiness gaps c...

"All of this planning sounds slow, and I don't want to slow down."

That's the objection Summer Poletti hears most from founders and CEOs who already know their sales hire needs structure underneath it. In this bonus solo episode, the founder and CRO of Rise of Us answers it directly — and she answers it as a 3x founder who doesn't like waiting either.

The premise: you don't have to choose between speed and structure. You have t...

Most first sales hires don't fail because the salesperson was wrong. They fail because nothing was built for that salesperson to step into.

In this solo episode, Summer Poletti — founder and CRO of Rise of Us — breaks down what has to be in place inside a growth-stage B2B company before you post the job description, build the comp plan, or make an offer. If you're a founder or CEO between $5M and $20M ARR planning your f...

What a Bad Sales Hire Actually Costs You. It's not Just Financial, There's an Emotional Toll and also Brand, Trust, and Momentum

Founders reach for a sales hire when revenue stalls — but the real cost of getting it wrong isn't the salary. In this conversation, Summer Poletti (founder of Rise of Us, a revenue architecture consultancy for growth-stage B2B companies) brings together three operators who see this problem from diffe...

Let's call it what it is. Marketing says no one follows up with their leads. Sales says the leads suck. The CEO is just asking about the ACTUAL numbers because they have to report projections to the board. And somewhere in the middle, real pipeline is dying because nobody will say the quiet part out loud.

This episode is the quiet part out loud.

Summer met Edward Preston (EP) at TechCon SoCal, where he introduced himself as the BS me...

"Everything is sales." — Lolita Taub

If you've ever convinced a toddler to brush their teeth, negotiated bedtime, or talked someone off a ledge at Thanksgiving dinner — congratulations. You've been selling your whole life without knowing it.

Summer has spent years making the case that profitable growth is more than just sales. Lolita Taub spent just as many years making the case that everything is sales. Turns out both th...

Revenue Remix moved from #34 to #21 on Feedspot's Best Revenue Podcasts list. No submission. No paid listing. No claimed profile. Just guests who kept showing up, and listeners who stuck around for it.

Back in December, this show made a real bet: bring collaborators back again and again instead of running through one-time interviews. That's not how most B2B shows handle repeat guests, and there was a real chance it would get old fas...

Most growth-stage founders are trying to figure out AI by watching other growth-stage founders try to figure out AI. That's the problem.

Enterprise organizations have been navigating technology adoption, change management, and workforce transformation for decades. They have frameworks. They have scars. They have lessons that most $5M–$20M companies won't learn until it's too late — and too expensive.

Ashley Gross has oper...