By Mitchell Newman, Director of Sales at Canalyst
Making the decision to go from a fifteen thousand person company to a one hundred person startup wasn’t an easy one. Big life changes never are.
I had so many incredible experiences being part of a large organization. A promotion, two back to back sales club trips, rigorous training, high caliber mentorship, and lots of corporate perks.
I also developed professionally. Gartner taught me a proven sales and sales leadership process that will always be a great foundation for my sales career.
Even still, when I was being honest with myself, I could admit that I had stopped pushing my own professional boundaries. I was successfully executing a great system, but spent little time thinking creatively about how to change or improve it. I felt like I was not working at or toward my full potential.
Since I was not challenging myself to keep getting better, my motivation for success was almost entirely monetary.
That became even more evident about eighteen months ago, when a friend and colleague was hired as Canalyst’s first sales executive in New York.
As we kept in touch, I learned about how Canalyst was pioneering a better workflow for public equity analysts.
I heard how hedge fund analysts could update their custom equity models, with new earnings data, at the touch of a button. That a small cap portfolio manager, for the first time ever, had access to a database of fully functioning and complete equity models.
Over that eighteen month period, my friend talked about how Canalyst secured new rounds of venture capital financing, built out a team of almost sixty research analysts, a coverage universe of four thousand public equities, and a client list that includes many of the largest hedge funds and mutual funds in the world.
But what really stuck with me was the passion he felt for his company and his career. He worked with purpose and meaning.
Seeing that forced me to reflect. What did his new environment provide that mine did not?
I pinpointed a few key differences. Canalyst’s rapid growth frequently brought new challenges that did not have prescribed solutions. This required regular problem solving, creativity, and continuous improvement (the first answer isn’t always the best one). Both at the company and individual level.
The more exposure I got to my colleague’s experiences the more I wanted them for myself.
Soon thereafter, I met with Canalyst’s CEO and went through their interview process. Every single engineer, product manager, sales director, analyst, and executive I met worked with purpose and passion. Their desire to keep making huge productivity leaps for their clients was palpable.
A week after my visit with the CEO, I accepted their offer.
As I begin this new adventure, I’m excited and motivated knowing that for Canalyst to achieve its huge growth potential I will have to work smarter every day. I’ll be relied on to solve problems that help create new ways of improving their clients’ workflow. Being at my best daily is the only way to maximize my sales success and the company’s revenue growth.
It’s the type of environment that will help me keep pushing my personal bar of success. Which I now know is way more important to me than any corporate perk.
Wish me luck!
Read Mitch Newman’s original Linkedin post.
