WMYT - What makes YOU Tick? Tech Leaders Career Stories

Hosted by Richard and Tolu @ Tick Talent

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194

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Aug 2026

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About the show

Conversations with high-performing tech leaders, breaking down the decisions, failures, and strategies behind exceptional careers. It all starts by asking "what makes you tick?" Designed for founders and operators who want practical lessons from people who’ve built, scaled, and led in the real world. No theory. No hype. Just insights you can use.

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60 recent

September 13, 202617 min

How to Hire People Who Actually Take Ownership

Benjamin Caller has led sales at some of the fastest-scaling companies in tech, and in this Best Bits episode he joins Rich to break down how to hire people who genuinely take ownership, not just the ones who say they do. Benjamin and Rich dig into the multiplier framework: the difference between multipliers, adders, dividers, and subtractors, and the four traits that make a multiplier, collaborative, ownership, resourceful, and execution (CORE). They get into why ownership is the hardest of the four to find, the exact interview questions that expose whether someone really has it, and why, when there's a doubt, there's no doubt. We discuss: 1. The difference between multipliers, adders, dividers and subtractors 2. Why finding talent is the leader's job, not just the recruiter's 3. The traits that make someone a true multiplier 4. Why ownership is the hardest quality to hire for 5. The interview questions that reveal real ownership 6. Why "when there's a doubt, there's no doubt" when hiring 7. The show do, help do, make do, let do coaching method Brought to you by Tick Talent, go-to-market recruitment for early-stage tech startups: https://www.tick-talent.com/ Where to find Benjamin Caller: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamincaller/ Where to find Rich: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richwash/ Subscribe so you never miss an episode. New episodes every Wednesday, Best Bits every Sunday.

September 9, 20261 hr 1 min

How Leaders Can Save the Career Ladder From AI

If AI takes the jobs of junior salespeople and marketers, who trains the leaders of tomorrow? In this episode of What Makes You Tick, Rich and Tolu sit down with Tony Larks, a field marketing leader with over 30 years in tech, to tackle a problem everyone's worried about but nobody's talking about: AI is quietly killing the career ladder. Tony has spent his career taking chances on young people with potential, and he makes the case for why leaders, not the government, own the responsibility to keep developing early talent, and how to actually do it. We discuss: 1. Why companies now hire the finished product instead of raw potential 2. What happens to the leadership pipeline when entry-level roles disappear 3. Why 92% of marketers accept whatever AI serves them, and why that's dangerous 4. Why the SDR to AE path is broken, and what it's costing sellers 5. Why AI has dried up roles without actually delivering results yet 6. How AI can create opportunity, not just take it away 7. How any leader can start an internship or work experience programme Brought to you by Tick Talent, go-to-market recruitment for early-stage tech startups: https://www.tick-talent.com/ Where to find Tony Larks: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonylarks/ Where to find Rich and Tolu: Rich: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richwash/ Tolu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toluadebekun/ Subscribe so you never miss an episode. New episodes every Wednesday, Best Bits every Sunday.

September 6, 202615 min

How Sales Leaders Perform Under Pressure (Without Burning Out)

Tammy Aguillon is VP of Sales at Webflow, a revenue leader who has risen from an inbound SDR role all the way to third-line sales leadership. In this Best Bits episode, she joins Rich and Tolu to talk about the mental side of leadership: why sales leaders burn out, how to regulate your nervous system under pressure, and why mastering your own mind matters more as AI gets smarter. Tammy shares how she found Dreamfuel, the neuroscience-based coaching that changed how she thinks, makes decisions, and leads, and why she brought her coach in to run a session with her entire leadership team. We discuss: 1. Why the mental side of leadership is now a competitive edge 2. How to lead when every decision is made with uncertainty 3. Why a dysregulated nervous system wrecks your decision-making 4. How metacognition lets you observe your own thoughts 5. Why AI is only useful if your own thinking is clear 6. The difference between therapy, exec coaching, and performance coaching 7. Why so many people in tech are quietly burning out More about Dreamfuel: Mental Performance Coaching for Leaders and Sales Professionals - The same neuroscience-backed mental performance coaching trusted by elite performers, available through the WMYT and Tick Talent community. Book your complimentary session: https://www.dreamfuel.com/whatmakesyoutick Where to find Tammy Aguillon: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tammy-aguillon/ Where to find Rich and Tolu: Rich: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richwash/ Tolu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toluadebekun/ Subscribe so you never miss an episode. New episodes every Wednesday, Best Bits every Sunday.

September 2, 20261 hr 11 min

The Frontline Manager Problem No Sales Strategy Can Fix w/ Olivia Lockwood

Olivia Lockwood is the founder of Open Up Coaching and a Master Certified Trainer of the Challenger Selling Model, with over 25 years coaching sales leaders at organisations including Microsoft, Google, IHG, American Express, and Lumen. In this episode of Making Revenue Tick, she joins Rich to unpack the problem no sales strategy can fix: the frontline sales manager. Olivia explains why companies keep promoting their best sellers into management without telling them the job has changed, why the player-coach model is often hard to work with, and how frontline managers can become the true force multipliers of a go-to-market org. We discuss: 1. Why promoting your best seller into management so often backfires 2. Why Olivia refuses to work with companies that use player-coaches 3. The four responsibilities of a frontline manager, and the one most get wrong 4. Why strategy fails to become execution 5. Why reinforcement beats "transformation" every time 6. Why customer success is still the toughest role in go-to-market 7. Why 10 to 15% churn a year is healthy, and who you want to lose Brought to you by Tick Talent, go-to-market recruitment for early-stage tech startups: https://www.tick-talent.com/ Where to find Olivia Lockwood: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliviarlockwood/ Where to find Rich: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richwash/ Subscribe so you never miss an episode. New episodes every Wednesday, Best Bits every Sunday.

August 30, 202621 min

When the Cuts Come, Which GTM Leaders Survive? with Jacob Warwick

Jacob Warwick is an executive negotiation coach who helps senior operators negotiate better salary, equity, titles, and severance packages. In this Best Bits episode, Rich and Tolu sit down with Jacob to talk about job security in the age of AI: how to make yourself indispensable, why no one really is, and how to future-proof your career before AI reshapes it entirely. We discuss: 1. How to deepen your roots and become impossible to cut 2. Why cross-functional influence protects your job more than hitting your number 3. Why every employment deal is a win-lose, and how to think about it 4. Why they trade you something infinite for something finite 5. How Jacob replaced a team of eight with AI in a single day 6. Why AI-augmented executives will earn over a million a year 7. Why you should create more than you consume Brought to you by Tick Talent, go-to-market recruitment for early-stage tech startups: https://www.tick-talent.com/ Where to find Jacob Warwick: Substack: https://www.execsandthecity.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@jacob-warwick Website: https://www.thinkwarwick.com Where to find Rich and Tolu: Rich: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richwash/ Tolu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toluadebekun/ Subscribe so you never miss an episode. New episodes every Wednesday, Best Bits every Sunday.

August 26, 202648 min

Why Nobody Knows How to Sell in Person Anymore w/ Joe Fontana

Richard is joined by Joe Fontana, Chief Marketing and Growth Officer at Amzai and one of the New York chapter heads for the SDR Leaders of the USA. He has spent 12 years running hundreds of events a year across 20 industries on every continent, and in this episode of Making Revenue Tick he joins Rich to explain why in-person events, done properly, are the most powerful pipeline engine in modern sales, and why a generation of sellers has never been taught to actually sell. We discuss: 1. How to use events to build pipeline and close deals faster 2. The "weddings and funerals" test of a trustworthy seller 3. What's broken in modern sales training 4. AI, and why sellers have content but no context 5. How the buyer took all the power from the seller 6. The ideal number of guests for a sales dinner 7. A seller's real job: keeping the buyer from getting fired Brought to you by Tick Talent, go-to-market recruitment for early-stage tech startups: https://www.tick-talent.com/ Where to find Joe Fontana: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-fontana75/ Where to find Rich: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richwash/ Subscribe so you never miss an episode. New episodes every Wednesday, Best Bits every Sunday.Joe Fontana is Chief Marketing and Growth Officer at Amzai and one of the New York chapter heads for the SDR Leaders of the USA. He has spent 12 years running hundreds of events a year across 20 industries on every continent, and in this episode of Making Revenue Tick he joins Rich to explain why in-person events, done properly, are the most powerful pipeline engine in modern sales, and why a generation of sellers has never been taught to actually sell. We discuss: 1. How to use events to build pipeline and close deals faster 2. The "weddings and funerals" test of a trustworthy seller 3. What's broken in modern sales training 4. AI, and why sellers have content but no context 5. How the buyer took all the power from the seller 6. The ideal number of guests for a sales dinner 7. A seller's real job: keeping the buyer from getting fired Brought to you by Tick Talent, go-to-market recruitment for early-stage tech startups: https://www.tick-talent.com/ Where to find Joe Fontana: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-fontana75/ Where to find Rich: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richwash/ Subscribe so you never miss an episode. New episodes every Wednesday, Best Bits every Sunday.

August 19, 20261 hr 22 min

E.146 - Why Nobody Knows How to Connect Anymore w/ Ravi Rajani

We live in the most connected era in history, yet real human connection has never felt rarer. In the first ever in-person What Makes You Tick, Rich and Tolu sit down with Ravi Rajani, international keynote speaker, LinkedIn Learning instructor, and author of Relationship Currency, to unpack why presence has become a lost art, and how to build relationships that actually compound in a world obsessed with shortcuts. Ravi has taught over 80,000 professionals how to communicate with charisma and connection, and worked with organisations like Oracle NetSuite, T-Mobile, Spotify, and Sherwin-Williams. This conversation is a masterclass in becoming the person people remember, trust, and choose. We discuss: 1. Why deep presence has become a lost art 2. Why instant gratification is quietly killing connection 3. The difference between reactive behaviour and true presence 4. Why the depth of your questions dictates the depth of your relationships 5. Why the person who tells the best story becomes the obvious choice 6. How to build a signature talk people repeat when you're not in the room 7. Why AI can give you the answer but not the character to hold it Plus, Ravi is giving away five copies of his book Relationship Currency. Brought to you by Tick Talent, go-to-market recruitment for early-stage tech startups: https://www.tick-talent.com/ Where to find Ravi Rajani: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theravirajani/ https://www.theravirajani.com/ Where to find Rich and Tolu: Rich: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richwash/ Tolu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toluadebekun/ Subscribe so you never miss an episode. New episodes every Wednesday, Best Bits every Sunday.

August 16, 202620 min

What Drives Humans to Do What They Do? Using Brain Science to Build Buyer Trust w/ Silvia Li

Selling is no longer about high-pressure tactics or corporate pitch decks. AI has made written content and automation so abundant that no one trusts it anymore. So now it's about alignment, trust, and emotional connection, built on how the brain actually makes decisions. In this Best Bits episode of Making Revenue Tick, Rich sits down with Silvia Li, founder of BrainSells Global, to break down the neuroscience behind high-impact sales conversations and how founders and GTM leaders can sell in a way that mirrors buyer psychology rather than outdated playbooks. We discuss: 1. Why research is table stakes, and where most people stop short 2. The SCAN model: similarity, common challenge, aha moment, and new possibility 3. Why similarity is perceived by a human, not generated by an algorithm 4. In-group vs out-group, and why your buyer's brain starts by seeing you as a threat 5. How to lower the threat level so a buyer is primed to hear you out 6. How to move from founder-led selling to empowering a new seller 7. The questions to ask to uncover what really drives your buyer Brought to you by Tick Talent, go-to-market recruitment for early-stage tech startups: https://www.tick-talent.com/ Where to find Silvia Li: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/silvia-li/ Where to find Rich: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richwash/ Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/ra62zjWWdy8 Subscribe so you never miss an episode. New episodes every Wednesday, Best Bits every Sunday.

August 12, 202657 min

E.145 - AI Is Getting Smarter. Great Leaders Need to Become More Self-Aware w/ Tammy Aguillon

Tammy Aguillon is VP of Sales at Webflow, a revenue leader who has risen from an inbound SDR role all the way to a third-line sales leadership position. In this episode, she joins Rich and Tolu to talk about self-awareness, gut instinct, the knowing-doing gap, and why the smarter AI gets, the more leaders need to master their own minds. We discuss: 1. Why Tammy makes decisions on head, heart and gut, and how to stop doing the "shoulds" 2. Why instinct is built from experience, not separate from data 3. The hardest jump in a sales career, and it isn't the one you'd expect 4. Why belly-to-belly selling drives a 4X multiplier on win rate 5. How AI should be used to expand a team, not just cut it 6. Why enterprise buyers now arrive 80 to 90% through their journey 7. Why mental performance coaching matters more as AI gets smarter Brought to you by Tick Talent, go-to-market recruitment for early-stage tech startups: https://www.tick-talent.com/ Where to find Tammy Aguillon: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tammy-aguillon/ Where to find Rich and Tolu: Rich: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richwash/ Tolu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toluadebekun/ Subscribe so you never miss an episode. New episodes every Wednesday, Best Bits every Sunday. Who is Dreamfuel?Dreamfuel is a neuroscience-based mental performance coaching platform designed primarily for technology founders, executive leaders, and high-pressure corporate teams. The company provides executive coaching and cognitive training to eliminate psychological barriers, manage severe workplace stress, and optimize daily decision-making under intense stakeholder pressure.What do Dreamfuel do?Unlock peak performance with neuroscience backed coaching. They help founders, executives, and sales teams sharpen focus, build confidence, and achieve their biggest goals.Book your complimentary 1:1 mental performance coaching session with Dreamfuel today: https://www.dreamfuel.com/schedule-your-demo

August 9, 202624 min

Why So Many Adults Stop Chasing Their Dreams (And How To Get Them Back) w/ Kevin Bailey (Dreamfuel)

"I dont believe founders fail. I believe they quit. Internally, then externally." - Kevin Bailey, CEO Dreamfuel.This is a best bits episode of What Makes You Tick, 20 mins on Your Dreams! Nobody tells you when you've stopped dreaming.There's no announcement.No big decision.One day you're building a life.The next, you're simply maintaining one.This conversation with Dreamfuel founder Kevin Bailey isn't about motivation.It's about why so many ambitious people lose sight of what they actually wanted—and how to find it again.We talk about:• Why dreams matter more than goals• Why achievement doesn't guarantee happiness• The invisible moment people stop pursuing their potential• Why now is the best time in history to build something meaningfulIf this resonates with you...Ask yourself one question:"What's the dream I've stopped giving attention to?"And then get some help in finding the resilience to keep going!Who is Dreamfuel?Dreamfuel is a neuroscience-based mental performance coaching platform designed primarily for technology founders, executive leaders, and high-pressure corporate teams. The company provides executive coaching and cognitive training to eliminate psychological barriers, manage severe workplace stress, and optimize daily decision-making under intense stakeholder pressure.What do Dreamfuel do?Unlock peak performance with neuroscience backed coaching. They help founders, executives, and sales teams sharpen focus, build confidence, and achieve their biggest goals.Book your complimentary 1:1 mental performance coaching session with Dreamfuel today: https://www.dreamfuel.com/schedule-your-demo🎙️ Guest: Kevin Bailey — Founder, Dreamfuel🔗 Connect with Kevin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinjamesbailey🌐 Dreamfuel: https://dreamfuel.com🎙️ Hosts: Richard Washington & Tolu Adebekun🔗 Rich: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richwash/🔗 Tolu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toluadebekun/🌐 Tick Talent: https://www.tick-talent.com/👉 Subscribe so you never miss an episode, new episodes every Wednesday, Best Bits every Sunday.#neuroscience #highperformance #mentalperformance #mindset #dopamine #serotonin #happiness #ambition #salesperformance #leadership #founders #startups #breathwork #visualization #flowstate #dreamfuel #whatmakesyoutick #ticktalent #peakperformance #mentalhealth #personaldevelopment #B2B #GTM #kevinbailey #dreamfuel #ticktalent #wmyt