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February 03, 2026 | 32 MIN
In this episode of The Rainmaker Podcast, Gui Costin sits down with Adam Rosen to unpack what actually works in cold email today. Adam shares his entrepreneurial journey and explains how cold outreach helped him win major brands, raise capital, and exit his first startup. The conversation highlights how cold email has changed dramatically, with infrastructure and domain reputation now critical to success. Adam breaks down why reply rates matter more than opens, why mindset and resilience are essential in sales, and how short, direct emails outperform long, polished messages. The episode offers practical lessons for anyone building pipelines through outbound sales.
Narrator: Welcome to the Rainmaker Podcast with your host, Gui Costin. The goal of this podcast is to give listeners a unique look into sales strategies from top industry executives. We introduce you to the heads of sales and heads of distribution, who will help you understand the inner workings of the successful sales organizations from philosophy to execution. This podcast is essential for sales professionals seeking wisdom from the best in the field. If you're not familiar with Dakota and their Dakota Rainmaker content, please check out dakota.com to learn more about their services. Gui Costin: This episode is brought to you by Dakota Marketplace. Are you tired of constantly jumping between multiple databases and channels to find the right investment opportunities? Introducing Dakota Marketplace, the comprehensive institutional and intermediary database built by fundraisers for fundraisers. With Dakota Marketplace, you'll have access to all channels and asset classes in one place, saving you time and streamlining your fundraising process. Say goodbye to the frustration of searching through multiple databases, websites, form ADVs, and say hello to a seamless and efficient fundraising experience. Sign up now and see the difference Dakota Marketplace can make for you. Visit dakota.com/dakota-marketplace today. What is up, everybody? It's Gui Costin, founder and CEO Dakota. Welcome to our latest episode of The Rainmaker Podcast. This is a special one everyone, because we're hitting on the pulse of really what matters most. And I'm so excited to be joined by Adam Rosen. Adam Rosen is a world traveling entrepreneur who sold his first tech startup in 2019. He currently leads eocworks.com, an email marketing agency helping startups, unicorns, and Fortune 500s generate sales through email. Having exited multiple businesses and led multi-million-dollar real estate developments, Adam now enjoys the freedom of building successful ventures while exploring the world's most inspiring places. Adam, welcome. Adam Rosen: Gui, thank you for having me. I'm excited to chat with you. Gui Costin: Ok, so take us back. We'd just love to hear your origin story, where you grew up, college, and then how you got into business and where you are today. Adam Rosen: I grew up in New York, and then I went to New York's arch nemesis, Boston, for college. So I went to school in Boston. My senior year… Gui Costin: We have to ask where. Adam Rosen: So it's a small school about 30 minutes...
Read Full TranscriptNarrator: Welcome to the Rainmaker Podcast with your host, Gui Costin. The goal of this podcast is to give listeners a unique look into sales strategies from top industry executives. We introduce you to the heads of sales and heads of distribution, who will help you understand the inner workings of the successful sales organizations from philosophy to execution. This podcast is essential for sales professionals seeking wisdom from the best in the field. If you're not familiar with Dakota and their Dakota Rainmaker content, please check out dakota.com to learn more about their services.
Gui Costin: This episode is brought to you by Dakota Marketplace. Are you tired of constantly jumping between multiple databases and channels to find the right investment opportunities? Introducing Dakota Marketplace, the comprehensive institutional and intermediary database built by fundraisers for fundraisers. With Dakota Marketplace, you'll have access to all channels and asset classes in one place, saving you time and streamlining your fundraising process. Say goodbye to the frustration of searching through multiple databases, websites, form ADVs, and say hello to a seamless and efficient fundraising experience. Sign up now and see the difference Dakota Marketplace can make for you. Visit dakota.com/dakota-marketplace today.
What is up, everybody? It's Gui Costin, founder and CEO Dakota. Welcome to our latest episode of The Rainmaker Podcast. This is a special one everyone, because we're hitting on the pulse of really what matters most. And I'm so excited to be joined by Adam Rosen. Adam Rosen is a world traveling entrepreneur who sold his first tech startup in 2019. He currently leads eocworks.com, an email marketing agency helping startups, unicorns, and Fortune 500s generate sales through email. Having exited multiple businesses and led multi-million-dollar real estate developments, Adam now enjoys the freedom of building successful ventures while exploring the world's most inspiring places. Adam, welcome.
Adam Rosen: Gui, thank you for having me. I'm excited to chat with you.
Gui Costin: Ok, so take us back. We'd just love to hear your origin story, where you grew up, college, and then how you got into business and where you are today.
Adam Rosen: I grew up in New York, and then I went to New York's arch nemesis, Boston, for college. So I went to school in Boston. My senior year…
Gui Costin: We have to ask where.
Adam Rosen: So it's a small school about 30 minutes outside of Boston. It's called Endicott College in a beautiful small town called Beverly, Massachusetts. One of the most beautiful universities I've ever been to, colleges I've been to. Beaches all over. The only problem is it doesn't get above 50 degrees while you're in school. So once it starts to get into the 50s, everybody's going to the beach, trying to jump in the water, and you're just forcing it a little bit. So I was a sport management major in college. I thought I'd be a big sports guy. And thankfully, my senior year, or my junior year, I took an entrepreneurship course, fell in love with it. I ended up running the Center for Entrepreneurship at my college. They offered me a one year MBA. And then three weeks before I graduated, I ended up starting what became my first startup. And I haven't looked back ever since.
Gui Costin: That's great. What was that first startup?
Adam Rosen: It was a college recruiting startup. So we built a platform of about 100,000 student organizations from all across the country. And then we would sell into companies like Amazon, Apple, Goldman, Disney, BlackRock who wanted to recruit those students through their student affiliations and also get data on those students. So we would host surveys through our platform. And we did a million things wrong in that startup, but the one thing we always did exceptionally well was getting, like I mentioned, some of the best brands in the world. And we didn't get them from having a bunch of relationships or even from a big marketing budget. We raised just a little bit of money. How we got them was from being scrappy. So we were just cold email and cold email and cold email. And it was how we ended up getting the bulk of our 100,000 students to sign up. It was how we got those big brands on the platform. It was even how we raised money and then eventually sold the company was through cold email. So as you can imagine, that's what parlayed us into eventually starting this company about 4 and 1/2 years ago now.
Gui Costin: Ok, so tell me about your current company before I get into the Q&A. Tell me about the current company, what you do, expertise, your client base, et cetera.
Adam Rosen: Yeah, we're an email marketing agency. So most of our email is powered through cold email. So we work with some early-stage startups. We work with some big brands like Allstate or the UFC, where the cold email world, Gui, as you know, and we were having this conversation recently about this, it has changed dramatically from when I was first cold emailing back in '15, '16. It's a different world. And the reality is, if you're not an expert, the deck is so stacked against you, you really don't stand a chance. So for most of our customers, we do everything A to Z. We book the meetings, they show up, and they do what they do best, which is make the sale.
Gui Costin: That's amazing. So what has changed from 2016 until 2026?
Adam Rosen: The one thing that stands out more than anything, and something that still surprises me today when I have these conversations that people are still doing wrong, is back in the day, we would send thousands and thousands and thousands of emails every single day from our primary domain and our primary inbox, and that wasn't really an issue at all. Odds are, you weren't going to go in spam. Your email would most likely get read, and you can get a response from it. If you do that today, not only is there almost 0 chance that you're going to land in the inbox, but you're going to destroy your domain reputation. So the number one thing above everything else, copy, lists, you name it, it all starts with infrastructure. So you have to build a bunch of sending domains and email inboxes that you're sending from. Because if you don't do that, again, you don't stand a chance of even landing in the inbox. And like I always tell people, one of my favorite Zig Ziglar quotes is you can't hit what you can't see. In an email in sales, if you don't land in the inbox, I don't care how good your email is, you're not getting a reply.
Gui Costin: So infrastructure is that expertise of being able to build that email marketing infrastructure is paramount and really the first thing before anything else.
Adam Rosen: Yeah. I had a conversation yesterday with a company that's sending 25,000 emails a day from each seller's inbox, and they're wondering why not only, are they not getting any replies from those emails, but they've noticed that their salespeople have good conversations, but they get ghosted and don't hear back over and over and over again. And sure, it could be because the prospects aren't interested. Or it could be because the proposals they're sending are now going in spam because their domain reputation is ruined. So not only will you not get results, it can have adverse effects where now everyone across your domain can be negatively impacted if you do that one big mistake.
Gui Costin: And do you supply the tools to help people analyze those domains? Are there tools out there that help people analyze what goes into spam and what doesn't? And you were saying the reputation of any particular domain.
Adam Rosen: Yeah, there's various tools that will give you an idea on your domain health. You could check if you are blacklisted. But you could also… most of the sending tools, Instant Leads, Smart Leads, you name it, they'll give you an idea of your domain health. But the best measure, because you can actually reach into someone's inbox and see, did I land in spam, or did I land in the inbox? That's why it's so important to look at the data. Don't look at open rates, because you shouldn't be tracking opens in cold email, but look at your reply rates. If your reply rates are under 1%, under 0.5%, you probably have a problem, especially if you used to get 3%, 4%, 6% reply rates. Now you're dropping a 1% reply rates, 0.3% reply rates. There's a good chance you're landing in spam. So you have to track the numbers, and you always have to be monitoring, because it can happen overnight. Where you could be landing in the inbox. You do one thing wrong, and that domain can be shattered. So you have to keep an eye on it daily.
Gui Costin: That's amazing. So let's just go back so the audience understands. Why not tracking open rates, but you're saying you want to track reply rates. Why is that?
Adam Rosen: So open rates you don't want to track in cold email for two reasons. One reason is it increases the likelihood you end up in spam. So when you're sending cold emails, you don't want to track opens. You don't want to track clicks. You don't want to put links or images in the email. You want to keep your cold emails plain text. The other reason you don't want to track opens is because the data is unreliable. Opens, because so many of these technologies will auto open emails to see if they're a phishing email or bot email, the open rate data isn't even accurate anyway. Versus your reply rates, that's a human that's physically responding. And if they're responding, odds are you landed in the inbox and the message is resonating in some way, shape, or form.
Gui Costin: So once we get past the infrastructure, can we get back to a philosophical question around cold outreach and cold email? And there's a lot of people out there that don't believe in it. So can we just get baseline, once we get the infrastructure in place, let's just talk. Could you just give your philosophy and opinion of why it's so critical? Obviously, we believe in it. We've built two businesses doing it. What is your opinion and philosophy on cold outreach?
Adam Rosen: Yeah, I feel like, Gui, there's people like you and I who are lovers of cold email, and then there's people that hate it. Cold email is dead. It's the worst thing in the world. Avoid it like it's the plague. And my sell to people is always give it a try but give it a real try. Because the thing with email, especially cold email, is it's looked at in this negative light. And the reason why is it doesn't feed into your ego. Versus social media marketing, you become a little influencer, a lot of the other marketing can feed into your ego a lot more. Cold email doesn't. But what cold email does do is it gets you results. And the reason why is because all email is, at the end of the day, all marketing is in general, it's a way to connect party A to party B. That is it. That is all. Whether it's an investor, whether it is a new customer, whether it is an advisor, someone you want to get connected to to get in their podcast, you name it, it's just a way to connect party A to party B. But you have to have the stomach for it. Because what's different about email marketing than a lot of other marketing channels is its direct response. So people are going to tell you, hey, this is the worst email in the world, or you suck or this or that. Or they're going to tell you, hey, this is a great email. I'm really interested. But you have to have the stomach to take the nos in order to get to the yeses. But in reality, anyone listening to this, and I know a lot of you are in sales, if you want to be in sales, you got to have a stomach. You got to learn how to deal with rejection and appreciate the rejection, because every no gets you closer to a yes. But the biggest issue with cold email that I see people face is they don't have the stomach for it. And if you don't have the stomach for it, you're not going to succeed with it.
Gui Costin: Ok, so I'm going to give you how I've overcome the stomach part that you're talking about. I generally don't read people's resumes. And we decided to only have the people, our BDRs who do cold outreach using email if they played a Division I sport, namely lacrosse. And I always say the reason being is since sixth grade in middle school, you've been told you suck by your coach all the way through your senior year in college. And if you manage to make the team, get recruited, go to college, the whole thing, you see it all the way through, there's no feeling sorry for themselves. That's what you're really saying, the stomach. Because people feel sorry for themselves. I always say no one went to college to be a professional meeting setter upper via email. And so like you said, it's more of an emotional I feel sorry for myself. Why is nobody getting back to me? When the reality is once they meet you, they're going to fall in love with you. But the only way to get through to them is with a very interesting email. So I couldn't agree more. And that's really funny that you say have the stomach for it. And we basically completely got around that where we just end up hiring people that we know it won't affect them. I mean, it's a lot easier to have someone not get back to you in an email versus having a coach putting you up on a ginormous movie screen and play after play after play ripping you apart in front of your 50 best friends. You know what I mean?
Adam Rosen: Absolutely. That's why I love hiring athletes too, because it's a throwback in a world today, and I think we're getting a little bit away from this. But in a world today where it's like, you always have to say all nice and cozy things to make people feel good. In sports, it's not that way. It's whatever gets us results. And you have to have tough skin. And in reality, anyone, again, who's going to be in sales, you have to have it. And look, all marketing is like that. And what I always tell people too, when it comes to email, usually when people say something mean to you via email, it has much more to do with them and what's going on in their life than it does with you. Their kids are sick. Their wife just yelled at them for something. Their boss just yelled at them for something. They want to take it out on somebody. And two minutes later, they already forgot you exist. It doesn't matter. Move on. Do your best. Be professional. Don't be lazy and cut corners. But if you do your best, you can't control the outcome. I see so many responses. One person says this is the worst email ever. And then two minutes later, this is the greatest email ever. Can you chat tomorrow at 2:00 PM? Just move on, do your best, and everything else will take care of itself.
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Gui Costin: That's amazing. So talk to me about the construct of a cold email. Let's start with the subject line. What are your recommendations for a strong subject line?
Adam Rosen: Well, with everything email related, sales related, it all starts with knowing your buyer. So you have to know your buyer intimately. If you don't know what problems they're facing and what solutions they're looking for, it's going to be incredibly difficult to get any results through email or marketing in any way. So the subject line should be very relevant to the problem that you're solving. It is always changing. We've had times where his first name has been a killer subject line, which I've always hated, but for whatever reason, it just works really, really well. Putting their first name in the subject line with the problem that you solve or with your solution, that tends to work the best.
Gui Costin: Nice. In our book, The Dakota Way, which I'm going to send you a signed copy. And by the way, anyone listening, send me an email to gui@dakota.com and I'll send you a signed copy. But we always do… because the only reason we send cold emails is to book meetings with fundraisers. That's it. So it always says meeting request, date and time. So they immediately know that you're requesting a meeting face to face. And then talk to me about the most effective body of the email. Do you have a philosophy around what the body should be?
Adam Rosen: It has to be short and sweet and to the point. The amount of cold emails I get that are six paragraphs long. Your own mother is not going to read this email, let alone a cold prospect you're reaching out to. So there's two lanes to go with email. One lane is you can become incredibly sharp when it comes to the latest technology, and it is insane what you could do today. Through using technologies like Clay and other personalization tools, it will genuinely feel like you just did two hours of homework on this prospect and then handcrafted an incredible message to them that feels like either, one, this person really did their homework on me, or two, they are really good at AI. Either way, credit to them. The problem with that, though, is it is not an easy technology, and you have to be a real student of the game to do it right. So the other side of it, if you're going to do what I call non-AI copy, is you have to be direct and to the point. So first sentence, stop, anyone listening. If your first sentence says I hope all is well, please, please, please remove it. That is such valuable real estate. You don't know them. You don't care about them in that way. Not that you don't actually care, but not in a cold email. Show you care about them by getting right to the point. Here's the purpose of my email in one sentence or less. What is the problem that I solve in one sentence or less. What is the solution in one sentence or less. What is your social proof in one sentence or less. And then what's the call to action? Hey, do you have 10 minutes to chat? But you got to keep it short, sweet, and to the point, because you've got to cut through the noise. Just like you mentioned, looking at a resume or not looking at a resume, same with a cold email. You got to punch him in the face in the first two seconds or you're going to lose them.
Gui Costin: I love that. That's exactly our recommendation is break their nose. And in one sentence, who are you, what do you do, why should I care? Because in our world, the investment world, if you're very clear about who you are, your investment strategy, and your firm, and there's a lot of clarity, they're going to make a decision right there. Because if you have a clear call to action to close it out, can you meet May 4 in Boston at 3:00 PM, if they don't, for whatever reason, they can't, but you're clear about what your investment strategy is, they will then drag that into their Outlook folder for that particular category or asset class. So when they're actually doing research in that asset class, you will now be in their inbox. But if you're not clear or it's too long, they can't figure it out, they move on.
Adam Rosen: Yeah. One of my favorite things I like to share with people is details create confusion, and a confused buyer is never a buyer. Whether you're on a sales call, going through pricing, or in an email, if you confuse them, they're just going to move on. So you have to be as direct as what you just said. You got to get to the point. You got to be direct. If the end user doesn't know what you're saying, they're just going to move on to something else.
Gui Costin: It's amazing when you think about, I say to people, if you don't have a clear call to action and you start to say, hey, I'm going to be in Boston next week. Can you meet? Can you send me a few times? It's like, all right, now you're making your prospect go to their calendar and do your job for you. Whereas if you give them the date and time that you're going to be there, then they can say, I can't do 3:00, but I can do 1:00. So you make it very clear. And that's why I would say I love opening meeting requests emails, because they're mostly AI. I open it and it's some BS. But I always open it, because I'm always wondering, hey, people want to meet with me. What do you want to meet with me about? I still in 19 years of doing this as Dakota, I still haven't gotten a good email request email that I wanted to take a meeting, which is kind of fascinating, but that gets me to open it. And then hopefully I'll reply, because if they're very clear about who they are and what they're doing and how could that value to me. And they say, hey, I'm going to be in Philly. Can you meet May 24 at 3:00? Yeah, I look at my calendar. Yeah, I can do 3:00. Send a calendar invite.
Adam Rosen: Yeah, to that point, one of the things that I see so many people mistake when it comes to email is the goal of an email is not to make a sale. That's not. The goal of the subject line is to get them to open it. The goal of the first line is to get them to read the second line. The goal of the second line is to get them to read the third line. The goal of the call to action is to get them to book the meeting. All you were doing is trying to get them to that next stage. But you are not trying to make the sale on the email. You're not going to make the sale on an email, especially if you are selling anything of significance. So you just have to sell them to want to give you another second of their time to keep reading it and then eventually booking a meeting and making it as easy as possible for them to do it.
Gui Costin: All right. That is pure gold right there. And why do you believe people don't buy into cold outreach and cold emails?
Adam Rosen: Branding is everything, and I'm admittedly not good at branding. That's never been something I'm good at or focus on, but I think cold email brand, they need to change the name of cold email. They got to remove the word cold. Because people get this feeling where when you book a meeting from a cold email, oh, it's cold. They're not really interested. Versus, oh, someone went on my website and they booked a meeting. They're a great lead. Really? Why? People go on my website all the time and book meetings. I look at it, I'm like, ok, they're from another country that probably can't afford my services, or they're a solo founder that may or may not be able to afford my services, or they sell a type of product that isn't going to be a fit for my services. Versus when my team is sending cold emails on my behalf and booking meetings, it is my exact ICP. It's my exact Ideal Customer Profile. And then once they opt in to taking this meeting, they are no longer cold. They are now a warm prospect. People have to get rid of that thought process of cold, cold, cold. No, once they decide to take this meeting, they are a warm lead that is interested in your service. Just like if they were to stumble on your website and book the meeting, they are interested in your service. So I think the psychological part of cold email is what really puts people back.
Gui Costin: Let's unpack that a little bit more, and I'm going to throw an idea out to you. So in our industry, the investment industry, we can get the TAM very clean and clear, meaning it's a very channelized world. You could have family offices, REAs, banks, broker dealers, pension funds. We all know based upon your product that that subset of buyers within those channels are your perfect ICP. So the question is, if you know there's 1,000 REAs that fit or would invest in your type of strategy, the question then is outside of cold email, and you have to cover all those accounts, how else do you go about it if you don't do cold outreach?
Adam Rosen: Right. What are other channels that you should use to get to those folks?
Gui Costin: No, no, I'm not even saying that. What I'm saying is, are you going to wait around for those other channels or referral or whatever, or are you going to take the initiative? You pick Boston, and I'm going to start chipping away. I think it's the only way to do it. And if you're just going to wait around for something else to happen, I mean, just say, hey, I'm going to be in your town. I'm going to be in your building, actually. I'm going to be one floor below you meeting with such and such. Can you meet with me for 15 minutes when I'm in the building on x date?
Adam Rosen: So this is no disrespect to realtors. There are phenomenal realtors out there. But to your exact point, Gui, so when I sold my first startup between starting this company, my business partner, he comes from the land development world. So he would buy big chunks of land, he'd subdivide it and sell it. He learned that business from his father. So his father bought this beautiful property in upstate New York on the Hudson River, and he worked with a sales firm to sell it. Didn't go well. So his dad asked me, hey, Adam, any chance you'd be open to moving to upstate New York? Which at the time I was in Hawaii. I'm like, no shot am I doing that. He's like, would you be open to moving up to upstate New York for a year or so and just helping me sell this thing out? Gave it more thought. I decided to do it. Anyway, I go to upstate New York, and the first meeting I had with him, he said, hey, I'm also working with this realtor too, and whoever sells it's going to make the money, basically. And at first, I'm like, oh crap. I don't know anything about real estate. I come from selling software to Fortune 500s. I don't anything about land. I don't even know how to read a damn map in a survey. What am I going to do? Long story short, I sold all the properties. Why? Because of what you just described. I was proactive. I was doing anything and everything from cold email to I was doing Facebook ads on the property with the phone in front of me. I was sending out mailers. I was just being proactive about it versus that realtor, who's a great realtor, didn't sell any of those properties. Why? Because she was passive, waiting for things to come, versus I took the approach of I want to be proactive and sell this thing out as quickly as possible so I can make as much money as I can from this thing. And the reality is to what you just described, Gui. That is cold email. You can either wait and hope that your ideal customers come to you, or you can be a winner. Go win and go get your prospects. Tell them who you are, be proud of it, and showcase you are the best in your space, and they should talk to you, not your competition.
Gui Costin: When I hear you speak like that, it only makes me think of people don't respect their product or love their product enough to think that by introducing the product to them, meaning via a cold email to book a meeting, that you're going to add value to their life. So they think that they're going to be interrupting someone or they're not thinking, no, no, no. If I can break through to this person, I can show them this piece of land, I can show them this investment. They may or may not make the investment, but at least they'll know about it. And I know it's such a great strategy that I have to make sure as many people know about it as possible. It's the same with software. It's the same with everything. So it's very funny that people take that approach. They feel like they're interrupting or hassling somebody. But that means you don't believe that your products can add value to your customer's life.
Adam Rosen: Gui, I'm sure for you, just like for me, there are 27 different problems that we want to have solved yesterday. And if those people in a great way to land in our inbox and demonstrate why they would be the right ones to solve that problem for us, and we trusted that they were worth our time, we would want to take that meeting and hopefully have that problem solved. If we all looked at it that way, that our buyer has a problem that we can solve for them, then it's our duty to do this outreach. We're not disrupting them. We're not annoying them. We are presenting a solution. But yeah, to your point, if we don't believe in our solution, then what are we even doing? Find a new company. Find a new job.
Gui Costin: All right. And I love this, man. Just so many gold bars in this conversation. So two questions. You brought up Fortune 1,000 companies selling software. Just out of curiosity, since you brought it up, is there one secret, quote unquote, "secret" to selling to Fortune 1,000 companies that you've seen over the course of your career?
Adam Rosen: Simple pricing. The amount of startups I see or just people in general, companies where their pricing is just so damn complicated and not easy to buy. Because typically with these larger companies, you're not just selling it to one person. There are unique situations where you are. But for the most part, whoever you're selling into needs to sell somebody else within their organization or multiple people. So the more confusing and complicated your pricing is, the less likelihood you have to actually get that deal through. So that's one. The second thing is a smart structure to make it easy for people to buy. I love a good pilot. We used to do it all the time. Even before we had our product built in my first startup we were selling to companies like Stripe or Bank of America. Hey, try this easy thing out with a three-month pilot. You get your foot in the door, and then once you have your foot in the door, it's a lot easier to turn a three-month pilot into a one-year contract. But you got to keep things simple. The more complicated it is, again, details create confusion. A confused buyer is never a buyer. So keep it simple with everybody, but especially when you're selling into larger organizations with multiple decision makers.
Gui Costin: So I love the line about details create confusion. That should be a lesson to all of us in the sales and marketing roles at investment firms is keeping it simple. Because we can include so many numbers and this and that. And it just loses all of its simplicity. And like we said, we never call on the end buyer. We're always selling to somebody that's selling to somebody else or selling to somebody else. So the grapevine and telling a story that's repeatable is critical. Ok, in closing, this is my favorite question is that you've built an unbelievable career, unbelievable business, unbelievable expertise. What is the biggest challenge you're facing in your business today and how are you overcoming it?
Adam Rosen: Scale is everything. Me being always an entrepreneur, I never worked at a large company. I've always had my own businesses, basically. I'm always used to being the one that just says, I'll do it, I'll do it, I'll do it. But the reality is, the more you scale, the more you have to hire great people, build the systems with them, hold them accountable so that you can focus on bigger, more strategic tasks and allow them to be more in the weeds of the business. So scaling is the number one problem that I'm looking to solve right now within my business. And it's an everyday struggle, everyday learning for me. A lot of it is making sure that I'm focused on systems, making sure that I'm focused on building a foundation, making sure that I'm holding my team accountable and incorporating the right culture where every little mistake we make is unacceptable and we have to learn from it. And we can make a mistake once. We can't make it a second time. And it's not fun sometimes being the bad guy, but it's what's in best interest for them and what's in the best interest of the company in order to do it. So it's something that I'm admittedly the daily struggle to try to get better and better at. But it's, I think, the most important thing for me in my business today.
Gui Costin: I love what you said, because I've always said that, is that our entire scaling is the Dakota way, for both businesses, both investment sales and software sales, data sales. Everyone knows that if I'm holding you to these standards, the standards are in your best interest. And I really love that, because you want to make sure… and that's why there's a way big difference between being kind and nice. My new book is called Be Kind. Because being nice, you might not hold people to these standards or a system or a process, because oh, I don't want to do that and tell them exactly how they should do it. No, no, no. This is in their best interest. And we know that this is a proven framework that works, and we're going to hold them to account to stick with it so they get the most out of it. So Adam, you're amazing. I'm going to tell you, this is definitely going to be one of the most listened to podcasts. You're hitting on all the most important aspects, especially for our audience investment salespeople that might not always believe in cold outreach. I think you made a ridiculously strong case for cold outreach. And before we close, Adam, where can people find you?
Adam Rosen: And thank you, Gui. I admire all the work that you're doing. It's always such a fun conversation we have. It's rare to be able to chop it up on cold email and business like we get to do. I always love when we get to chat, and hopefully we get to do this a lot more in the future. But anyone can check out our website at eocworks.com. My email is adam@eocworks.com. And you can find me on most social media, really LinkedIn and Instagram, primarily @AdamIRosen. And feel free to reach out at any time. I always tell people when I'm on a podcast, especially one like this, I give you guys so much credit when you're listening to podcasts that better yourself, that are focused on education, because there's so many other things that we could do to feed our mind junk food. And hopefully you don't feel like this was a junk food episode. So I give you all so much credit and always feel free to reach out. Always happy to be a resource.
Gui Costin: Great. So I encourage everyone to reach out to Adam. Obviously, we have a lot of great investment firms, a lot of great salespeople that need guidance, need education, and need the belief system that I think you can absolutely enroll them in. And so I hope everyone reaches out. Adam, you're a rock star. This has been so much fun. This is definitely going to go down as one of the best in the Rainmaker series. So Adam, thanks. And everyone, that is a wrap on another episode of The Rainmaker Podcast. I'm so thrilled you joined. Adam, you're awesome, and we can't wait to see you all on the next edition of the Rainmaker Podcast. Thanks.
Narrator: You can find this episode and others on Spotify, Apple, or your favorite podcast platform. We are also available on YouTube if you prefer to watch while you listen. If you would like to check up on past episodes, check out our website, dakota.com. Finally, if you like what you're hearing and seeing, please be sure to like, follow, and share these episodes. We welcome all your feedback as well. Thank you for investing your time with Dakota.
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