Gary Travis

Founder of BloomingBound | Author of "100 Viral Quotes & Why I Wrote Them" | Sharer of Thoughts 💭

I'm a 3x founder, content creator, and military veteran passionate about startup team dynamics.

To date, I've launched ventures in the HR, social media, and team performance spaces.

I've also somehow managed to turn many mistakes along my entrepreneurial journey into eventual success. Too many people think of their failures as the end of the road. But they are the beginning of something better!

I post daily content on leadership, culture, hiring, careers, and startups. If this sounds helpful, give me a follow :)

Founder

We Help Mid-Level Professionals Get More Interviews, Recruiter Outreach, and Promotions.

Founder @ Tellstone.ai | Solving Co-Founder Mismatch & Engineering Better Teams for Venture Studios

Founder of Loomenti | Sharer of Thoughts 💭

It's not about winning. It's about integrity.

Founder @ Tellstone.ai | I Help Managing Partners at Hands-on Venture Studios Build More Winning Teams

Edward Gorbis

I teach B2B sellers how to use AI to close bigger deals | $500M+ closed | I write Morning Sales ☕

I write Morning Sales ☕ — a free daily newsletter helping B2B sellers use AI to close bigger deals faster.Join 2,800+ subscribers → edwardgorbis.com-----Most sales reps are using AI wrong.They’re copying and pasting ChatGPT templates into cold emails and wondering why nobody responds. They’re automating volume instead of improving quality. They’re replacing the human element when they should be amplifying it.The sellers winning right now aren’t the ones sending 500 AI generated cold emails a week. They’re the ones using AI to research accounts in minutes instead of hours. To find warm paths into deals. To write follow ups that actually sound like a person wrote them. To prepare for discovery calls so well that the prospect thinks they’ve met before.I know because I’ve spent 15 years doing enterprise sales at AWS, WeWork, and high growth startups. I’ve closed over $500M in deals. And the biggest lesson from every single one: technology opens the door, but trust closes the deal.Today I lead a Generative AI sales territory at AWS. I see what the best sellers in the world are doing with these tools. And I see where everyone else is falling behind.That’s why I built Morning Sales.Every issue gives you one AI powered sales tactic you can use that day. Not theory. Not hype. One thing you can implement before your next call.Here’s what I cover:→ AI prompts that actually work for prospecting, follow ups, and deal strategy→ Frameworks for using AI without sounding like a robot→ Enterprise sales fundamentals that no tool can replace→ Lessons from closing 8 figure deals at companies like AWSIf you sell B2B and want to stay ahead of the AI curve without losing what makes you great at your job, follow along.📩 Get the newsletter free → edwardgorbis.com

SMB Growth

Peter Marriott just told me something that should make every sales leader uncomfortable.

"Never thought to reach out to a prospect merely asking for a referral from their company until reading the comment section on one of your posts."

Read that again.

A professional seller — someone who prospects for a living — never considered asking for a warm intro until they stumbled across a LinkedIn comment.

That's not a knowledge gap. That's an industry failure.

We trained an entire generation of sellers to send 200 cold emails a day. We gave them AI tools to send 2,000. We optimized subject lines, sequences, and send times down to the millisecond.

But nobody taught them to say: "Hey, I noticed you're connected to [name]. Would you be open to making an intro?"

Here's what AI can't replicate:

The trust your former colleague has in you. The favor your old manager owes you. The relationship you built over three years of working side by side.

AI made cold outreach faster. It also made it easier to ignore. Every inbox is drowning in AI-generated messages that sound polished and say nothing.

Meanwhile, one text from someone who knows you — "hey, take this call, this person is legit" — still closes more deals than a thousand perfectly crafted sequences.

Your network isn't a nice-to-have anymore. It's the last channel AI can't commoditize.

The reps who figure that out first won't just hit quota. They'll be unhirable — because every company will want the person who brings relationships through the door.

Shoutout to Peter Marriott for the honest feedback. What's the one intro that changed your career? I'd bet it wasn't from a cold email.

Edward Gorbis 🇺🇸

I write Morning Sales ☕ for B2B sellers | Warm intros convert 10x better than cold — I show you how | Top 1% Seller @ AWS | 15 years enterprise sales | ₿itcoin

"Never thought to reach out to a prospect merely asking for a referral from their company until reading the comment section on one of your posts."



"Your price is too high."

Four words that separate closers from discounters.

I heard it on a $180K deal last year at AWS. My gut said cave. My training said don't.

So I asked one question instead:

"Help me understand — too high compared to what?"

Then I shut up.

What she said next changed the entire deal.

"Compared to what we budgeted." Not the product. Not a competitor. The budget.

Which meant I wasn't talking to the person who could actually approve the spend. I was negotiating with someone who'd already been told no.

That one question saved me from giving a 20% discount to someone who couldn't sign the contract anyway.

I've watched this play out hundreds of times. The answer falls into one of three buckets.

And it's almost never about the price.

When someone says "compared to [competitor]" — you have a positioning problem, not a pricing problem.

When someone says "compared to our budget" — you're probably talking to the wrong person.

When someone says "compared to what we expected" — you didn't set expectations early enough in the deal.

Three different problems. Three different fixes. None of them require a discount.

The reps who cave on price at the first pushback train every future buyer to push back on price.

The reps who get curious and ask better questions close at full margin.

Price objections aren't about price. They're about perceived value.

Fix the perception. Keep the price.

What's the best response to a price objection you've ever used or heard?

The 6 months that protect your ego are the same 6 months that make you irrelevant.

Justin Welsh as nailed it — most people would rather be average forever than look stupid for 6 months.

In sales, that’s fatal right now.

Every rep I know is “waiting for AI to get better.”

Meanwhile the ones actually using it — badly, awkwardly, in front of their whole team — are rewriting how they sell.

Not because the tools are perfect.

Because the reps are training themselves to think differently.

The gap isn’t AI skills.

It’s willingness to be the worst person in the room at something new — while everyone else polishes skills that are quietly expiring.

6 months of looking stupid with AI will teach you more about your buyers than 6 years of “trusting your gut.”

Your gut doesn’t read 10-Ks at 2am.

The 6 months that protect your ego are the same 6 months that make you irrelevant. 

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Gary Travis

Edward Gorbis

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The Battle

Gary Travis

Edward Gorbis

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Gary Travis's LinkedIn Performance

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