Ali Merchant

I help managers become leaders in 12 weeks or less.

Senior L&D leader with 18 years of experience designing, delivering, and scaling enterprise wide learning programs. 

Deep expertise in learning strategy, facilitation, and executive coaching.


My track record includes:


✅ Scaling enterprise learning platforms including a $1.4M LMS rollout in 10 countries and a platform generating 1M+ page views with 1,500 resources.


✅ Launching and scaling L&D program for 2,000+ employees across 54 offices reducing ramp up time by 62%  


✅ Launching and scaling customer education programs that reduced onboarding time by 4 hours per customer and accelerated productivity for 15,000+ users


✅ Designing, launching, and facilitating training programs (live and virtual) globally for audiences ranging from first-time managers to executive teams, training more than 1,400 leaders 


✅ Coached 100+ senior leaders including founders, CXOs, VPs, and directors


✅ Author of "The All In Manager: Become a better leader today. Not someday"


✅ I write a weekly newsletter for 2700 leaders and my LinkedIn community reaches 50000+ leaders

Founder

👉🏼 My mission is to help ambitious managers become better leaders. 

I can help your managers in three ways:

1️⃣  Leadership workshops: 60-90 minute monthly workshops depending on your company's needs. Popular workshops include: 

1. Remote productivity, performance, and resilience
2. Building Psychological safety in a remote world
3. Delivering, asking, and receiving feedback virtually
4. Learning to become an effective coach.


👉🏼  "This is the best feedback training I have attended on this topic. I really like Ali's style and how he goes thru examples and breaks it down" - Sales leader


2️⃣ First-time manager training: A 5-week virtual program designed to get your first-time managers up and running. Topics include:

1. Understanding the role of leader
2. Building one on one connections 
3. Building Psychological safety
4. Delegate or DIY
5. Understanding feedback mechanics
6. Learning to become a coach.


👉🏼 “With becoming a manager recently, these sessions have really helped” - Engineering manager


3️⃣ Director and VP level coaching: Your leaders want someone who's a coach + consultant + mentor. Having coached for a decade, I know when to play each role.


👉🏼 "Ali's dedicated his career to developing leaders and it shows in his ability to effectively coach me." - Customer support leader.

Most founder‑led B2B companies hit the same wall:

You have a great product, but…
❌ Sales cycles drag on for months
❌ Prospects go dark after a promising first call
❌ Every rep tells a slightly different story
❌ Onboarding new reps takes too long

Maybe you can relate.

Over 20 years in agency work, I have helped hundreds of companies fix this. The pattern is always the same: without a clear, unified story, sales stalls no matter how good the product is.

I love working with founders because you are passionate, you spotted a gap in the market, and you built something to fill it. My job is to make sure the market understands that value as clearly as you do.

That is why I created Clarity in 30, a 30‑day sprint to lock your message, sharpen your pitch, and get your team selling with one voice.

Here is what that looks like in the real world:
✅ Dan, CEO of a B2B SaaS company cut his sales cycle by 50%
✅ Amy, CRO of a marketing agency increased her close rate by 30%
✅ Priya, VP of Sales at an enterprise SaaS company improved her second‑meeting rate by 50%

What you get:
✅ A crystal‑clear UVP your team can rally around
✅ A brand story that makes selling easier
✅ Key messaging that guides every campaign and conversation
✅ A pitch deck that converts warm conversations into signed deals

Once your story is right, everything else becomes easier. Content marketing, blog topics, ad creative, and campaigns all become faster to create and more effective because they are anchored in the same clear message.

If you are ready to shorten sales cycles, boost close rates, and get your whole team aligned on one clear story, head over to www.ProovingGround.com for a short about video.

Let’s get your message right so everything else works better.

Joe Lovett

The Market Doesn’t Pay for Insight
Why markets reward founders who name the pain and claim the outcome.

One of the things I enjoy most about working with founders is this:
At some point, they noticed something that wasn’t right.
A leading product that didn’t work the way people expected.
A market that accepted poor design and middling outcomes as normal.
A problem that everyone described, but no one actually fixed.

They didn’t just point it out.
They decided to do something about it.
And building a company usually starts with a belief like this:

“The way this is done today is wrong.”

Where Founders Get Stuck
Most founders are very good at explaining what they’ve discovered.
They can explain why current solutions fall short.
They can walk you through the system and its features.

What they often stop short of doing is saying what follows from that insight.
They show the issue.

But they don’t clearly state the cost of leaving it unresolved.
Or the upside of fixing it properly.
They assume the audience will connect the dots. Most won’t.
Not because they’re unintelligent.

Because, like all of us, they’re busy, distracted, and comparing ten other things at the same time.

Respect Can Turn Into Restraint
Many founders hold back because they:
They don’t want to oversell.
They don’t want to tell smart people what to think.

So they explain the situation and stop.
But explanation without emphasis rarely moves people.
If you don’t name what’s at stake, urgency never forms.
If you don’t name what changes when the problem is solved, the work feels like its optional.

The market doesn’t reward restraint.
It rewards clarity about consequences.

Conviction Is Not Volume
Conviction doesn’t mean exaggeration.
It means being willing to say:
“This problem is costing you more than you realize.”
“This is what keeps happening if nothing changes.”
“This is what becomes possible when it’s fixed.”

That’s market leadership.

You didn’t build a company because the problem was interesting.
You built it because it mattered.
Your audience needs to hear that part.

The Pattern I See Over and Over
Founders already have the insight.
They know:
what’s broken
why it persists
why existing solutions don’t go far enough
What’s missing is not evidence.
It’s the willingness to clearly state what that evidence says.

To move from:
“Here’s how it works”
to:
“Here’s why continuing the current way is a mistake”
That shift is where ideas start to spread.

Why This Is the Work I Do
I don’t work with founders to make them louder.
I work with them to help finish the thought.

To turn:
“We’ve identified a real problem”
into:
“This problem has consequences, and here's a better way forward”

Not by adding drama.
By removing hesitation.
Because expertise alone stays put.
Conviction is what allows it to travel.

Want help uncovering yours?
Grab my Clarity Arc Field Guide, the 5-step process I use to turn insight into conviction your market feels.
DM me “Clarity” and I’ll share it.

Tech Founders: Before You Waste $$ on SEO, Podcasts, or a Website - Fix Your Story | Guaranteed Clarity in 14 Days

Important ideas don’t fail because they’re wrong. 
They fail because they’re ignored.

In medicine, the evidence had existed for years.
Guidelines were updated.
And still, behavior lagged.
Not because clinicians didn’t care.
But because attention was elsewhere.
The lesson wasn’t about data.
It was about the stakes.

Without a story that makes consequences visible, even the right answer struggles to move people.

I unpack this more deeply in a recent Substack post, using an example from medicine during COVID to show how even critical ideas can get ignored without the right story. Link in first comment below. 👇

Data doesn’t create urgency. 
Consequences do.

Founders often assume that if the data is strong enough, action will follow.

It doesn’t.

Action follows when people clearly see:
-why the current approach is misguided or no longer works
-what continues to happen if nothing changes
-why this moment calls for a different decision

They don’t need more evidence.
They need clarity about why acting now is better than waiting.

I unpack this further. Full post on Substack. 
Link in the first comment below. 👇

Smart audiences don’t struggle with complexity.
They struggle with relevance.

Doctors, engineers, founders, executives.
They deal with complexity all day.

The failure mode isn’t understanding.
It’s priority.

They don’t need ideas simplified.
They need clarity about why this matters now, among everything else competing for attention.

That’s where story does its real work.

I unpack this more. Full article on Substack in the first comment below. 👇️

Attention is the scarcest resource. Not information.

During COVID, Hepatitis C didn’t go away.
The evidence didn’t disappear.
The consequences didn’t soften.

It simply lost attention.

That pattern shows up everywhere.
In medicine.
In companies.
In markets.

If your idea competes for attention, being right isn’t enough.
It has to break through the noise and reframe what matters.

I unpack this more. Full article on Substack in the first comment below. 👇️

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The Battle

Ali Merchant

Joe Lovett

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The Battle

Ali Merchant

Joe Lovett

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

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);}Joe Lovett's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreJoe Lovett's LinkedIn Performance