Helps organizations scale their learning culture | Learning Expert | Developing my SaaS superpowers

A career pivot into SaaS sales during the pandemic followed over a decade in hospitality, where creating great experiences and solving problems in real time were part of the job description, not bonus points.

At Docebo, the journey started as a BDR, leveled up into an ISR, and now continues as a Mid-Market Account Executive. Today, partnerships are built with organizations during their Docebo evaluation, focusing on solutioning to real learning needs and helping teams clearly see the value and impact learning can have on their business. Less feature tour, more “this actually solves our problem.”

The work centers on understanding current learning strategies, aligning solutions to learner needs, and connecting learning initiatives to measurable outcomes. If learning transformation had a utility belt, this is where it stays stocked.

Core values include curiosity, coachability, long-term customer success, and having fun while doing meaningful work. Dad jokes included at no extra cost.

Outside of Docebo, time is split between bartending at Jacobs & Co Steakhouse, attending concerts, and treating a great TV series like a long-term commitment.

If your organization is evaluating how learning can better support people and business outcomes, happy to connect and compare notes.

Ashley Farina

→ GianoFiore.com 

At Nooks, I was the first marketing hire and 15th employee. I built the Nooks community and ran growth experiments as we scaled to 200+ people and from <$1M to $XXM ARR. Before that, I spent 5 years in B2B sales development learning how buyers think and how revenue really works. Now I generate the leads that I always wished for.

Giano Fiore 🟣

"How did you go from SDR to Marketing?" 

Five months in San Francisco has exposed me to more people in tech than five years of working from home in Arizona combined.

And I get asked this question all the time. 

In my opinion, SDR -> Marketing should be a normal career path. Think about it: 

As an SDR you learn:
- Where good leads come from
- How to convert them into pipeline
- How to test messaging in real time
- How to understand a customer’s pain quickly
- How to get rejected 100 times a day and still come back

That’s literally growth marketing.

The difference is just the medium, not the muscle (so many are already making content anyways).

Most SDRs would thrive in growth if they realized their job has already been training them for it.

Normalize the SDR to Marketing career path ✌️


---

P.S. - If you're interested in learning how to build a portfolio to get recruited into marketing or land your first marketing role. HMU. 

It's my favorite thing to talk about lately 💜

Giano Fiore 💜

Growth Marketing Manager @ Nooks | Boost pipeline with AI assistants 🚀

Melanie Smith built a world class SDR org from 3 reps to 30+, with 9 promotions in less than two years. Here's what she did that makes her the greatest to ever do it: 

• Strong hiring process that vets for outbound skills
  
• Strong cold calling culture and scheduled call times
  
• Clear promotion path with 9+ visible examples
  
• Remote teams spend several hours together in Nooks salesfloor 
  
• Friday Stand Ups walking through KPIs and meetings booked 


Get all the deets in her episode of 30 Minutes to President's Club. 

Listen here ↓

Spotify: https://lnkd.in/g-gyV9ig
Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/g-XctnXD

💜

With Nooks Call Insights Agent, reps can cut weeks off their ramp time 🔥
 
When I was an SDR, my first 6–8 weeks were spent doing one thing: 
Learning objection handling and talk tracks for different personas.
 
That meant:  
• Dozens of hours listening to Gong calls  
• One-on-ones with AEs for advice  
• Shadowing meetings
• Role plays  
 
It was slow. Manual. And unavoidable.
 

Today, the Call Insights Agent does that work instantly by learning from thousands of real calls.
 
You can ask it anything:  
• How top reps handle a specific objection  
• What works for a certain persona or account  
• Best practices pulled from real conversations
 
In seconds, you get: 
• Clear answers with call-level references  
• Real examples from past calls  
• Coaching suggestions based on top performers
 

When people say, “AI won’t take your job, someone using AI will,”  this is exactly what they mean.
 
Reps using AI-powered call insights will ramp and improve 2x faster than those who don’t.
 

Check it out and let me know what you think ↓

Excited to be joining Demand Collective as part of the Practitioner Council: Brand, Content, and Organic Social! 

I've been craving a community for Marketers because I found so much growth in the SDR Communities like RevGenius, Brand30 and ATX SDR Leaders. 

So I’m pumped to be getting involved with Eric Linssen and the 400+ demand gen folks in the group. 

I'll be publishing my marketing playbooks for first time and sharing lessons from growing Nooks from zero to one as the first marketer 😎
 
If you’re looking for a marketing community, DM me and I’ll help get you plugged in!

I took a 20% pay cut to land my first Marketing role at Nooks.
 For my entire first year, I made less than I did as an SDR.

At the time, all I really had was:
 – A few years of Sales experience
 – My personal brand and LinkedIn content
 – A portfolio of Upwork projects I did for dirt cheap. 

Most of my friends thought I was crazy. 

But here’s what I knew:
– I wanted to be early in building something great.
– I truly believed in the mission and the product–market fit.
– I was freelancing in marketing and my passion was growing fast.

After weeks of interview projects and convincing them to take a chance on me,
 I got the job as the 15th hire and the first marketer.

And it has completely changed my life. 


→ Short-term dollars and shiny titles are a vanity metric.

If you believe in yourself, bet on yourself.
 Take the risk. Go all in.

✌️

—---

If you’re interested in Founding Marketing and Early Stage roles, HMU. 
 It’s my favorite thing to talk about.

Start-ups aren’t for everyone.
 You have to deal with change constantly.
  And carry way more weight than your title says.


But if you’re built for it, there’s a lot to be grateful for:

1. You get to punch above your weight

At a startup you own the whole revenue story. 
 You learn more in one year than most do in five.  

2. You can see your impact instantly

When you launch something, you feel the results. 
 You push something and the company moves.

3. You work with builders, not bureaucrats

Your ideas matter because you own your discipline.
 It forces you to think independently, and grow fast.

4. You become extremely employable

You operate under pressure. Build without playbooks. 
You become more adaptable in any future role.

5. You get growth stories that others don’t

The “I built this and it became 50% of revenue” stories. 
 These become your portfolio, your personality, your edge.


Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving. Unplug. Enjoy your people.
 Be grateful you chose the hard path, it’s the one that makes you better.

💜


— 

Are you in a Founding role or new to start-ups?
You’re not alone. I got 30+ messages from my last post. 

HMU if you’re interested in early stage roles and career growth. 
It might be the start of a new community.

After 4 years of working on my personal brand, my dreams came true and I got to meet my LinkedInfluencer heroes like Ronen R. Pessar.


From 2020 - 2023, I obsessively consumed Sales content from Gong, Apollo, Sell Better and 30 Minutes to President's Club to up skill. 

I used to watch some of these guys on webinars, read their blogs and wonder if I could ever get to their level. 

They we're my SDR heroes. 


Then in 2023/2024, we launched our Cold Call Battle Series and our Influencer Challenges and I found myself meeting with almost all of them. 


Here's a few of my favs: 

→ Ronen R. Pessar: Supported Nooks early, hosted our first webinars, partnered on content, co-hosted our first Happy Hour in San Diego (pictured) 

→ 🔥 Tom Slocum: The OG supporter. Launched our first challenges with us and was really a huge catalyst for our UGC engine. 

→ Nick Cegelski: An incredible partner. Every time I meet with him I am impressed with how keen he is on our business. He really practices what he preaches. 

→ Devin Reed: I spent years reading his Gong Labs articles and last we co-published a Nooks Insights article together. 

→ Kyle Asay: I've reading his stuff for years and now his team uses Nooks and we co-published a playbook last year. 

→ James Buckley: I probably watched 100 hours of this guys webinars and then I got to see him live produce on of our challenges last year. Surreal. 

→ Morgan J Ingram: Just a real one. Has given me tons of advice and we crushed pickleball in Phoenix. 

This is just a short list. There's so many more. 


So build your personal brand. It could change your life. 

It changed mine. ✌️

undefined undefined

Filling the Funnel

Hootsuite Platform Certification

Advertising Campaigns

Advertising and Promotion

Computer Information Systems

Consumer Behavior

Finance

Financial Markets and Institutions

Global Marketing Strategies

Intermediate Business Statistics

Marketing Problems

Marketing Research and Analysis

Operations Management

Social Media Marketing

Strategic Management

🏅 1st Founding Marketer and 15th employee at Nooks:
⚡️ Sourced 50% of total revenue through inbound channels as sole marketer
⚡️ Won #1 Dialer and Top 25 Sales Software on G2 though lifecycle campaigns
⚡️ Fastest growing Sales Tech brand on LinkedIn with 10M+ organic impressions
⚡️ Managed partnerships with Sell Better, 30MPC, Wishly, The Daily Sales and more

Growth Marketing Manager

Join the fastest growing AI Assistant community and our group of next generation sales reps ☎️🔥

Sr. Growth Marketing Lead - Founding Team

Founding Growth Marketing Lead

🏅 Milestones:
⚡️ Worked directly with Founder and CEO to create strategic outbound motions
⚡️ Built strategic relationships with VCs and Board to sell into portfolio accounts
⚡️ Created and published SEO content with Demand Gen team
⚡️ Built and scaled strategies that drove $500K+ in pipeline
⚡️ Ghostwrote LinkedIn messaging for leadership

Strategic Account Executive

🏅 Milestones:
⚡️ Lead Q4 21 in closed revenue with over $100K
⚡️ Consistent top 3 performance with 100-120% quota attainment
⚡️ Member of Content Committee building outbound sequences and sales copy

Sr. Enterprise Sales Development Representative

🏅 Milestones:
⚡️ 124% quota in Q3 20, 100% quota in Q4 20, 125% quota in Q1 21, 130% quota in Q2 21
⚡️ Added over $1 million in new sales opportunities to pipeline
⚡️ Top lead generation with 100 - 500 new contacts per event

Enterprise Business Development Representative

🏅 Milestones:
⚡️ Accomplished yearly goal of $12K average weekly revenue in 6 months
⚡️ Member of leadership committee on path to be promoted to Account Manager
⚡️ Managed largest client account and first payroll account for construction team

Sales Development Representative (Recruiting Team)

Growth Marketing Manager @ Nooks

This award is given to students with a cumulative GPA of 3.5 or higher. 

Award for Outstanding Academic Excellence

The Harry Trueblood Scholarship is awarded to students in the School of Business and the School of Entrepreneurship. To qualify for this opportunity the applicant must also be a U.S. Citizen. This opportunity is based on merit.

Harry Trueblood Scholarship

The McArthur Scholarship Award (business) is awarded to business majors. To qualify for this opportunity the applicant must be a full-time undergraduate student; in good standing with the University and a Colorado resident. This opportunity is based on talent, future promise and demonstrated ability. 

The McArthur Scholarship Award

This award is given to students with a semester GPA of 3.5 or higher.

Dean's List

Interfraternity Council

Delta Tau Delta

Comprehensive business plan for the new owners of The Calhan Mill. Research conducted for the entire semester. Contains competitive and financial analysis. 

Business Plan for The Mill

Created marketing concept and marketing plan for mock company, Carve Bindings. 

Marketing Plan for Carve Bindings

Used primary and secondary research, including conducting personal surveys, to provide Weldwerks Brewery with market information. 

Market Research and Analysis for Weldwerks Brewery

Developed and presented a marketing plan to the owners of Colorado Therapy Horses.

Marketing Plan for Colorado Therapy Horse Ranch

This organization is dedicated to helping families struggling with infertility and adoption. They offer consultation for issues pertaining to such things and also help fund families in the adoption process who are struggling to afford it. They also hold two fundraising events each year, one in the fall that is a run/walk, and also one in February which is a wine and cheese tasting.

Stop paying SDRs for meetings, meetings don’t matter | Cofounder @ Outbound Operators

Gong

Sell Better

30 Minutes to President's Club

Author of Cold Calling Sucks (And That's Why It Works) | Founder of 30 Minutes to President’s Club

I help B2B SaaS marketing leaders build mindshare and pipeline with the 95-5 Content System

VP Global Growth Sales at LaunchDarkly | Founder of salesintroverts.com

Host of the Sell Better Daily Sales Show 🎥

Outbound → Revenue. For B2B Teams That Want Results | Founder @ AMP | Making Sales More Human in AI World

In early 2025, our influencer hot sauce challenge took over the LinkedIn feed and drove 250K+ impressions in one week. 

And the world met our AI Coaching Bot, Jim HardAss. 


Here's how we did it: 

1) Partnered with Christopher Merrill and Sell Better to "seed" the challenge

2) I met with each of them and directed the video in Riverside

3) We worked with the sponsor to manage all of the editing/production

4) Each influencer challenged another person to take the challenge and register for the challenge to receive the hot sauce

5) We mailed out 50+ bottles of hot sauce to participants 


The result: 
• 40+ posts 
• Dozens of ancillary posts about the the challenge
• 250K+ impressions in one week 

→ Organic LinkedIn was our single largest channel for inbound in 2025. 


I'm working on something similar for 2026. Stay tuned 👀


S/o to Nikki Lang for being one of the first 👇


🔥

SDRs are great writers, communicators and creators. They should get more shots to move into marketing roles. That's the post ✌️

P.S. - I got 100+ messages and 50K+ impressions from my post about my transition from SDR to Marketing in November (featured on my profile)

If you that's you, DM me 💜

I’ve been doing influencer projects on and off for the last 3 years. I can tell you right now. Creators in B2B media are crushing it right now. 

→ Their prices are going up.

→ Their audiences are growing.

→ And they are over booked.


The people that are blowing up: 
Write their own posts, 
Make their own videos and,
Are picky about what they promote. 


All this growth happened for them in a 3 year period where AI promised to replace creative work. 

It didn't happen. 


Viewers hate AI generated content. 
They call it "slop" and algorithms derank it. 


So I'm betting that genuine content will win in 2026. 


AI is going to revolutionize productivity.
But it will never replace real voices. 

✌️

The stuff that DOESN'T scale is what makes you different. 

I recently hung out with a few YC W26 founders.
 
They told me that Paul Graham is still teaching the same thing he always has in the founding classes:
 
“Do things that don't scale. Early growth almost always comes from recruiting users and helping them one by one.”

That hit.

 
Because you can’t get the scrappy, do-whatever-it-takes days back.  And sometimes I really miss them.


Here are 10 things we did (and still do) at Nooks that won't scale, but helped us go from Seed → Series B 👇
 
1) Dressed up in phone costumes and handed out cookies at SaaStr.ai 

2) Did flash interviews with prospects (below) and posted clips daily

3) Shipped 100 purple phones to users and asked them to post a photo

4) Live stream cold calling with 500+ viewers, and $1,000 on the line

5) Showing up onsite at customer offices for live cold call competitions

6) Slack channels for customers with a direct line to our founders

7) Individual user awards, given out quarterly, designed by hand

8) Hot sauce influencer challenges for our AI bot

9) Writing every post for the Nooks page by hand

10) Our SDRs creating content on their own terms
 

Bonus: sleeping in motels, on couches, and at Vishnu R. Tejus’s house.

 
Enjoy the work that doesn’t scale. You have the rest of your life for "___ at scale" ✌️

Top reps today are setting 50-100 meetings per quarter… using ONLY the phone.

I’ve been sending out our 50+ and 100+ Meeting Club awards to reps that booked 50 or more meetings in Q4 2025 using the Nooks dialer.

We only see the data from the dialer, so this doesn’t even include what they’re booking using other channels.


tldr; these reps are the real deal. 


If you’re looking to upskill this year, these are the people you want in your network.

↓

Cat Spurgeon @ ClickUp: 150+ Meetings

Anders Adžija @ BuildOps: 150+ Meetings

Teddy Howe @ ZoomInfo: 150+ Meetings

Henry Grebe @ ZoomInfo: 100+ Meetings

Samuel Newman @ Regroup Mass Notification: 50+ Meetings

Josh Runco @ Remote: 50+ Meetings


Congrats to you all for doing what was literally impossible 5 years ago 🎉 


We're sending these awards out in batches, so there's dozens more to come. 

Stay tuned 👀

50+ Meeting Club Q4 2025

Nooks is hiring for 14 open roles in GTM and we're working on big news!

Joining Nooks in 2023 as the 15th employee and 1st Marketer has been the absolute ride of my career. 

In 2023, the company was 15 people in their 20s just figuring it out. 

In 2024, we raised our $22M Series A and $43M Series B. 

In 2025, this is what we pulled off ↓

• Over 3× ARR
• 116.7% of annual goal 
• 130.7% avg AE quota attainment
• 110 new hires, 200 total employees
• Users are making 1M+ calls/day on Nooks
• 1000 customer accounts w/ 3 or more seats

And our biggest launch in Nooks history coming soon 👀


So join the ride:

𝗖𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗦𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 & 𝗦𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁: 
AI Deployment Strategist
Technical Support Engineer
Customer Success Manager, SMB
Customer Success Operations Manager
Customer Success Manager, Commercial

𝗚𝗧𝗠:
Solutions Engineer
Account Executive, Upsell
Sales Manager, Commercial
Account Executive, Commercial
Account Executive, Mid-Market
Customer Success Operations Manager
Senior Sales Development Representative, SDR (Hybrid)

𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴: 
ABM Lead
Growth Marketing Lead

Link to apply: https://lnkd.in/gVENsVJC

Tag someone who might be a fit ↓

💜

Nooks

Nooks ranked Top 50 Sales Software on G2 in 2025. On the same list as brands Salesforce, HubSpot, and Gong.

But when I started almost three years ago, it wasn't like that. 

 
At the time we had…
 
No badges. No category presence. No one was comparing us to the big players.

Maybe 30 G2 reviews and zero ranking. 

 
Here’s the actual playbook we used to build a community of raging fans and turn Nooks into a category threat:

 
1) We built a community first
 
We created turned the Nooks brand into a place SDRs wanted to hang out.
 
Live call blitz competitions. Challenges. Featuring reps as experts.

 
2) We engineered an NPS to G2 pipeline
 
Inside the product, users get quick pulse surveys.
 
Participants automatically got funneled into a clean, low-friction G2 flow.

 
3) We gave people a reason to smile
 
Using Tremendous, we automated rewards so anyone who left a review got a small but thoughtful thank-you.

 
4) We picked categories strategically
 
We planted ourselves in the same categories buyers check when they’re evaluating our competitors and started taking over the leaderboard from the inside.

 
5) A product people actually love
 
This is the part I can't take credit for.
 
Shoutout to the people way smarter than me who built something worth championing.

 
Pretty wild to see where we ended up.

 
Check it out: https://lnkd.in/g-qJvxka
 
We’re climbing more categories in 2026. Stay tuned 😎

I was once in Sales and I thought Marketing sucked. 

But in 2023, I decided to make the switch and it was the best thing I ever did.


There's way more to it than meets the eye and I promise you that marketers don't get enough credit. 


I've gotten 50+ messages from SDRs interested in switching to marketing over the last month. 


So if that's you, here's the playbook: 


1. Start building your personal brand
   
Send connection requests to Marketers that work for the companies you’re familiar with. Then post about your day to day and how you use their tools.

Example: “How I use Notion to _____”


2. Turn your best posts into 1000 word blogs
   
Write long form stories out of your best LinkedIn posts, include mini-tutorials and your point of view.


3. Send your long-form blogs to the Marketers in your network
   
Once you have a small portfolio of content. Reach out to Marketers in your network and ask them for feedback. 98% of them won’t respond. But there’s golden opportunities in the 2% that will.

This was how I got published by Sendoso, Apollo, Tenbound, RevGenius and more 😉


5. Leverage your portfolio to get freelance jobs
   
Once you have a few decent pieces of work. You can reach out to marketers, join UpWork, Fiverr, etc and start doing paid side work.

There is so much demand on UpWork for freelance email copy and content writers. 
Skills you already have as an SDR.


6. You did it
   
It’s only a matter of time until somebody asks what it would take for you to join as a their full time marketer. 


It worked for me, and I know it will work for you 💜

P.S. - If you have experience using Nooks, we’ll gladly offer you a guest post on the LinkedIn page and maybe even our blog to help you get started ✌️

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The Battle

Ashley Farina

Giano Fiore 🟣

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The Battle

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Giano Fiore 🟣

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Likes

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