TL;DR — When hiring sales teams didn’t work, Impressive co-founder Russ Macumber took back sales himself—growing revenue by 40%. His secret? Balancing multiple lead sources, leveraging founder-led sales, and building a strong operational team to support growth. Learn how he scaled from 6 employees to 100 and what he’s doing next. Listen on Apple or Spotify.

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Hi Reader,

Imagine scaling your company to $20M in revenue, hiring a sales team, and thinking, “Great, I can step back from selling.”

Now imagine realizing that hiring wasn’t the answer—and the only way forward was to take sales back into your own hands.

That’s exactly what Russ Macumber, co-founder of Impressive, did. After struggling to find the right sales hires, he made a bold move—he jumped back into selling himself. The result? A 40% revenue increase and a stronger, more predictable sales engine.

If you’ve ever felt like sales isn’t moving fast enough, or that hiring sellers should be solving the problem but isn’t, this episode is for you.

What you can learn from Russ's Journey:

1. Founder-Led Sales Isn’t a Step Back—It’s a Strategy. Russ built and scaled a sales team, but the results weren’t there. Instead of forcing it, he leaned back into what worked—himself. He knew his market, his buyers, and how to close. When he took back sales, growth followed.

• ✅ Action: Identify high-impact deals where your presence as CEO could help increase win rates.

2. A Strong Lead Mix Fuels Growth. No single lead source drove Russ’s success—it was the combination of SEO (inbound traffic & leads), referral partnerships (trusted introductions), outbound sales (strategic outreach), and speaking engagements (thought leadership positioning).

• ✅ Action: Audit your lead sources—which are performing best? Where do you need to invest more?

3. Operations Must Support Sales, Not Slow It Down. Selling as a CEO doesn’t mean doing everything. Russ trained his operations team to own the business functions so he could focus on growth. With a strong integrator running EOS, he had the time to sell and scale at the same time.

• ✅ Action: Free up your own bandwidth by delegating day-to-day operations to a strong second-in-command.

4. Scaling Requires a Repeatable Sales Model. Scaling from 6 to 100 employees wasn’t luck—it was process-driven. Before hiring new reps, Russ built structured systems that delivered predictable results.

• ✅ Action: Test and refine your sales process before hiring. Prove it works, then scale.

If you’re scaling and wondering whether to hire, restructure, or take a more hands-on role in sales, this episode has insights you won’t want to miss!

🎧 ➡️ [Click Here to Listen Now]

To Your Sales Success,

Alice Heiman