Cold Outbound Isn't Dead, It's Just Brutal

Every rep on the team is running the same sequences, hitting the same ICPs, sending the same messages as every other company in the category. Response rates are down 40% year over year, and nobody agrees on why. Jared Robin, founder of RevGenius — a free community of 65,000+ revenue professionals — joins hosts Adam Jay and Dale Zwizinski to make the case that the real problem isn't the market. It's calling it a "market" at all.Jared breaks down why he's retired the phrase "go-to-market" from his own vocabulary, what building a community actually costs before it returns anything, and why he's betting on owned audiences over cold outbound even as it gets harder every year.They discuss:Why "go-to-market" might be the wrong phrase for your company's entire strategyThe real, dollar-figure cost of building a community (the grind behind RevGenius's first 5,000 members)Why cold outbound isn't dead, but 80–90% of the cold calls Jared gets are already flagged as spamThe difference between an audience (demand gen) and a community (retention) — and why HubSpot spent $20M building oneThe one personal-branding mistake hundreds of sales reps keep makingTimestamps(00:00) Introduction: why "go-to-market" is the wrong word(00:31) On the clock: the $25 million SaaS company scenario(04:15) Why last year's winners are this year's mediocre teams(08:12) Context engines and the human layer AI can't replace yet(11:54) What separates a community that drives pipeline from one that just drives engagement(17:02) Owned vs rented audience and building real demand gen channels(22:13) What building a real community actually costs(27:53) Keeping community conversations human as AI takes over content(33:33) Is outbound dead? Rethinking cold outreach and audience-first selling(38:33) Monday Morning Move: turn your feed into a real network(43:03) Dream vacation and closing remarks