I'm Anton.
For years, I was the one every serious deal ran through.
I built two companies where the way we won lived in my head. I could sell. What I couldn't do was take a week off without the pipeline going quiet, or hand the closing to someone else without watching it stall. The ceiling on the business wasn't the market. It was my calendar.
So I learned to build the way out: a sales process the company owns and a rep can run, drawn from real deals instead of a template. I've had to build that way out again and again, as a founder, a founding sales hire and a sales leader.
The work.
- I ran Huron, an outbound agency with a team of 20. We built sales systems from zero for more than 50 B2B clients. One of them, an Amazon agency, has run the system we built since 2018. It outlived the engagement, which is the point.
- Wavo grew out of that. I took the systems the agency ran every day and turned them into a cold email software company. It was bootstrapped and profitable for seven years. I built the close framework and closed deals myself for years. Then I documented the process, hired two closers and a setter, and handed the closing off for good. Revenue went up after I stopped closing.
- I was also the founding sales hire at Brave Commerce, a daily deals startup with no sales process when I joined. I built the funnel from prospecting to close and hired three salespeople. Every one of them closed at my rate, which was the point: the system carried them. When the process lives in one good salesperson's head, you don't have a process. Brave was acquired by Rogers, Canada's biggest telecom, in under 18 months.
- Inside Rogers, I launched a new product line, Vicinity Rewards. I chose the platform, negotiated the licensing deal, built the sales process from scratch, and hired and trained a team of 15 that signed hundreds of merchants.
- And I've sat on the other side of the table. At a mid market PE family office, I evaluated software investments and helped portfolio companies get ready to scale and sell. It taught me what an acquirer sees that the founder often can't: a business that runs on one person isn't worth much. A business that runs on a system is.
Add it up and I've made this transition four times.
- Once as the hire.
- Once proving it with fifteen reps.
- Twice as the founder handing it off.
What I'm doing now.
First M. is where I do this work now. I work with founders making their first sales hire, the person being asked to build the sales process while carrying quota. I build the process with them during their first 90 days, from your real calls and deals, so the way you win stops living in your head and becomes something your hire runs and the company owns. Not advice. Not a course. We build the actual thing, and it keeps running after I leave.
I've sat where you're sitting, and I know the quiet fear underneath it: that the business is really just you, that it can't be sold and can't run without you. It can. The difference is owning a company instead of being the best closer inside one.
This is the work I wish I could have bought back when I was the one every deal waited on, instead of losing years telling myself I'd fix it.
If that's where you are, send me your job post. You'll get back a teardown of the role and the 90 day plan I'd hand your hire on day one. Free, delivered in 48 hours, no call required.
Outside the work.
I live in Toronto. You'll find me on a trail with my Norwegian Elkhound, on a ski hill or scuba diving with my wife and daughter, or under the hood of one of my old British cars (awesome when they work).