Unbeatable: The Legend of Vincent Scott – Chapter 21: Muddling, But Moving

In the wake of his Elite Club triumph and elevation to Sr. Managing Director of the brand new HealthTech Solutions Group under Janet Leary, Vincent Scott should have been coasting on waves of euphoria.

He had finally seized the recognition he’d spent over a decade clawing toward—the title, the accolades, and a reputation as a sales juggernaut.

But the days and months that followed were anything but a victory lap.

Life came at him all at once—an avalanche of new responsibility, relentless change, and personal loss. The stress of the new house and the myriad repairs required on the prior house. Vincent hired his replacement, Audrey Teger, and she moved into managing his prior customers.

The new year brought a new frontier—a team of high-performing AEs, many with deeper tenure and stronger technical acumen than Vincent. He lobbied hard to Jarrett Danforth’s boss to realign Jarrett’s territory to match Vincent’s new one and won.

It was time to go to work. Vincent’s new team performed well the year prior, but nowhere near as well as Vincent did in the same AE role. He built his Moneyball grid and LinkedIn social selling strategy to complement their efforts, feed them high quality leads in bulk and then coached them how to build out strategic deals at scale.

There were some initial doubters, but not for long.

But success felt hollow. It came with no peace. Even his victories sparked discomfort.

He poured himself into workouts, completed podcasts, pushed through projects, and tried to keep his family afloat.

Vincent barely paused to grieve when his beloved grandmother passed in December. He wrote and delivered the eulogy, held it together for the family, and collapsed into his office afterward, bereft of energy. Then came the loss of the family dog.

Spring followed a winter of discontent, but with it came more work, more burnout, more leadership expectations. Vincent trained teams in Singapore, coached sellers globally, presented to rooms of executives, and helped the team navigate and drive deals that sent a record number of his team to President’s Club.

Each week became a dichotomy: dazzling webinars, impactful training, and accolades from colleagues… balanced against exhaustion, resentment, and an ever-present fear of obsolescence. He knew he could make a difference. But he no longer knew if it mattered.

Vincent buried his grief, his imposter syndrome, and his sense of isolation in service. He answered every call. He said yes to every opportunity. He built newsletters, drove 60 partner workshop bookings in 2 weeks, grew a library of training content, and won over skeptics. He turned down trips and accolades to be present for his family.

But the price was steep. He often felt like a ghost in his own life.

His soul was searching, endlessly. He had everything he had once wanted, yet he couldn’t remember how to feel joy.

His name was in the mouths of leaders worldwide. But he was spent.

Exhausted, unrecognized in many ways that mattered to him, caught in the paradox of being both indispensable and invisible.

He was no longer chasing external validation.

He was chasing peace.

One of Vincent’s new team members had a customer that was over-quotad by $8M and, even though they could show and prove it up the chain, they were told nothing could or would be done about it. The seller checked out for a couple of weeks. Vincent asked Janet what he should do, and she coached him to acknowledge that it was OK he was canceling their 1:1 calls together but he needed to find time to connect with Vincent and talk. They did, and Vincent pledged to do everything they could together to turn over every rock and go down swinging. Vincent committed that if the seller did this, he’d ensure he got paid like a champion no matter what.

Vincent had to cover rewards discussions for his old team. A bitter old team member let Vincent have it, saying Vincent lucked into a layup quota and parlayed it into Elite Club and a financial windfall. It was lost on the seller that Vincent actually turned his top 3 customers into 4 mega-deals, and actually won Elite Club because of his broad impact at Majestech and not just his 200% performance, but it was lost on the seller and the damage and shock of the insult stung Vincent for a while.

Vincent ran the account manager team, and one of their biggest beefs was that the specialist team who sold different solutions was spread thin and didn’t devote as much time to their customers as they would have liked. So Vincent went to the specialist teams himself, and created a program called “Plays that Get You Paid.” He asked them point blank, “If my team and I are going to dominate going out and earning conversations that lead to solution area purchases that max out your paycheck, what is your target ideal executive title and what conversations are most lucrative?”

They answered, and Vincent delivered. With his LinkedIn prospecting and mining all of their obscure tools for contacts that had opted in somewhere along the line to being contacted, Vincent delivered Glengarry leads to his sellers all day every day. Even Vincent’s top reps, who had covered some of the largest medical device and electronic medical record companies for nearly a decade, who initially thought they had plenty of contacts were blown away at the dozens of new executive relationships Vincent created at every single organization they supported.

Plays that Get You Paid drove endless, exorbitant pipeline and the high caliber team nurtured and closed it.

Vincent was driving hundreds of attendees to webinars and creating conversations with newsletters; the only knock his team had on him was that they were overwhelmed sometimes by the fact he’s on another level and communicated so much. Vincent scaled back from engaging them in a team chat every time he had a thought or best practice to a daily digest that was much more digestible.

Heading into 2022, Vincent’s notoriety continued to grow as he was asked to do global presentations, training, contribute to global training curriculums, and his energy for the monotony of it waned, causing him to throw himself more and more into workouts and any motivational or inspirational or thought-provoking book he could find.

After watching the Mark Wahlberg movie Invincible about Vince Papale of the Philadelphia Eagles, where he saves his wife’s note about how he’s worthless when she leaves him, Vincent found and re-read his appraisal from Quintana Navarro. He needed fuel anywhere he could find it: new challenges, new mountains to scale, new experiences and wins.

Vincent’s pastor delivered a sermon where he called this “muddling through” and that’s exactly how Vincent would describe the ups and downs of family, the dissipation of lifelong friendships and the daily demand of conjuring up freakish energy and drive only to be drained and depleted by every day’s end.

There was no rest nor restorative time. He took on too much and executed everything he could in pursuit of a happy family and hitting quota in a year it was statistically impossible and it felt like failure every single day.

43 years old, Vincent did not sleep overly well and pushed himself hard physically and mentally. He looked at his face in the mirror in the mornings and felt he looked haggard and unkempt; unshaven with dead eyes. He was in excellent physical shape but felt his prime was past.

Lots of customers would be unresponsive or ghost or allow momentum to die, but they were fever pitch when there was any billing or service issue. These started to become more rampant. And with large customers, they were high profile; they’d go to senior Majestech officers, and meant the heat would be on Vincent to reconcile them.

Janet Leary appropriately coached Vincent to think more broadly than his Super-AE approach of prospecting and creating relationships and conjuring up deals, and to create a super-team. To lead the division in strategic deals. It was just the motivation and North Star and new challenge he needed. She talked about him getting every single member of his team across the 100% threshold instead of worrying about his personal number. It annoyed him sometimes, but she was right.

He teamed up with a co-worker to develop a sales campaign to drive new applications licensing and it blew up; they won an award. for the ingenuity. Janet coached Vincent to ensure he could tangibly account for the impact of his work outside of their market, and he did: his engine was driving tens of millions of dollars in other markets thanks to his organization-wide training. Partners and vendors who held events that Vincent promoted loved him, because he wasn’t just seeking a win for himself and his team, but he was broadly promoting the events to customers and markets, and delivering huge wins to the partners.

And, in the final quarter, a multiplier incentive was created that allowed Vincent and his over-quotad colleague to achieve goal: Vincent made it across the line at 102%. He was interviewed on a podcast by a gentleman out of D.C. and heralded as the #1 social seller in all of technology. He trained thousands across the globe in 11 countries on how he prospected.   

The team landed a 9-figure win that sent several players to Club. But it wasn’t sunshine and rainbows, as the larger the deals, the more hourly pressure from every executive who is counting on the revenue. They will ping you mercilessly from dawn to dusk, ask how they can help, you tell them and nothing happens most of the time, and if you close it you did your job and get a brief reprieve, but if something goes awry or you don’t close it, there’s hell to pay.

Another highlight was that Vincent referred Kyle Carver, who he hired at ABM Advertising in 2008 and was the best pure seller he had ever seen, with a work ethic that was second to none, to Majestech to fill the role he had vacated in 2019 and he got it.

One of the most significant events of 2022 was Vincent’s father’s Parkinson’s diagnosis. Vince, Jr. had suffered a stroke and TIA in the years since his heart attack, and steadily declined in mobility, forcing him to give up basketball, volleyball and eventually golf.

Vincent was at the age where he spent the preponderance of his time and energy concerned and worrying about his aging parents and his unpredictable kids, and then trying feverishly to bury any and all emotions with work so he could carry on. Elizabeth was in high school and Vincent and Autumn were teaching her how to drive. Sydney was starting kindergarten.

Vincent was still teetering at the summit of the top of his game, leading a team where they all made more money than he did while he was arguably one of the most influential and impactful people and leaders in Majestech and technology. With over 300,000 social followers and now multiple published books, hundreds of podcast episodes and being asked to do something for a different team somewhere in the world every week, Vincent was stretched and wearing thin. Vincent was getting his team paid like rock stars and he was making far less than he believed he deserved.

The massive 9-figure Twin Cities Grace deal that never should have happened finally closed. The largest pure LinkedIn social selling win in the history of the world. Vincent nominated the top 5 members of the TCG team who had supported them for this 2-year deal cycle for an award. Wanting to give his replacement Audrey Teger top billing actually caused the award nomination to go through her hierarchy, and Audrey’s new jealous manager removed Vincent’s name from the award, giving it a zero percent chance of winning without its deal story and likely costing all 5 nominees $10,000 apiece. She was mad at Vincent for hiring Hailey Raines, his former technical specialist, for his new team; Hailey seeking to rejoin Vincent had put this manager on a warpath of false accusations of Vincent recruiting, which he did not do, that she reported up multiple lines of leadership in an attempt to stop it and tarnish Vincent.

He was always a target. Another jealous peer would report to Janet Leary anything he disagreed with that Vincent did or didn’t do with his team. Janet and Vincent had been close for 5 years, and this peer saw squeezing between them as a way to further their career and beat Vincent for a promotion Vincent didn’t even want and this person would never get anyway.

Bigger customers and deals mean bigger politics. More finger-pointing and hot potato, and trying to cast blame. Vincent executed relentlessly and had paper trails to raising compete flags but colleagues would still try to throw him under the bus to Janet Leary.

Vincent waded through the Bible, champion mindset books and sales leadership podcasts and coaching documentaries.

The sales culture at Majestech had never been overly strong or consistent; teams would plan 2-hour prospecting hacks and just sit around talking and posturing, while Vincent would be in the background messaging 6,000 leads and driving 10 new opps for $630K, while being chastised for not doing things the same way as his less effective peers.

Vincent’s top seller, Dina Barnes, drove yet another 9-figure win that would send everybody who supported her deal to Club.

Vincent’s team led the entire division in strategic deals. He realized the 86 managers in their organization didn’t talk to each other, so he formed Coaches’ Corner, where he organized the monthly best practice sharing, solicited for speakers and content, and then facilitated a masterclass on collaboration that led to manager tools and philosophies being shared broadly.

Vincent’s team supported a prominent healthcare analytics player, but the CIO wouldn’t take a meeting. He was often standoffish in e-mail if he responded at all. One day, he reached out upset when Majestech announced a healthcare data consortium and they “weren’t invited to the ball.”

Even when a customer is upset – perhaps especially when a customer is upset, because it is a strong emotion – there is opportunity to sit in the storm with them in hopes of walking with them in the sun. Vincent did some homework; this data consortium didn’t even go anywhere. But that wasn’t the point. The customer wanted to be included; wanted to be courted.

Vincent got a meeting with the CIO aimed toward finding deeper, meaningful projects in which to co-invest. He got a VP to be executive sponsor. He brought in Bart Johnstone, healthcare industry executive, who had helped him with TCG, and they loved him.

Vincent could’ve gone defensive. He could’ve explained the oversight, redirected blame, or shifted the conversation to products and capabilities. But instead, he leaned in.

Because he knew something most sellers forget in the heat of the moment: If a customer is talking to you—even angrily—it’s an opportunity. And he wasn’t going to waste it.

He studied the executive’s online profile for clues on what he cared about and how to best speak his language.

Their summary didn’t read like a marketer’s pitch. It was pragmatic, focused, clipped. The words they chose weren’t warm or flowery. They were metrics. Market position. Mentorship. Leadership. Substance over style. This was a fact-first, ego-free, mission-driven leader. Analytical, no-nonsense, allergic to fluff.

Vincent smiled. He’d been approaching them all wrong.

He had been writing like a storyteller, a relationship guy. But this exec? They didn’t care about the story—only the score.

So Vincent rewired his strategy: He trimmed every sentence of future outreach by half. No long emails. No metaphors. Just clarity. He highlighted mutual wins, potential co-innovation, and how their work supported shared customers. He offered zero hard pitches. Just collaboration and access.

Then, he did what few sellers are willing to do: he took his pride off the table.

He mobilized.

He opened the gates to the castle—unleashing a swarm of resources, architects, technical strategists, and executive sponsors to blanket the account with value. He pulled together a task force that treated the customer not as a target, but as a partner-in-progress.

They spent an entire day onsite with the customer’s leadership team, not to sell, but to listen. To diagnose pain points. To map solutions in real time. The roadmap they built wasn’t generic—it was bespoke, tied to the customer’s metrics and ambitions.

Vincent’s only goal? To earn their trust. Not with promises—but with action.

Over the coming months, the transformation was nothing short of astonishing. From being an afterthought, the company became one of Vincent’s flagship accounts. An 8-figure deal was signed, spanning every major solution area. His team was invited into their all-hands meetings—an unspoken rite of passage that meant they trusted him enough to let him inside the walls. They became a tentpole partner—showcasing innovation alongside Majestech at industry events, podcasts, and roundtables.

And the exec who had once felt overlooked? They became a vocal champion.

Because Vincent didn’t just show up to sell. He showed up to serve. He showed up to understand. And that made all the difference.

Vincent was still leading all the charts and executing plays better than anyone, but Majestech liked to spread the wealth when it came to giving recognition, awards and bonuses. Vincent had already had his time in Elite and President’s Club, and had won a dozen awards so the awards now went to others even when Vincent led in those metrics. He was still being asked to present and train to a different team every week and would do so without hesitation, but it was happening without recognition from his leadership.

It was frustrating for Vincent to see other people being rewarded for doing something well that he had perfected and was doing better, but what was he going to do?

December 2022. The final act of an already punishing year. For Vincent Scott, it felt less like a month and more like an extended unraveling. Rampant family and extended family challenges, from conflict and personal crises to health issues. More and more cracks in the fragile shell of resilience he wore like armor. Each day arrived like a tide of new chaos, forcing him to paddle furiously just to keep his head above water.

Work offered no sanctuary. His Q2 quota was a monstrous $18 million, inflated by unattainable expectations and dwindling opportunity. He had hustled. Innovated. Delivered the largest deal of his career. But still, it wasn’t enough. Some deals were chopped down to less than initial customer commitments and team aspirations, causing scrutiny instead of celebration in an organization struggling to hit their number. People seemed more interested in finding fault and scapegoats than celebrating wins.

Vincent Scott was a husband, father, therapist, salesman, podcaster, leader—and somewhere underneath all of that, a man trying not to break.

He tripled down on workouts, working out every single day for the first quarter of 2023 en route to an 8th consecutive annual gym record despite the pain in his knees, shoulder, back and elbow.

Massive companies came down with edicts to cut costs and expected Vincent and his Majestech team to drop their prices and contracts, discount to the point of devaluing their products in order to buy, and if they didn’t, they would go over his head to VP’s or C-levels. Vincent and Jarrett Danforth would crunch the numbers every which way they could on every customer and potential deal where there was addressable market. Vincent drove hard and negotiated harder, but these execs wouldn’t budge. It was a game of chicken where anything but a big win was a big loss.

Internal hoops and bureaucracy made it tougher and tougher to get anything done, even what should have been programmatic funding; thankfully, Vincent cashed in some political chips to get internal champions to rally for his cause, and where he was told he wouldn’t find any money whatsoever to get to fund a client’s project, he went to the Chief Revenue Officer and got $1M. Another deal done.

Vincent was sleepwalking. He could do the prospecting and customer conversations and deals and trainings mechanically.

It was also a world where tech layoffs were becoming more prominent, AI was hitting a stride, and Vincent Scott was heading full force toward 45. He casually stuck out feelers to some former colleagues and had conversations about potential next jobs.

But he finally got some attention from their VP, who was deferring to Vincent when execs tried to go to him over Vincent’s head, was having Vincent ghostwrite his e-mails to Vincent’s customer executives, and was heaping praise on Vincent’s vastly superior deal-driving and never give up attitude.

Vincent realized his addiction to winning; because it was what made him feel alive and worth something. He realized the value of if you’re going to fail, fail fast so you can regroup and find a different way. Vincent was continuing to accumulate experiences and wisdom that was making him better and better, no matter what he’d do next.

Unfortunately, their 13-year old cat passed away in the spring, making Autumn yearn for another pet. Elizabeth got her first job.

And in the waning days of another fiscal year, deals died left and right, Vincent’s team members failed to execute on fundamentals or deals that would have made a difference, and Janet Leary retired. Vincent’s best manager and mentor he had basically followed for 6 years would be gone, and Vincent Scott adopted a free agent mentality.