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  • Podcast
  • Tom Glason
  • 12 Feb 2026

Building for efficient growth – Pavilion’s honest growth journey & the real problem behind the short CRO tenure with Sam Jacobs

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Most growth stories celebrate momentum, but very few actually share the behind-the-scenes of what happens when momentum stalls.

In this Making The Grade episode, we’re joined by Sam Jacobs, Founder & CEO of Pavilion – the community built to give in-seat GTM leaders the peers, frameworks, and rooms they need to operate under real pressure. 

 

Sam takes us on a journey from the early days of Revenue Collective dinners to Pavilion’s Covid-era surge. But there’s no skipping the hard bits in this episode. Sam shares the painful consequences of growing too fast, loosening ICP, and chasing scale for growth’s sake.

 

This is a rare, unfiltered conversation about what happens when your biggest strength gets diluted, and how you rebuild when churn becomes the signal you can’t ignore.

 

No matter whether you’re a Founder currently building or a GTM Leader facing the various challenges the market throws at you, there’s endless practical advice in this episode, ready for you to apply straight away.

📚 Episode Chapters:

01:15 – Pavilion’s origin story
09:23 – Scaling mistakes & lost focus
19:08 – The short CRO tenure
22:20 – Building P&L Fluency for Revenue Leaders
29:00 – Sustainable GTM Strategies
39:34 – Planning for a successful exit

🎧 Continue listening…

Make sure you listen to What it really takes to win in the US – Honest lessons from Natalie Johnson

Want to listen to the full episode with Sam?

 Listen here: 

🎙️ Apple Podcasts 

🎙️ Spotify 

🎙️ Simplecast

 

Or watch below…

Enjoyed this episode or have a guest suggestion for us?

We’d love to hear any feedback you have for us and any suggestions or guest recommendations you may have. Simply get in touch with our production team at [email protected]

Patrick Coleman

Patrick Coleman

Co-founder & CEO, QStory

“ScaleWise has transformed our go-to-market approach enabling us to implement best in class Account Based Sales Marketing strategies that deliver high-quality pipeline consistency”

Matt Jones

Matt Jones

Head of Go-To-Market, EvaluAgent

“Having valuable expertise ‘on tap’ from ScaleWise has been pivotal in accelerating the growth of Evaluagent”

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Tatjana Hayward

Communications & Business Operations Lead Senseforce

“ScaleWise coaching had a big impact right from the start, helping us to execute a much more effective marketing strategy whilst implementing best practices throughout our sales & marketing funnel. ”

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