Part 3: The Reason I Can Sit Across From Anyone In Leadership

July 18, 2026

In partnership with

Granola Runs Revenue On Attio

"When I think of revenue, I think of Attio." - Shreman Shrestha, Head of Business at Granola

Here's what that adds up to:

  • Zero missed leads and 10x faster access to customer context

  • Lead triage 83% faster

  • Five hours saved per week with automated updates

Here's something I don't lead with on LinkedIn, but I'll tell you here.

Before I ever built a trade school, before I ever consulted for one, I was a student inside this exact industry. Not in a classroom with a quad and a mascot. Online, self paced, figuring it out on my own time because that was the only way it was ever going to work for a kid like me. However, the courses I took were all sales-related.

I know what that experience actually feels like from the inside. Not from a case study. Not from a focus group summary somebody's marketing team put together. I lived it. The uncertainty of whether I was doing it right. The silence when I had a question and no idea who to ask. The moment you either decide this place actually has your back, or you quietly stop logging in and nobody ever calls to find out why.

That's the piece almost nobody sitting in a boardroom for one of these companies has. Not because they're bad at their jobs. Because their resume doesn't include the version of the story I just told you across the last two newsletters.

I didn't come from the trades. I came from sales. I got into this industry because I understood people who feel unseen, because I was one of them, and because sales taught me how to close the gap between where someone is and where they're trying to go, without ever talking down to them.

I took that and built a trade school from nothing, funded entirely through WIOA, scaled it fast, and exited it. Then I spent the years since inside 50-plus schools, in the enrollment calls, the marketing meetings, the P&L reviews, fixing exactly the gap I just spent two newsletters describing to you.

Ask yourself this: when was the last time someone in the C-suite heard a live call? When is the last time someone in the C-suite took a live call?

Most of you already know the answer. You've felt it in your enrollment numbers for years and called it a "top of funnel" problem, or a marketing spend problem, or a lead quality problem. It's usually none of those. It's a language problem. Your institution is speaking fluently to the student who was always going to enroll, and mumbling to the one who needed you the most.

I built my entire consulting practice around closing that exact gap, because I'm not guessing at what that kid needs to hear. I was that kid, and now I'm the guy who's actually built and exited the school he needed to find.

If your enrollment team can't have the conversation I needed when I was seventeen, you're not just losing a student. You're losing the exact revenue, retention, and word of mouth growth that comes from serving the population everyone else in this industry keeps missing.

I'd be lying if I said I built this platform for applause. I built it because somebody needs to say this plainly to the people running these institutions, and I've got the track record and the story to say it and be heard.

If this hit close to home, and you're wondering what that mystery shop would actually reveal at your school, that's a conversation worth having.

Control what YOU can control, take action on something, and don't forget to smile.

Connect with me here.

www.linkedin.com/in/hector-resendez-3a11982b