Who Are Armand Farrokh & Nick Cegelski? 30 Minutes to President's Club, Explained

Last updated 2026-06-12 · Reviewed by Steven Ellis

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Career and rise

The origin of 30 Minutes to President's Club is two people who were actually doing the work.

Armand Farrokh graduated from the University of Southern California and joined Carta, the cap table and equity management platform, as an account executive. He stayed long enough to move through the organization: from AE to building and leading both the SDR and the SMB sales teams, reaching Director of Sales. When he left Carta, he went to Pave, a compensation benchmarking company, as VP of Sales. There he grew the business from early-stage revenue — reported in multiple profiles as somewhere between $100,000 and $1M ARR at entry — to more than $10 million ARR in under two years. He became a VP at twenty-nine. None of this is particularly legible from the outside until you watch the podcast, where the Pave arc comes up repeatedly as the practical laboratory for everything he teaches about building a sales team from zero.

Nick Cegelski's background is different in texture. He ran a vending machine company out of gyms in Southern California while still in college — stocking supplements, managing accounts, negotiating with gym owners on space. It is a telling detail: before he ever held a software sales title, he was doing the physical work of business development. He moved into enterprise B2B sales, eventually specializing in six- and seven-figure deals, and worked at SurePoint Technologies — a legal practice management software company — where he became their top enterprise account executive. He also lived and worked internationally, spending time in Berlin, Prague, Rostov, and Warsaw, which gave him experience navigating procurement and buying dynamics outside the American tech company context where most B2B sales training is built.

Farrokh and Cegelski co-founded 30MPC to do something specific: produce a sales podcast that contained actual tactics rather than motivational frameworks. The positioning was deliberate from the start. The format they settled on for the podcast was tight — episodes run close to the thirty-minute mark — and organized around concrete actions rather than philosophy. Each episode typically includes a clip from a sales call, a tactical teardown, and specific language a listener could deploy the following morning.

The podcast grew quickly enough to support the claim that it is the number one sales podcast, which is their own marketing language and impossible to verify independently with precision, but the download figure is consistent: 3.6 million-plus downloads as of June 2026. The newsletter, which operates separately, has crossed 60,000 subscribers. Both numbers are substantial for a content brand in a professional niche that does not have the mainstream consumer appeal of personal finance or fitness content.

The book arrived in August 2024. Cold Calling Sucks (And That's Why It Works): A Step-by-Step Guide to Calling Strangers in Sales is published under the 30 Minutes to President's Club imprint and is backed by Gong data from 300 million cold calls — a dataset that makes it, structurally, one of the more evidence-grounded cold calling books available. It passed 100,000 copies sold, which by any standard in the business publishing niche is strong performance. The title is the argument: cold calling works because it is uncomfortable and therefore most people stop doing it. The book is the how.

The no-nonsense tactics method

30MPC does not have a single named proprietary methodology in the way that NEPQ or the Challenger Sale have names that travel independently of their creators. The operational identity of the brand is a stance: no theory, no mindset content, nothing that cannot be used in the next conversation.

That stance shapes every format choice they make. Podcast episodes are structured around what they call "actionable tactics" — specific language patterns, objection responses, discovery question sequences, and negotiation moves with defined use cases. The implicit standard they apply to their own content is roughly: can a sales rep lift this from the episode and use it today? If the answer is no, it does not belong.

The cold calling framework that runs through the book and their training courses is built around a counter-intuitive insight: the goal of a cold call is not to close anything. It is to create enough curiosity that a qualified prospect agrees to a structured conversation. The book documents specific opener structures, how to handle a brush-off in the first fifteen seconds, what to do when someone says they're happy with their current vendor, and when to push versus when to disengage. The Gong data is used not to provide academic legitimacy but to filter out the tactics that trainers teach because they feel right versus the ones that actually change outcomes at scale.

Discovery is treated as the most underestimated phase in B2B sales. Their course on discovery — titled "Sell in a Way That Doesn't Feel Like Selling" — is built around the premise that most discovery conversations are actually feature dumps in disguise. The framework pushes sellers to develop a problem picture before presenting anything, to understand the organizational context of the problem (not just the individual prospect's pain), and to map the internal politics that will determine whether a deal closes. The emphasis on organizational dynamics puts it in the same intellectual neighborhood as Iannarino's consensus-building work, though the tactical specificity is distinct.

Negotiation is covered in the Four Levers Negotiating course — the title refers to the four variables in any deal that can be adjusted when price pressure emerges. The principle behind the framework is that most salespeople negotiate on one lever (price) because they don't know where to find the others. Identifying which levers matter to a specific buyer and then using them deliberately is the core skill the course develops.

The executive selling course addresses what Farrokh and Cegelski identify as one of the most common failure modes in enterprise deals: an AE who is excellent with mid-level buyers but loses access and relevance when the deal escalates to the C-suite. The framework for C-suite communication is built on different principles than champion-level selling — executives care about strategic risk and business outcomes in a register that differs from the day-to-day operational concerns of line managers.

Live Tactic Teardowns — events that have drawn 3,000-plus RSVPs — are the live content counterpart to the podcast. They run shorter than a full training program, are structured around specific skill areas, and maintain the same no-fluff standard as the podcast. For practitioners who want to sample the training style before committing to a course, the teardowns are the lowest-friction entry point.

Programs and pricing

Individual course pricing was not confirmed on the 30mpc.com homepage as of June 2026. All prices listed as "reported" should be verified directly at 30mpc.com before any purchasing decision.

Content engine teardown

30MPC built its audience on a single product bet: that the sales podcast audience would reward specificity over inspiration, and that the right format was dense and short rather than expansive and long.

The podcast is the center of the distribution flywheel. Episodes release on a regular cadence, run close to thirty minutes, and follow a consistent format that regular listeners have internalized — there is a known structure to the time investment, which reduces friction for repeat listening and makes it easy to recommend to a colleague. Both hosts are good at on-camera and audio presence in the way that working practitioners often aren't: they are clear, they don't ramble, and they maintain the no-fluff standard even when they're talking about their own experiences rather than a specific tactic.

The newsletter at 60,000-plus subscribers is a meaningful number in professional B2B content. For context, most sales thought leaders with significant social followings have newsletter lists an order of magnitude smaller. A 60,000-subscriber newsletter, if it maintains open rates consistent with engaged professional audiences, represents a reliable direct-reach asset that social algorithm changes can't touch. This is likely the primary mechanism for converting a free podcast audience into paid course customers.

LinkedIn is where both Farrokh and Cegelski maintain individual presence. Their posts tend to be tactical — specific examples of call language, objection sequences, or negotiation positioning — rather than motivational or general business commentary. This keeps them visible to the practitioner audience that actually buys training rather than the broader LinkedIn audience that engages with content but rarely converts.

YouTube functions as a secondary archive and discovery surface. The Live Tactic Teardown format translates reasonably well to video, and the podcast-clip format provides ready-made short-form content. The channel is not the growth engine — the podcast is — but it extends the brand's surface area into video search.

The book, at over 100,000 copies sold, is the highest-leverage awareness driver they've published. A business book that clears that threshold reaches buyers through retailer recommendations, media coverage, and word-of-mouth in professional networks in a way that podcast episodes don't. It also establishes the benchmark against which future products are measured — anyone who found 30MPC through the book and then explored the courses is making a purchasing decision anchored in trust built through a concrete, tactically useful product. That sequence is the product bridge.

Reception and track record

The 100,000 copies sold figure for Cold Calling Sucks is the most straightforwardly quantifiable performance marker in the 30MPC brand. That threshold in business publishing, without the marketing infrastructure of a major traditional publisher (the book is published under their own imprint), reflects genuine audience demand and distribution reach. The Gong data backing provides an additional layer of credibility that most sales books lack.

The 3.6 million download figure for the podcast is the consistent number cited across their marketing materials as of June 2026. It is their own figure and not independently audited, but it is consistently stated and large enough to represent observable standing in the Apple Podcasts and Spotify business category.

Both founders' practitioner credentials are independently verifiable: Farrokh's career progression at Carta and Pave is documented through LinkedIn profiles and press coverage of both companies. Cegelski's record as a top enterprise AE at SurePoint and other organizations is consistent across his public profile. The international work experience Cegelski brings is unusual in a category dominated by American tech-company veterans and gives the enterprise content a slightly wider frame of reference.

The Live Tactic Teardowns drawing 3,000-plus RSVPs indicate an engaged professional audience willing to show up for live content — not just consume async — which is a meaningful signal for practitioners evaluating training programs that include a live component.

Frequently asked questions

What is the 30MPC book about?

Cold Calling Sucks (And That's Why It Works), published August 2024, is a step-by-step guide to cold calling backed by Gong data from 300 million calls. It passed 100,000 copies sold. The thesis is that cold calling works specifically because most salespeople quit doing it — creating a disproportionate opportunity for the minority who stay consistent.

How much do 30MPC courses cost?

Individual course pricing was not confirmed on the 30mpc.com homepage as of June 2026. A negotiation course pre-order promotion offered $100 off before June 22, 2026 — suggesting a base price above that discount level. Confirm current pricing at 30mpc.com before purchasing.

Is 30 Minutes to President's Club legit?

Both founders have documented careers as working practitioners: Farrokh built and led SDR and SMB sales organizations at Carta and scaled Pave from under $1M to $10M+ ARR as VP of Sales. Cegelski was a multiple-time #1 enterprise seller working six- and seven-figure deals. The podcast's download count and book sales are consistently cited figures. The brand is independently verifiable.

Related coaches

Sources

1. 30 Minutes to President's Club – Home — https://30mpc.com
2. Cold Calling Sucks – Amazon — https://www.amazon.com/Cold-Calling-Sucks-Thats-Why/dp/B0D63HFPVV
3. Armand Farrokh – LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/armand-farrokh/
4. Nick Cegelski – LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-cegelski/
5. 30MPC Newsletter — https://30mpc.beehiiv.com

Voiceloop is not affiliated with or endorsed by Armand Farrokh & Nick Cegelski (30MPC). This is an independent, editorially researched profile. Voiceloop takes no affiliate commissions from any program mentioned here. See our editorial policy. Corrections: hello@voiceloop.app.