Building a Presales Career North Star - Matthew

Lots of people seek out coaching when things are going wrong.

Matthew sought it out when most everything was going right.

Matthew Young James came into Full Stack Presales already successful by almost every measure.

He's a Senior Presales Consultant, co-host of the Presales Collective Podcast, and one of the most recognizable voices in the Presales community.

Before joining Full Stack Presales Coaching, he’d recently moved from a scale-up into a 6,000-person enterprise, and was focused on building trust with AEs, learning the platform, and establishing his reputation in a completely new environment.

At the same time, he was also focused on presales podcasting, speaking at community events, advising startups, diving deeper into AI … and still thinking about what to get involved in next!

None of those things were a problem, per se. But the problem was they all felt like top priority.

It’s a common wall many high-performers experience - when success creates more worthwhile opportunities than anyone could realistically pursue at once.

Eventually, he found himself asking a question many ambitious SEs run into:

"What is all this for? Where is it taking me? Am I actually spending my time on the right things?"

Matthew sought out coaching to step back from the day-to-day, reconnect with what he wanted his Presales career to become, and bring more intention to everything he was saying yes to.

We started by looking at his career as a whole: his  fintech background, his new role, his podcast, community involvement, and the work that consistently gave him energy.

The thread running through everything that fueled Matthew wasn't simply Presales. 

It was helping people make sense of complex ideas, whether that meant hosting a podcast, moderating a panel, or representing his company.

That insight shaped our focus in the coaching program. Instead of asking, "What should I do or not do?" we started asking, 

"What kind of professional do I want to become?"

We were able to define what Matthew wanted to be known for, the impact he wanted to have, and the career he wanted to build over the next one, three, and five years.

That long-term direction became his North Star.

Once we had that, prioritization became much easier. Instead of treating every opportunity as equally important, we could ask a better question:

Does this move Matthew closer to his North Star?

Together, we had honest conversations about energy, focus, and the difference between being busy and making meaningful progress. Projects were parked, not abandoned. Timelines moved.

New ideas stopped automatically becoming new commitments.

From there, we built a quarterly roadmap—but more importantly, a repeatable decision-making framework. Every new opportunity could be filtered through the same questions:

Does this align with my North Star?Is this the right time?If I say yes to this, then what am I saying no to?

The roadmap wasn't just a plan for the next quarter, but a system Matthew could return to whenever a new idea, project, or opportunity came his way.

And narrowing his focus didn't mean slowing his career down.

By the end of H1, Matthew had raised his profile internally, earned recognition from leadership, and felt on top of everything he'd committed to.

Three months earlier, Matthew had been asking:

"What is all this for? Where is it taking me?"

By the end of the program, he had his answer.

He didn't leave with fewer ambitions, but with the confidence that he was investing his time in the right ones.