08 Sep September 8, 2025 – First Quarter Million Katie Nelson and Cisco’s John Chambers
Katie Nelson – Founder/CEO of Sales UpRising
Don’t put yourself so far ahead of ‘I need to be this persona of a CEO, or I need to be a persona of an executive, or a president, or whatever the case is.’ Just be who you are and go hawk your stuff. Go see who the right buyer is for you, figure that out first, and then the rest, you’ll have time, you can afford to spend time on building the rest of it, if you can get the sales piece right.
Katie Nelson
Katie Nelson is the dynamic Founder & CEO of Sales UpRising, where she’s widely known as “The Sales Catalyst.” She brings a bold, no-nonsense, and refreshingly honest approach to sales coaching with a single-minded goal: to deliver real results, not fluff. With nearly three decades of sales experience, Katie is a three-time business owner who has helped hundreds of small businesses accelerate their revenue trajectories, especially those stuck under the $250K mark, a milestone she considers a proof of concept. Katie’s philosophy is simple: cashflow is oxygen for your business. Without sales, there’s no revenue, and without revenue, there’s no business. She believes that every everyday action—posting on social, chatting, sending a message—is a step toward a sales goal. She excels in teaching sales as authentic, human-centered conversations, helping clients break free from the “five-figure rut” by focusing on relationship-driven, high-impact sales tactics rather than expensive marketing misfires. In addition to coaching, Katie delivers keynote presentations that combine entertainment and strategic insights, and hosts Top 6 mastermind sessions, consulting, and speaking events designed to help business owners boost cash flow and scale sustainably.
John Chambers – Former Executive Chairman of Cisco and now the CEO of JC2 Ventures
You shouldn’t be doing a startup if you haven’t got the courage to fail. And you’ve got to realize that it’s not straight up into the right, it is up and down and up and down. And that’s part of the nature of these.
John Chambers
John Chambers is the founder and CEO of JC2 Ventures. In his role, Chambers focuses on helping disruptive startups from around the world build and scale, while also promoting the broader development of startup nations and a startup world. He invests in companies across categories and geographies that are leading market transitions, such as ASAPP, Aspire Food Group, Balbix, Bloom Energy, Cloudleaf, Dedrone, IoTium, Lucideus, OpenGov, Pensando, Pindrop, Privoro, Quantum Metric, Rubrik, SparkCognition, Sprinklr, and Uniphore. He serves on the Board of Directors for Bloom Energy, OpenGov, Pindrop, Sprinklr, and Uniphore. Prior to founding JC2 Ventures in January 2018, Chambers served as CEO, Chairman and Executive Chairman at Cisco Systems. During his 25+ years at Cisco, he helped grow the company from $70 million when he joined in 1991, to $1.2 billion when he became CEO in 1995, to $47 billion when he stepped down as CEO in 2015. As Executive Chairman, a position Chambers held until December 2017, he led the Board of Directors and provided counsel to the CEO and leadership team on strategy, digital transformation and strategic partnerships. John also spearheaded the creation and development of Cisco’s country digitization program, where he partnered with government leaders across the world to harness the power of technology to create economic opportunities. Chambers resides in California with his wife of more than 40 years. He enjoys fishing, swimming, and spending time with his two children, as well as his two grandchildren.