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Scott Danner is the CEO of Freedom Street Partners and the author of Freedom Street. We discuss how to unlock potential in yourself and to define and create your path to freedom. What does freedom mean to you? We delve into mentoring, Scott’s personal story that led him to his current role, and much more. A must listen for sure!
Thank you to Scott for the inspirational conversation.
Hey, everybody, this is the DiscoPosse Podcast. My name is Eric Wright. I’m gonna be your host. And this is a conversation featuring Scott Daner. Scott is the author of Freedom Street. He’s also the CEO of Freedom Street Partners. They’re a fantastic financial services team, and we really explore a lot of the core of what people define as freedom and ultimately finding that personal path to whatever you need to define as your freedom, your future. So Scott’s a fantastic person to chat with, and we don’t go into his own history of what drew him to helping people unlock what it is they need to find their personal freedom. So it’s a fantastic story, and it was a great conversation. If you like this and other amazing conversations, of course you can head on over to youtube.com/discopossepodcast and you can see the video version of it as well. And this is made possible by the amazing folks like our friends over at Veeam Software. I got to give a shout out because if you’ve got data, if you’ve got applications, if you’ve got content, it needs to be protected. So everything you need for your data protection needs head on over to vee.am/discoposse. Check it out. They just had their really cool VeeamON conference, and they had a lot of really great announcements. This is stuff that you need. Look, ransomware is on the rise. We got craziness going on the world. Stop the craziness, get yourself protected with Veeam. So go to vee.am/discoposse and check it out. Speaking of startups and protection and growth, and what do you need to do? If you want to grow, if you want to think about what’s next, then you want to think about bringing on a sales team that has driven, that has culture first. And this episode is brought to you by the amazing folks over at the Shift Group who are turning athletes into sales professionals. So if you’re looking to hire driven and competitive former athletes, or how to architect a real successful go-to market strategy that can scale both efficiently and effectively, head on over to shiftgroup.io. They’ve got an incredible group of candidates, whether it’s entry-level all the way to leadership, and they’re going to help you build culture first sales organizations. So shout out to JR and the team at Shift Group, go to shiftgroup.io and see what they can do for you. With that also – oh, that’s right. You like coffee? Go to diabolicalcoffee.com. With that, here comes Scott.
Hi, everybody. I’m Scott Danner, author of Freedom Street and CEO of Freedom Street Partners. And I’m here on the DiscoPosse podcast today.
Fantastic. That’s like my I always say it’s my on air lights. The moment you hear that, it’s like you press the button and it’s on. So, Scott, thank you very much. This is a fun meeting of employment history. It’s a hilarious thing when I see folks that come up on my guest list. And I think, number one, you’re a great content creator, you’re a great presenter. And I’m excited on that side. But we actually share some background in companies we worked for, which is always a funny – it is a small world, after all, as they say. But for folks that are new to you, Scott, if you don’t mind, let’s do a quick intro. And obviously, we’re going to talk about the book and we’re going to talk about your own history and what brought you to bring that to the world. I’m already wishing it was longer than the time that we’ve got allotted because I’m looking forward to this.
I’m excited to be here. And as I said in the intro, I’m author of a book that just came out at the end of last year called Freedom Street, how I Learned to Create a Rich Life, live my Legacy, and Own the Future as a financial advisor. And I promise it’s way more interesting than most financial advisor stories because it brings in real life childhood, all kinds of stuff that I think makes it relatable to people in all facets of work. And number two, I’m the CEO of Freedom Street Partners, which is a financial advisory company. We clear through Raymond James, and that’s our mutual work history. And it’s a great company, a great entity. And we are in seven States. We have just under 50 advisors, and we manage about just under $3 billion in assets. So I’ve been doing the financial advisor thing for almost 20 plus years, actually over 20 years now. And it’s been really great to me. And what I love most about it is honestly finding the connections between people and helping them solve life’s biggest issues, solutions, problems, whatever it is that pops up. And like you mentioned earlier, it’s always nice to see that there’s usually one thing in common with just about every human out there. So being able to find that and start there is usually a really great spot. So I’m very grateful to be here and looking forward to the conversation as well.
If you don’t mind, I’m going to start off with a big question. And this is always the fun part. I’m going to put you on the spot early. Define freedom. This is one that we often really get stuck on. We use the word, but you’ve got such an experience and history in bringing it in various forms to people. So, Scott, when someone comes to you and they say I need freedom, what does it really mean?
Yeah. So we always say, what does freedom mean to you? Right? What does freedom really mean? And ultimately it starts with what lights you up. What makes you feel good, what makes you happy, what’s a perfect day for you. Where do you want to be, who’s surrounding you? What are the things that really drive you to add more of this in your life. And when you can start to find that you can actually build a life around freedom. I think freedom stands for a lot of things. And I’m always very grateful because I’m always amazed that I could come from very humble beginnings and build something so great and so wonderful with so many amazing people. And so much of that lies in the freedom to create the freedom to be an entrepreneur. I think freedom to me is doing what I love every day with the people that I love doing it with and always putting my family and our friends and our relationships first. So it’s such a big word and it has such a different dynamic to so many different people that I think freedom is individual. And it’s something that you define and hopefully you have the ability to get it.
It’s always interesting. So fellow who I was lucky enough to work with, ironically enough, through Raymond James, his name is Andrew Johns. He is actually currently with a company called Canaccord. He switched teams along the way, but Andrew himself was fantastic. And I remembered him putting a tweet out and it was like just a picture of him. And it was like the classic sort of like nerdy. It says $0 assets under management, zero weeks experience, first day as a financial adviser. And this was, however, many years later, he says, looking back on that, he’s like amazing to see this journey from humble roots to growing. And he had a very strong business and has continued to build a team as well. Which is always interesting in the ability of not just being individually successful, especially as an advisor. There are lots of fantastic individuals. But to also be ultimately a leader of a team to help support a client base and a community. And I think that’s the one thing that genuinely separates. And I don’t want to use the word successful or not successful. I’ll say prolifically successful in that they can scale the success of their clients. When there’s a different mindset that comes into play, you bring that mindset and you’ve developed a team to carry that vision. So it’s always that very just an amazing mix to me of like that entrepreneurial capability and then leveraging a machine behind it so that you don’t have to worry about the clearing house. Ultimately, you bring people towards their freedom and you have tools and techniques and products that help them get there. But it’s vision mapping and delivery on it. It’s quite amazing.
Yeah. Well, you hit on two really big points, I think. Number one, nobody hits success alone. You are successful for a multitude of reasons, and it’s usually an army behind you. And if you don’t realize that truly successful people are very quick to realize that. We have a mentality here at our company that we say we’re better together. We’re building something bigger than ourselves. These are internal cultural taglines that we use every single day. And the truth is, I cannot be anywhere near as successful as I’ve been able to become without the team behind me. And I think that’s the first big point that you’re making. And then you talk about the word partnership. I’ve always used partnership because anytime you’re meeting with a client, you’re creating a relationship to truly understand what freedom means to them. Anytime you’re in a friendship, a relationship of any kind, the goal is to help the person that you’re surrounding yourself with kind of live a better life, have a better experience, enjoy each other’s company. But if I don’t know a little bit more about you, I can’t ever actually have you want to know more about me. And so it’s kind of a mutual respect. But when you talk about prolific success, prolific success comes from actually understanding you did not do it alone. That is really important.
Humility is one of the strongest traits of great leaders. The ability to do stuff when no one is watching, and the humility to understand that you are powered by the adjacent humans that get you there. It is something. It’s funny. I always love the merger. People get like, you know, I work for 20 years across financial services firms in tech. But for me, my success, this came from deeply understanding the nature of the business and what made the business successful and what made their clients successful so that I could develop technology solutions that would then help that company deliver success to its customers. That’s my purpose. That’s my goal. And then in technology now I work for a technology vendor, and I got on the technology space and startups. We use this word. This is phrase all the time, and I was laughing at it. It’s the goal of everybody is to become the trusted advisor. And I say, you misuse that phrase all the time. It’s kind of like the Princess Bride. You keep using that word, but I don’t think it means what you think it means. Right. Like it’s an overplayed phrase.
But the truth is that it really is a genuine connection of their goals and their limitations and their comfort. There’s a reason why we have KYC. As a technology marketer, I have a KYC program that I run people through. What is your ability to be comfortable in this type of marketing and this type of sales situation? I have to understand the profile of investment in messaging and marketing and sales. It’s funny, and I learned this from literally working beside trusted advisors who are regulated to KYC and what that means. You already have this mindset, Scott, of being trusted. What drew you to this as a field in the beginning?
Yeah, a couple of things. Number one, trust is earned and authentic trust is about building relationships and developing that trust. Trust is something that builds over time and gets stronger and stronger and stronger as long as it’s not about the transactions. Trust built on transactions are weak, and they’re weakened every single time the person realizes it’s just about a transaction. And I think that I was blessed in the sense that I was working for the state attorney general here in Virginia, and I was assistant director of crime prevention. And my job literally was to travel around the state doing PR type events in crime prevention for the attorney general, especially in the places where he was less likely to go. And so I ran a lot of senior and law enforcement events where I would bring the law enforcement community in and teach retirees how to not be taken advantage of. Identity theft was fairly new at this time, and I was out there really teaching about what to be aware of, and I was educating all the time. But I saw a major gap in trust, in helping people in the financial areas. It seemed like the people that were being taken advantage of were people that didn’t have trusted advisors, didn’t have great family foundations.
I also have a really great backbone of a great family. In my book, I started out by talking about The Lion King and how Simba was held up and hung over the mountainside for the entire village to see. And when I was born in an Italian Catholic family to a Sicilian grandmother and five aunts and an uncle, I was a firstborn grandson. I had this feeling of great confidence and so many people behind me. One of my aunts, who I was extremely close with, I happened to call when the AG did not win the governor’s office, and I didn’t have a job. And I said, hey, I don’t know what I’m going to do when I grow up and I need help, and I just can’t figure it out. And she said, I think you’d be really good at this job that I see these guys coming in and doing every day. She was working as an admin assistant in one of the offices at Edward Jones, where I had worked prior to founding Freedom Street. And she said, I feel like you’re young and you’d be great at this, and it falls right in with what your mission is of trying to help people.
And I remember fighting her a little bit on it. I put in an application. Two weeks later, I was hired, and I had to learn. And I started from the ground up almost exactly like the story you defined where the guy was standing there with zero assets under management. I had no family money. It was one of those things where I was knocking on doors in cold calling. But I was willing to work because I came from a very, very hard working family without a whole lot of extra, and I was willing to learn the story. The last part is I got lucky, Eric, because I came into the business at a time where it was very difficult in the early 2000’s, the 1999-’02 time frame, the majority of people that started, fail. Because not only were they failing because of September 11 and all the stuff that was happening in that first financial crisis, but ’08 and ’09 happened right at the meat and potatoes of when they would be actually finally getting going in their careers. And today we have more 80 year old financial advisers than we do 30 year olds in our industry.
And the reason is, most of them were so transaction based. The old school way of doing it was so transaction based that I learned within the first months of my career. If I don’t build a relationship with these people, nobody’s going to stay with me when times get tough. And when times get tough, that’s when trust elevates. That’s when you develop the next level of trust. And by being able to really have been an expert in something I didn’t even know I was an expert in, it was just really connecting with people and building something that had nothing to do with the business but had everything to do with the success of helping the other human across the desk from you. And so whether it was the early stages of the AG’s office or my aunt and the family confidence, or it just happened to be hard work and hustle of understanding, connecting with more people would get me there. It kind of led me in that path.
It’s one of the most interesting challenges because especially you talk about the timing of it. Right. Like between the financial crash, which was much more prominent in the United States, I happened to be in Canada while it was going on and working at a financial advisory firm and interestingly seeing things begin. I remember signing the deal and closing for a condo in Vancouver, BC, which was sort of known for the sort of disturbing prices of real estate because you’re surrounded by water and mountains. The only way you can, the prices go up and so do the properties. Right. Like they’re all condos. There’s a fixed amount of property. So it’s perfect market economics for the market, not for the people participating in it. But I signed in Halloween of ’08 and people said this is like we were losing a bank a week at that point. But I had luckily, the insight into the way the market was moving and being adjacent to seeing it happen because we knew, the news was figuring out that this was going on. But the financial world, we were already playing it out. It’s sort of the famous scene from the movie Margin Call where it was meant to be this idea of like, imagine. So what you’re telling me is that everybody’s moving around, we’re all dancing and the music is coming to a stop. And then the quant who’s at the table, he says “No, imagine that actually the music has already stopped”.
Right.
And we’ve just realized it. And so it was interesting that it could have been the worst thing I ever did. And it worked out to be good, that it was actually the trough of the pricing. But to see that the resilience of good relationship based advisors and relationship based selling in anything to survive those troughs is differentiating, right. Because it’s very easy to get in the game. And like I said, we can do transactional business. And that happens. There’s still a huge piece of that in every business. But the true relationship sellers I’ve learned now in technology, like it’s – you see them and they’re different. It’s like that kid that plays soccer and you’re like, it’s an eight year old kid, you’re like, that one’s different. You can tell. And then now, years later, I’m an older gentleman. I’ve witnessed it in action with folks like yourself or I’m like Scott’s different. He’s got a bigger picture in mind. But it seems like it’s been there for a long time. It started early with you. Now when you moved in and now you’re doing the business, what was your focus when you bring a client on board? What is the thing that said, I’m Scott, and this is my goal for you?
I think it was first connection. So the first thing I wanted to understand is really understand the human behind the money. Our tagline today is life wealth optimization. And we say constantly that life comes first and really prioritizing life all the time first. So it’s like going on a date and they start talking about all the things that have nothing to do with getting to know each other. You have to get to know each other. And that was always my objective, to connect with a human first. The next thing was to establish what was most important in life and help them attain it. Sometimes it’s actually helping them go back on things that they never thought were possible. I used to say that I’m a life coach that specializes in money and people would laugh. You really have two types of people, the people that immediately shut off. It was the perfect elevator pitch because people would immediately shut off if they don’t believe in that. If they’re straight, transaction driven or hyper analytical, they literally are lost in that first phrase. I’m a life coach that specializes in money. But the people that we really served well immediately go, wow, that’s interesting. What does that mean? And I would say, well, I obviously do investment management. It’s something that I have to do every day. The next thing I do is really scenario planning. If-this-then-that. If you do this, then what happens here? And it’s just true financial planning. And the third thing is vision coaching. And they would say, what’s vision coaching? And I would say, well, it’s really identifying what lights you up what are you going to do in your next chapter? What are we working towards? How do we actually measure success on a grander scale? It’s going back to the term freedom again, right? What is your freedom and how can we help you work towards that? And when you go into those types of conversations, it really changed the dynamic of everything. And that’s one of the main reasons that I wanted to put a book out. That’s one of the main reasons I wanted to put all these ideas into the world was because I felt like there really still are not enough of those soccer players, as you define, which is a great analogy because I have a 12 and a 15 year old son who dedicate all their time to soccer, and we love the sport and you can tell the difference.
But I really felt like we needed to change the game. The game needed to go back to connection and humans and relationship driven advice. And it’s any business. And when you can get that vibe and that energy that goes with the right relationship and the right connection and someone actually caring about shaking your hand and looking you in the eye, not robotically doing it because they know they’re supposed to, you start to really tune in to who those people are, and they stand out immediately. And I love that analogy that you gave because it’s really everything we believe in.
The interesting thing as well is the idea of optimization as a word, both in technology, in finance, in life, and anything. Optimization is much more about the scale on which you measure optimization. So there’s local Optima where if I’m driving and I want to get there a little faster, I’m going to just kick it up and I’ll go 10 miles over the speed limit for a little while. Maybe I’ll go to 15. Right, because I don’t see any police around. But if it’s a seven hour drive and there’s only one stretch of highway that I can go 15 miles an hour over, that local Optima is actually risk inducing because you’ve got a higher chance of getting caught by police in this corridor because they know they’re using aerial radar or whatever. Right. So having the broader view and understanding the scale and the timeline allows you to optimize. And this is one of the things that people have trouble seeing because they’re simply thinking now, just the same way that I buying real estate in October. It’s a fundamentally bad idea by any measure of most people. Right. But when I looked at my optimization was a 20 year timeline, I said, this is either the bottom or near the bottom, and I’m willing and able, luckily, to maintain the risk level. It did net longer term benefit. But I had to view the timeline. And for me, most people can’t see that timeline. That’s why I loved your idea of life-wealth optimization. And it’s so much different because you can give them the broader view, but then help them map to it. So, Scott, when you meet somebody, what does that discovery process look like?
Well, I think the first thing that we try to do is we try to make sure that we’re understanding again the things that stand out. So the discovery process is going to be just like meeting for a cup of coffee. Who are you? Not what do you do? That always draws me bonkers. And I know you probably go to a ton of these things, Eric. We go to events and everyone the first thing they want to know is what do you do? And I want to know who you are first. I want to know what you stand for. I want to know more about you as a human. And so all the surface area questions that I don’t care about, I start going deeper and deeper. And a lot of times people walk out and they’re like, I haven’t talked about that ever with anybody. And that’s always been a goal. The goal is not to get people uncomfortable, but to balance the uncomfortable with the comfortable. What are the things that they’re going to think about when they walk away? You mentioned something super interesting to me, and that is – think about the long game. If you made all your decisions on a long-term basis, how much better would most of your decisions be? Even as a young teenager. I have teenage boys and the bottom line is we all were teenage boys or teenage girls at some point in time in our lives back in the old days. And as a teenage boy, I always thought pretty long. I made bad decisions, but I was always playing chess and not checkers. And so the objective is to really make long. You would have still bought that house in Vancouver if you were thinking as you did long-term. Now for the short-term, it was a really tough decision and you questioned it. But in the end, knowing that you were there for the long term. Every time I make decisions, every time we help people make decisions based on a longer time frame, they tend to come out ahead. I always do this drill and I love this when I do town halls. I started doing town halls when I was early in my career because I found that the same phone calls, the same questions would pop up over and over and over again.
And there were two things that really helped people. Number one, knowing that they weren’t in it alone. So knowing that other people had the same questions as that made them not feel stupid for asking the question. And it also helped us answer it once and not a thousand times the same way. And the second thing was, everybody needs when you’re playing a long game, everybody needs a little love. You need a little bit of understanding that it’s still a long game and it’s going to work out and things will be better if we just are all in this together and we talk through it. And I started doing these town halls and I like to play this game where I will ask, any time things get a little bumpy, I ask people in the room how many people have been married for more than 25 years? And then I go all the way up and believe it or not, we often get to just this past week, I did one and we got to 60 years. Okay. They were married for 60 years. And sometimes it’s more than that. Okay. They got married super young, highly successful.
Here’s the point. I ask all those couples how many days were rough? And they all laugh and they say, tons. And I say, how many weeks or months? And they laugh and they say tons. And I say, some of the time they’ll interrupt. They’ll say they were actually very bad years, tough years. And I say, but you’ve been married 60, 65 years. When you look back, what was the long game worth? And they said, well, all those bumps in the road just helped us build a stronger relationship. They helped us build more trust in each other. They helped us serve as a beacon to the next generation of what relationships and long-term success really looks like. And it’s commitment and loyalty and understanding that there’s bumps in the road. And I think understanding that in the process, your question was process driven and what someone goes through. But understanding what we’re really looking for, I think is even more of an interesting part of that process because we’re looking for people that really understand that. They’re working towards that level of freedom. But they’re understanding that bumps in the road, a short real estate blip in the market usually ends up playing to your advantage if you stay long enough. Vancouver is a hot market. Mountains and water, you can’t go wrong with that.
Yeah. And that is always the interesting thing that I’m not sure whether it’s like going through adversity as a kid and watching my dad go through a difficult – he was in the tech market. In the tech job market when there was no such thing. Right. This was when comdex was new. Like that’s the age that he’s at. Right. So here I was watching him through the 80’s lose a job, which meant months of no work and newspaper ads to apply for jobs. So fundamentally different. So I have this really interesting challenge when I see stuff these days that exposure to adversity and an understanding of the longer game and that there’s Optima over time are played out differently. And so I kind of feel blessed that I got that exposure to that experience because it taught me down the road and I’m so lucky. My wife is a great example, she says, I had a financial surprise which my taxes got re-assessed. And they’re like, oh, yeah, it’s like Monopoly. It’s a banker in your favor. It’s never in your favor. It was very much not in my favor. This situation. I was horrified. I was just like, this was a real shock to the system was going to be a financial impact.
And I was worried to bring it down. My God, how do I say this? And I said, this is what happened. And I’m not sure what to do. And she says, well, it’s easy. We just pay it and we work through it. Because she had that ability to see long term, and there are difficult times. And versus you could focus all your attention on that situation. And so living through cycles of market, cycles of jobs, cycles of exposure to adversity for me was healthy. I always say I’m jaded, but the truth is I’m blessed because I’ve come out the other side of it. When you’re in that town hall, those are people that kind of get they’re closer to getting what you’re bringing to them and what you can give, what you can help them to achieve. Let’s talk about the people that are not in that room. What do you see as the risk when people don’t have that insight? How do we give them? Like, how do you put Freedom Street on their map?
Yeah, well, I think, first of all, we have to always have a growth mindset. And so if I’m trying to educate myself and grow myself in any capacity, I’m always learning. And so putting out information that was putting out Freedom Street as a book was part of that mentality, launching all the videos that we do on positive mindset. I think everything starts with mindset for the most part. For me, mindset is everything. I have one of my son’s high school soccer teammates. He had a little injury, and he’s been texting and keeping up with me. And I’m literally like, hey, keep your head up. Just keep doing what you’re supposed to do. Everything’s mindset. Because the minute he gets down on himself is the minute that it starts to change, it starts to feel heavier and feels like you can’t do it. It’s building those good habits to make discipline easier versus because, you know, discipline equals freedom. We all know that. But discipline is a hard word, but habit is an easier word. So we help them establish the habits that end up building the discipline that help them look in the long term.
And I think the insight that really helps people is just starting with that growth mindset. Starting with putting stuff in their brain that helps them think bigger. I also always believe we should always reset the environment that we’re in and look at who you surround yourself with. Eric, you have great conversations, 200 plus of these great conversations. Just think of all the things you’ve learned from talking to a boring financial advisor or a CPA or some of the jobs that other people don’t realize the depth of what they’re doing and how they’re doing it because they shut off because they have one mindset of what that looks like. And the reality is, for 20 plus years I’ve been sitting across from people in an office learning stories, hearing challenges, understanding business fails and business wins, helping guide people towards their biggest successes and being there when they’re not so successful. And the reality is it’s like sitting in and learning and learning and listening. It’s just helping. Developing that in other people and then sharing it with the world so that more people can think in the way that gets them there. And having an abundant mindset doesn’t hurt.
Not thinking in a scarcity mindset is very valuable and it’s something that probably is one of the biggest indicators of success is are they able to shift from there’s only so much of this to there’s so much of this that I need to share it with the world and the world will give it back to me. The universe is there to share amongst each other and build something bigger than ourselves.
Yeah, it is interesting that you say that like the mindset and the I’m selfishly doing this podcast is because I love learning from people and people. I had chat with a friend of mine recently and I said everything I do is to make my grandmother proud. She’s long since passed, but she always said I was a shoe repair man and then I was a landscaper and then I worked in retail and everything I did, she was proud of me because I was proud of it and I wanted to be the best at it, whatever it was. And my ethos has always been whatever I’m doing right now, whatever I’m learning. What if I needed to make a living and support my family doing this thing? That’s how much I want to learn about it. And like you said, I look now, I started this as like a tech podcast. I’m going to talk to my nerd friends because I know how to speak that language and I’m excited by it. But I wanted the story underneath it. And then now to speak with amazing folks like yourself and people who are CPA. I’ve had folks who are sex and relationship therapist way outside of the vein of this text.
But in the end, to hear people react to those stories and say that I would have never known that I needed to listen to this person, but they’re fantastic now that I’ve heard it. Like I said, that’s Freedom Street as a mindset in showing people the opportunity ahead and mapping the path with them. It’s important. Partner. We mention that word before and you talked about the strength of that word. Partnership has been early on for you, obviously in your advisory team. Partnership is incredibly important because it is a journey you map together, not you don’t create a journey and then you hand it, here’s your playbook, do these things and you’ll get there.
That’s right.
Let’s talk about what does partnership mean to you?
I think a lot of what we mentioned when we said the relationship really correlates to partnership, because partnership is sometimes a closer relationship. It’s even more dynamic. And I have partners in the business that we work with. I have partners every day. We also everyday in our affiliate businesses and our other components. And it’s really interesting because when you mentioned the word freedom street, when I wrote this book and I came up with some of the pathways to kind of having a better partnership, not just with the people in your life, but with yourself. That’s something that doesn’t often get explored. We often look at how we’re doing in the world to other people. We spend very little time internal. And the average age of a financial advisor in my industry is 62 years old. Successful financial advisor. I mean, not someone who just came into the industry and is successful because they’re not fired, but somebody that genuinely is making a pretty good living in this industry. The average age is 60 something years old, and it fluctuates 58, 64 depending on what article you read. But let’s just use 62. Here’s what I found.
So many advisers had helped everybody else with their continuity plans. How were they going to step out of the industry? How are they going to sell their business? How are they – they hadn’t done it for themselves. Almost 70 plus percent of independent advisers had never had a continuity plan or a succession plan. And so one of the reasons I put this book out there that triggered us to put it out there was a partnership with the community of which I work in. And financial advisors are somebody that are just like attorneys and doctors and all the other professions, tech professionals, they build this baby of a business, but they never think about what happens when it’s time to move on. The tech world does a really good job of this. I mean, maybe they do it too early. Sometimes they go in and they basically build it, sell it, build it, sell it, build it, sell it. And in our world, it’s the opposite. And what I found was the reason the sub line is to create a rich life, live my legacy, and own the future was three things.
I found that, number one, living a rich life had nothing to do with money. And it was really important to help people define what living richly really meant to them. That’s part of the process. Whether you’re selling a business, whether you’re in the tech industry, it’s not just about a number, okay? Because every time you get a number, if you’re a tech industry professional and you have a start up and 10 million is your number. I can guarantee you that the minute you hit 10 million, you say 20 is now your number. And the minute you hit 20, you’re like 50. If I can get to 20, I can get to 50 and the numbers change. But what are you doing to live richly? Making an impact, living a legacy versus waiting to leave one really important to me. I talk a lot about the daily habit of impact. What are we doing every day that’s leaving an impact, an imprint on the world that my kids and my family can look back and say, hey, dad did this. Dad was working on this. Dad was always trying to, hey, he didn’t have any time the other day, but he spent 45 minutes on with the local board trying to help them revamp so they can provide something in the community.
And I want to have that as something that’s important because here’s what we find. People that are too tied to their businesses, their legacy is all tied to their business. And so selling the business is almost something they can never fathom, because everything their impact relies upon is in the business, not outside of it. And once you can live richly and you kind of get into that, living a legacy versus leaving one, you own your future now. You could set the core, you could set the course, you could set the blueprint. But if you haven’t established those couple of things and what you’re doing to your question is you’re partnering with yourself. You’re actually identifying what makes you click. What am I doing that’s working? What defines my future path of success? Who’s with me, and how can I go ahead and dive deep into this path so I’m set up for success in the future.
It is interesting that partnership begins with being your own partner. And I often think of this idea of, like, goals versus execution. The latest topic that I’ve got a lot of because I say it’s almost rolling my eyes I shouldn’t because I genuinely believe in what it is. What I don’t believe in is people that set these sort of big, hairy, audacious goals. There’s nothing wrong with setting the BHAG, as they call it, right? But sustainability is a big topic in life, in the energy sector, in tech and everything. We should be concerned about the impact we’re having on the world, on the Earth, on our communities, on each other. And everybody says, like, all these press releases come out, that company X has developed their sustainability plan to hit a target by 2030. And we joined the 2030 project, and we do all this stuff. I remember that in 2025, LA was going to have no gas powered vehicles on the roads. 2025 not far away but we’ve kindly hidden that press release, right? So when people say they’ve got sustainability goals, when I get into discussion with them, I don’t say, what’s your sustainability goal?
I say, what have you tactically done over the previous twelve months towards this goal? Let’s not talk about what’s ahead, but what have you already started so we can amplify that. Like, this is you partnering with your goal and then executing on it. And as you said, right. It’s small things. It’s habits that we create. And it’s very easy for us to just say like, yeah, I want to make a million dollars a year. Fantastic. What does that mean to you? Why is that a number? There’s always one thing. But secondly, what’s your habit forming path to reach that? And that’s the piece that’s always missing. I mean, I struggle from it myself, but that’s why I’m excited. I’m emotional hearing you describe this text. I’m like, I’m going to leave this conversation. I’m going to write stuff down and do things. I’ve got to exercise. I’ve got to call my wife. I got to do it. Everything I do is to that long term habit creating opportunity to reach that goal.
Yes. When you talk about making a million dollars. I just did a video on this yesterday, literally on the exact topic. And I used that example. I was like, okay, so you want to make a million Bucks? Can you quantify how you’re going to get there? Can you actually lay out the path? Most people say things like this and they never actually believe that they’ll attain it. They actually say things like this, and they never formulate the real vision. They immediately switch off in their brain that it’s possible. That’s the first problem that people do. Right. We do this on lots of things. I mean, we all do this. Sometimes you go into a new room and you think, I’m the smallest guy here. I don’t know anything. And then everyone starts sharing ideas and you jump right in and you’re like, wow, this is great. I belong here. But you had to remind yourself you belong there. And I think everybody every level, I’m sure Bezos and Elon Musk go into an occasional room and they’re like, man, this is a big room. I don’t know how big the room can be, but there are definitely things.
But charting the path of what you can control is really the next thing. So get your mindset right. But then what are the things you can control today? What is the word? Practice is a word that I love. I have a twelve, almost 13 year old son. And the kid practice every day, right? And he executes upon something in a game. And people are like, oh, my gosh, how does he do that? I can’t believe he just did that. And I go, I mean, he does it in the backyard literally every day. Like, the guy tries this every single day. And we kind of lose the habit of practicing the older we get. We forget that if we want to get to a million dollars, we have to practice million dollar habits. What does that look like?
This is one of my favorite, sort of like a bit of a time waster every once in a while, I’m sure is I scroll through Instagram for fun and just a bit of a distraction. And one of my favorite things is sort of like motivational things, because once you click on one of them, it’s all over. That’s going to be your feed, which is actually probably pretty decent, but I don’t know who the voice is behind it, but there’s an audio and people put just videos in front of it. They reuse the audio. And so fella, it’s almost like a preacher. Practice, practice, practice. What does practice make? And you hear the audience go, perfect. He goes, Absolutely not. Get that mindset out of your head. That is not the case. Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes better. What are you better than yesterday? Do it, right. And that whole idea. And I say even the simplest thing, I always joke on camera. It’s like just like goofy little things that I do because I’m a big fan of card magic. And so I sit there every day and I just fan cards and I look back and the first time that I tried to fan a card set and people look and they say, how do you do that? If I hand them this deck of cards, it’s the same physical set of cards. The difference between me being able to do this now is that I’ve done it 25,000 times. And I literally can’t do it bad now. I say it’s like I’m broken. I cannot show you how to not fan a deck of cards because I’ve taught myself the habit and the muscle memory. So this is the new every day it gets smoother, it gets better, and I can do it quickly. And it’s hard sometimes to impart that wisdom and create that path for people. Because when you have money, when you have career success, when you have whatever, this is what I’m always interested. How do you give people that inspiration and guide them through that journey when you’ve already practiced it so much. You may not remember how hard it is difficult at times and such, because that’s it. It’s very easy to say, like, I’m going to make a million dollars this year. And people like, that’s fantastic. But helping them reliving that path to a million with them. I love this idea. So, Scott, how do you teach when you already know but teach in a way that they can adapt and learn?
Yeah, you said it earlier. You’re very grateful that you had adversity because adversity taught you that you could do harder things. You could actually overcome challenges, and then you happen to marry the right person who, when something adverse pops up, you do it together. So now you’re seeing another skill that’s extremely important. And that is being surrounded by people that make you better, that lift you up. There’s some fundamental things that never change. No matter how great you are, no matter how big you become, if you’re surrounded by the right people and you understand that on the other end of adversity is often success. Unfortunately, it’s sometimes fortunate and sometimes unfortunate. So I had this conversation. We have a Sunday night dinner at my parents every Sunday with our whole family. And it’s a wonderful time. And we were talking about the challenge of how children and young adults struggle with anxiety and adversity. They almost get to doing hard things and stop and pull back now. And what they’re not realizing is that on the other side of that uncomfortable feeling is really good stuff. But you have to actually feel the uncomfortable feeling.
You have to change your mindset. My boys, every time they have a soccer game from the time they were two years old, I would ask them if they were nervous, and they would say a little bit. And I was like, you’re not nervous. You’re excited. Remember, you want to change the words to match what it’s truthfully doing to you. Can you wait to play? No, I can’t wait to play. Do you love playing? I love playing. Then you’re excited. You’re not nervous. See, when you tell yourself you’re nervous about something, you’re giving yourself a negative connotation to something that doesn’t need to exist in your brain. And so when you talk about adversity, the first thing I do is remind people that you want to do something that’s not easy. And that means that it’s going to take work. And work is sometimes really uncomfortable. It hurts. You’re going to fail. Get used to it. If you take a basketball and you take 25 shots and you haven’t shot a basketball before, you are not good. But the more you fan your cards, the more you recognize and level up each time. And I think, honestly, this is where authentic advice comes in.
Being in a good relationship, relationship advising relationship, good quality relationships in general require truth. Trust requires truth. So you also have to be willing to tell somebody when they’re lying to themselves, because that also is something that’s difficult. And we also live in a world sometimes now where people are really afraid to say truth. We don’t want to say that. We want to blame the spoon for eating the ice cream, not ourselves. Right? It’s the Spoon’s fault. It’s the box. It’s so big. They didn’t put it in a big box. Like, there’s always a reason why it’s someone else’s fault. But if you look in the mirror, you’re bringing the spoon to your lips every single time in that really big container. And you know how good it is. And it’s okay. It’s your choice. But the reality is just know that if you want big things, if you want to build the next big, great tech company or you’re building a great financial advisory business or you want to be the best CPA. It’s going to take a lot of uncomfortable adversity and you work through it. And on the other side of that work is usually some level of high performing success.
It is amazing that truth. And that being with them while they’re going through the journey and giving them the little nudge that like, hey, I saw you yesterday or I saw you last week and I can tell it’s coming together. They can’t necessarily see it. Right. It’s often lost in that thing. And like those incremental changes are not visible when you’re the one incrementing. But the honesty and the partnership of going through that with them lets you be on that journey instead. Remember two years ago you said this was your goal. We’re two years in and you’re 20% there, and that’s 20% more than you would have been if you hadn’t mapped out the goal and started the plan and then introducing adversity. That’s why I’ve never been a fan of the sort of the helicopter like, I mean, I’m a helicopter parent. I have four kids. Certain amount of helicopter. You do you’d want to protect them from things, but I also purposefully don’t protect them from everything. You don’t want them to experience real negativity, but you want to expose them to it a little here and there. So that almost like an immunity response that they know how to get on the other side of it.
And you could say, remember like that. Remember how that felt? That was tough. You don’t want to feel that again. Right? We want to try this BMX trick, this snowboard trick. My oldest daughter is a Championship snowboarder for slope style, and it scares me every time I see her doing a backflip off of a 40 foot ramp. I’m like, but what I gave her early on was taking her through a tree run when she was five on skis and having her bounce off a tree. But it gave her the ability to say that I’m willing to test the edges. And I think that’s a real big thing. Scott, you talk about this. So when people go and they want to find Freedom Street, their Freedom Street, what’s your sort of first layer advice you give?
I think the first is we have to ask the question and the questions all lie in what does freedom mean to them? And you start there and a lot of times it’s too big for people and I’m a big picture person and so I’ve got to work it down. So we talk about what’s the perfect day for you? What are you doing? Where are you at? All those types of things are important. But really the recipe is in the book and that’s living richly, living a legacy and then owning the future. And what does that future look like? If we’re going to live long term and we’re going to think long term and we want to have success, it’s not immediate. Anything given immediately is usually something we don’t appreciate. We have no idea where it really came from. It’s why most lottery winners are broke within a couple of years or months because they have no concept of what it took to get that amount of money. So it’s just easy come, easy go. It’s way better to create something of substance. And I think really identifying it when we identified I mentioned earlier, 20 plus years of being a financial adviser.
You know what I’ve been my entire life as I’ve been a coach, I’ve been a consultant. And the reality is I’ve done this for a living, working over and over and over again in this space. But it’s something I feel very comfortable in, something I love doing. Watching the impact Watching your success makes me as happy as watching my own level of success. And when you learn that about yourself, you’re really able to give a lot more of yourself in those types of things. And that’s what Freedom Street was about for me. It was about giving people the recipes to really create each part of this book of creating a rich life on the road to riches, tell stories of things that I failed at. Moments where I thought I was going to get a promotion, and it was the most important thing in my life, and I didn’t get it. And my wife has two glasses of champagne and a bottle waiting for me that evening to celebrate. And I didn’t understand what we were celebrating. But again, surrounding yourself with the right people, having the right dynamic, knowing the path you’re working towards all made that a better situation.
And a learned experience helped me two years later, define the next path, which has been great for lots of other people who have now followed us and built something bigger. And that’s why we created the coaching and consulting practice was to help business owners in any industry really go through these challenges because life is full of transitions. So Freedom Street is really helping to navigate those transitions with ease because you define the most important attributes of what you’re living for.
I’m getting excited because I think I said at the beginning it’s to be able to learn and hear and get inspired by it. And knowing that there are people out there that we can impact through these conversations, people sometimes ask me, like, what do you consider your greatest success? And I say, it’s the success I’ve created for somebody else through a lesson that I’ve given them. So the greatest thing I can do is help somebody achieve the greatest thing they will do. And it’s such a fantastic feeling, and I can see it and hear it. Your background is quickly before we finish up, because if you don’t mind, they’ll just stretch a couple more minutes on this one, because your entry into advisory and financial advisory and this side of the world was via crime prevention, which is very interesting, but your choice in how you targeted it was really about empowerment in community, empowerment in things. And so you went that route. It really genuinely seems to me, Scott, that from very early on, you had that. What can I personally do to empower my community to be better? So how do you go from crime prevention as a practice to where we are today?
I think it really ties with self awareness, understanding what you’re great at, what you’re good at, and what you’re not so good at. And I’ve always had a tendency to lean heavily in what I’m very good at and great at and surround myself with people that are better than me at all the ancillary things, just like we talked about in the beginning. I am the person at Freedom Street that you want to bring in, to talk big picture, to dive into the weeds on your vision, to break down the challenges, you know, to look at, okay, here’s where we want to go and here’s how we’re going to get there, and we can chart it all out. When we get into some of the analytics, I bring in the experts and I have an input, and I’m a part of all those decisions, but I get to have experts that are better at it than me. And I think what I really wanted was I wanted to build towards strengths. I wanted to create a company and a culture that was built around people that were great at their space and putting them in the space that they love doing.
So when someone comes on, I’ve hired so many people that we’re looking for X job, and we find the right human, but the right human doesn’t fit the exact job we were looking at. So I’ll change the job. I’ll change what we’re going to be utilizing this human for if it’s the right person for the culture fit. And we’ve really done that. It’s interesting, to your point just a second ago, when you talk about making an impact. I have been doing these videos on YouTube, and we just launched a new channel. But ultimately I’ve been doing these videos on Facebook and LinkedIn and all these different, different facets and putting things out. And the person that started helping me is a phenomenal PR person. She’s really great with video. And she used to come to me and say, are you getting the ROI you need? She was trying to quantify every single thing. We talked about it yesterday, and I kept saying, no, it’s a long game. I’m not here to make money on this today. I’m here to get better at doing it. I’m here to provide more impact. And you know what I love more than anything? Is I love getting the feedback and the loop back that this conversation gave someone the ability to think bigger.
It gave someone the tools. In the book, at the end of every chapter, I literally have a set of questions that evaluate, do you see yourself as this person or that person? Do you see yourself doing these types of things? What can you practice every day? What gets you to that millionaire mindset? Whatever it may be, it’s about that process. And I think to directly answer your question, after spending almost 15 years at a great company where I was growing and learning, I found out that I was in a box, and I needed to break out of the box and do my own thing. And the reality is that’s where Freedom Street partners came from. I told everyone we were a tech startup. So it’s funny because the connectivity between what your startup is and what we were, and that’s who we were. We started with nothing. We built up this business. We have offices in seven states today, and we’ve developed a path where we’re building something bigger than ourselves.
And it was the vision from the beginning. We had a vivid vision. Cameron Harold wrote a great book called Vivid vision, and I’m in a couple of groups with Cameron. He’s a phenomenal person to talk to. But we created a vivid vision in the first three years, and we knocked everything out of the park, and we did so because we kept putting the right puzzle pieces of human capital in the right spots. And all those people are better at the area they’re serving in than I am. And again, it’s that teamwork mentality that bigger and better together mentality that really helps people understand. But it’s about the impact and part of there’s a deeper thing, and we don’t have time to go into the depths of it. I know, but here’s what I could tell you that I find really interesting. In the beginning of a journey, a lot of times you start out, maybe scarcity leads you to abundance. Maybe my fear of losing it all because I didn’t come from anything in the beginning kept me from spending any money. So that when the bad years came, I was always in a better position. And then when my abundant mindset kicked in, I happened to be in the right position. The same thing goes for failure and affirmation. I think what I found is, I found a lot more comfortability helping other people be the greatest version of themselves early in life because I was trying to find my own way.
I was trying to figure out how to get myself where I needed to be. And what I learned is I just needed to continue to learn from other people. And all that coaching and learning and teaching was actually bringing leveling me up every single time. So I very rarely turn down conversations like this because I learned just as much from you as hopefully you’ll learn from me. And each day we get better and better at this. Right. And so my mindset of just this open learning, open mindset, really learning from the things that I might not have been great at very early in my career are the things I want to be best at at the next chapter.
That’s amazing, yeah, great. And vivid vision, fantastic. Cameron is a great writer. I seem to remember he was in BC as well, another Vancouver. There was some presence he might be Canadian. I’ve read so many bloody books these days, it’s hard to keep track of who’s who, but I do. There’s a fantastic, fantastic book. Cameron seems like a really great human. And Scott, you are, you are doing great things. And as I say, the greatest mentor has a great mentor. And it’s an important lesson that people don’t. They forget. They think that once you are reaching a certain level that you are now at the top of the chain, like, no, you are looking – you get there by your peer group and you get there by your mentors. And it continues up. Even therapists have therapists. That’s how it has to go. Because if you stop receiving knowledge, it’s really not fair in my mind for you to give it out.
Yes. If you’re not growing, you’re dying, right?
Yeah. And they sound like witticisms that you would put on an Instagram post or something. But when you see it in practice and you hear about the people that are being successful at helping people be successful, I’m turned on by that. That’s my thing. If you came to me and said, what’s the thing that makes you wake up and get this? It’s like I’m on this microphone for an hour a week, an hour and 20 minutes a week, and it’s the greatest moment. It just lights my week up because I learn something and I try to put it in practice. And then I share it and it’s so great. Scott, your passion for this is palpable. It’s obvious, and it’s earned. And the success you get from it is deserved. So I’m going to tell people, get the book, get involved, learn. So thank you for spending the time today. So, Scott, if people do want to get a hold of you and of course, we’ll have links to the book and to your team at Freedom Street Partners. So what’s the best way they can get in touch?
The easiest thing to do is, ScottDanner.com, and you can kind of see all the links there. I really encourage people. What I’m extremely passionate about is this YouTube channel we’re building, and it’s just in the infancy stages. But the reality is it’s all about hitting the next algorithms. And I think putting more positive information out there to people is really something that we don’t have enough of. There’s too much of the algorithm that’s putting negativity into our feed on purpose. I’m a Duke basketball fan and taking the loss to UNC last weekend was challenging. You would be amazed at every single UNC fan I’ve ever known in my entire life was in my feed. It’s like they knew how to make me feel miserable and I want the opposite. I want to create stuff that helps people feel great. I want them to look at something that we’re doing and see that we believe in them, that I believe in them that your conversations are there to help people be the best version of themselves. ScottDanner.com the books on all major things. My wife ordered it from target and it was delivered to the house.
Amazon.com audible, we just love for you to get the message out and don’t be turned off that it says financial adviser. I think what you’ll find is that the story is something that was written for anybody and I think that’s the value takeaway. I hope it’s something everybody finds good information and reach out to us. We’d love to hear from you.
That’s amazing. There you go, Scott Danner, thank you. Absolutely. This has been a real pleasure and everybody needs a little bit more Scott Danner in their life feed I can tell you that.
Eric, thanks for having me, man. Such a great conversation.
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Danny Allan is the CTO at Veeam Software and shares updates and news that we will see happening at VeeamON in Las Vegas May 16-19. On top of that, we cover why system-level protection is a fundamental need, plus some great discussion on why data protection for containerized apps is the new normal.
Oh, yeah, that’s right. Welcome to the DiscoPosse podcast. Thank you for listening. And hey, thank you for watching. If you’re heading on over to youtube.com/discoposse, make sure you go get a like, subscribe to the channel because we’re spinning things up in big way over on the visual side as well. And this is a great chance for you to see the one and only – someone who is fantastic, love having him on the show. This is Danny Allan. Danny is the CTO at Veeam Software. Also got to give a shout-out of course, because Veeam are some of the supporters of the podcast. So this is cool because I get to talk, shop with Danny. We talk about the Ransomware challenge because, hey, Ransomware is a disaster. And I mean literally, if you’re not ready and thinking business continuity and disaster, we talk about methodologies and real stuff that I remember from the field. So this is a good exploration. Plus, of course, they have their VeeamOn -their annual conference, which is going on in Vegas right now. It’s super cool to see that they’re back in person and doing some really neat stuff. So big thanks to Danny, of course, for coming on.
And of course, like I said, if you want to check out more about Veeam, you can go to vee.am/discoposse and you can get all that you need for your data protection needs because they got you covered in all sorts of ways. Actually, it was just a bonus. I had Danny on just because I wanted to talk to Danny. Just so happens that he’s from Veeam. And speaking of great supporters, of course, I got to give a shout out to JR and the team over the Shift Group. Because if you are running a company and you need to bring on a sales team that’s going to make the difference, Shift Group is in turning athletes into sales pros. So if you’re looking to hire driven, competitive former athletes or even thinking how do you build a go-to market that can actually scale both efficiently and effectively? Shift Group is not only offering a huge pool of really awesome diverse sales candidates from everything – from entry-level to leadership, but they’re also helping you to develop your overall hiring strategy, interview process, and truly building a culture of success and talent. What you need in those early stages. So get on in, head on over shiftgroup.io and you can find out more about that. And while you’re at it, of course, one last little shadow. Do you like coffee? So do I. Go to diabolicalcoffee.com. It’s super good! It’s tasty, it’s devilishly good, diabolically awesome. And hey, we support a bunch of podcasts. Oh, by the way, it’s me. Full disclosure, it’s my coffee company. So check it out. All right, this is Danny Allen from Veeam.
My name is Danny Allen. I’m the CTO at Veeam Software. Very excited to be with you. And you are listening to the DiscoPosse podcast.
Another all Canadian episode. It’s a rare treat when I get to have fellow Canadians on. We actually had a fun one. There was a team of folks that do a podcast called The Produce Stand. It’s actually for a very Canadian show called Letter Kenny. And the amount of Canadianness that came out in that episode was laughable. It’s so funny how we all kind of like, especially if you talk about something that’s really based in Northern Ontario but has sort of Eastern Canada roots. We all very much adopted good, strong Canadian accents by the end of the hour.
I’ve watched all the Letter Kenny episodes. They’re awesome.
Nice. So, Danny, thanks very much. This is great to have you back because we’ve been apart for a while as humans, as society and as technologists. We’ve seen them move towards virtual for a couple of years for very obvious reasons. And we saw a real fundamental shift in kind of how we engage with people. And I was lucky for the podcast has been greatly successful because people are tapping into this type of learning and exploring these conversations. But at the same time, good golly, it feels good to know that when you were talking before we started to record here that we got plane tickets booked, we’ve got VeeamON, which is live in Las Vegas. So you’ve got a real in-person event coming up. So maybe if you want to just first of all, give a quick intro for folks that are brand new to you, and then let’s talk about VeeamON and kind of the excitement around that right away.
Sure. So my name is Danny Allen and the CTO at Veeam Software. We’ve been in business now for almost 15 years doing data protection. Which I point out is not just backup, but also recovery, recovery at scale, doing it instantly and doing all the things around the management of that data over its life cycle. Along the way, over the past decade or so, we have created and been privileged to have behind us a green army that loves the Veeam software. And one of the things that we’ve done since 2015 is an industry conference. And so coming up next week, it begins May 16th. We are having an in-person event in Vegas for the first time in three years. But I want to highlight for people, we are going back to the in-person event, but it will be hybrid. There will also be a virtual experience. And one of the things that we’re very focused on is making sure we have an equitable experience for those who can be there in person and we can shake hands and have fellowship together. We plan to do that. But also we want to make sure that the information and the content we’re providing is equally available for those who are attending virtually. So we’re very excited to have this event coming up.
It also brings up as excited as many of the folks in the industry are to get back together, there’s still a lot of trepidation around travel and personal risks like this. Everybody’s got their own sort of their comfort level with getting back, especially in big crowds. So I do like that you’re taking the hybrid approach. And it’s a tricky balance like to have information be broadly shareable, but then have an experience that like you described to make it an equitable experience so that people in the remote situation have almost their own show that we can add other elements to it. Because it’s been a real challenge I think, as an industry, for us to have meaningful engagement through conference experiences because we’ve often turned them into 7-hour webinars. Which it’s tough, like good golly, 1-hour webinar is enough to put anybody into a nap mode. So it’s been tough to maintain meaningful engagement and meaningful collaboration as well. So that will be one thing. Danny, I’d love to get your experience, like looking back over the last little while, how have you and the team stayed really collaborative with both customer and just general industry peers?
Well, one of the things that we have certainly gone deep on is online meetings, virtual meetings. Starting out, I told everyone I want your video cameras on because I want it to be like we’re in the office together and seeing one another. And what you learn over time is you mentioned something very important. Everyone is different. Some people like being together. Some people don’t like being together. That’s true. Not just across the industry, but within a company and within teams. We have people who are more comfortable than others being together. And you need to or I would argue you need to. Some people say you want to. I say you need to accommodate for that. That’s why the hybrid is so important. But to share with you one of the learnings that I learned, we switched to video meetings all day long. I sat in front of this webcam, and this is what we did for 8 hours a day or I did for 8 hours a day. But even that, I learned over the past two years, sometimes that is exhausting for people. And so I actually change the models. If I do one-on-one meetings for example, I still have the camera on. But if I’m doing a one to many meetings, I don’t require cameras to be on.
And what you find is everyone is different. Everyone adapts a little bit differently. And the important thing is to seek to understand the person on the other side of 100 milliseconds of latency and help them to be the most productive that they can possibly be. And so whether it be meetings within Veeam or industry conferences, I do believe that this is the shift, the 2020 shift that happened. And as we go forward over the next decade and decades, I think the norm will be this hybrid experience that does its best to accommodate individuals where they are.
And it speaks to the power of empathy. Right. We’ve kind of over injected that phrase into, you know, it’s like customer centric. People say it a lot. And it looks great on a brochure or, you know, a header on a web page. But it’s activity and action that prove empathy in real life. And actually seeing it in motion the way you just talked about it is important because we’re now seeing the return to work and return to office wave and you can see that it’s having a pretty significant impact on people’s sense of what the current culture and future culture they want out of their organizations is. Both as the organization leaders as well as the broad base of employees. They don’t want to say rank and file, but especially you think if you’ve got a thousand people that are normally coming to an office and then out of those pretty significant numbers are going to say that, yeah, we’re good back here. I’m just going to be at home. You call me when you need me. But it’s a real shift, which is, I mean, it’s exciting to see us navigate it and I think we’ll get to something unique and new, but I think it’ll become as normal as normal can be described these days.
Yeah. If you think about the generations that have come out of college in the last two years, this is all they’ve ever known. They have learned to be productive in this world. And so if we don’t seek to accommodate that and empathize with that, then we won’t have a bridge or a place to start. One of the interesting things that has occurred for me in the last little bit as we started to go back to in-person meetings, they don’t tend to be in an office. It tends to be at a coffee shop or at a restaurant. And even when I have team meetings now, I don’t look to sit around a table and hammer out our strategy for the next year. Typically my team meetings are let’s get together and have a meal and establish that relationship. But we don’t focus on the tactical things. So it really has changed every organization is my belief.
And let’s just hope we all take the good lessons and the tough lessons and merge those together into new ways of doing great things together. Because it’s a very empowering thing when you can now enable remote workforce and embrace it because look, we remember how many companies have I worked for and talked to over the years that just said straight up like no, we can’t support a remote experience for our employees. It would impact the business too much. Now we didn’t have a choice and, good golly, we’d have all in the world traded the reason for the result. But now that we’ve had to live through it because of lack of choice. Now all of a sudden when choice is brought upon us, we’re like, oh wait, we do have choice and we can tackle it a different way.
Yeah, and I would push back on the, it hasn’t been successful because, well, if you take when the pandemic first hit and people started working from home, we had over 30 releases of products within the first year. I would argue that our research and development at Veeam and I know this isn’t Veeam, but we were even more productive when employees were working at home. The cadence and of the product releases that were coming out was incredible. And I do think the key to all of this is data, which ironically, of course is what would be protects because organizations will be able to go back and look at that data and examine how people operated and what made the most productive. And so I think we’re going to find those nuggets of information within the data that we’re creating or have created over the last two years that will help all of us within the industry to evolve and increase our productivity.
I think it brings up a good, I’ll say a parallel topic on the new way of doing business. And I see you’ve got a cast and logo on and looking at the evolution of application architectures, the evolution of the way that we run businesses and build IT services and applications now, obviously now it’s been a while since cast and been integrated through acquisition so, congratulations again on that continued success and seeing the growth there. But early on, we got a lot of I’ll say “we” as an industry, there was a lot of push back on data protection doesn’t belong in containerized micro services architectures because the thrust behind the architecture is that it’s completely immutable. But it was really like saying security doesn’t belong because you could just destroy it and rebuild it again and it would be secure when you rebuilt it. You’re like, no, that’s not how it works actually. And we have data persistence, we have legacy. So Danny, I’d love to hear about now, especially that you’re further in, what is the impact of new application architectures and now seeing where data predictions being recognized as critical function.
Yeah. Well, two things I would point out. I’m a big believer in containers as the future of architecture and we see this just from results. I mean, we had 900% growth with our Kasten K10 products last year and that’s because containers are taking off. No question about it. There’s not a lot of migrations, I’ll say, from traditional applications to the new container-based application, but all the greenfield opportunities, every organization that I’m talking to is building on containers and they’re doing that for all of the benefits that container based architectures give, which is elasticity and portability and it’s more modern, it’s more resilient. All of those benefits come into play. So all the greenfield opportunities are going in that direction. But the other interesting thing that I’ve seen, and this connects with the data. When containers first came out, everyone said I’ll put all my stateless workloads in there and I’ll connect it up to some stateful location. Stipulate for a moment that that is true, you still need to protect the container architecture because the configuration at any given point matters when it’s talking to that data warehouse or data repository, whatever that happens to be.
And we’ve seen multiple kinds of repositories. We see structured data, we see a lot of unstructured data, we see message queues, we see object storage, lots of stateful data that is offline, I’ll say, from the containers. But the most fascinating part of this journey to me is in the last 12 months-18 months, we’ve actually beginning to see more stateful data pools end up in the containers themselves. People are saying I’m not going to run RDS over here on the side, I’m going to take PostgreSQL and put it inside the containers. And I expect that to continue as well. So people who say it’s for that stateless environment doesn’t need protection. I’d say wrong in both cases, you still need to protect it if it’s stateless. But we’re seeing more stateful environments too.
Yeah. This is the intellectual view of it is that, persistent data and especially distributed data architectures inside a container is an anti-pattern, and we’ve long held on to this. So the researchers in the industry have said that the architecture is not designed for it because in fact it’s designed against it. However in practice, we know it’s going on and then if it works in practice, at some point you have to say, it’s like the old picture of UI versus UX, this 90 degree sidewalk and then the dog path that goes 45 degrees across it on the grass. If eventually enough people are doing the thing that’s the anti-pattern, it’s no longer the anti-pattern. Right. If every hipster wears a Monocle and rides a unicycle, then they’re no longer unique.
Right. Do you write code, Eric?
Enough to consider myself happy. I don’t do it full time, yeah.
So the reason I ask is because I write code. I try not to, I’ll be honest, but sometimes I just can’t help myself. There’s a problem I need to solve, and I often will put my structured database in containers. And the reason I do that, it’s so simple. I have a container infrastructure. I don’t have to call up a DBA and say, hey, can you carve me out a piece that needs to look like this and perform like this? I just spin up the database inside the container because it takes me 2 seconds to do and it’s completely ephemeral. I use it, I might destroy it afterwards. I might not. But the simplicity drives me as a developer to want to do it and like you say, I think that anti-pattern is becoming the pattern for the norm within the industry now.
There’s that interesting thing that is, we see adoption and adaptation, and those are two very important distinctions that just like when we saw I often talk about private cloud. Like, here we are. I’ve been a private cloud advocate since I was on the customer side of the world building private cloud architectures, doing bizarre things like getting OpenStack fronting of VMware environment when they weren’t really meant to play together at the time. And successfully deployed a private cloud architecture for self service for my development team. Well, here we are. Now it’s ten years later, twelve years later, and we’re finally arriving at private cloud democratization. And it’s really neat to see. And same thing as what was told to me at that time was like, well, why would you put a different front-end on a legacy back-end? Well, that’s because it’s solution oriented, right. My solution was I needed a developer self service front-end, and I wasn’t going to re-architect my applications and my virtual machines to run on OpenStack and with a different hypervisor. So I made something work that some people think wasn’t really a slick idea. But here we are, same thing. It’s like many years later. Well, what do you think that all these products are? It is merging of traditional architectures with fresh, new, available technologies to solve an actual bloody problem. Which is really what we’re here for, right?
Yeah. It is definitely about solving the problem. We tend to think of it, or at least and I’ll criticize myself in this. We tend to think of it from an IT perspective of I’m here to protect the data or I’m here to make sure that the data is secure. That’s not the motivation at all. The motivation is that the company makes money and we deliver a service that makes people more productive. And recognizing that and fitting in within that pattern is far more important than saying “thou shaltl not put state in containers or thou shall not do this”. And if we facilitate the business because it is about the business, then we will ultimately be successful. My only hope is as we go forward, we don’t forget the lessons that we’ve learned. And we often do that over and over. You know, we learned about the secure development lifecycle. We learned about the essential need to protect traditional physical systems. When we went to the virtual world, we forgot about it for a period of time. Then we brought it in a broken way. And as we go forward to not just containers, but serverless and Lambda-based architectures, we can’t afford to lose the learnings that we’ve learned over the last 50 years.
Yeah. And I often find, especially if you get into very developer centric technologies, that they have their sense of understanding of protection and mitigation. And we’ve talked about you know, as an industry, DevOps was meant to sort of release the reins of the BOFH, right? The old school operator, that’s just getting the way of innovation. But it didn’t take away the need for the practices that still happen on the offside. It just meant that the deployments and the life cycles moved into this more fluid cross team method. And I was using things like get ups and using ways in which that we could have lifecycle management, version control. But version control is not data protection. It’s point in time state capturing. But what’s protecting that? Every once in a while you meet somebody, you grab them by the caller and say, well, what’s protecting your version control? And they’re like, oh, yeah, I never thought about that. And like, well, I’m sure someone has got it on their laptop. That’s not data protection. That’s luck.
We can’t depend on luck, clearly as a strategy. But you find people that say, just use the infrastructure as a model of data protection. Snapshots are backup. And same thing. You see that in Kubernetes, too. People say, well, just take a snapshot of the data at any given point and you have data protection. But unless you think of it, backup is more than that. Thinking about the system in the context of that application or service, which is far more complex than a single VM or a single database or a single snapshot on a storage array. What are all the components that have to come together to recreate the environment at any given time? Because that’s really what the business needs when it’s going to recover. And we see this more than ever now, these massive ransomware attacks that are hitting us, they’re not just hitting a single database or a single component. It’s the whole thing that goes down. And all of a sudden you need to bring up something that is not just multiple terabytes. I mean, approaching petabytes. Sometimes these systems that have to come back online at scale quickly to what it looked like at a given point in time, that’s never just a single system. It’s a very complex array of environment that you have to bring back.
Yeah, this is the challenge. I did disaster recovery and business continuity for a long time, and it taught me this idea of system level thinking in that protecting the data was only as good as the matching protection of the application code, because I’m protecting my application code every 48 hours or every 24 hours, but my data is being snapshotted every seven days. Or maybe it’s completely other side where it’s like I’m getting data protection every 2 hours or every 15 minutes really, like near real time stuff. But none of the other adjacent protected systems align with those schedules. Well, how do you recover the whole system? And it’s this complex symphony of scheduling. And that’s why system-level protection now is finally sort of hitting us. That as much as we like the idea of decentralized IT. The applications are system central and it’s a very tough mindset for people to adapt. They kind of think of it as like, oh yeah, we’re a distributed team, so all we have to worry about is our stuff. You’re like, well, there’s somebody out there who has to know all of the stuff and protect all the stuff and be able to actively recover all the stuff. And I think that backing it up is one thing, but actually recovering it in practice is where the rubber hits the road.
Yeah. There’s two folks on my team that are far smarter than I will ever be, who always say ransomware is a disaster. Melissa Palmer and Jason Buffington, they all repeat that all the time. If you’re looking for the silver lining in ransomware and some of the cyber threats that we’re facing now, it’s causing people to think more in terms of the system than in terms of a VM gets deleted or an array goes down or a computing server goes down because you do need to think of it in terms of the holistic system to bring it back. So if you’re looking for silver lining and ransomware, people are thinking more about business continuity and environments where we mentioned Kubernetes earlier, you can have a multi-cluster environment that spread not only across multiple clouds, but you can have clusters that are on premises, too, on Tanzu or Rancher or OpenShift. In these complex environments, you want to bring it back to the point that it was when it was targeted by a malicious attack or whatever happened.
Yeah. It’s exciting to see the work being able to be done now in these like, they’re multi-disciplinary Ops teams now. And we’ve gone away from like, yeah, VMware was the sort of Ops-centric and Ops-focused community for a long time. And now we used to sort of poke fun at HyperV, but if they’ve got a pretty broad adoption public cloud. And what’s happened now is that same 12-year VMware V expert is now AWS certified and learning Kubernetes because we have to. The industry shifting on our behalf whether we want it to or not. And with that, they have to adopt new practices, bring over the lessons of the previous generation, but also not just try and shove those on top of new technologies. So how have you found the sort of human understanding of adopting protection practices across shifting infrastructure patterns?
I guess one of the things that I’ve seen to be very successful and you see this in verticals more than anything else. Financial services certainly come into play here. Technology comes into play. Those who take the approach of my development teams are going to focus on the creativity side of it. So it’s true that they shift left and there’s DevOps and they’re going to agile and new models of development even within Veeam, for example, Kasten K10 team, they drop code every two weeks, we have a new release of our product. So you want to allow the freedom of that creativity to shift left, move faster, deliver code, be more responsive in the service delivery. But the companies that have truly been successful have not told that team, hey, you’re now responsible for performance and backup and security and all the things monitoring and all of that. What they’ve done is they’ve created a team, I suppose the evolution of the IT team, but Platform Ops is what I call it. There’s a team that enables them to turn those capabilities on for the creativity teams while they’re going through their process and not be a burden. Don’t slow them down, don’t go back to the old waterfall way of doing it. So the most successful companies are companies that still have two different teams, the DevOps people shifting left and being faster. But they still have a team that thinks about the architecture and resiliency and building in the properties that we’ve learned over the last few decades.
Yeah. And I guess it’s the thing, if you look at standing up an RDS database does not relieve the need for a DBA. It just changes the way in which they apply their practice. So the act of getting access to the resources is significantly faster. But the requirement for true design still exists. And so that’s another example of that sort of merger. And it’s funny, but we’re also sticky humans, right? We really kind of resist change, but I think once changes around us long enough, we get better at it. I’ve definitely seen even my own adoption of new things. My habit was always like, okay, stand up a VM, run a local instance, build my Ruby on Rails app, deploy my SQL. And also I’m like, let me learn PostgreSQL. So I learned Postgres. It’s better performance, easier to get at. And then also like, okay, let me containerize my application and like, pushing away the crutch of like, I’ve already got a template that I can spin up really fast with Vagrant, and I could be up and running in no time. Like, no, no, I’m going to take a week and I’m going to do it in a new way. And then at that point, I’m like, okay, I want to do it again, but faster. But it’s hard for me to necessitate it for myself. I think that’s on the human interaction side, Danny, how have you found the love of learning of these new technologies? Because people have finally accepted like, that’s it I have no choice now, but they are enjoying the transition.
Yeah, I am by nature, myself personally, just very curious people. How person, how can I do things easier, faster? I mean, I remember the transition you spoke of standing up databases and then making that easier and easier. I remember going to the Lamp appliances because how easy it was to deliver a Lamp appliance and turn things on and now it’s a home command to do the same thing. And so I’m always looking for those opportunities to make it easier for myself. Selfishly. But then to communicate that with other people. That’s why I think containers present such an interesting opportunity, because we can make it easier for the industry. And so it’s not about the technology for the technology’s sake is my own thought on this. It’s how can I make the life of people around me easier? And this is true of everything. I mean, we used to grow all our food in the backyard. Actually, there might be a little bit of going back to that, but now we go to a grocery store, right? We move generate our own energy. We don’t do that anymore. And so on a personal level, I just find it exciting to learn about what the future is bringing and then share it with customers and partners and everyone, because that’s what gets me out of bed in the morning. So it makes me excited.
Yeah. I always say, like I love organic food, or as my grandparents used to call it, food. Never had to go out of your way to certify it as organic. There was just no choice. That’s just how it came.
Yes. But on a personal note, as you denoted, I am by nature a curious person. And then the extension of that is I’m an excitable person because I see the benefits in the new ways of doing that. And frankly, that’s a big role of what my job is here at Veeam is to communicate externally where the industry is going and making things easier for everyone. Making it easier for that DBA who had to spend half of his day doing pointless, repetitive tasks that really provided no value. Can we eliminate those things and let him focus on the things that makes him great at his job?
Yeah. And I think, to me really, that’s where, maybe it’s just because I’m at this point in my career, I’m far more excited by that outcome. Like watching somebody’s life gets better because of a new process they take on, and especially bringing new generations, people who’ve been exposed to technology so early in their life, but then bring use cases to it where they can make a career out of it. That’s what makes me tick now, because I realize, like, I could learn it and I enjoy the process of learning. But there’s nothing more beautiful to me than empowering somebody else to find their journey and help them along it. It’s just something that maybe it’s because I’m an older fellow now. That’s the thing that makes me smile a lot more than just me learning Kubernetes.
No, it’s the same for myself as well. I have six children and thankfully a number of them, I shouldn’t say thankfully. Thankfully, they all follow their passions, but some of them are very computer centric. But I don’t take them back to what I learned in COBOL, and mainframes, and Banyan VINES network. I mean, I want them to focus on the now and the possible of the future. And so, languages for example, my son started learning programming languages. I didn’t start them back on Basic. I said, no, you should start with Go and modern languages and figuring out how to use existing frameworks, don’t go back to assembly. And so I am excited that a lot of the things that we had to figure out are just inherent properties now of the platforms that the future will use.
Yes. It is amazing when you can unlock that with your kids where they can, you can give them that option now that we didn’t have. Like, I remember when I was a kid, like my dad brought home, he bought Sinclair ZX-1000s. And these were like little tiny black things, and they actually had an integrated keyboard. So it was like pressing on a calculator button kind of thing. And it was a 16K expander in the back. Clearly dating myself here when I came up in technology. But just like I have a picture of me as a kid, like just sitting there with this little tiny tube TV plugged into my ZX-81 and my ZX-1000. My sister Ad and mucking around with basic because that was all it was there at the time. And then now to be able to have kids use Scratch as a programming language or use very visual programming languages and no code stuff. And they’re learning process thinking and system thinking so much earlier, I think, or the opportunities there more so, which is exciting. So that when they get to the point where they take it on as a career, they’ve had much more exposure versus, like, we had to grind it out and just say you could do stuff that you didn’t necessarily know you could do and just hope you could pull it off. And now they’ve got opportunity there.
Yeah. And the no code, low code, Scratch type models. The benefit, of course, is that the line of business can focus on delivering what they’re trying to deliver. Because really, do you want your value to be on writing if-then-else statements? Probably not. You want to focus on what it is you’re actually bringing out to market. Now there’s going to be some people that need to focus on the core fundamentals. The challenge that I see, of course, is that the stock is getting so much more complex. It used to be that you could get a Full Stack developer who understood everything from the top to the bottom. These days, in modern infrastructure, there’s not many people. I confess I’m not one of them that can fully understand everything from the top to the bottom the way there used to be 20 years ago.
The sort of mythic Full Stack developer, because I’d say the phrase came because it meant you could write PHP and do MySQL queries like, that was pretty full back. And now it’s like the work that goes on in Visual and just JavaScript frameworks, you can’t sneeze without hitting the JavaScript framework and eleven of its neighbors. But every single one I want to learn, I kind of get overwhelmed because look and say, oh, I should learn Angular and so perfect. Let me stand up something in Angular and then it says, oh, you also need React and then this framework and then you need a package manager. And then I’m eleven products deep and I still don’t know what Angular is versus like, I just do Ruby on Rails. It’s one of my favorite frameworks. It’s just like it’s a beautiful DSL. I know enough Ruby to be dangerous. Stand it up really quick, set up the back end. Understand enough about choosing my JavaScript front end. You know, use something simple like Tailwind or whatever. And that’s enough of my full stack. But true like end-to-end full stack engineers, it’s a tough thing to find. They’re very unicorn-like.
That is true. And even more so with modern platforms that exist today. And truly, can you have a full Stack developer if you’re writing using Lambda functions where you don’t even see or know what is writing on the back end? Probably not. You’re only getting a stub to an API that does something for you. But that’s not to say it’s a bad thing. I go back to the exciting thing about the industry right now is, data is driving all the value within organizations. That’s even more true, I would argue, after the last two years, because we couldn’t be together in person, we didn’t have physical value to drive in the same way. And so data became even more valuable if it was possible. And so protecting that, enabling that, facilitating that, managing the life cycle of that. It just it’s what makes things so exciting for where we are right now in history.
And as we move to ephemeral and immutable being standardized as patterns of infrastructure and application deployment, I’m glad to see that protection, at least at some layers. We hear about the shift left idea of introducing security and protection. Well, like I said, ransomware is a disaster. If we think about disaster recovery and business continuity, ransomware, security, these are vulnerabilities. These are risk components to an organization. I’m in the risk business. I love mitigating risk. It’s probably one of the weirdest things to say you’re in love with, but understanding where the edges are and then mitigating for the edges and then finding that edge. It’s effectively theory of constraints in the risk world. So as you see, chief risk officers and chief data officers, they’re introduced in security and data protection in their mandates now for the organization. Right. So what are you seeing as an evolution on the executive team’s understanding of the impact of protection?
Well, we’re certainly seeing the emergence of chief data officers and risk officers, because there is a balance there and an anti-pattern between two things that you just mentioned, Ephemeral and Immutable. Both things are needed. Sometimes you want to keep things for a little bit of time, sometimes you want them for a lot of time. We just did a study on ransomware, we’re actually releasing it at VeeamON around ransomware specifically, and 94% of attacks now are going after backup repositories because it is the last line of defense they want to delete that, right. And so Immutability becomes really critical. But I think what we’re seeing is kind of two things at a board level. One is how do we balance things being Ephemeral that we use them only for when we need them and keep the things that we actually need to keep. And then for the things that we need to keep, how do we manage the privacy of that? We focused on security now for 20, 30, 40 years. Privacy is coming to the forefront of executive senior leadership teams or board teams. In fact, there was a recent framework just released between Europe and the US around privacy and exchanging of data.
And I’m excited for that because, frankly, there’s been a hodgepodge of different regulations. There’s GDPR and CCPA, and we’re going to see more of those. And that fragmentation kills organizations. So two things that I would say we’re seeing within the enterprises. One is the policies that enable the balancing between Ephemeral and Immutable. And secondly is, okay, now that we have the data that is Immutable that we do need to keep for whatever period of time that is, how do we delegate down access to users if they own the data, that they can control it, and they have some say in the data that we’re collecting about them?
I think we’re probably at the verge, if not already happening, of what we saw with Sarbanes Oxley. Right. So when SOX compliance came in, and I remember being in the financial services and the insurance organization, and we talked about the implementation, and it’s a fairly loose framework. It’s loose and tight at the same time. Very specific, but also general in its specificity, like a typical lawyers speak.
Yes.
But what was important about the actual implementation was it meant the executive team and the board actually signed a declaration that they hold personal responsibility for maintaining compliance. So you are very personally vested in the success of a program wrapped around compliance in that. And I think we’re going to see that in the data Privacy Arena soon that we are I mean, we already are to a degree, but I think we will see a much more formal standard where you will have officers signing a declaration and saying that we hold this to be true, and I’m to be held responsible if it’s not true.
And that’s a good thing for the industry, of course, because as the saying goes, if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product, which means that organizations are collecting more and more data. And we want to give people the ability to control what is held about them by organizations. So I am grateful and thankful for the elevation of the criticality of this topic. And while SOX was both loose and tight – Serbanes Oxley, I believe, that same model would be very appropriate for data retention as well. Because I have six children. Do I want an organization that I am not paying money to start collecting data about them, their birthdays and their health information and shopping habits and whatever it is that they do? No. I want some degree of control over what is permissible and what is not permissible.
When it comes to then designing protection systems. Now, this is interesting when you think about like right to be forgotten and this is why I’d love to sort of hear your view on the approaching it systematically across the whole environment now. Because as the right to be forgotten and the right to be protected are now system wide. The interlinking and using sort of centralized platforms is much more critical now. Right. It’s no longer I’m going to protect my VMware with this, I’m going to protect my containerized stuff with this. I’m going to protect my cloud with this. The system level understanding for data awareness and traceability now is critical because you have to be able to get rid of it systematically on demand, but also be able to recall it systematically on demand. It’s a really complex challenge.
It is. And it’s one that Veeam has been very focused on from the very beginning. If you go back a decade, people don’t realize this often about us. But if you take security for example, before we get to privacy, we were leading the industry in a lot of the capabilities now that people just take for granted. Immutability for example, or tagging data. The first step of the NIST cybersecurity framework is identify your data. Right. And that capability we have carried forward from security to Privacy. So with GDPR, we would tag data that this data belongs in Germany, can’t leave Germany. This data is in the US, it can’t be recovered elsewhere. And so those concepts of securing the data, identifying, classifying the data, knowing who can have access to it, where it’s allowed to be spun up is something that we’ve built into the platform from the very beginning. We’ve been very thoughtful and intentional about. Now, I know the latest hot topics are zero trust this and whatever the buzzwords are around those things. But we’ve been building this into our platform for the last decade, and it’s why we have such a large customer base and so many passionate customers coming to our conferences.
I always tell people that I’m a firm believer in zero trust security and that I have zero trust in your security. The thing that I had to learn through business continuity was both the systematic level of managing business continuity and data protection and application protection, as well as the human element. Because this was an interesting thing that we saw play out because it was active in a huge multi-million dollar program. And I covered, distributed my 1200 servers that I had to do protection for. And this is everything, every organic service that was everything that was oxygen from up like DNS and active directory like the order of recovery. I had to have this all done at a systematic layer. Like, can I recover it as much without human touch. But also then, understand the availability of humans for it. And we’d often like, I feel bad in hindsight, right? You get a little bit gallows humor, but say, okay, so imagine the data center blows up. So it’s just a big smoking hole, right? You start to create these images and then somebody from human resources, can we please not say that? That’s really not appropriate.
I’m like, oh, yeah, sorry. But imagine we lose access to the building. So we had to understand the availability of human elements because if, let’s just say we lose access to the entire environment or a major attack occurs or a power outage, you also have to weigh out availability of human resources like actual people. And so when we again thinking system approach, how have you seen the change in automating recovery and adoption of more automation in these protection systems?
It’s exploded in the last few years, Eric. And the reason I say this, we have a product orchestrator that does exactly this, that stands out in the industry because it orchestrates complex environments. What I say by that, I mean by that is anyone can spin up a few VMs or any good backup vendor. Of course, that does back up can recover a few VMs. But what they can’t necessarily do is I need to spin up 46 VMs in this specific order, create some VLANs. I need you to move this from here to there. I need you to change DNS. That is a very complex, orchestrated workflow that I argue that organizations will need to do, whether it be for natural disasters, whether it be cyber events, because you’re going to have to prove to your cyber insurance company or to your board of directors that you can actually recover. And the events of the last four months have highlighted this more than anything. We had a development team in Ukraine, for example. So you can imagine the types of things that we had to think about at a people level because your systems can go offline. But what happens if your people are no longer available to work on a project? So automation not just of the technology stacks but of the people involved becomes absolutely critical.
Yeah, this is the and it’s automation by people. So we’re taking people processes and automating it. Not eliminating the need for them but ultimately freeing them from those extreme situations where you need it. Because that’s exactly it. Right. These are complex, multi-tiered, multi-faceted systems. And it’s just not feasible that you would have somebody who’s got anecdotal tribal knowledge to do recovery. Not at any decent scale. It’s tough. And that’s why I’ve always liked that your approach through Veeam has always been like the core out versus a lot of folks that have kind of like, folks that focus purely on disaster recovery. But then they had to build data protection and then try to build continuous data protection. But it was never their focus. It’s much easier to go this sort of Spider diagram outwards to like if this is your core and you always go back to the core while adding containerized complex recovery in a second environment. We already have all the images, we have all these, all the data. We’ve got a second cloud. It speaks Kubernetes, do it. Right. That if you didn’t have the core nailed down, you’re writing the whole system top down, which is a horrifying way to build a company.
Yeah, you’re speaking my language now because the core of what Veeam has always focused on is – protect the data and recover it as fast as humanly possible. Right. That is the essential core of what Veeam does. And we’ve done that for virtual systems. But over time, we expand that into physical and into cloud and into SaaS and into containers and all of these different models to protect and recover that data. But you don’t stop it at protecting and recovering the data. You want to orchestrate complex workflows and migration and copies of data for other people. And what really gets me excited, and I think that Veeam is positioned better than anyone else in the industry. Of course, I’m biased. I work for Veeam, but we own all of the data. You know, an interesting thing, Eric, people come to us and say, I want you to tell me where I have malware in my environment, where I’ve ran somewhere. And I think, why would you do that on a secondary system? Like, why don’t you do that out at the edge in your IDs or your IPS or your firewall? Why? If you’re discovering it in the backup, it means you’re already too late.
But here’s the interesting thing. It’s because we have every piece of data that they have in their entire estate, whether it’s in the cloud, on premises, I shouldn’t say “or”, it’s “and”, right? In the cloud and on premises and in SaaS, we have the best data warehouse lake pool that is possible to have. And from that, you can of course protect it and recover it. But you can also begin to use that data for new and interesting things. And that’s what’s really interesting. If you own all of the data that you generated in the last two years during COVID, where are you going to go to to find out, how do I make my company more productive? What are employees actually doing? You’re going to go to the person who houses all of that information, which is a man, you’re going to spin up copies, and you’re going to begin applying TensorFlow and machine learning techniques and artificial intelligence to make the business smarter about all of the data that it already has.
Yeah, it’s an interesting thing. Right. Like you said there’s at Ingress and Egress. Right. So that’s where IPS ID systems come into play. But any true sort of CISO worth their salt will tell you assume you’ve been compromised. And how do you do that? Right. Well, it’s going to be data at rest or data in flight during process -internal processing. So assuming that you’re not going to it’s already in here, and it could have come in by a USB stick or by a laptop that accidentally plugged into a Starbucks and connected to a WiFi pineapple instead of an actual WiFi. Right. Then it goes in and it bypasses ideas, IPS, and it gets backed up. And that data now is in some beautiful static Immutable repository. You can do all sorts of exciting intelligence on it at that point. But again, to the core story being first, do that fantastically. So, you know, that’s what you can do things on top of versus go figure out how to build a machine learning company to go through data. But like, what data you’re going to go through? There’s all sorts of assumptions where you’ve eliminated the assumptions because we own the data.
The edge should be informed by the core, right? You don’t want your Tesla, self-driving Tesla, going down the road figuring out what a stop sign is. That’s already been figured out in the cloud and has been instructions have been given to your self driving vehicle. This is when you stop. This is when you go. And so it’s not that IDs and IPS and data loss prevention systems and all of these security tools are going to go away. It simply means that they’re going to be informed and configured by the Core where you have all of your data. And so if you know what all of your data looks like, you know what’s in there, what’s normal. You can begin to do the heuristics and anomaly detection that actually does the configuration because you don’t want humans doing that if you can avoid it. You don’t want a human programming the Tesla and what a stop sign is. The Core is telling the Edge how to configure itself. And so in my mind, all of those platforms become more critical, but they’re configured by the central repository of your data, which VeeamOn is all of that.
Yeah. And again, it’s that thing that assume you’ve been compromised has to be the default state of any offset system security person. Because even if you’ve got incredible endpoint protection and DLP, all it takes is for you to be one signature late. And I’ve seen this in practice where you start to get weird errors. Like, you know what? We’re getting a weird error. The signatures aren’t updating. Tell you what, just hit OK on the error message. It’s all good. 4 hours later, found out that we’ve been ravaged by a system which was ultimately trying to become a botnet. And then seeing all this stuff, which is doing all this phone home stuff. So all of those edge systems are coming into play. So what do you do? Well, we shut down the edge, we literally closed the door. Well, now what do you do? How do you find where the data lives? How do you go back to the most recent immutable backups and ultimately find the origin, build the heuristic and enable the end point? It’s an orchestration of all these incredibly complex systems. But again, if you don’t have safe origin, immutable source, everything is a variable and you cannot, it’s the traveling salesman machine learning problem. It’s impossible to solve, but yet we get stuck on like, oh yeah, just put up better firewalls.
Yeah, it’s owning the data, managing the data, tearing that data. In my mind, it’s what gets me out of bed in the morning. And frankly, a lot of that comes from our customer base too. It’s not just Veeam engineering and isolation. We’re constantly talking to partners and analysts in our customer base. And we have an unfair advantage because of the size of who we are, perhaps. But I think the best is still out in front of us.
Unearned advantage, I would call it. Because it’s proof in staying a core mission, delivering a product and a method by which people can adopt it that it’d be successful. Right. The stuff doesn’t happen by accident, for sure. And we know we’ve all every company will. There are things you never want to be in the news, and certainly a victim of ransomware. It’s like my only goal in life is to never be referred to as embattled. I don’t even know what it actually means, but it seems like when you get that tag, it’s a problem. And these affect shareholder value when somebody gets affected by ransomware. So we have a vested interest in succeeding in adapting the ways in which we can do it because the systems are changing.
And the mindset there should be, we should just assume that we are going to be compromised by ransomware. Then what? Now, clearly we don’t want to be. In that study that we just did recently, 76% of organizations had at least one ransomware event in the last year. And I would argue that probably the other 24% may not be aware that they had a ransomware in the last year. But you should start from that as the starting point. Okay, what is our plan if we get hit by ransomware? Do we start at the firewalls, at the edge, at the core? And I’m not here to dictate you, do this or do that, but you should start with the plan of managing your data and operations and business continuity from the expectation of we’ve been compromised. Now what?
Yeah, I always as a track cyclist, we have a famous saying we have there are two kinds of track cyclists, those who’ve crashed and those who are about to. And that’s exactly it. Right. 76% say they acknowledge they’ve been hit by it and the other 24% are just closing their eyes and hoping that it’s not true. So that’s it – “assume compromise, now what?” And build system to be prepared for it. And it’s good. So I’m excited. I’m going to be watching a lot of the content for VeeamON. What are the big ticket items that people can be watching for as far as, like, cool sessions and stuff that’s happening on the ground at the event?
So the core is as many organizations right now are very much highlighting security and our security capabilities that we’ve been developing over the last weekend. So you’ll see, in the technology sessions, we go deep on security and hybrid cloud and multi-cloud and containers. But if you’re really interested in the sessions, everyone loves our flagship product, Veeam backup and replication. We’re going to be giving a sneak peek at version twelve of that.
In that long already, it’s amazing to see the growth in the product. And then the version numbers are indicating how long we’ve been at this.
A very significant footprint. I mean, we have over a million installations, real installations out in the wild now of the flagship product. But then everyone is really interested to hear and see what we’re doing on our cloud products. We have a cloud-native product for AWS, Azure, and GCP, and we have new releases of all of those coming this quarter. So as you might imagine, there’s some really good sessions on that. And then you started by asking how we were doing during the Pandemic. We’re communicating via teams. Everyone is. So our Veeam backup for Microsoft 365 product. Very excited about that. We’re going to be demonstrating that on main stage and what we’ve done to reduce costs and make it more self-sufficient for users to go in and recover their own data. And the one that I am personally most passionate about probably is our orchestrator product. We talked earlier about a systems mentality. We’re going to be talking about recovering from ransomware. So taking that security concept and applying it from an orchestration point of view to bring organizations back in line. So we’re going to be breaking news on coming features within product, but also focusing heavily on security and hybrid cloud incoming products.
Amazing. Yeah. As a long-time person trying to hack together systems to do what orchestrators are able to do, it’s amazing to see every time I would think of like, you know, what I would have needed to do and see it show up in there. And the fact that it’s being created as a framework, more so than a pure core product that people are sort of writing SDKs against. I like that it’s flexible in the capabilities. And then we’re going to see, thank goodness for API bi-directional API access to so many things now that it’s very easy to trigger really clean workflows and you don’t have to depend on you building it as a Veeam core function. But now I have the ability to adapt my own systems, add my own chat Ops, add my own external integrations. Super cool. So framework for the Win as far as I’m concerned.
Well, it’s easier for those people who haven’t registered and are listening to this. You’re going to see on main stage and the technology keynote using APIs to do something really interesting. So an API, we discovered some ransomware. What can we do? So that’s a teaser for people. But yes, API is for the Win. We have a very modular framework, of course, that connects together so that you can start with whatever component you need, but you can expand beyond that across your organization to do all the things that your organization needs to do.
I like that. And I can’t remember if I told this to me before, Dave Mcjanett, also a fellow Canadian CEO of Hashy Corp. And I talked with Dave at one point about you’ve got this beautiful, sort of like multilayered set of frameworks that can tie together beautifully, and it truly is a platform. And he’s like, if you squint hard enough, it’s a platform. But we truly treat it as a framework more than a platform, because platform indicates that you require interdependencies, and that’s actually not the case. Their frameworks with layers. So happens they sell you a thing at each layer, but you don’t need to be using that thing at that layer. So that’s why the flexibility of this framework approach in where Veeam core platform still exists. But then having framework extensions, that is a fantastic approach for as a consumer, it means that I’ve got flexibility. And flexibility is something I’m willing to pay for, for sure.
Yeah. My single controversial statement would be, I don’t like platforms. Single glass of pane. Single pane is a single glass of pane. Because the release of that is painful. Right. If you can create a framework with small modular components that are right sized for the environment and there’s a framework for communication, that’s a far more effective solution, I would argue, for every organization, from the smallest all the way up to the largest. And it’s actually why we have the same product. I installed the product in my basement. I have six use of compute. I know most people may not have racks in their basement, but I do. But that is the same software that actually protects our largest service providers with hundreds of thousands of machines or the largest financial institutions with hundreds of thousands of machines and petabytes of data. Same software because it’s a modular framework.
Yeah, I can say that truly. People often ask like you know, you talk a lot about beaming. And obviously, I’ve known you and the team for a long time, and they actually do support the podcast and my blog as well and have been fantastic partners on that side. But I legitimately use it. I actually took a Synology that I loaded up with all of my podcast episodes. So this is the trust. And I just like, unplugged all the drives one by one. And I was like, oh, boy, how this works. Go to the second Synology and all right, start the restore process. And as if by bloody magic, there was all my data. And so the proof is in the pudding at that level to use it and succeed so easily. And then knowing at the enterprise layer. Yeah. The scale that MSP stuff that you’re targeting is incredible.
Yeah, it really is. People don’t realize what a significant part of the business that is for Veeam. We’re the largest as a service provider in the world. And I think I can say that backup as a service provider in the world. I think I can say that based on data, because if you look at the accounts of VMs and users protected from Microsoft 365, we’re in the millions. We’re not small. We’re going to be sharing more numbers of this at VeeamON. But we have a massive business. We drive definitively if you do the mathematical analysis on this, Veeam drives over a billion dollars of revenue in the same as a service space. Forget about the direct to customer sales. These are now cloud service providers delivering services out to market. We drive over a billion dollars of sales in that.
And it’s amazing. They said, well, people may look and it’s so funny, too, because, you know, the logo and we sort of have like, oh, yeah, I remember it’s like, even when I remember doing disaster recovery, my favorite thing is I built the first VMware environment in one organization and then we did disaster recovery on it. And people were like, this is fantastic, right? And so we were using Veeam and very early adopter of Veeam. And it was funny because then all of a sudden it was like five years later. And people just said like, oh, how long will it take us to recover? How many servers do we have? What about 30? I’m like, we have 480 servers now. The last time you counted, apparently was the first time I showed you at work. But to see that growth and the platform adopt and the company grow. And like I said, cast and doing some huge growth numbers. So, yeah, I’ll be watching for sure from afar. Unfortunately, I can’t make it to Vegas, but I look forward to good luck. Have a great trip. Enjoy the event. And for folks that wanted to connect to you, Danny, and find out more about what you and the team are doing. What’s the best way they can do that?
Well, Veeam.com is always the best place for information on Veeam. I’m happy to connect with anyone on LinkedIn or Twitter. On LinkedIn, I’m Danny Allan. @dannyallan and then on Twitter, @dannyallan5 is my handle. I’m semi-active. Not as active probably as you, Eric, but I always enjoy meeting new people so please reach out.
And I imagine you’ll be not watching Twitter for the next week except for seeing your notifications light up and grow because people will be announcing lots of stuff and live-tweeting everything so it’s going to be a great event. There you go, folks. Go check it out. Links down below of course. What’s happening and yeah, excited. So we’ll catch up after. I would love to hear. I’m going to pour over the announcements and watch sort of the analyst view of it and I’m excited on your behalf of what’s coming up.
Excellent. Well, thank you, Eric. I appreciate this time to chat about it and look forward to everyone being able to join us either in person or virtually.
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Congratulations on the release, Michelle! Big thanks for letting me be a part of amplifying this book which I LOVE LOVE LOVE and highly recommend you get. Drop me a comment with to let me know you picked it up. ONLY 2.99$ for the entire month of MAY so don’t miss out! Seriously, just get the book. It’s fantastic.
Heck, drop a reply and if you’re in the US or Canada I’ll help a bunch of folks to pick up a copy before the price goes up.
Welcome everybody to the show. My name is Eric Wright. This is the DiscoPosse Podcast where we are bringing on a return guest, somebody who I really enjoyed having a conversation with the first time, which is why I was honored to be able to help Michelle Seiler-Tucker. We talked about her book “Exit Rich” that she co authored. It’s an amazing book. I’ve read it. We talk about the 6P framework in her original episodes. Go on, make sure you check out her original show. But to top this off, we’re talking today about lessons learned since the release of the book and an amazing announcement that the audiobook is now available.
So you can follow the links below. Get the audiobook because right now it’s on sale for $299. This is a really really amazing deal. Literally like less than a cup of coffee. Why in goodness name would you not get this book? It’s well read. I love the folks that they had, actually did the reading and just the content of the book is fantastic. So Michelle Seiler-Tucker, thank you very much for letting me be a part of helping with the amplification for the launch. And this is why great people support great things and I love supporting Michelle and all the work that she’s done. Speaking of support, of course, I want to give a shout-out to the folks that support this podcast that make it happen. If you have data anywhere in your world, which you do, I know you do, especially any of the systems you’ve got in your organization, you need to make sure that you protect your data, protect your business, protect yourself, protect everything. So everything you need for your data protection needs can be shopped out by the fine folks over at Veeam Software.
It’s also Veeam-On coming up next week. If you’re listening live and this is a really great time, everybody’s going back in person. So go head on over to vee.am/discoposse. You can see all that they’ve got to offer. I recommend it. I’m a user of the platform myself. Very cool. And also, we are super proud to continue to grow our partnership with the friends over at the Shift Group. So, JR at the Shift Group, if you caught his episode which you absolutely should, this week’s episode is brought to you by the team at Shift Group. They are turning athletes into sales professionals. So if your company is looking to hire driven and competitive former athletes, or considering how do you architect to go to market that can scale efficiently and effectively? Shift Groups not only offering a huge pool of really cool, diverse sales candidates from entry-level leadership, but they’re helping early stage startups to develop a hiring strategy, the whole interview process, and really building sales culture that’s going to scale with you and build high talent, early-stage companies. So head on over to shiftgroup.io and you can check it out. All right. With that, this is Michelle Seiler-Tucker. Get yourself the book. Click the link. Seriously, leave right now. Pause. Go over and download the book, it’s fantastic. Thank you very much.
All right, Michelle Seiler-Tucker, thank you very much. This is a rare treat to have somebody come back. I don’t often get the chance to spend more time, especially with somebody as amazing as you, because I know you are busy in day to day. Plus, we’re here for a special occasion right now. We talked in the past about “Exit Rich”. We talked in the past about your entire story, your business, your own way of helping people to get to success, both personal and professional. But we’re here today because we’ve got something new in the Exit Rich world. So Michelle, if you want to re-introduce yourself to folks that are brand new to you, and we’re going to talk about the new launch of the audiobook and everything wrapped around it.
Absolutely. Well, first of all, Eric, thank you for having me back on. I appreciate it. I am Michelle Seiler-Tucker. I was on your show, I think it was six months ago. I’m Michelle Seiler-Tucker, mergers and acquisitions master, intermediary senior business analyst, certified mergers and acquisitions professional, and a bunch of other acronyms behind my name. I’ve been in this industry a little over 20 years. I think what really makes me neat in M&A is I own other companies. So I’ve always been an entrepreneur. I’ve always sat on the other side of the desk. I’ve always had to be the one to make sure I meet payroll, pay the bills, et cetera. So a lot of my advisers, brokers, have not necessarily owned businesses before. And I think that helps me to be able to relate with my clients and really be empathetic and understand what they’re going through. So at any given time, I own several different companies. I’m also building to sell. Like I said, I’ve been in this industry for a little over 20 years. I personally have sold over 500 companies. My firms has sold probably even more than that.
And we really specialize in not just selling companies, Eric, but we specialize in buying companies, selling businesses, helping buyers buy the business of their dreams. We specialize in fixing and growing a business because Steve Forbes, who endorse “Exit Rich” says 80% of businesses on the market will never sell. 80% – I mean, that should be a big wake up call for business owners because that means you have less than a 20% chance of success when you go to sell your company. And so what I learned a long time ago is if I don’t get in and roll up my sleeves and help fix these companies, help position them and help them build the infrastructure on what we talked about last time, which are the 6P’s, then their business is not going to sell. So like I said, we don’t just specialize in selling. We specialize in fixing these businesses, growing these businesses. So the owner really has a sustainable business that’s scalable. And when they’re ready, sellable.
When this is very important too, Michelle. We often forget about the numbers. And in fact, you are one of my most quotable episodes because in the industry, we’re constantly thrust with this number where people say like 99% of startups fail. And I continue to go back to remind them, watch the episode with Michelle Seiler-Tucker where she talks about how that’s actually inverted. Right. The upside-down numbers that we get from the SBA. And now that 80% that you and Steve talked about there of businesses that are sitting unsold. That is an interesting stat. But if you don’t mind, let’s recap on sort of the failure in this metric that we talk about that small businesses are failing.
Yeah. So small businesses are failing. And to go back over those matrix, I was actually quite shocked myself because when I wrote my very first book, “Sell Your Business For More Than It’s Worth” in 2013, I did the research back then and learned that 90-95% of businesses were going out of businesses were startups. So that is true. However, what’s changed so dramatically is when I did the research for “Exit Rich” in 2019 and 2020, I learned that the business landscape has really flip-flopped. So now it’s not startups a great risk anymore. Startups only have less than a 30% chance of going out of business. A 30%. So they have a 70% success rate. But, what’s so mind-boggling is when you look at America and you look at what the economy is really built-on, there’s 3.2 million businesses in the United States employed over half the US workforce. Over half the US workforce. Think about that.
Wow.
So small business is really supporting the economy, the American economy. If we lose small business, we lose jobs. What happens when you lose jobs? We lose spending power. And then what happens? It’s a trickle down effect. We stopped going to restaurants. We stopped buying ice cream. We stopped doing a spinning discretionary money because we don’t have it anymore. So now you have a triple down effect where more businesses will close. So 30.2 million businesses now, out of 27.6 million companies in the United States, those businesses have been in business for ten years or longer. 70% of those companies are going out of business. 70%. See how it flip-flops. So now startups have a 70% success rate, whereas startups, existing businesses have a 70% failure rate. Pretty scary. And you hear about the big companies all the time in the media like, the media will talk about public companies, Toys R Us – in business 75 years ago, goes out of business. Montgomery Ward, Sears, J.C. Penney’s, Pier1 – I love Pier1!
Right. Crate and Barrel, a recent one as well. Lord &Taylor, lots of the big retail players.
Yeah, but the media doesn’t talk about the private companies. They only talk about the public businesses. On the private side, we got businesses on every street corner and every city and every straight across our great nation. These businesses are dropping like flies. They’re selling from – they’re actually poor, not rich. They’re selling for pennies on the dollar, closing the companies or even worse, filing bankruptcy. And so it’s really scary. And by the way, Eric, that was before the pandemic. I hate to see my numbers now, but that was before the pandemic. And I always say the number one reason for that, why it’s kind of flipflop is because startups are really a different breed now. It used to be the dreamer mentality. People would leave their corporate jobs and say, oh, I always wanted to own a coffee shop. I always wanted to own a restaurant or a clothing store. But they don’t have the business experience. They’re probably not really an entrepreneur, you know, they’re really probably not an entrepreneur. And they have that build-it-and-they-will-come mentality like “Field of Dreams”. Remember the movie “Field of Dreams”, build it and they will come? Now, a lot of those startups go out of business because they’re brick and mortar.
Plus, the business owner is not really an entrepreneur. They didn’t do their due diligence. They didn’t study their area and run demographics. And most businesses fell in those first one to five years because they simply run out of money. They run out of working capital. The startups now are younger generations and they are forward thinkers. They’re problem solvers. They’re solution-oriented. So they’re not just building another coffee shop. We don’t need another coffee shop or another restaurant. So they’re looking around and saying, well, what’s the problem? What’s the solution? How can I fix this problem? Right? And so you have a lot more tech businesses. You have a lot more e-commerce businesses. You have a lot more businesses that are started by, like I said, newer generations. But also, people got laid off from their job during this pandemic. And a lot of people are going – wait, what can I do to start my own business and really make a difference in the world? Now, on the flip side of that, for existing businesses, existing businesses are going out of business because of what I call lack of AIM. Aim is “Always Innovate and Market”. So business owners become complacent. You know that. I mean, look at Toys R US. They didn’t do anything different in 75 years. Look at Blockbuster. Blockbuster had the opportunity to pick up Netflix, to buy Netflix. They sat back to nothing and are out of business. So this is going to become complacent. They also, really they’re in love with their original baby, with their original concept, their original idea. And they don’t like change. And that’s a big problem because you’re either growing or dying. There is no in-between, which is why I always tell business owners, you got to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. And so that’s the big reason that so many business owners are going out of business because they stop innovating. Here’s the bottom line. The marketplace has changed dramatically. The way consumers purchase products and services is completely different than the way they used to place them or buy them. And you can pick Amazon for that, you can pick the Pandemic for that. But you really got to innovate, and you really got to look at your industry and you got to ask your client, what do you want? What do you want to experience when you do business with us? What can we do to make your experience more pleasant? What can we do to make it easier for you to do business with us? And you got to innovate. You’re either innovating or like I said, you’re dying.
It is interesting that when we look at – especially the historical changes and then the tightening up of that type of thing, I mean, the pandemic obviously reshaped everything, and it made a huge opportunity for a lot of businesses. There are small environmental changes that can ravage a business. I remember I lived in Vancouver, British Columbia, at the time when the Olympics were coming. And so they said, well, we’re going to build a subway from the airport to the city to make it easier for the Olympics. So it seems like a fantastic idea to build the economy. What do they do? They tunneled underneath the main roads, and in order to do so, of course, you block off the road because you can’t be driving while they’re tunneling. Well, that took 14 months and literally destroyed every business on that road because they were all traditional little tiny met restaurants with local businesses and no parking other than two spots in front. And I think to myself like good galley in that kind of a snap, that stuff can occur over snap, a snap decision that has a 24 month effect, whatever over. It took a few years for it to really finally pay out.
But their inability to go into a new area of the market to attend to a new customer, to figure out a way to get out of that thing, that single event ultimately wiped out. And we see that often, right? And it’s not just whether it’s going towards exit ultimately, but just going towards sustainability if a single market change can fundamentally affect. You taught me this lesson, and I hold it, it’s in my heart every day. And I think this because we talked about this idea of solopreneurs and the risk that people think that they’re in business when they’re a solopreneur. And you taught me these words, if you stop working and the business stops working, you are not in business.
You have a qualified job that you got to work with me versus the business that works for you.
And it reminded me and everything I do I have that in my mind. I’m like, what would Michelle tell me to do to automate this? Make it repeatable, make it scalable, offload it, whatever I can do, not just outsource. Also, another lesson you taught me, just outsourcing it, putting it on Upwork or Fiverr is not actually running a business because you’re not building a team. You’re not building a scalable system. These lessons stuck, Michelle. And I thank you for that.
Glad I can make a difference.
So let’s talk about the book, because not only did I enjoy it thoroughly and I’ve read it and it’s marked up and highlighted and bookmarked all over the place. But I’m not the only consumer. Lots of folks taking the stand. Let’s talk about how the book has been doing.
Well, the book has been doing great. I think I was under show in January and you know, look, like you said, something can happen and completely stop us dead in our tracks. And actually wrote “Exit Rich” in 2019 and we were supposed to publish in 2020. And then this pandemic happened. So we ended up publishing June of 2021. Now is on the show, I believe, in January. So the book is really great. It’s a Wall Street journalist bestseller, not in New York Times, but it will be.
We’ll get it there.
So Wall Street Journal, USA Today bestseller, and it’s in the Hudson bookstores and 99 different Hudson bookstores all around the United States. We’re getting boring recommendations. What I really love and what I guess really inspires me to continue to write and continue to educate is when I get letters from entrepreneurs that have been in business for decades. And we had a media company that emailed us and said, look, Michelle, your book changed my life. That’s what changed my life. I’ve been in business 20 years. I thought I was doing everything right. I read your book and realized I was doing everything wrong. I basically took your book step by step, broken out to different divisions in my company and told them follow this book to a T for everything that she says. And he says it’s really changing his business dramatically. It’s going to come to us in about two to three years to sell. And then we had another owner entrepreneur in Texas. It’s a pharmaceutical company. And he actually bought the book before the booking and launched. So we emailed him the digital version. He printed it out in ledger paper and highlighted everything, gave it to different teams, his teams, and said, listen, do everything she says, on the people, on the product, on the processes, on the proprietary.
And he came to me to sell this business, and we’re going to be selling it for the $25 to $50 million range. And so I love getting those letters. I love getting those calls because it means I’m making a difference. And that’s what inspires me. That’s where my true passion is – is to really help entrepreneurs, really help business owners be able to save that business and be able to not become a statistic of the 80% of the statistics don’t sell, but become in a 20% to where you can sell for premium for maximum value and exit rich. That’s really what my passion is. It breaks my heart when I see baby boomers, their heart, their energy, made huge sacrifices along the way. These baby boomers are actually poor. Many of them are losing not just their business assets, losing their family assets, too, because they take out a mortgage against their family home. And that breaks my heart. I really want entrepreneurs to be able to really retire for their desired sales price and exit rich so they can finally sit back and enjoy the fruits of their labor, because as entrepreneurs, they make huge sacrifices. We go into this and we’re going to have better quality of life.
We’re going to have more time, we have more money. Well, guess what? We don’t always have that right. I talked to a business owner who’s in business for six years. He said, Michelle, I miss every one of my kids soccer games. I miss my girl’s plays. I miss pretty much everything in life. My life just passed me by while I was working in my business. While I was working in my job.
Yeah.
Versus my business working for me.
I still remember years ago working in retail, and there was a fellow who had a restaurant inside a mall. So in Toronto, Ontario, was living in Canada at the time, very busy mall. And millions of people come through here and traffic every day because it’s a subway stop and there’s lots of office towers nearby. And so it was like a falafel restaurant in the food court. And he was doing an incredible amount of business. But it wasn’t enough that he had real margins. And what ended up happening was he ended up after a few years of working there, selling the business to go back to work for a restaurant, because in the end, his direct money he was making to take home to his family was less than he could make in an hourly rate. But he was working open to close every day.
Yeah, that’s sad. That stories are prevalent and it’s very sad. So it’s always been my mission. So they help entrepreneurs build a business, not a job, and really build people, because you don’t build a business. You build people and people build a business.
That’s why I really enjoyed the book, not just in the processes and lessons that it teaches which are real, tangible things you can do that work. I know this. I literally am living the experiences of doing it. So I’m not like I said, I chose my guest. And it was a blessing to know that I was going to get to spend time with you to thank you for this, Michelle, because on top of that, there’s additional stuff that comes from the book you’re able to get in. You’ve got lots of online community. You’ve got great folks that you can get connected with and learn lessons beyond what’s written in the book. But now let’s talk about what’s coming up, because not only is the book printing and doing well on that side, but you’ve got an audiobook coming out as well.
We do. And the main reason for that is because everybody’s asking me, Michelle, I have the printed version but I want the audio so I can listen you know during my commute to and from my company or wherever they’re traveling. So we did come out with the audio version just a little bit more on Exit Rich. Exit Rich again, is endorsed by Steve Forbes. My co-author is Sharon Lechter who wrote “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” with Robert Kiyosaki. Kevin Harrington is the Ford. And Kevin Harrington was the original shark of Shark Tank in the United States. I think in Canada you all have Lionston, I think it’s called. Yeah. Anyway, so Exit Rich, I just want to be crystal clear. Exit Rich is not just about selling the business, because in most cases, you don’t have a business to sell. Exit Rich is all about, number one, figuring out what do you want, what do you want? What is your end game? Like Steven Covey always says, start with the end in mind. Exit Rich is all about planning your GPS exit model, planning your exit from the beginning, and really determining what is your destination. What do you want to sell your business for?
You can’t wake up one day and say, I want to sell my business for $20 million when you haven’t grown a $20-million company. So you really have to plan it in the beginning and say, I want to sell for $29, and then you have to build that $20 million company. You need to know who are the buyers, what’s their buying criteria, where do your numbers need to land? So you need to know all of that. And you also have to go through what I call the “Seller Sanity check” to really check yourself to see what’s the most important thing to you. Is it what you walk away with. Sometimes it is, sometimes it’s not. Is it making sure your place is taken care of? Is it to make sure that your clients are in good hands. Is it making sure that the new order is going to grow your legacy. So you really have to go through that seller sanity check. And then one of the most important lessons of Exit Rich is to build that solid infrastructure, because it’s the infrastructure of the people, the product, the processes, the proprietary assets, the patrons – diverse client base, the profits.
Those 6P’s is what will maximize value. Those 6P’s is what we’re taking it from a three multiple to five, to six, to eight to ten. And then it’s all about how do you package your business for sale. And then so the first half is getting it ready to actually build a sustainable, scalable business. The second half is all about selling your business. So it’s almost two books in one. And so we all come out with the audio version in May. Go get it today. You can go get it right now. You can get it in apple – I believe it’s in Apple, Barnes & Noble and Kobo. So Kobo, Barnes & Noble and Apple – $2.99 which is less than a cup of coffee, less than a quarter pound of cheese meal at McDonald’s. So with $2.99, you can get the audiobook After May, it’s going to go back to its original price, which is going to be $24.99 I believe.
Right.
And so with that $2.99, you also become what Eric was talking about – an “Exit Rich” club member. So you get access to documents. Documents to operate your business. Like sample employee handbooks, non-competes, policy and procedure manuals to sell your business. Sample prospectuses – what they should look like. Sample letters of intent, due diligence checklist, closing documents. All the stuff you need to operate your company and sell your business are there for your download and your use. And guess what, Eric? These documents cost me over $50,000 to create, and you can get them for the $2.99.
That’s amazing.
Yeah. So it’s amazing value and go out and get your copy today. Again, that was Barnes & Noble, Apple or Kobo. And it will be worth every single penny. I know Eric read the book so he can attest to that.
I stand 100% behind. I bought it for full price. It’s funny. I think even your production crew were like, hey, let us know if you need a copy of the book. I said, oh, too late. I knew I could ask, but I also knew I was willing to pay for it. So I wanted to make sure people know that me endorsing this book is 100% because I believe in the book. And like I said, I’m using it in lessons that I’m doing to build things that not even looking at a near term exit right now, but to build sustainable processes and a sustainable business, because that’s just healthy for me. Right. I know what my intent is in growing what I do. And like you said, you set that. What is your expectation, what is your goal? And then how do we build processes to make that business achieve that goal? I can tell you on that side of the lesson. I haven’t gotten to the exit yet. But like I said, we’ll talk in a couple of years when I’m a Michelle Seiler-Tucker, you’re selling my business. We’ll do business together that way, too.
And, you know, I think you just hit the nail on the head, too, because you might say, well, I never want to sell my business. That’s okay. First of all, I never say we’re number one, because you never know what life has in store for us. And number two, even if you go and sell your business, at least you’re building a valuable asset. At least you’re building a sustainable business that can run without you. So you truly do have financial freedom. So you truly do have a better quality of life and you’re in charge of your own destiny and your ability in a business that you can scale. And if the situation ever occurs that you do have to sell, you’ll have a valuable asset. I get calls all the time, Eric, from spouses, where they say, like, a lady called me from Dallas, her husband dropped out of a heart attack at the age of 45, left her with a pile of debt and asked me if I could sell her business. Well, guess what? He didn’t have a business. He had a job. He had a construction company. He didn’t have any employees. He had all subcontractors. He didn’t have any processes, no possible procedure manuals. Everything was in his head. So when the business owner died, he died. So the most important thing here is set your family up for success. We never know what’s in store for us. So we want to make sure that we’re taking almost valuable asset, which is our business, and we want to make sure we’re setting it up for success. So if anything does happen, God forbid, our family will be taken care of.
Yeah. And even as a successful transfer, why wouldn’t somebody want to pass it on to their kids and give that option? Right. People often just think exit means sale, but exit is bringing the business to a new stage and you yourself are exiting. But it’s only good if you can pass that on to somebody else and they can continue to grow it and know how to operate it. Definitely feel and for $2.99, it’s a crime not to get this. There is nothing that is worth more than the time you invest in reading this book, for sure. So I know I will be an early listener and a repeat listener because it’s also not like a read and walk away situation. It does play out like a manual that you want to revisit and recheck. It’s very well written in that way. You and Sharon work together and created a great book.
Well, and that’s why we came out with the audio version, because like I said in the beginning, so many of our readers are saying, look, do you also have the audio version? Because we want to listen in the car, not just read it. So go out there and get both. But if you don’t get anything, get the audio version. Make sure you get that audio version and you’ll love it. It also comes with all the supplements. So like all the glass and charge and things like that that we have in the book, the surveys, all of that will also come with audio version.
That’s always the funny thing when I talk to people and they’re like, how can you listen to a business book? Because it has lots like charts and such. I’m like, well, because they come with a PDF, you can get all those assets, which is great. Now as 2022 kind of a wild time. We’ve got inflation, we’ve got a lot of things going on. But Michelle, what’s the positive outlook? What can people look to do in a good way to embrace sort of current market conditions?
I mean, like I’ve always said, innovate, take a survey of your clients, of your market share. Really survey your clients because so many business owners really lose that perspective. Why are you in business? You’re in business to serve your clients, right? Without clients, without users. If you’re a tech business, if you’re a SaaS business, you got to have users. If you don’t have any users, you don’t have any business, right? So really take stock of your clients, of your market share and actually go back to your clients. A lot of times we think we know what we want our clients to experience, but you really need to go ask your clients. Mcdonald’s did this back in 1940s when they created the fast-food McDonald’s chain and they created a fast-food system. They asked clients because they did surveys and they asked themselves, what do we want our clients to experience? Three things. We want them to get hot food. It’s great-tasting, 30 seconds or less. Come up with the three things you want your clients’ experience, but really look at the markets. Look at what’s happening. Make sure that you research and not just learn from your industry, but learn from other industries as well.
Look at some of the leaders and what they’re doing. Like, look at Amazon. I mean, Amazon is a great company to learn from. So is Disney. So is the Ritz Carlton. There’s so many different, so is Apple. So many different companies to really learn from, because you can take some of the things that they’re doing and adapt it to your industry. But innovation is the name of survival. Innovation is survival right now. With inflation and everything else and the cost of just doing business and retaining employees and everything, you just got to get really creative. You got to throw the box away. You got to do things different than you’ve ever done it before. And if you can’t really see clearly because you’re so in it and sometimes we’re in our pocket foggy, sometimes you’re so close to it, you really can’t see it. Like I always say, it’s hard to read the label. It’s hard to read the label from the inside of the bottle. You need an outsider’s perspective to read the warning sign to keep you out of the danger zone. So if you can’t really see what you need to do differently and innovate, get a mentor. Get somebody who’s been down the road you want to travel. Learn from other people’s mistakes. You don’t have to learn from your own all the time. Get somebody out there to see something that you can’t see yourself. I mean, that’s what I’m really good at. I’m really good at looking at other businesses and asking the question, what business are you in? What’s your superpower? What business should you be in? And those are very important questions to ask ourselves right now. Amazon did that back in the 80s. They asked themselves, what business are we in? We’re in the fulfillment business. What’s our superpower? Fulfillment! What business should we be in? Fulfillment for everybody. But it’s true, right? Same thing with McDonald’s. What business are we in? Everybody says they’re in the restaurant business. No, they’re not. They’re in the real estate business. Mcdonald’s are huge because of Ray Kroc’s starting McDonald’s Corporate Realty, gave him leverage over the McDonald brothers. It is the reason why McDonald’s is the largest real estate holding company in the world. But guess what, Ray Kroc didn’t come up with that on his own. As an outsider, go watch a movie – The founder, that was an outsider looking in on Ray’s conversation when he was trying to borrow more money after being overlapped. So a lot of times, it takes an outsider’s perspective to help us see things more clearly and help us really be able to innovate. But you can’t do the things the way you’ve always done them. The world is changing so quickly. Consumer’s buying habits have changed dramatically. Number one because of Amazon and number two because of this pandemic. And you really got to look at all that and eyes wide open. And don’t do business the same way you’ve always been doing it because you’re going to lose market share and end up going out of business.
Yeah. And if anything, like you said, the lessons are out there to be had. And founders, builders, operators, they love to share lessons because it’s as important for them to talk through what they’re doing. It actually is a great validation. I forget what the process is. Something like, see, say, do teach that’s the way that they do medical school. Right. You watch it, you learn about it, then you explain what it is because by having to explain it, you’re rationalizing it while you’re explaining it. Then you do it and then you teach it. And that cycle flow, there are lots of people who are at that teach phase. If you’re a gamer, it’s like a cheat code for business. Like, why would you just wait to turn a hard lesson on yourself when you can find somebody else that maybe has already had that lesson learned and impart that on them.
Right. But before you get that mentor, we are going to make mistakes along the way. I was just talking to a roofing company. And they’ve done really well in three years. Victor’s EBITDA is earning some franchise taxes. Depreciation is around 2-3 million. In three years, it’s pretty good. And they’re like, Michelle, we made every stake in the book. We made it. And I said, did you get a mentor? And I said, no, I wish we would have. Three years ago. They said, but we felt forward. We keep selling forward. We keep learning from our mistakes. And you know what? If you don’t quit, you didn’t tell.
Absolutely. Yeah.
But they were cracking me up because they’re like, well, nobody can make as many mistakes as we have made. And you know, what they also did is they didn’t just learn from their industry, their roofers. They went and learned from the funding trade, from the logical trade, from the HVAC trade, from all other different service trades instead of just learning from their own industry. And then they figured it out. And then they became marketing geniuses. And it really blew up their business in pretty much a year and a half. So half of the time they made all the mistakes. The second half they go on their business exponentially. But go out there and get that mentor. And that’s what I’m talking to them about. I’m like, okay, I’m going to start a company, but then I want you to go help others. I want you to go help others forward and have them learn from the mistakes that you’ve made in the past so they’re not having to make the same mistakes. I mean, we can all learn from each other. We can all help each other better ourselves.
That’s it. And like you said, it’s how you react to it that will change the outcome, right? There are lots of mistakes that are made, and there are lessons learned from them, and it’s what you do beyond it. There’s a great I think it’s like an Instagram sort of meme or video. And this guy just started talking the back almost like a preacher. And he says, practice, practice, practice. Like he’s talking to crowd. He goes, practice makes what? And you hear the whole crowd go perfect. He goes, Absolutely not. Get that mindset out of your brain. He says, practice makes better. Better means more practice. That’s really how we have to think. Like, you do it and you will make mistakes and you will survive them and you will learn from them, hopefully.
I tell my daughter the same thing. My daughter’s in gymnastics and the apparatus she struggles with the most is the balance beam – she’s great on everything else. This is her first year in competing and she hates practicing the balance. And like, you have to practice, practice will make you I never say perfect. I say practice will make you better. It’ll make you fall less. It will make you fall less. It’ll make you get a little bit higher score. And I had an interesting gentleman on my podcast the other day, Peter Taunton, who was founder of Snap Fitness, he says 10% is what happens to you and 90% is how you react to it.
Oh, yeah.
10% is what happens to you and 90% is how you react to it.
Yeah. There is very much that mindset. And that’s really why mentoring is important, because even the strongest founder’s mind and the perseverance you got, you can still get stuck sometimes and you can still get hung up or feel like you don’t have a path. And going to the community and finding folks that are, like you said, even better sometimes to leave your industry and look outside because a lot of those practices transcend the industry. And in fact, even the best things come. Right. Look at how many companies like you said, McDonald’s, they happen to make burgers. But I remember when McDonald’s and this is back in the 80s, I think, or the 90s, they decided to add pizza to their menu for a very short period of time. Rightly.
I don’t remember that.
Yes. It might have been a Canadian thing. And literally overnight, McDonald’s became the largest pizza restaurant on Earth because they rolled it out to every restaurant across multiple countries. Right. So that scale of business meant like if they are in the scaling business, they were in the logistics business. They were like, that was the thing they were doing. So you can look at that lesson. I don’t want to go to McDonald’s to learn how to cook a burger. I want to go to McDonald’s to learn how to move people in through the restaurant experience.
And how to really create those processes in system to where if you got to, unfortunately, hire someone, McDonald’s get rid of people all the time. People quit all the time. Mcdonald’s can take that SOP checklist and have an employee train within 30 minutes and look at the drive-through or any other position at McDonald’s.
Yes.
So to really learn their systems or processes and how they do things is just amazing because again, it’s all about those processes and it’s all about getting the right people in the right seat to run those processes. Mcdonald’s and Burger King is a great example of that.
There are many things. And even though some people get stuck in the idea that I don’t want to make a checklist out of my vision, well, you’re not. You’re making a checklist out of the operations to achieve your vision and so, don’t ever get lost in the idea of your vision.
What happens to your vision if you don’t have processes. You would never achieve your vision. That’s what happens to so many entrepreneurs, because entrepreneurs are visionaries. I mean, most of them are visionaries. They’re not integrators. Entrepreneurs are like squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel and he’s visionaries. But they need a good integrator. Every entrepreneur has to have a good integrator. An actually fun moment with entrepreneurs is, there’s more entrepreneurs by the neuron integrator? There’s really good integrators. And that’s what every entrepreneur needs is that great integrator to really get their vision onto a policy procedure and they don’t really get their vision into implementing it.
Well, if you want to build for the right outcome, then you got to think like you need to Exit Rich. I can tell you, like I said, so congratulations on the release of the audiobook and for folks that are watching and listening, get on it, $2.99. This is absolutely, I’ll buy a bunch of copies, drop a comment on the YouTube. I will make sure I enrich people with this. And a lot of my friends are getting a copy right now. I can tell you because this is absolutely worth it.
You got to be out of your mind if you don’t get it for $2.99. You must be out of your mind.
It’s always amazing to me when people be like, well, they’ll negotiate by 10, 20, 30, $50,000 on the price of a house. But then it’s like $2.99 for a book that could change the future of my business success. If this is the $2.99 you’re fighting in your head over, then maybe you shouldn’t be in business to start with.
It’s really giving up a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
Absolutely is. So Michelle, thank you.
Coffee is like $5 now at Starbucks.
That’s it. That’s it. 100% ROI, I can guarantee that. Michelle, thank you very much. And of course for folks you can go to exitrichbook.com. That’s where you can find it. I’ll have links for everybody to get to it and look forward to having you on again as we get further into the year and hear about how the uptake has gone and hopefully that inflation. We’re on the right side of inflation and the economic story. It’s going to be an interesting year ahead for sure.
Yeah, I tell you, it is definitely going to be an interesting year.
And Michelle, I guess I should say just in case any other, what is the best way for folks that they did want to get connected with you? Of course we will have your own website also there. But what’s the best way to reach out?
Yeah, so they can reach out at seilertucker.com. If you want to take the 6P quiz to see how you stack up and how you rate, you can go to seilertuckeracademy.com to take that quiz. Follow me on social media – @michelleseilertucker everywhere: Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and then you can also listen to my podcast Extra Rich.
It is fantastic. I was going to say, I also forgot to tell people to go check out the podcast. You got a great array of guests and it’s really well done so I appreciate the listen for sure. Michelle, thank you very much.
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Dr. Andrew White is an experienced programme director, teacher and researcher at the Said Business School at Oxford. Andrew’s areas of expertise include innovation management and leadership development. Andrew is a Senior Fellow in Management Practice, and was previously the Associate Dean of External Relations (2020-2021) and Associate Dean for Executive Education and Corporate Relations (2010-2020) at Saïd Business School.
This was very enjoyable discussion that covers a lot more than just leadership and modernizing business education. Andrew was an absolute pleasure to chat with and shares lots of insights into the leaders of today and research he and his team are coming out with soon.
Welcome everybody to the podcast. My name is Eric Wright and gonna be your host. This is the DiscoPosse Podcast with the one and only Andrew White. Dr. Andrew White is a senior fellow in management practice at the Saïd Business School at Oxford. This was a really enjoyable discussion where we talk about traits of leadership, really the transition from what we often talked about as traditional leadership, the Silicon Valley culture, start up culture in general, and what we can do. We also talk a lot about sustainability, the impact that we can have both personally and organizationally on each other, on the world, literally on the Earth. We cover a lot of very exciting stuff. Super excited because Dr. Andrew and his team are doing a lot of work and research, so we’re going to have him back to talk about what’s going on there. But anyways, I don’t want to pre-podast the podcast because it’s literally just so much fun to listen to. And speaking of making this stuff happen and our impact, I am super happy because I’ve got great supporters who are impacting you and I’m hearing the good news. So I want to give a shout out to the folks over at Veeam who make this podcast happen.
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Hello, my name is Dr. Andrew White. I’m a senior fellow in management practice at Saïd Business School at the university of Oxford. I’m delighted to be here today with Eric Wright, host of the DiscoPosse Podcast. Great to be with you.
Fantastic. Thank you, Dr. White. One of those beautiful occasions where when I see a guest opportunity come up and your practices, your studies and your research are in real alignment with a lot of the work that I’ve been exploring. So I am selfishly going to take a ton of lessons out of our discussion today as well. Luckily, a lot of folks who do listen. So thank you for joining. If folks are brand new to you, Andrew, if you don’t mind, give a quick sort of bio on your background, and we’ll talk about some of the research that you’re working on and really what folks can take away as we think of the future of transformative leadership, which is becoming something we really had to be keenly aware of.
Yes, thank you. And thank you for the opportunity to be here as well. So a little bit about me. I started life as an academic. I did a doctorate in innovation management, really looking at where ideas came from for successful businesses. That was about 20 years ago. I then started my academic career, and very quickly I moved into leadership roles. The biggest of those was I was associate Dean for executive education in the business school I’m currently in at Saïd Business School at the university of Oxford for ten years. And in my capacity there, we worked with thousands of leaders around the world. Every year we launched a big digital platform, but now it’s about 25,000 people training with us or going through leadership programs. And I got to know what was really going on. I didn’t have time to teach. I didn’t have time to research. I sponsored a research project where we interviewed 150 CEOs back in 2015-2016. But then after doing that job for ten years, with all the complexities of running a PNL and the HR stuff and the global business development, I really wanted to get back to teaching and research because I felt there was an agenda I wanted to pursue.
And that agenda, if I put it in simple terms, is what the leaders need to be doing today. What do they need to be addressing? How do they need to be leading? With a particular focus on that, I think the time we’re living in is critical. Between now and 2050, much of the science suggests that we’re either going to be in an existential crisis due to the climate challenge or we’re going to have solved it. And I think when you look back at humanity, we’ve got the creative ability, the entrepreneurial ability to have sold it. So I really wanted to know who are the leaders that are transforming businesses, starting businesses that are really having an impact on what the future looks like for humanity? And what does it mean to be a successful leader today in terms of shareholder returns, in terms of profitable growth? But also, as we both know, more is being asked of leaders. And businesses don’t exist in isolation just with their own competitors. They’re actually part of a group of stakeholders that have or they have a stakeholder base that requires them to think about the impact they have on the world.
So that’s what I’ve done. I’m a host of the Leadership 2050 podcast. I have a Leadership 2050 newsletter on LinkedIn which really focuses on these things. And I’ve begun the research that I wanted to focus on by looking at transformation. And I’m in the midst of a major global study on that at the moment.
Fantastic. Now this is going the interesting thing. I think it was the dichotomy of leadership in that you have both a fiduciary responsibility as well as a very human responsibility in leading people through change. But with the shareholder responsibility to bring growth and returns to the investors and ultimately the responsibility of the business, it is really an interesting challenge where we often see folks that are fantastic on one and struggle on the other, and often why there’s a leadership team. So you have more sort of the COO who will be the driving the functional business growth, and then the CEO is more the vision and leadership. But we’ve always here, or at least because social media brings the noisiest voices forward. We hear about the moment someone is a very strong leader. We immediately try to sort of find something wrong with them in that they’re so disconnected from the average worker within the organization. For me, I look at it with a sadness because we need leaders to be doing something almost like sports years. You never want to meet your sports here because they’re probably not good people to get along with. They have this drive and this different thing that lets them be great at what they do. So when you look at transformational leaders as well, really, what do you see as sort of traits and how we’re viewing those personalities?
I think you’ve got two things going on currently in business. I think on the one hand, you’re right. The world has a challenge in terms of what I would say is the disconnection fixing large companies between the salaries of those people at the top and the salaries at the bottom. And I think that adds to what you were talking about, that sense that they’re not us and they’re different and they live in a different world. And there’s no doubt that that phenomenon is out there. But like many things in the world, I don’t think it’s one or the other, and I don’t think it’s black or white in that sense. What I see is a cadre of leaders who are really, and this is the ones I focus and I study, who are really understanding what it means to put humanity back at the heart of leadership. And I mean that in a number of different ways. Firstly, they understand their role is about fiduciary duty to shareholders and profitable growth and all of these things. But they also know that what they do and the footprint they have and the impact they have is far greater than that.
And I’ll give you a couple of examples. One is a company which I recently profiled called Pave Gen, which is a fantastic company. Full disclosure, I’m an investor in it as well, but they created paving slabs, indoor and outdoor flooring that when you step on it, generates electricity. So in the same way you have solar on the top of a building, and that plugs into the building’s electricity infrastructure. If you’ve got buildings like hospitals or shopping malls where there’s high footfall, they’re even doing it in concerts. I think every time a person takes a step, electricity is generated. Now that has huge potential for shareholder growth, huge potential for profitable growth and all of those things. But actually, if that company does well, it’s harnessing a source of electricity, which is our footsteps, which at the moment is just going to waste. So to me, that’s a great example. And the leaders there have got a real sense of how do you bring people on a journey? There’s something about society and how do you bring people with you on a journey. There’s something about the way they’re leading. The research we’ve done on transformation, that the phrase we’re using is about putting the humans at the center.
And what we’re seeing is these leaders. If I could give you a bit of a picture in your mind, imagine a CEO with one arm, and that arm represents line management, their hierarchy, their It systems, their finance, and all of that stuff. But it’s tied behind their back, and they have to use their other arm and their other arm. The only skills they’ve got is their speech, their ability to listen, their empathy, their concern for people, their ability to draw out of people what their values are. And I think that’s the secret weapon. Most of them know how to do the other stuff, but the ones that can really not just inspire but listen to what people’s concerns are, what their values are in their employee base, but also in their customer base, and weave that into a vision, weave that into a purpose. That’s not some overly simplistic statement, but really, why does this company exist? Who does it exist for? I think these two things of, let’s call it social impact or human impact, and profitable growth and shelter grid, they no longer become two separate things. They’re embodied in a vision. They’re embodied in individuals who are able to do both.
That is interesting. And I’ll say when we hear transformational leadership, there’s an implication that they’re beginning at a place and carrying to a different destination, especially now when we see a startup come up, I almost have to look at it with a grain of salt. This idea that they’ve come from zero to one. So the transformation is in what the platform or the company is achieving. But when you see leaders that especially are in an existing organization, the sort of steering of a cruise ship, there’s a very different challenge I find. And look when we look back on great books that we use today still to study like Built to Last. And then if you look at the story, it’s about most of them actually didn’t last. If you took it outside of the context of the five year research term in which they research the book, most of those businesses actually struggled greatly in the decade that followed have continued, but not with high growth. So when you get to leaders of especially large organizations, Andrew, how does one stay empathetic when there’s such a broad audience to have to listen to?
I think it’s a great question, and I think it’s a question which has been rumbling for decades, if we think of Polaroid and Kodak, of the video rental stores that didn’t make the change, BlackBerry and some of these other companies. So I think what’s changing is that the rate and the impact of disruption is pretty much affecting everybody. So it’s no longer something that comes out of the blue. It’s no longer something that you’re unlucky if you’re experiencing a career, it’s everywhere. But I think you put your finger on the challenge for the incumbents. And I would describe it as this. There is a status quo which is all consuming. If you think about the schedules that most leaders of those businesses have, they’re probably starting at 6-7 AM in the morning. Some of them are going through till very late in the evening, particularly if they’re responsible for global activity and they’re working across multiple time zones. They’re probably back getting on planes with the relentless travel schedule as well. And it’s all consuming. They don’t have the mental space in a sense, they’re addicted to the machine and the machine that demands continual returns, the machine that demands continual effort.
The companies that I have seen that have broken this, they’ve done something that I’m going to describe as a conscious disconnection from the status quo. They’ve had a CEO or another senior leader that has effectively said, we have to take ten days out to think about the future, not two days, not one day, but ten days. And we have to go somewhere. And that is either to look at a set of emerging industries, spending time in nature away from everything to give the human mind and heart and soul chance to refresh and to think differently, building a different group of suppliers around us. But that notion of a conscious disconnection from a status quo I think is such a powerful one for me because it’s like an addiction. There’s an addiction to the returns, there’s an addiction to activity, there’s an addiction to processes where it’s very hard to get space from that. And those that are successful consciously disconnect. And I think in some ways it’s becoming easier because the problem is becoming clearer that if you don’t do that, you’re not fulfilling your responsibilities as a leader and you’re not thinking about the next certainly the next three years, five years, ten years.
So there’s a need to go through some form of conscious process of disconnection and then think about what is the best place for us. And as I say, my recommendation, if I was working with a firm, this is at least five days. And you need to put in place the infrastructure around you that allows you to take that time out and to really spend the time sinking into why we exist separate from our current operation, separate from how we currently work. To think about what the future might look like, to think about what a reinvention might look like and from that place, then go back in and lead in a different way.
This is one of the things that I’ve often promoted, even in my own work and my own teams. This idea of the off site where we have to visually disconnect from your day to day processes because it’s habit forming. Right? We go to the office, we say we’re going to go into the big meeting room. And so what does everyone do? They bring their laptop. They pop their laptop open, you see them looking at their screen and tapping away. So I would say, like, no, here’s what it is. You sit at the table, you’re either in a hotel or somewhere else where it’s quiet or even if it’s in an existing room, you have one person with a laptop. They’re the scribe. They’re on screen so you can’t see them. You make sure they’re not on instant messaging and email. The rest of us, we have pad and paper and really go through that disconnected discussion. And it can’t be a half day. It’s got to be something where you’re taken away because there’s nothing worse than somebody comes up and it’s like, oh, I’m just going to go down and check on something or I’m going to check my email real quickly.
But it’s really a human behavior problem where we feel like we’re missing something. And yet the irony is it’s completely the opposite. You’re right. You are missing something because you’re involved in it every day. You’re missing what you could be doing. And it’s so hard to hammer that into people’s minds that this is how they need to behave.
A couple of points. I think you’re absolutely onto something. I coached an executive once, and they spoke about their iPhone, and they said they had more anxiety putting their iPhone down than they did when they had a baby. And the coaching was about how long can you not go without holding the iPhone? So we started off with a minute. We got to two minutes. We got to ten minutes. We got to walking around the garden without the iPhone and what it felt like because it was an addiction. And I think there’s a whole conversation around social media, which I don’t think is today’s topic. But what I would also say is I’ve run events where we gave people the option of handing over their mobile phone and the mobile phone being locked in a safe for a day. Now you have to put some with executives, you have to put some infrastructure around that. So everyone lets their PA no, there’s somebody outside who has got a phone. They give them the number, and if there’s an emergency, either in the family or in the business, they call that person and we commit, we’ll bring that person out and then they can get access to their device.
What was really interesting, Eric, at the end of the day, we got to like 05:00 A.m.. He said, right, phones back. And a few of them said, no, can you keep them for a few more hours? We just love this time of being able to think and be with ourselves and be with the bigger questions that this company is facing. So could we extend this to 08:00 P.m.? And then we’ll have our phones back. So to me, it was a really interesting it was like taking a toy off a toddler at the beginning. And at the end of it, there was a few people that didn’t want it back because of what it gave back in terms of space and that space to reflect, which I think is so important today.
Yeah. I mean, I often recommend people read Cal Newport has fantastic writing on the idea of the digital minimalism and Deep work is another fantastic book. And it’s funny, when I read Cal Newport, I sort of had this vision of some scholarly 65 year old gentleman. He’s a young guy, he’s probably going to be my cousin. He’s well studied on the idea of this disconnection. But it’s funny that going through that first part of putting it down and you hear people go through like you can see them change when they realize their phone is at their desk and they’re in a meeting room. And I agree with you that when we’re doing it with purpose, we have to know like, hey, I’m going to be offline if you need me. But another thing I do as well with work. I often talk to people at this idea. So if you ask for a week off, the first thing that happens is people say, what’s your project schedule look like? Who else can we get to back you up? We begin to wrap the machine around. Is it possible for you to get away now? It’s a very North American thing, especially as well.
But if you say, I’ve got to go to hospital, I’ve got a family issue immediately. The response from everyone on your team is no problem. Go for it. Let us know anything we can do to help. We’ve got you covered. And I often think about this, why we should be able to have everybody should just have a big red button that they could just say, this is my day, I’m taking the next three days and just, like, hit the button, no one questions it. We had this belief that we need to overly plan escape. And Ironically enough, when you just do it, the machine rolls on. In fact, it gives you freedom of thought. Like when I go for a run, the moment that I can’t look at my phone, especially on a bike, because I have no headphones, I don’t listen to any music. So I’m just out for 5 hours. It’s the most incredibly creative time because you just have nothing to do but be introspective. And when I get back, I’m like typing and scribing and all these fantastic ideas have come because there’s no access to distraction.
Yeah, exactly. And I think you’re making such a good point. So over the lockdown period, the first lockdown period, I got bored. I was literally like an express train that came to a halt at that point. I was probably on a plane two or three times a month, and so I had a lot of pent up energy. I still have the work schedule, but the social life and all the other things that we weren’t able to do at that time. So I trained as a meditation teacher, so I’d meditated on and off for about ten years. And I’d always had a hunch that this has got a real purpose with leaders. And it’s for this exact reason that meditation forces you to just stop, focus on your breathing or any other of the techniques you’re using. And it’s that discipline. And you suddenly realize after a while, when the mind quietens, that you go into a place of stillness. And it’s that stillness that real innovation, I think, can come from real creativity. And it’s another form of that separating from the machine, separating from the busyness, separating from the thinking mind, which I just think there’s so many things in today’s world has just put that on steroids.
Social media being a big one with the like and dislike, which is the same as the Buddhist concept of attraction and being repelled from things. But just bringing awareness to that takes us into a place where we realize that is not me. My thoughts are not me, my work is not me. And that subject object separateness is essentially what I’m talking about when I’m saying a conscious disconnection from the status quo. Our company is not our current way of operating. It’s the current expression, but with something bigger than that. And what are we in service of? To me, these two things started to come into alignment. I’ve not fully finished that journey of exploration of bringing these two worlds together. And there’s others working on this as well. But to me, that’s why I went there during that lockdown period.
When you think of that sort of forced introspection where we had obviously the last two years, even like, people still have trouble at this point remembering when it began. It’s been so long. And I remembered going through an airport in February of ’20. It was the beginning of being concerned that something could be happening, but things weren’t locked down yet. And I remember sitting in this airport looking around, going like, there’s nobody here. I was in Calgary, Alberta, so there’s generally not that many people anyways, but still so vastly different than I’m used to. And like you, I travel a lot as part of my function for work. And I would get I got those creative breaks. I would be – my favorite thing was to be on a plane. I’ve got so many colleagues, and they would say, oh, I really dread airplane WiFi. I said, do you know what’s better than having to worry about your airplane WiFi? Never getting it. You don’t need it. You’re in a bloody plane. Just disconnect. And the moment that I’ve got this white noise around me, I put in noise canceling headphones, and I usually write a blog. I create presentations. I get very creative because, again, there’s zero access to things. It’s that sort of meditative creative state that I get into.
I’ve heard a lot of people say that about planes, by the way, before WiFi on planes, the planes where the planes, the busy executives went to rejuvenate, they had some of their best thinking. They could write. There was just not that interference. Yeah. So I think there was something about that which hopefully we don’t lose with the plane’s WiFi.
But it definitely did change my work patterns and my creative patterns when I had none of that all of a sudden. It took a while. I’d been a remote worker for a long time, and I was used to managing team experience in how I would engage with them. They were all in an office or fairly central, and I was the remote worker. And then all of a sudden, everybody was suddenly remote. And people say like, oh, this must be sort of normal for you because you’re used to being a remote worker. It was normal for me, but it’s not normal for most people because they are now treating remote work and remote leadership like it’s the office. And all of a sudden, I went from 5 hours a week of meetings to 19 hours a week of meetings because there was this culture of presence that was incredible. It’s a very challenging thing. And then the leadership, if they’re used to that culture of presence as part of the leadership, it was very difficult for them to adapt. And this is, again, when I think of the good leaders can be away from the direct experience, but not actually away from it.
Maybe that’s when I think of the large organization leaders that are empathetic, they don’t have to sit beside the worker to understand the challenge of the worker and the needs of the worker and the capabilities of the worker and the pandemic I think highlighted a lot of people who were leaders by time in the company, not by actual capability.
Yeah, there was something about that I’ve seen recently, companies starting to put on LinkedIn. This is a no meeting week. In this week no meetings. Just get on with you. I would love to go in and see a how do they define a meeting? Because in the virtual world, is that anything beyond a one to one or does a one to one include that? But then what work actually fills the gap when you take the meetings out? What happens to the productivity, what happens to the output from people? What happens to the creativity, what happens to the motivation and the energy within people? So the way of tracking that would be super interesting. But I also think I think your point is really interesting that have we just transferred in, going into the lockdown and remote working as it’s now sticking in many places, a culture of meetings into this online world. So people are in just back to back Zoom meetings all day rather than as you’re saying, if you’re working from home, working remotely, you probably need about 5 hours to check in, but the rest of the time you’re working remotely and that’s the job you’ve got to do.
I don’t think we’re at the end of this process of this transformation to come back to our theme in terms of the future of work, we’ve disconnected from the status quo that Toby did that, but we’ve not landed, I think, on what the norms are of when do you go in? When do you not go in? How many meetings a day is optimal, really?
And what people didn’t realize, it’s odd because maybe I just think a little too hard about these things, but they don’t understand that being in a Zoom meeting is cognitively tiring like much more so than being in a room full of people in a meeting. Because I actually studied for a long time the dynamics of physical placement at the table in a meeting room, when you sit up across from somebody, there’s a natural adversarial relationship. When you sit beside somebody, directly beside somebody, there’s a different relationship and how you collaborate versus somebody who’s at the end of the table, but you’re looking down towards them and they need to look. There’s a reason boardroom tables are designed a certain way and that people sit at the head and at the side and at the middle, there’s a very ergonomic pattern to behavior. Well, in Zoom we suddenly are – am I in the middle of the frame? Am I looking at the camera? There are things we never had to think about. I guess I’m technically I’m a broadcaster now, so I’m staring into the lens of a camera because I know I’m supposed to, but often you see me looking down because I want to see nonverbal cues and I enjoy that part of the experience. We don’t get that. Like twisting a pen on the table like little things that you would enjoy. You’d see somebody doing something and you’d say like, oh, that’s neat. Where did you learn to do that? Which would never come in a Zoom meeting. We were missing so much of that non-verbal cue.
I had a couple of funny experiences. One was at the beginning of moving on to Zoom and moving on the lockdown, and I was in conversation with somebody I’d met a few years earlier, and he came on and he said, Are you okay? And I thought he was asking about covid, I said, oh, fine. None of the family is affected. It’s all great. Thank you.
No, no, no. He said, you’ve lost a lot of hair. And I suddenly realized I’m six foot ten tall. Now, I don’t come across a six foot ten. I said, no. I said, I’ve not lost a lot of hair. You just don’t normally see me from this angle. And then I run a leadership program at Oxford, and we’ve had to do the whole front end virtually. So I got to know a group of 43 leaders from around the world all through this medium. And then they turned up in Oxford. And the shock at my height, even though I told them, I said, guys, I told you I was six foot ten coming in. I think because in their mind’s eye, they had this assumption of me as, you know, we’re all normal on this. There’s an equalizing effect. And it took some of them a couple of hours to really just recognize. And it was more than I mean, I often shock people when I stand up, but this was notably more so when they’d got to know me in the Zoom world, and then they’d see me in this other world and then the world of real human interaction.
Yeah. I remember when I first saw one of your Ted talks. And like, even there, there’s no frame of reference because no one knows how tall the stool is. But I could immediately tell them, good golly, this man is a tall gentleman. And it’s funny. That another interesting thing. I’ll say it’s good in a way that we’ve sort of democratized people’s existence in a way that it does take away other things that may detract from it or distract more than detract, I should say. There’s one felt I worked with for months, and it was fantastic gentlemen, we got along great. We did a lot of collaboration together. And then I saw a LinkedIn profile about him, and I talked about him being a military veteran, and I’d known he was a military vet. And then I saw the picture of him standing and he has no legs at mid thigh below. He’d lost both his legs in an explosion and thought like, it’s amazing that I’ve worked with this man for eight months. I had no idea, because even if you stand up on camera, you wouldn’t even get as low to be able to see that.
And it was fascinating to me that there’s no focus on it, and that can be good or bad because there are things that you do want to bring attention to. But it was very interesting that it just sort of we could only focus on what we were working on, and it takes away stuff that may impact your belief in someone’s capabilities.
Yeah, I think there is something in all of this, and I’ve noticed as well that on certainly teaching on Zoom because of the chat function, we get a more diverse set of people asking questions and making points. There’s a bit of a fight with getting hands up, and you need a good person to work through that. But the chat function just broadens out the voices that can come into the conversation. I think particularly for the introverts, in my experience, it’s the extroverts who often dominate when the professor asks, does anyone have any questions? But then you’ve got that space for people who perhaps are not as confident or want to put a more thoughtful question into chat rather than make a more rambling point, if that makes sense.
Yeah. Especially having given a lot of talks myself and doing lecture work at events, it’s always funny when the person that stands out, like the first person that gets up, I’ve got a question for you. What you actually have is a statement, and you’re framing it with a question mark at the end because there’s sort of the overly learned person that wants to make their point. They effectively want to sort of begin this Dodge thrust Parry of like, I could be on stage and I applaud it. I love that people are willing to do that. But then there’s so many people in the room who, as you say, like, they’ve got fantastic insights and questions, but they just don’t want to stand up, they don’t want to look bad, they don’t want to sound bad. But in chat, it’s a beautiful way to democratize access to that intellectual back and forth, which I think is something we’ve really gained and I hope we hold onto.
Yeah. One of the best tools that I found is Mentimeter. And this is within boardrooms. It’s within executive teams. So I’ve got four quite challenging questions that I often use in discussions. One is tell me what you are not talking about, but that you need to talk about. Tell me what you always talk about but never resolve. Tell me what spaces you need to create in this organization to have those conversations and what would be different in, let’s say, one or three years time if those conversations led to the right decisions and the right actions. And what’s interesting is when I ask the first question, tell me what you don’t talk about, that you need to talk about if I’m in an executive team, half of them will look at the floor. They can’t hold my eye contact. The second question, tell me what you always talk about but never resolve. Half of them will laugh because there’s always things that they’re really good questions. So I call them my diagnostic questions. But what I found is they’re even better if you put them on mentee because people can just put stuff up and it’s cathartic, it gets stuff onto the table.
It gets out of the political angst. What are people going to think about me? How this could be Christine as critical of the CEO and all those little questions or points come up on the mentee screen, you can also get people to score stuff. So if I work with an executive team and they come up with a 100 day plan, we meet after 100 days and there were four elements in the plan. I get them to score themselves out of ten on how well they did. And the little bar arrow moves up and the bar moves up and down as the scores come in. And it brings a ruthless and really important honesty which I think is at the heart of some of the transformation we’re talking about. So some of these digital tools which you can now use embedded within a Zoom or alongside a Zoom or Teams meeting can be really powerful. So I think there is something as I say, we’re learning to work in this new digital world.
There’s an interesting that concept is something I’ve embraced and one of the sort of leaders in that very open radical. We talk about radical transparency and such. Ray Dalio, of course, author of the book Principles and Bridgewater Capital and I’ve been lucky to be exposed to their in room experience where they record every meeting. Everything is very open. The downside to radical candor is often people believe it’s a reason to be able to say anything, that maybe some stuff should be not rewarded. I’ll say not unsaid. But I’ve talked to many former Bridgewater employees and they say you find people go from the idea of radical candidate to becoming a radical arsehole because they just freely say things that are negative, not thinking of contextualizing it, which is.
And so therefore it needs the right values around it. It has to be done in a constructive way with the right questions, with the right behaviors for it to work. I think you’re right. All these things can be abused, can’t they?
I love your questions because it is something even when I so one of the environmental impact, right. Sustainability, it drips off the tongues of everybody these days. Right. I sort of joke and say if you want something to be more successful, rub some sustainability on it. Right. Like if it suddenly gets us increased focus as it should because we have an opportunity to continuously change the future with what we do immediately and in the near future. And then we hear people, they say all these organizations have come up with these strategies and promises and 2030 impact statements and all these things they’re doing. And then whenever I talk to an organization or talk to a team, the question that I ask is, what have you done in the past twelve months towards these goals? And it’s amazing to hear, like, everybody’s like, yeah, we’ve got a promise we’re going to be carbon neutral by 2030. We’re changing the way we do business, we’re changing the way we operate infrastructure. Tell me precisely tactical things that you’re doing that are working towards that goal. And as you mentioned before, people are like, there’s a lot of navel gazing and, well, we’re coming up with a plan, but it’s done in a constructive way that they say, okay, what have we done? And they do find good things, and they then start to think more strongly about what can we actually do to affect this vision, this goal, and tactically begin to take action towards it.
Now, I’m struck by how much innovation has actually taken place over the last two decades around things like alternatives to plastic. Now, all of that, if I get magazines delivered, they come in biodegradable plastic bags. So when I see a company not using that, I’m thinking, you’ve got no excuse. The company is making it work cost wise. The technology is there. My house opposite. Where the building I’m in here. We rebuilt it. We put solar on the roof. On a day like today, as it is in the UK, we’ve got bright Sunshine. That house is a net contributor to the grid, to the electricity grid. Such is the case across large parts of the world with wind farms. Now we have the technology. The question is, are we going to sit on old business models with old products, or are we going to accelerate and really lean into the transformation? And I think, to be honest, we’re at a point now where if you don’t, it’s bad business practice. It’s not just bad for the environment, but it’s bad for your shareholders and it’s bad for the future of your organization because you’re just not going to be part of the future and what the future looks like. And I think it’s taken pioneers like Elon Musk to kind of move the needle in the automotive space. But you can see when someone like that does that, then the rest of the industry starts to really get its act together and go on that transition. So I think we are at a pivotal point in history where, in a sense, the commercial world and the environmental world and the human world are coalescing and the leaders are the ones that get all those three things and are able to drive forward with the right products, technology, commercial solutions, which will generate the shareholder returns of tomorrow.
I’m going to put two personalities up. And this is from my own experience, and I’d love to get your thoughts on the sort of the transformational leader. And I’ve met a lot of CEOs and in everything from solar printers to small organizations to startups to massive organizations. I’ve worked in major financial institutions for a long time. And you would meet people who are good CEOs. And it’s as if they were cut from a cloth and sort of printed. And they have perfect answers, which are no answers. Quite often they’re media ready. There is that sort of vision of that type of leader. And they lead a financial institution or a healthcare company, and they’re very good and they have to do there’s a certain amount of that that’s necessary. They can’t just sort of go off the cuff and be natural. But the tough part is I would struggle with believing in them, in their people impact and their human centric impact, because they’re giving beautiful canned answers, almost political in the way of like, how are we going to handle this problem? And then they know how to do it so well. First, let’s look at the four macro trends that are facing… And like, they’ve got the answer, sounds fantastic. And then you see them twelve minutes later on CNBC giving exactly the same answer, right? I saw Elon Musk, sometimes a polarizing figure. But when he was on actually a great podcast with Lex Friedman and Lex Friedman asked Elon, how do you prepare for engineering something that’s so massive that it’s got a high chance for failure? And first of all, among the most fantastic interviewing techniques ever, he stared at him for 25 seconds, I think, no words. And you could see Elon. He’d actually see his eyes darting around. We don’t architect. We don’t engineer for failure. We engineer for mitigation of failure.
Right.
We know that failure is not an option. Ultimately, we can’t fail. We have to believe in the outcome. We have to like the ability for him to not be media ready, not be perfect diction. And to let that air out, first of all, as an interviewer is like the most fantastic thing I’ve ever seen, the best 20 seconds of an interview I’ve ever seen where we didn’t just fight to fill dead air. So there’s very dichotomous leadership styles. In the business, I’m curious, how do those two personalities play out?
I would put it this way. If you put both of those people in front of a panel of 1000 members of the general public, which one would they trust more? Which one do they believe more? Which one would they like to hear more from? I suspect it’s Elon Musk. And I think we went through the whole world of the sound bite and the slick press operation saying everything and saying nothing. And I think there’s a craving for leaders to turn around and use phrases like, I don’t know, we’re not there yet. This is our aspiration, but we haven’t yet thought through what the plan looks like to get there. We don’t plan for that. And I’m more honesty about things, and I think COVID was a really good case, certainly at the level of political leaders and perhaps down in corporates as well. We didn’t know so much at the beginning. Has it ever been a thing that hit the entire world where we just didn’t know what the next four weeks were going to look like? The next two weeks? We’d never lock down entire societies like this, and it happened in parts of the world, but never at such a global scale and never with such the industries that got stopped as they did.
And we saw some people thrive in that and some people didn’t. But I think if you tried to almost take the approach you described in the first instance, you just come across as stupid. And it was far better to be honest about the situation and honest about the potential risks and consequences of what was being spoken about.
Do we find this or do we teach it, Andrew.
I suspect we can teach it. I suspect we can create the cultural conditions for it. I think the press has a responsibility here, but ultimately it’s down to individuals who’ve got the courage of their convictions and the courage of their values. I think he’s probably at the heart of this.
Obviously, you’re entrenched in the research side as well as in higher Ed institutions. Do you find that those institutions are catching up to industry and changes in the world? One of the things that I’ve often struggled with, especially in higher Ed, you’d see, like startup leadership courses, and they were so disconnected from a real, true startup leader experience or even in telecom and technology because of the tradition of education, was deep research that led to curricula and syllabus that could be tested and trusted meant that it had to move at a slower pace, but the world moved at a slower pace. So in this day and age, I think it’s getting better, but you’re obviously much closer to it. Do you think that the education is catching up to the pace of the world?
I can only speak for what we do in the business school at Oxford, and I think, yes, we’ve got a whole structure we’ve set up around entrepreneurship. A good proportion of our MBA students go into setting up entrepreneurial businesses. And I think we’ve got a very good curriculum there in terms of the leadership program I run, which is at the opposite end of the spectrum, which is people who are 2030 years into their careers. I think we’re very much on the cutting edge of what’s going on in the world. We have the benefit of having the Oxford Martin School in the University looking at the challenges of the 21st century. We bring that onto our program. We have some brilliant research around scenario planning. We bring that onto our program. We’re doing cutting edge research around transformation, where we’re interviewing leaders who are at the forefront of that. We’ve got an 1800 person survey globally around that as well. So I’m not suggesting we’re perfect, but I certainly don’t think we’re sitting on our laurels with a curriculum that was from about three or four decades ago. That’s definitely not the case.
One thing in the time we got left, I want to explore an area of leadership success and leadership proof is not defined by successful times. But I think adversity. And also one of the challenges we have. Right, is that we don’t introduce adversity into someone’s experiences. We sort of have helicopter parenting, and that translates into easing them through public schooling and then getting them onto higher Ed. And, well, we’re paying for this University. So I want my child to have a good experience. So they yell at the professors, make sure you do a good job, and stop making negative comments. We’re seeing this sort of unfortunate pervasive trend of the normalizing of existence, taking the edges off a bit. But when you take those sharp edges off, then you get out of the school and the world has sharp edges. But for leaders as well, right. Leaders are often defined by getting through difficulty. Just like a marriage, right. Every marriage goes great for five years, and then you have children. You’re like, oh, boy, this is difficult. Now you really see the test of collaboration and partnership.
Yeah. I think you’re on to something. It’s a big topic, and I don’t claim to have all the answers. What I’m minded of is my late grandmother, who was a pharmacist during the Second World War, and this was old school pharmacy where the pharmacy was full of jars of powders and potions, and a bomb went off near to where the pharmacist was. And she described how she was up to her knees suddenly in glass and powder. And I said, well, what did you do, Grandma Darling? We just brushed it all away. And we opened up the next day. And to me that’s my high watermark of resilience. A bomb goes off, you’re up to your knees in glass and whatever chemicals were in the pharmacy, you brush it all up. And then your duty is to have that shop open the next day, not just for the shop sake, but for the community and for the whole war effort and for the country. And I do wonder if we need adversity in life. And I suppose it’s only a question. That generation that came out of the war, there was a resilience about them. And it’s almost every generation it halves.
And maybe what we’re going through at the moment with a much more uncertain world is actually good for us. It’s painful. We don’t like it, but it’s a bit like a muscle. It needs to be stretched in order to grow and resilience, I think, is like a muscle. It needs to be stretched. And I wouldn’t wish Adversity on anybody, but there is something about it which is perhaps necessary. And if you think about the survival of the fittest and the evolutionary processes which we’ve come through, there’s something about that as well. So I think you’re right. And one bit from our research, we’re finding companies that do transformation well then are able to do transformation well, it has a virtuous cycle about it, and the opposite is true. You muck up a transformation, it has a vicious cycle about it.
Yeah, that is the interesting thing. It begets a better response in future. I mean, I think of telev’s research and concepts around anti-fragility. Often difficult to quote him because it’s a bit of polarizing figure as well, but still, that concept of natural exposure in the same way that our immune systems react by creating antigens to these situations. If you experience difficulty and you see the reaction to it and the response to it, then you have preparedness for the next time. And I often find personally, my favorite thing in a weird way is when it all goes sideways. I worked in data center operations, and It operations for years. And the moment that it would get out of control, I would just feel this calm of like, okay, let’s immediately go into sort of triage. What can we do right now? What’s necessary? And you were forced to immediately prioritize things. I don’t like being in a well, let’s develop a steering committee, and then we’ll set up some cadence calls, and then we’ll set up a nine month plan. If the power went off, what do we do right now? I thrive in that experience, and I struggle with the very plan for long term views of things.
There’s definitely going to be personalities that can do both sides, but I often find the people that require the planning when something does go wrong, they really struggle, and ultimately they aren’t able to contribute as well, because I’ve never seen it and they don’t get that exposure to it. It’s an interesting thing. Maybe because I threw myself at adversity a little early. I got used to it.
I think it’s a really interesting concept, and it reminds me of just the human body. If you sit in front of the TV all day and don’t move, you’re atrophy. If you get out on a bike, go for a walk, go for a run, lift weights – that stress that you put the body under, stimulates growth. And you’re also more prepared. If you ever need to really pedal fast to get out of trouble, run fast, walk fast. You’ve done the preparation in that sense.
Yeah, I used to do track cycling. I’m a longtime cyclist, and I started doing track cycling just for fun ’cause I lived in an area where there was a velodrome, and it was exciting. One of my favorite races was this like timing was flying 200 where you basically do like five laps and then you say, okay that’s it, I’m going to go on the next lap and you start at the top and then you immediately go to the bottom eldrum. So you’re going to fall out for a 200 meter lap. And the reason I was particularly good at because when I was a kid, I lived in the middle of nowhere on a farm and the person up the road for me had two German shepherds. So if I wanted to go for a bike ride, I’d have to literally be like preparing for this ride. And then I would hear the barking and I would immediately have to just sprint because I had to outrun them before they could come to the road and catch up.
They’re quite some dogs to outrun as well.
They are fast little fiends, those ones. But like that sort of natural exposure to difficulty and seeing my dad go through difficulty with work through the 80’s when the tech sector fell apart and seeing it go around. That’s why I look to leaders. It’s very easy for someone to be in a leadership role, but not a leadership function. And they’re very different. Like just being the team lead because you’ve been there longer than the rest of the developers does not actually make you a leader. It’s often by title, not by function. And that’s why I try and tell people to differentiate between the two. You deserve this role, you deserve this title. But when it comes down to it, there are different skills required for leadership. And I think that especially in transformation, you can’t just look back and say, well, this is how it’s been done for X number of years. What is to use the playbook? I have to be able to have something suddenly shift and then be able to understand and get through it, not just for me, but for my entire team and my organization.
Yeah, I think we’re seeing that with President Zanelleski in the Ukraine at the moment. This guy was an actor and is now taking on arguably the most difficult leadership role that’s been seen for decades in the most difficult of circumstances. But the way in which he’s working both locally and internationally in getting consensus, getting coalition, is remarkable to see.
Yeah, I think that is, in adversity we have surprising leaders that rise to the top or surprising personalities that you discover through it. And being able to see them as well in an organization, I think it’s part of that empathetic need of to be able to say like as a leader, I can recognize other people that I can bring up, I can rely on and I can empower them to do more. One last thing, decentralized leadership and giving up sort of control of it to a decentralized group. How are you finding that as a transformation in leadership styles.
I will rehearse a conversation I had with one of the executives I coach. This guy is brilliant. He’s top quality performer with his brilliance comes a bit of a shadow in that he demands excellence from his team, and he does that through controlling. And I was coaching him on this, and it come through on a 360 process he’d been through. And we went through the session, and I thought the session was good, but I didn’t feel we fully landed. And we were packing up our stuff about to go. And he said to me, so I guess, Andrew, what you’re saying to me is and what I’m learning is it’s about their energy and not mine. And I just said, you got it. How do you find a way to release their energy and you will get so much more out of it? Yes, you have to put a guiding framework around it because it’s your vision, but it’s how do you engage and get their energy involved in this rather than a passive response? And he went away and did some stuff and came back and said, I just cannot believe the difference in the output I’m getting from people by kind of taking this mentality, I wouldn’t necessarily call it centralized or decentralized. It’s about energy. And as a leader, do you energize people? Do you bring their energy to the table, or do you crush their energy with your energy? So that’s how I would frame it.
It’s fantastic. Yeah. So what are you looking forward to in the coming year as we sort of re-opened the world a bit now? Of course, given the conflicts that are going on, there’s bigger challenges that we probably had to weigh into what we believe the next twelve months will look like. But as you head into the next batch of your work with research, what is your goal to come out at the end of this year?
Yeah, that’s a great question. Thank you. I think a number of things I’m looking forward to getting out and visiting the world again. So I’ve done one international trip already. I’ve got another one in April. I love people, and I love being part of a business that takes me all over the world doing the work I do. So to be able to be back on a plane visiting people is really great. I’m working with 160 leaders this year on the advanced management and leadership program that I’m working on, all of them face to face, all of them in Oxford. That’s going to be great. And we see huge transformation taking place in them and with the plans that they take back to their organizations. And I have a couple of other projects. So I’m going to get to 21 podcasts this year of leaders who I think are making a transformative impact. I’m planning to write a book, 21 Leaders for the 21st Century, so I’m not sure that will be out this year, but it will certainly be written this year. And more of the research around transformation, just taking that into the public domain as well.
That’s a fantastic set of goals. And as you said, getting back out and really engaging and collaborating back the earlier point, we said people went to many meetings and I often get asked said, you love people, so you must like meetings. I said, no, I like collaboration, which is why I hate meetings. Meetings are not collaboration. When done right, they are, but they are seldom done right. And I think we’ve learned to value collaboration over meetings. And I’ve seen now more of people getting like, I’m going to focus on what matters. So that 60 minutes meeting, when we feel like we’re done at 25 minutes, we just cut the call because we’re done and it’s so good instead of before. It’d be like, okay, well, we’ve got some more time here. What else can we talk about? Like, no, perfect. Let’s just get onto something else. And what we needed to get done is done. And then there are those moments where we’re getting back to just chatting and meeting in person and breaking bread and enjoying time together. I look forward to it, for sure.
I hope I bump into you at some point in those travels around the world.
It would be fantastic. I would really take pleasure in it. So, Dr. Andrew White, if people do wish to reach you and get connected, what’s the best way they can do that?
Best way is on LinkedIn. I’m very active. You can find me there. If you just search for my name and Oxford, or you search for the Leadership 2050 newsletter. And it would be great to hear from folks.
Yes, definitely. I’ll have links, of course, to both the newsletter and make sure that people can get access and to your podcast, which is amazing. That’s just such a beautiful opportunity now to bring the world, those stories in that format and explore this. And then, as you said, now, do you think like 20-30 years ago or even a decade ago, the idea of being able to do a podcast and then take that content like, oh, this is a book. Now, people often say, like, well, you’ve been at all in the podcast, but there are many people who will not hear it, nor would they want to do it in that format they like to read. So I love that you can take research, practice, beautiful work with the podcast and the newsletter and then now bring it together in book format. I will be anxiously awaiting the release of the book for sure and look forward to it.
But the book also gives an opportunity to do synthesis. So it’s not just going to be like a transcript to the podcast. It’s going to be learning what are the cross-cutting themes. So maybe you’ll have me back at some point, Eric, and I can talk about what those findings were when you put the whole set of those podcasts together, are there ten themes, the ten lessons that come out of that?
Absolutely like any great special, the end gets you right back to the beginning. It’s that whole thing. The executive summary is written last. People forget that sometimes, you now look over this body of work and said this is what we’ve actually done and then to see that thematically played out so good, like I love the free form. Like the podcast style is great because you can go in many directions and then you’d be like, okay, what did we actually discover? But definitely, it would be an honor to have you on again. Look forward to catching up. Hopefully, in real life and in travel it would be fantastic. Andrew, thank you very much.
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JR Butler is the Founder and CEO of Shift Group. This is an episode filled with lessons on what it takes to commit to building yourself, your team, and your business. JR is an inspiration and I can’t wait to have him back on to dive into more of his story and the work he is doing with Shift Group.
Check out Shift Group at https://shiftgroup.io and big thanks to JR on the launch of our new partnership to help amplify what he and the Shift Group team are doing to help empower elite athletes with the tools to succeed in technology startups as growing sales leaders.
Alright, everybody, welcome to the DiscoPosse podcast. My name is Eric Wright. I’m gonna be your host. And this is a particularly special episode because we get to welcome a brand new partner to the show. This is a brand new sponsorship and I’m so super proud and I wanted to make sure that I used the opportunity to share it within fact, the very guest who I’m hosting today was JR Butler, who is the CEO and founder of Shift Group. So without really leaking the whole story, it’s fantastic. No, seriously, it’s good. You’ve got to listen to this. JR is a really fantastic human. He and his team are doing really neat stuff around helping folks transition from elite sports into elite sales leadership, including setting them up with training and teaching them. It is amazing. So, hey, let’s just get right to the good stuff here because I want to say that this week’s episode of the DiscoPosse Podcast is brought to you by Shift Group. Shift Group is turning athletes into sales professionals. Is your company looking to hire driven, competitive former athletes or considering how to architect a go-to market that can scale efficiently and effectively?
Shift Group not only offers a large pool of diverse sales candidates from entry-level to leadership, but they help early-stage startup companies in developing their hiring strategy, interview process, and build strong sales cultures that attract the best talent for early-stage startups. Reach out to the Shift Group over at shiftgroup.io or drop an email right to JR. He’s JR@shiftgroup.io
They specialize in identifying the best talent in the market that works with you to create a culture of resiliency, focus, discipline, coachability, competitiveness, and work ethic. That’s cool. I’m a fan, definitely of what JR and the team are doing. And speaking of sponsors, of course, all of them, who would we be without supporting our amazing friends over at Veeam Software? If you want to check out everything you need for your data protection needs while you’re building your fantastic sales organization, make sure that you head on over to vee.am/discoposse. They’ve got a lot of amazing stuff coming up. They’ve got VeeamOn. They’ve got all sorts of live events that you’re going to be seeing the Veeam booth at. Do check it out. Go to vee.am/discoposse.
All right, now let’s get to the fun stuff. This is JR Butler of the Shift Group on the DiscoPosse podcast.
Hey, this is JR Butler. I’m the CEO and founder of Shift Group, and you’re listening to the DiscoPosse podcast.
I’m waiting for the day that we could put this together, JR. And life is happening fast in really interesting ways, but it’s like slow and fast. Thank you very much for jumping on because I’ve always thought there’s going to be a time when you and I could jump on mic together and really talk about the stuff that you’ve always done as like a practice and as methods that I’ve seen you put into play. And now to see that you went even further and now you’re building a business around it. So this is fantastic. So for folks that are new to you, JR, because I’ve been lucky enough to spend a bunch of time with you in my life. And if you want to give a quick bio and an intro, and then we’re going to jump in, we’re going to talk about the Shift group and what it’s all about.
Absolutely, Eric. I grew up in the Worcester, Massachusetts area. Grew up in athletics, played football, hockey, baseball, big hockey family. My father was a high school hockey coach for 30 years. So that was my destiny. I got to play in a hometown college, division one. Both my brothers played division one. And then I got right into tech right after school. Was lucky enough to grow up on the technology belt in Massachusetts. So I was surrounded by it and ended up at an EMC VMware cisco reseller right out of school. So most people start on the product side. I was lucky enough to start on the partner side and then spend about seven years there. And then like you, was lucky enough to come across a small little company in Boston called VM Turbo at the time.
It’s cool, I love it.
And I joined it as a sales rep for New England. And the rest is history. I was there for six years in change. Got to grow with the company. When I joined, it was less than 50 employees, I believe. We were in the Burlington office, and then I spent a lot of time running commercial teams. Then I was lucky enough to move into enterprise. And then my last role there, before I left, Eric, I was doing the strategy and operations gig, and then I got an opportunity to do even earlier stage company as a chief revenue officer for the last two years and change. So I got to partner with a technical founder and help him really shape his go-to-market, his messaging, his sales process, all the things that I really enjoy doing and helping them start to build a team. And then got inspiration to start Shift Group, which we can get into today. And that’s kind of where I’m at. We just officially launched the company last week. But we’ve been kind of doing some stuff in stealth. So we’ve got some really good success stories and testimonials. So we got to go to market with a lot of different wins.
And now we’re focused on what I’ve been focusing on my whole career, which is scaling the business. Now, the only difference now is it’s my business.
Congratulations. It’s earned and deserved the opportunity. And I also know that this is the start line of the marathon. People always say that when you hear funding announcements or people that are founding a company, people are like that’s awesome. Congratulations. And at the same time, I know, I know what it means. This is the hard yard start now. And in fact, they already started because the announcement is never the beginning of the work. It’s the beginning of the publicity that it’s on. And it’s impressive to watch the process that you build up. And it’s funny when I look at our own time that we shared together, you have a unique ability to deliver both on just, like, doing the thing, as well as building the process around doing the thing. And it’s rare. A lot of people are really like, they can go out, they can sell, they press flesh, they do their relationship sale. They can do a lot of those things. They know that experience, and they can do it every day. They grind it out, and they know that this quarter has got to be bigger than last quarter, and it’s a tough thing.
I got a massive respect for people that are in quota-carrying sales. But they often struggle with, like, you got to put the stuff in Salesforce. You got to build a team. You got to make sure you’re doing your look ahead. You got to make sure, like, all the stuff that you got to do, they almost like, that gets in the way of them doing what they’re doing sometimes. And you split that line. And then on the other side of it, too, you got the sales Ops and the process builders who are like, only the sales people would do what we asked them to do. We could get better visibility into future bookings. And you’re trying to build a business. So to split that line, it’s a real sort of unicorn type of rarity.
Yeah. I think a lot of people don’t realize that there is a difference between being in the business and being on the business. That’s kind of how I describe what you’re talking about. And I think it’s really critical to be able to do both, especially as a CEO, as a founder, like, especially when you’re small. Right. You are the face of the company in most cases, but you’re also the one that has to go and execute. So it’s something that I’ve always paid attention to, and I’m kind of building it in to my operational cadence, and I always have been able to do that where even as a sales rep, process was so critical for me and for me to be successful. And process is about your cadence, how you operate, your daily schedule. Maybe it comes from being an athlete my whole life, but the way that I’ve always kind of made sure to balance the two is by blocking off time for both. Right. You just have to make time to take a step back and think about strategy and think about process, but then you also have to make time to go out and execute it.
So that’s kind of how I’ve always done it in my head is by literally blocking time for both in my weekly, monthly, quarterly schedule. You know what I mean?
Well, now you get the interesting add on of being wholly and solely responsible for the outcome, in a sense. Right? The CEO is always the CRO at the beginning. And it’s an interesting mix. And I’ve worked like I’m an advisor to another startup and watching this thing where literally like, technical founder, two technical advisors, two developers, and going to market in really big, like B2B. But big B, like really big B sales. And it’s wild. It’s a very David versus Goliath. And this split of being a CEO, building strategy, building a product at the same time, being a technical founder and watching that, like, how do you go in and then pitch. But then build and then even just looking at raw sales, I learned from you – live the other side, get on the phone, figure out that I read Jeb Blunt and I followed these folks that are leaders. And I learned about golden hours and I learned about what it takes to make this machine work. And like you said, you just got to be fanatical. I don’t feel like working out today, but that ice is waiting. And if I don’t work out, then there’s no choice, right. It means that tomorrow is going to be a worse day. Today is a bad day, but tomorrow will be worse if I don’t do what I need to do today.
Absolutely. It can get hard because you want to be focused on the strategy and the vision. But the best way to build the strategy and the vision is like what you said, it’s going out and having those conversations, asking those questions. Not losing customers, but people telling you like, hey, this is interesting, but it’s not quite there yet. I’m not ready to invest with you as a customer. I think that’s where you learn the most. Even as a technical founder, I’ve always believed and I think we experienced it an amazing example at Turbo, where the best founders build companies to solve the problems that they faced. Right. Which is a great thing. But the challenge with that is sometimes that problem shows up in a different way to different people. So as a founder, when you’re building something to solve your own problem, you have to also be able to take a step back and figure out how other people view that problem. Right. And the best way to do that is conversations. And I think those founders that do that end up building amazing companies when they’re solving their own problem because they’re passionate about it, but also being self aware enough to understand, like, okay, how do other people think about this and how do they want to solve it and then building a product to kind of meet the market essentially, you know what I mean?
Yes, it’s a very interesting balance. The Innovator’s dilemma is one of those sort of off quoted things that this idea, they get sort of like locked into vision and forgetting to then take feedback. And that feedback loop of getting out, getting in conversations. And it’s a weird thing, too. You also have to create business. And I remember even someone you’ll know, of course, Schmuel Krieger, who’s the founder of one of the founding team at then VM Turbo and then Turbonomic. We’re at an event one time, and everybody from sales was coming back from it was like VM World or something. And they’re like, yeah, I just had a great conversation with this person. Yeah, we’re having really great conversations. Hey, how’s your day going? Yeah, we’re having really good conversation. He finally just goes, guys, time out, time out, time out. You don’t build a business on conversations. You build it on deals, stop having conversations. And it was this funny thing of like, the conversation isn’t the outcome, the business is the outcome. What did the conversation do to further your path towards that outcome? And sometimes we get lost. And now as a founder, you’ll be intimately aware of being able to put that into action.
And you got the skin in the game, which is a very important and respectful thing that you’re doing to make sure that you’re responsible for the outcome.
Yeah. A very smart guy once told me to build a great company. The vision has to be clear and the execution has to be obvious. Do you know who told me that, Eric? Hopefully you remember that conversation a few years ago. So, yeah, I couldn’t agree more. Conversations are critical, but what’s the outcome of that conversation and what is the next step? Right. That’s really what it comes down to in terms of getting to that kind of golden nugget of revenue is moving the ball forward in those conversations to the next step to an eventual, like, investment in your product. Right. And it happens in different ways at different companies. And I’m figuring that out at Shift Group. That’s what I’ve kind of done my whole career is figured out how do these conversations have to play out in order to get to the outcome that I want? And then you can start to shape the conversations, ask the right questions, and then position your solution to the problem the right way. And those conversations are important, but the next steps are the most important part of it, for sure.
Yeah. This is the interesting thing. We’ve sort of talked a bit about this idea of splitting the line between being in the business and being on the business. The idea of understanding the personality it takes to go out and be on the ice, out on the fields, wherever it is on the mountain, probably wearing my UBC shirt. My oldest daughter is at UBC, and she was eight in Canadian nationals for snowboard freestyle. So slope style rather. And watching that what it takes to make that happen and fitting it in when no one’s paying. You really just saying, like I care so much about this that I’m willing to throw myself on it. And so there’s this dedication that’s required in athletics. But then when you move over to sales, it’s like you start to see them align. And so let’s talk about Shift Group. What’s the founding premise and the vision that made you bring Shift Group to the market?
I’m sure a lot of founders say this, but I honestly believe, Eric, that this was my destiny to start this company. My entire first 23 years of my life was dedicated to athletics, mainly hockey, playing at the division one level. I wanted to play professional hockey. So everything I did in my entire life was about that, right? You’re right. You don’t get paid for it. I think any young hockey player, you’re not playing hockey to make millions of dollars. You just want to be on that big stage with the big names and the money comes with that, of course, but that’s really not what it’s about. But when it’s gone, when you dedicate and your daughter’s going to go through this experience someday, when your sport is over, when you don’t have that anymore, it’s not unlike losing a loved one. It’s something that you wake up thinking about every morning. You think about it before you go to bed, and then just one day it’s gone. So that transition for me was very hard. I remember it well. I struggled with it. I struggled in a really personal way. I went to some pretty dark places and honestly, I didn’t really come out of that dark place until I realized that just because I wasn’t a professional hockey player doesn’t mean I’m not a professional.
So it was probably honestly a few years into my career before I kind of had that epiphany that I wanted to be a professional salesperson. And when I made that decision, I got a lot of the things that I missed when I was a hockey player. Right. The dedication, the growth, the competition, getting better every single day at something and working on something that athletes need that in their life. So the first reason I started the company is because I wish somebody explained that to me when I was 23 years old. Right. Like that. So I want to just get in front of these athletes and I want them to know that, one, they’re super marketable because of what they’ve been through. And two, this transition doesn’t have to be a hard one. It can be smooth. The second reason is my experience, honestly at Turbo and then at Pillar trying to hire salespeople. Right. It’s really hard to interview somebody and know that they’re resilient and they can handle rejection. To know that competition motivates them, to know that they’re going to do the work and they have the work ethic to do the work, to know that they’re coachable. Right. Like, that’s so important. Early on in a career, you’ve got to be able to take constructive criticism and not take it personally. And then you’ve got to have a growth mindset. Like you can’t be a fixed person that doesn’t think you can get better at something, that doesn’t take feedback. And I kind of consider intellectual curiosity as part of growth mindset that doesn’t necessarily show up like that in sports. But I think in sports you’re working on weaknesses constantly. And I think that’s how intellectual curiosity will show up in sales because you’re going to have a lot of weaknesses at first, like everything is going to be a weakness. So when I thought about those days when we were really building a Turbo and hiring hundreds of BTRS a quarter, I think about that’s what I was looking for in our candidates. And I know as a former athlete, as a coach, as somebody who grew up in a house with a coach and two brothers that went on to play Division One and a brother that played in the NHL in the Olympics, athletes at that level, like your daughter’s level, they have all those things they have to you don’t get to that level without resiliency, competitiveness, coachability, work ethic and a growth mindset.
So the second reason I started the company is because I want to find folks like me seven years ago at Turbo, looking for those people that’s all I have in my candidate pool is those types of people. And honestly, Eric, and I think you’ll appreciate this the most is, I’m a first generation College graduate. Right. And when you grow up in a certain way, there are certain limiting beliefs on what’s available to you. Okay. So the third reason I started the company is because I just want kids like me when I was 23 to realize there’s this industry and technology where if you’re willing to work hard and you’re willing to be coachable, you can have incredible success and whatever that means to you, whether it’s financial, whether it’s leadership, whether not everybody’s going to get to be part of a company that exits for $2 billion. Right. But the reality is if you try and you go and build that, there’s going to be things in your life that you can accomplish that you never thought possible. So I want kids like me that were sociology majors with minors in art history and sign language.
I didn’t have a computer when I was in College. It’s a different time than now. And now I’ve been selling technology for 15 years, and I’m actually pretty good at it. I’m actually pretty technical because I’ve done the work and I’ve been intellectually curious. So I want people to know about this industry like non technical people. Right. Probably less folks in your audience who really get excited about it. But I believe that you can kind of come into it a little later in life in your 20’s and you can get excited about it. And the opportunity is amazing. Like, if you look at the numbers, the tech industry is two times larger in GDP than the financial services and insurance industry, right? When I tell people that they’re like, no way. I’m like, what do you think the financial services and insurance industry is running on? They’re running on technology and that’s only going to grow. You see this amazing. It’s a buzzword we talk about a lot, right? Digital transformation. But it’s true, right? Like software is truly eating the world. And the engineers, the developers, those people are critical. They’re critical for this to continue.
But just as critical are guys and girls like me that have the type of personalities and the type of resiliency and ability to handle rejection, to bring all these amazing technologies to market. So just honestly, it’s helping athletes transition, helping companies find great candidates, and making sure that people are aware of this industry and what it can afford you as a human being. That’s why I started the company.
It’s a beautiful proof in the execution in your own life. We see a lot of folks that have this opportunity. And I love your line, right? I don’t have to be a professional hockey player to be a professional. That’s the mindset built in a similar way too. There’s like coaches and often, excuse me, many really amazing coaches that were not really amazing athletes, but they had a skill that was understanding the business, understanding what’s required to build a team, to create a strategy on field, off field, and be able to do this and then be able to motivate people, be able to understand the human aspect. Really true. Like, they’re basically therapists and behavioral psychologists that are able to drive people. In athletics, I find it’s a very different thing. Like, the military is often used as the thing that we define as success in business is often related to military. We use military references all the time. And I’m on the other side. Like, I’m always using athletic references and cycling references because it’s much more meaningful to me, having never had exposure to the military personally. And I have a huge respect, obviously, and to all those that serve and give that as they dedicate their lives to that. It’s amazing.
But I was on the other side of it. I was much more like I wanted to have no format, no machine, and I wanted to be able to create something where it didn’t exist. And I’m not an athlete, which is hilarious because I ride a bike far more than most people would think is normal, but far less than anybody that I think of as a cyclist. So I have this interesting bar. So I’ll be really good. When I was in cycling on a team, when I was living way back in Vancouver, BC, and riding up mountains when people are riding down them. It was me. It was the challenge. It was the idea that the moment it points up on the Hill, people just say, this isn’t a ride I want to be on. And I’m like, all right, let’s do it. Get on my wheel. And it was less about me completing the task, but more about when I rode in a team. I never planned to finish a race. My whole goal was to ruin the day for most of that field. So that the guy behind me who’s on my team that I know is going to finish the race can sit in my wind and then take it.
Right? So I could do the best that I could do. I wasn’t going to be the guy on the podium. I never even wanted to be it. I wanted to make sure that my team got there, and that was my dedication. So in a way, like some of that military stuff came through and that I was willing to sacrifice myself for the greater good. And I enjoyed it. You don’t show up in the roles for great finishing times, but there’s an honor in doing that and the same thing. So in athletics, when you take that into business, it is really that you’re not the star. The customer is the star. That’s the story you’re exposing. That’s the thing you’re bringing out. And you’ve always really personified that ability to do that.
Yeah. One of the really fun things about this business, Eric, is I get to plant the seeds of how I view sales to kids that are really just starting to get into it. And I think mindset and the way you view selling is really critical for a foundation for your career. We have an LMS that these kids go through training with us. And when we talk about the role of a salesperson, we’re not talking about haunting people or being pushy or anything like that. We’re really about the thing that I explained to these guys is software exists to solve problems. That’s it. That’s why people don’t buy software, because it’s cool. They buy software because it solves a problem. And your job as a salesperson is to identify that problem in your customer. And sometimes you have to help them identify that problem. Right.
I think the best companies in the world solve problems that customers don’t realize they have. So being able to pull that problem out of a customer and be really smart about how you do that is critical. You can’t tell somebody that they have a problem. You have to help them get there themselves. So we teach that. We teach making sure that once you solve that problem, you then have to tie it to their business, to their role, and really understanding how does the problem show up for them. Right. And then as a salesperson, you should be spending most of your time. Once the person agrees with you that they have the problem and you’ve identified it in a way that they can understand it for their industry, their company, and their role. Your job is to help them with them, partner with them, capture the value of solving that problem. If you do those three things, you identify the problem, you make it relevant to them, and you help them document the value of solving it, then the sales will come, right? Then comes all the qualifications and negotiation and et cetera. But if you’re just coming in and forcing something on somebody because you believe it and they don’t really that’s why salespeople have a bad sometimes can get a bad rap.
Right? you’ve got to come from the customer’s perspective. And I love that I get to release these salespeople into the wild with that mindset. I hope that I’m building, like a small part of a generation of sellers that are really customer centric people. And I’m super excited to watch them in their career and grow and see how that foundation helps them in their success as salespeople.
The high-performance mindset translates to other things. It’s just like even fantastic sales teams and salespeople, the thing they sell can change what they’ve got is the mindset. So you throw whatever it is at it, right? So people always joke, Michael Jordan was a really bad baseball player. Now he was not an MLB level. Like he was MLB level, but he was a decent MLB player. He was not the best player. People kind of railed on MJ like, look at that, he’s a garbage baseball player. You realize he’s playing in the elite of the elite. The guy that finishes last at the Tour de France still better than any other rider that I’m ever going to ride with in my life. And he’s going to finish like 7 hours behind the guy in first place. The women’s Tour de France. I remember this thing when I was living in BC. I used to ride and I was lucky. There’s a lot of pro cyclists out there. Really an elite level cyclists that aren’t even pro, they’re neo pro. So they’ll be category two, category one, top level amateur athletes. So maybe getting a little bit of sponsorship or like a little bit of sort of basically a stipend for riding a bike.
And I rode with the giant women’s road team on a training ride. I just happened to be out on a ride and they’re really great because they kind of let those people jump on the train. Right? So you’re out there and there are ten of them. And there was me and one other guy that were just out random ride on a Sunday morning and we end up on this big. Like, they were doing interval loops. They were doing really, really wild stuff. And hearing their coach with them saying, like, if you don’t feel like you’re going to throw up, you’re not pushing hard enough. And it was like, oh, yeah, no problem. I got that feeling. Right. So I was riding with female athletes and could barely hang on. And people don’t get that. It’s like men, women, elite, top level athlete versus a really good amateur. Whatever it is, they’re at a level that is different and they’re willing to do stuff that gets them there and pushes them beyond it. And this idea of sort of like being better than yesterday, whatever, it’s going to be like that mindset. You’re going to be sick one day.
You’re going to train all year for an Iron Man, and then three days before you get the flu and it’s over. And to be able to still get out there and do it like finish 438th just because you got to know that you got through it and then knowing that next year I’m going to do it, I got to keep going. You get back on the bike, you get back out on the field, you do whatever it takes. I love that mindset. I wish I had it. I wish I had more of it. But you can spot it in people.
Yeah, well, I mean, Eric, no offense, but you do have it. It’s showing up in your tech career. Right. You’re constantly learning, you’re constantly growing, you’re constantly trying to understand things. I mean, the fact that you’ve read Jeff Blunt is all I need to know about your hunger for getting better and understanding the industry as a whole. Right. Seeing both sides of it as a technical person, really diving into that sales, that marketing side. You’ve definitely shown that. But I couldn’t agree more. And that’s why that’s one of the reasons I think this is going to be a special business is the same reason Turbo was. The same reason I think Pillar is going to be is because of the product. Right. The product that we bring to market are they’re elite human beings. It’s not easy to have a division one College decide to pay for your entire education. You had to be a special person. And yes, of course, there’s natural talent. Right. I think I have some natural talent and sales in terms of just talking to people, being an extrovert, all those types of things. But there’s a lot of work that goes into refining that.
And I think a lot of it for me, I grew up around it. Right. With a coach as a father, with a little brother who from day one, I asked my dad what he knew my brother was going to play in the NHL, and he said he knew when he was seven. But that said my brother was in the driveway with me every summer shooting pucks, running sprints in our street in front of our house. Yes, he was great, but he wanted to be better. And it showed up every day and I think that’s one of the reasons I think I’m excited about this company the same way I was excited about Turbo and Pillars because I know that our product is unique, our product just happens to be people this time, but these are really special people.
And if you think about now again, having gone through being in a growth startup, being on the outside, on the customer side of the world, like just watching the industry and learning how it works, and I worked in finance and insurance companies for a long time I worked for a chemical company, an explosive company, which is kind of cool, and the first thing I did was I learned the business because then the technology mattered more to me, like understanding what the reason I was doing what I was doing and that allowed me to map and understand and then when I got to Turbo, it was the same thing I’m like, I’m going to stay out of the sales side because I want to learn the customer story and then very quickly I realize we’re all in sales and that’s a weird thing that a lot of people struggle with, especially technologists, where you kind of get in this thing of like, no, no, you know, I’m not in sales, like, well, in a sense, we all are, we are always telling the story, we’re always carrying the vision with us and you may not be quoted carrying, but you’re ultimately responsible and in a weird way, like marketing teams are some of the unsung heroes Often I don’t say that just because I work in a marketing team, these folks will have the same paycheck if you do 40 million or 4 million, but their goal is to get the people that will get you to 40 million what they need to get to 40 million, right?
And as a quota carrying rep, there’s a massive responsibility because generally your base is base and your upside is self imposed. So there’s a very different responsibility, and then there’s understanding and respecting the reason why each of us has that responsibility and that upside. So as a marketing team, I know, like, hey, I don’t have to grind it out every day for 720 days to make a deal happen, right? But I also know there’s a thing that I’m doing where I will be compensated more if I head towards this thing and it’s like changing roles. So it’s a very interesting thing of crossing the boundary of what you do to understanding and empathizing with what others do, and I think that’s what makes it good at understanding the customer story too, is that you can say like, hey, I’m here to sell technology, but what’s your day look like? What’s the thing that bugs you every day and you get them, they’re like, oh, man, you wouldn’t believe I got this goofy thing that really just drives me nuts and you’re like, oh, yeah, tell me about it. I’m really curious. Like, how do you think you can fix that?
I don’t know. Now all of a sudden you’re like Ricky Romo. You’re like, no, I’m not going to show you this. I’m not going to show you this real estate. Like, it’s not really for you. And next thing you know, you’re putting their hand on a pen and that pen is going on to a contract.
Yeah, absolutely. Not to overdo the sports analogies, but it is a lot like sports and that everybody has a role. Right. And I think athletes understand that inherently. Like, just because you’re not the one throwing the touchdown or scoring the goal, the part that you play, even if it’s not a great hockey player. Right. In college, my role was a locker room guy. Like, I was there to keep it light in the locker room, make sure everybody was still having fun, making sure the boys were all getting together. Those types of. But that’s a critical role in a team. And marketing plays a huge role in finance and the partner team. And you look at we used to have this diagram at Turbo that I would use with my team, where the customer was the center, the account executive was kind of around the customer. And then outside of that was this whole organization. And how are you going to use the executives? How are you going to use the marketing team? How are you going to use sales operations? If you don’t bring everybody into a deal to help that customer and the customer doesn’t end up moving forward, that’s on you. Like, you didn’t do your job of getting the whole team involved. We talked about get everybody on the boat so that nobody’s on shore. If the boat sinks, you don’t want someone onshore pointing at you and blaming you. Get them on the boat. So if the boat sinks, you know, you did everything. And I think marketing is critical to that. And everybody really is, honestly and everybody’s selling really honest to God. Yeah. I think you’re right on.
Like, this is your go to market is what you’re doing today. Right. Obviously, you’re bringing elite people into organizations because of their capabilities. And then you’re giving them the tools they need to map it to the business and deliver what that business needs. You’re giving them a framework, you’re giving them what they need. That’s their playbook. And they literally will know a playbook. Right. We talked about that. There’s a reason we call it a playbook because it is learning. Just like a great MMA person isn’t about the first punch they throw. It’s about the 7th punch they know they’re going to get in when that guy throws the first one, because I’m going to come around the left and then I’m going to go under and then I’m going to pull them back and I’m going to get him on his heels. And we’re going to get close to the fence. They are looking at the 7th hit, not the first one, not the second, not the third. Like, they know the playbook and they’ve run it through and they Spar and they practice. Because when you know that that’s the thing. That’s the deal closing that, you know, is the 7th hit.
But there’s a lot of stuff that’s going to happen in between and it may not go right. The third punch may lead to you falling on your ass. And that means you’re like, all right, what’s the next play? Like immediately thinking, okay, what do I do? What do I learn from what just happened? Adjust, pivot, get ready, re approach, assess. And that mentality comes through. So you get those elite players that can come in. But then beyond this, I’ve been lucky enough to work with you on bulletproof sales. Right. Taking that and making it a framework that maybe can be shared beyond just the direct people you’re affecting. There’s a reason why I got books like Legacy by James Care, you know, talking about the All Blacks and their mentality and why the winners sweep the sheds and while the team goes to celebrate and learning about that coaching mentality that you coach. Like, I coached little kids when my older kids were younger and I was like, my little kids, I’m coaching them all the time. Right. I got four kids. You have to learn a lot about listening and coaching and going through this.
But even teaching other parents, you don’t coach from the sideline, you coach from the practice pitch. The sideline is where you just remind them to do the play they already know how to do. So you can create that framework, and then it goes far beyond just the athletes you can directly affect, which is kind of cool.
Yeah, it’s very cool. And to steal from my friend John Kaplan at Force Management. Right. It’s about you practice to the point where you’re audible ready. That’s really what you’re describing. Right. Because you want to get to that 7th punch, but you might not. So if you don’t, you just got to be ready for it. And the only way to be ready for it is practice. That’s it. That’s all you can do is just work on it. Work on it, work on it. And then when the game gets there, just go play. Just go execute. And you’ll be ready. If you did the work, you’ll be ready. Right. And we see that all the time with great sales people all the time.
Now, the challenge in the early stage startups, especially hiring early, bringing somebody in that’s got that elite mindset, but is then willing to grind it out. And I think that’s really where the perfect pairing comes with the folks that you have in your roster, is that they’re going to be willing to do some uncomfortable shit for a long time before there’s a payoff versus like, I’ve seen it at business after business. We experienced it directly. When you and I worked at Turbo, you bring in people they’re like, yeah, they work for, like, a $5 billion company. So obviously they know how to run a $5 billion sales team. And you’re like, that’s all they know how to run. They don’t know how to run a $40 million sales team and get them to 5 billion. They’re way later. They’re great, fantastic people, but they can’t build the machine. They just get on the machine and they make sure it stays on. And they do work. That’s impressive, but they’re not going to be able to get in early because they come in the first thing they think is, all right, Where’s my $2 million budget? Where’s my event team? Where’s my swag supply? They know how to do good stuff, but you walk in, you’re like, I used to always tell people, okay, so imagine your greatest vision for what you want to execute. And now imagine you have no money and no people to do it. Now, how do we get this done?
Yes, it definitely takes a different mindset, a different personality. Listen, as big as Turbo got while I was there, I think we crossed the 600 Mark. That’s the biggest company I’ve ever worked for, right? So I don’t even know what it’s like to work at a big company. Right? I don’t know that I would fit. And listen, there’s something to be said about that skill set. Like you said, that’s still a special skill set to be able to take something that’s large and keep the machine running the way it is. And there’s something to be said about what I think I have, which is being able to work with some constraints and help build something into that. So it’s two very different things. And you’re absolutely right. I think our candidates have amazing mindsets when it comes to building and growth. We talk about being gritty all the time. I call it having jam. You either have jam or you don’t. And if you got jam, you can get into those situations where it’s going to be a long path to the outcome that you want, but you’ve got to enjoy the process. And I think our candidates enjoy that process of building more so than probably most people.
And again, I think that’s why it seems obvious now in looking at you putting it together. But it took the vision and having the belief that this can happen, and it needs to happen much more than it can happen, because everything is like, oh, yeah, I got a whole lot of ideas, and I got 55 domain names in AWS just in case. But there you go, no further than me buying a domain name and sitting on that second for $12 a year. The difference is that you took this and you said, we’re ready and we’re going to do this. And I love this idea. Like, I use rocketry references all the time. It’s like stage one, stage two Rockets, they’re going to get dropped off. And that is the building phase. That is like, what gets you to orbit is this incredible, like, thrust. Knowing that at the moment they hit that altitude, they’re like, that’s it it’s gone. And that stage one has did its job. And you know what you’re going to do? You’re going to strap that bad boy onto the next rocket and you’re going to do it again. And that’s why those purpose built players that will get uncomfortable once they hit that altitude, they’re like, you know, it was weird at first when I saw it happen, but I was enthralled by watching it occur where you see people are like, it’s getting a bit big here. Like, there’s 22 sales people. This is not big. Like, for me, man, I’m like, zero to 5 million. Once you hit a revenue number, they’re like, I got to go.
That’s such a good analogy, man. I’m stealing that. I’ll give you credit twice, but then it’s mine. That’s an awesome analogy.
That’s one of my favorite things, by the way. I’ve stolen that and I give you credit twice. Every time. That’s my favorite. I’m stealing that line. I’m going to give you credit twice, but then it’s mine. That’s such a JR ism. I always love that.
Now, making the jump and finding the team to build shift group. Let’s talk about the people behind it.
Yeah. So I have two full time guys already, and they’re both athletes, former athletes, one’s a hockey guy. I think the reason he’s good is because I found him at a time, like, when I originally talked to him, he was looking to make the jump into Tech. And then I started telling him what I’m building. And he’s like, man, I would really like to do that. I want to help guys like me. Right. And he’s phenomenal because he’s going through or has gone through that same transition very recently after playing professional hockey. My other guy is awesome. He was a College football coach for over a decade, and he was at a very big program at Michigan State as the recruiting coordinator. So he’s been helping kids go into that transition from high school to College. And the difference between high school football and a division one level, like Michigan State, is that’s like going from amateur to pro big time. Right? So I think as I build up my team, those types of experiences that these guys have had are going to be really critical because I do believe you have to have some passion about helping somebody in order to make this work, because obviously, I’m not a five and one C three. Right? But at the end of the day, my only goal is to help somebody find something they love, help a company, find a candidate they love and help them in that way. The money will come when you help people, right. So I need to find guys and girls that are really passionate about helping people. And I think with the two that I’ve started with, I have that and they’re my models now. Right. That’s what I want to build off of. And so that’s kind of how I think we’re going to grow the business is, continuing to bring in people like that. That’s going to be critical.
And I guess that’s the ideal thing, J. I could do this all day and we’re going to come back. You and I will take a bit more about sort of the background because I didn’t want to crunch it in and just make it 10 minutes of the story. I want to really like bring Shift Group to the front, but your own story and a lot of the stuff that makes this obvious is cool. And that’s a really neat back story that deserves more time. But what do people do if they want to get in touch and become part of the Shift Group?
Absolutely. For sure. Our big focus right now is finding some more companies. We’ve done a good job before launching the company, building partnerships with athletic departments, players associations, teams. Now we’re looking to grow where we can put these elite athletes. So if anybody’s looking for great people, they can find us at shiftgroup.io is the website, and they can reach out directly to me JR@shiftgroup.io
I think they should know when reaching out to me that I’ve been in their seat. I know exactly where they’re at. I’ve seen companies from pre-series A to series A, and then obviously with turbo from A to exit. So I’ve been through it all, and I know what they need. And I just want to help them. So yeah, JR@shifgroup.io is a perfect way to contact me, Eric.
There you go. If you’re in a venture, this is the team you want building you team. So get on it. JR, thank you very much. This has been amazing and I wish you all the best, and I know that’s nothing more than me yelling from the sideline because I know you already got the playbook. So I’m just making sure that the playbook works. I’m glad to be on the sideline and watch it occur.
Eric, so good to catch up, man. Great to see you. Thank you so much for having me. This was an awesome conversation. I appreciate you.
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Sponsored by the Shift Group – Shift Group is turning athletes into sales professionals. Is your company looking to hire driven, competitive former athletes? Shift Group not only offers a large pool of diverse sales candidates from entry level to leadership – they help early stage companies in developing their hiring strategy, interview process and build strong sales cultures that attract the best talent for early stage companies.
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Does your startup need strategic technical content? The team at GTM Delta delivers SEO-optimized, compelling content that connects your company with technical users to help grow your credibility, and your pipeline.
Buu Lam is a Community Evangelist at F5 supporting the growing DevCentral community. Beyond just the day to day work Buu does with F5, he’s a fantastic content creator and someone who embodies the value of customer and people first.
We cover a lot of what he has done in the transition from architect to SE to evangelist plus a deep dive into his video and audio rig! Make sure to subscribe to Buu’s channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtVH…
p.s. he has one of the best LinkedIn profiles ever because you can read it like a story. Seriously, check it out here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/buulam/
Alright. Welcome everybody to the DiscoPosse Podcast. My name is Eric Wright. I’m going to be your host, and this is a fantastic conversation featuring Buu Lam. Buu is a community evangelist at F5 DevCentral. He’s also a budding YouTuber, somebody who’s taught me a lot about that side of the world. And just a fantastic human who I really enjoyed knowing professionally and now being able to spend time on the podcast so kind of really cool way in how we had been connected for a long time. You’re going to enjoy the show. I know I certainly had a really great time. Plus, he unpacks some of what he does in his equipment and really just approaching the technology community side and his own personal history that brought him there. Super cool. So, you’re really going to take this one. And I do have to of course, give a big thanks and a shout out to the folks that do make this podcast possible, including the amazing folks over at Veeam Software. And I say this because, hey, it’s that time of year – you’re doing your taxes, and you’re probably thinking, Am I protected? Well, make sure you’re protected in every side of the world, including your data protection, everything you need to cover your data center assets, your cloud assets, your SAAS assets. I guess they’re Saassets. Anyways, you wanted to check it out, go to vee.am/discoposse. It’s that simple. And you can check out everything they’ve got, whether it’s physical servers, cloud servers, even cloud native stuff. Hey, just because you got it running on Kubernetes doesn’t mean it’s safe. There’s a lot of persistent cloud native applications out there. As there should be.
All right, go check it out. So again, go to vee.am/discoposse and you can see what they’ve got to offer. I stand behind it because I legitimately use the platform and really, it’s truly saved my backside a bunch of times. Of course, while you’re saving your assets, make sure you enjoy just an absolutely stunning, devilishly good cup of coffee that you can get from the very own diabolicalcoffee.com. We got some really cool things. We got some shirts, we got mugs. We got fantastic coffee. And of course, we’ve got just building small business. I definitely recommend it. I’m also the co-owner. So, hey, let’s be honest, I can do full transparency there. Speaking of full transparency, let’s get right to the transparent goodness. This is Buu Lam from the DiscoPosse Podcast.
Hey, everyone, my name is Buu. I’m a community evangelist with F5 Dev Central, and you’re listening to the DiscoPosse Podcast.
The fun part, Buu, I’ve been taking in your content for a while, so it is a true honor and a pleasure to share a microphone with you for a podcast because we have a fun history, personal history that, thanks to the LinkedIn world, stayed connected. And I suddenly started seeing some really neat, dynamic, good video stuff coming up in my feed. And more and more, I saw kind of what you were doing. I then saw you doing videos about what you’re doing, and those videos got better. And I was like, Buu is on something. This is it. I love your progression to what you’ve been doing.
Thank you.
It’s cool. So I’m super happy to, we’re going to nerd out a bit on tech, which is natural for us to do. But I’m also excited about what you and the F5 team are doing. So for folks that are new to you, if you don’t mind, give a quick bio and an introduction about what you’re doing with F5.
Yeah, sure. Well, first of all, I got to say thanks for having me on because I’ve been watching your content as well, and it’s been really cool to see somebody deliver this type of content in this level of quality for such a long time as well. I think a lot of folks, I don’t call myself that unique right now, although maybe I am a little bit, but there’s a lot of people putting out really good quality content now. But dating back a couple of years, you know, you’ve been doing this for a while now, putting out great quality content. So I’m honored to be here. If I were to dial it back, maybe our history. I used to work at a reseller here in Vancouver, British Columbia, and I was a network security consultant there. And at that reseller I met a younger Eric Wright, who is a really great guy. And we got to look at a few things with your organization. And that was way back in the late 2000s at that point and early part of my career. So I finished school around 2004-2005 and got my first job in IT at that point. I learned a bunch of stuff, but that company ended up getting bought out by even bigger company. And then I moved on to do the whole consulting thing through a reseller. So I was doing that for a number of years. I was always in the network security space. And then in 2011, I moved to F5, which is where I am now. And my story at F5 is pretty basic, actually. I started as a sales engineer, and up until last year I was a sales engineer for ten years, working with the same sales rep, covering the same territory, almost exactly the same territory throughout those years, with a couple of spots of covering for turnover here and there for other territories as well. But I did that job for ten years covering F5 products, talking to a number of folks within British Columbia about F5 products. And just last year moved over to the DevCentral team, which is F5’s user community, which is really important to F5. We dedicate a number of folks to working on building that community relationship with everybody. And as part of that, we’ve been doing a lot of live streaming and video work.
But I was actually doing that prior to joining the team, and I was doing that for my customers. And I was doing that because of the pandemic. Everybody was at home. And I was like, okay, I got to keep engaged with my territory. And so we couldn’t have user groups anymore. We actually, at the start of the pandemic, had to cancel our user groups. So I was like, okay, well, let’s just do some of this stuff on video. And then, yeah, like you said, started making videos. And I looked back on my YouTube channel that I had started at that time, and I thought they were okay videos at the time. Now I look back, I’m like, cringing over time, keep putting out content, it gets better. And then eventually this role with the DevCentral community, they had a head count open after there was a bit of a shuffle there, and I was able to join the team and kind of do this at a level for the broader F5 just to help out with these efforts here. So that’s my background. If that’s enough info for you.
That’s awesome. And it’s funny that the progression to evangelist. I started to cheat the system when I came to then VM Turbo and became Turbonomic. I was working out on the West Coast for a few years. I moved back to Toronto, still working for the same firm, but I was blogging. And then through that piece of it, that was kind of the first layer of me just finding a problem, sharing a problem similar to what you’re doing now with that conversion of user group to a video format. And then in doing that, you’re like, oh, what if I just did more than just like, wait till I bumped into a problem to write about the problem and the solution? So I then started proactively building content and proactively reviewing stuff and getting involved. Next, you find yourself at an event and you’re sitting at a blogger table and you’re thinking about it more purposefully. And from there, then when I got the gig at Turbo, I got hired as the evangelist. And at the time, that was kind of now they call it developer advocacy or whatever, right? Like, we the idea was being not in sales, not in marketing, sort of spanning both the understanding of it, but really being in the customers world. In the seat of the consumer of your product. And having that honest outside voice to bring into it.
So that’s really what I was lucky enough to have that background in my blog. And it led me to that first gig again. So let’s map to what you’re doing and why I really dig the way you do this, Buu, is that you’ve always got the mind of the consumer, the user – like you’ve always been very human centric in your approach to technology, and your storytelling is really great. So this makes it easy to take in. And you’ve got a great delivery. So it’s a surprisingly rare thing to have both a creative mind and ability, as well as a strong technical capability. It is sort of a unicorn type of personality, which is good. And I’m glad that you’re finding a really great home in your role at F5, because it’s deserved. Because you’ve got a lot to bring, and it’s tough to find those gigs sometimes that gives you that freedom to be creative, but also you got to really get deep into the text sometimes.
Well, it is funny that you use the word unicorn. My boss would say that he has a team of unicorns, and we’re finding that out now because there’s an open head count on our team. We’ve got a couple of folks that are lined up and look like we’ll hopefully have someone pretty quick here. But yeah, to find somebody who wants to jump in technically, who is somebody who cares for community, that’s a huge part of it, like, really understanding the needs of others and being there to serve, as opposed to trying to serve yourself. And then also be someone who’s willing to jump in front of the camera at a moment’s notice and just be out there for everybody or somebody who can write and somebody who can produce videos as well. When I thought about it, I was like, I’m just kind of adding little bits and pieces onto my existing role. But now that we’re actually looking for that role, I’m like, oh, my goodness, how am we going to find this person like that? How many of these people exist? Because I thought there was a whole bunch of me, but it turns out there wasn’t.
You’ve broken the mold.
Right.
And it’s funny that I think even in today, like, literally today compared to what it was even two years ago, especially, like, pre-pandemic. YouTuber was a pejorative. Like, it was just like, you want to be a YouTuber? What does that even mean? Now you say “YouTuber”, and everybody can name multi-millionaire personalities. They may still kind of dislike that it exists, but they know it. It’s more name brand. Right. Back when we met, I remembered seeing this video of a guy who was someone with a camera was filming him, and he was going around and taking a bicycle, and he was stealing bicycles in New York City. And every one he would do, would start by getting on a bike and then just riding in a way and watching the reaction of people around it, and there’s no reaction. Right. Then he would get on one and he would, like, mess with the lock and then ride away. No reaction. There was one where there was, like, a cop standing right beside it, and then he was sitting there, like, with a Hacksaw sawing through this lock. And then somebody came over. The caption was, oh, finally someone is going to call me out. But instead the guy didn’t call him out. He said, you know, you should do you should be cutting the chain, not the lock. The chain is easier to cut. And so the guy basically held it for him while he cut it. Then he got on the bike and rode away. Well, that was Casey Neistat.
It’s hilarious.
It was like filmed on goodness knows what, like super early stage camera was. But he was doing these viral YouTube films before YouTube was even a thing. Like it was a brand new platform. And now I look years later and people are going to the Casey Neistat film class right now, which is a brand new thing that’s offered through monthly stuff like that and that influence. Now it’s there like we’ve got so much around us that has upped the game where if I don’t do a video that feels like it should go on YouTube and get paid for, I feel like I’m letting myself down.
Well, the hilarious thing is quite literally two and a half years ago at this point, I’ve told my kids, YouTube is not a career. Don’t get your hopes up that you are going to be on YouTube and actually make money doing this. That’s like a one in a billion shot to do anything like that. Lo and behold, pandemic hits. I’m on video all the time now and have pretty much set up a YouTube studio in my office. I’m like, I’m eating crow at this point. That’s okay. I will always admit when I’m wrong, even to my kids, especially to my kids. And so lesson learned. They saw the future before I did.
Well, I think the good lesson that we get out of it too, and I even tried it. I understand why when you say they’ve surveyed kids and like primary, elementary school kids and the top jobs used to be like doctor, fireman, whatever. Right. And then now the top job in almost every country they pulled in was YouTuber. But just like saying doctor, it’s no different. They see somebody that has a great earning potential. That’s why people became, when you’re a kid, you want to be a doctor because you think a doctor makes a bunch of money and they drive nice cars, not because they’re healing humans.
Right.
It’s really more about the importance of the job. So a YouTuber to that kid is an important thing. It has financial benefits. Never realizing that to get there is a grind.
Absolutely.
Even if you get a viral, if I got one video that went to a million views, the next video would go to 1000. Right. Nothing is guaranteed. You’ve got to grind it out for years and years. Even this podcast, this will be like a 216th episode. That’s 216 weeks of content. And I feel like I’m just figuring it out.
Your persistence is amazing to me to just keep pushing out content, especially like, for us in a similar space, looking for tech content, which isn’t, I’ll admit, it’s not always the most interesting thing to us. It’s interesting, and that’s why we do it. But to an audience, I think from an audience, how do I keep this interesting for them? How do I make this, maybe something hasn’t come out in weeks and nothing new like Hot and Shiny is out there to talk about? How do I keep putting out something that will interest them? And for you to do it for 216 weeks in a row is very commendable.
There was a gap in the middle where I wasn’t sure it was going to happen. Somewhere around. I think that’s why everybody I know, I got a lot of fantastic friends who are our peers in the industry. Right. And everybody had a podcast. And then about episode 11-15, the wheels come off the bus because it’s like easy just to grab your friends. We all have the same friends, so we all get on each other’s podcasts. It’s like having a party. But at some point, you have to actually seek out the subject. You have to seek out something new and be curious about it in that process. And that was really the differentiating thing was my sort of blind willingness to keep on pushing when there’s no listeners and no feedback. But I think, just like you, what we start to do is you translate what you do in true human interaction and learn to do it with a camera where even this, like, I’m actually looking into a lens. I’ve learned how to do this. Instead of looking down the screen so that you see the top of my forehead and me eyes pointing down, I have to learn to engage the camera. And so I do it for demos, and I started doing live streams. And your stuff is fantastic. I love your streams because it’s a different pace, it’s a different cadence.
But you keep the energy level like it flows. It’s not just as you can see, we’re going to go through you click on here, you hit F5, create content that you would like to sit down and watch. Maybe it sounds too just like, easy to say that, but that really is my approach to it. And again, to your credit, you’ve nailed that. And heck, I learned from you on a daily basis these days.
Thanks. One of the things I do, too, is think about the why. Why did I start this? Or why do I keep doing this? And my why at the start of the pandemic was maybe it wasn’t true, but I thought, you know what? My customers, they’re missing out on their user group, which was always a great time. Like, we would get as many people together. We’d sit down in a restaurant, and that was actually like a safe time for the customers. We’d be in meetings with customers. And yeah, we have a point to that meeting. We’re usually either catching up and then showing them our latest wares and seeing what they want to do. But the user group was like, oh, you’ve already bought the stuff. I don’t need to sell you anything now. So I get to talk to you in a safe place and say, okay, here’s the stuff that you bought. Here’s all the cool things that other people are doing with it. Let’s chat about that. And then hopefully that strengthens our relationship. And so that cancels, and we don’t have that anymore. And so I’m like, maybe I won’t go as far to say maybe they miss me, but maybe we’re missing this interaction now.
So how do we still maintain that interaction? So I always thought about that every week. My Monday morning ones, when I was doing it in territory, they were always like, ten minutes of actually talking about F5 stuff, maybe five minutes of talking about F5 stuff, maybe zero minutes of talking about F5 stuff. And otherwise it was like me and Daryl catching up on our weekends, because that’s usually something that we would do. Actually, every Monday morning, we just kind of chat about how our weekends went. So we chat about our weekends. We usually have a guest on, chat about what they’re up to. And then we’d actually just bring up current events, and they might be technology related, but not necessarily F5 related. And it was just like chat with folks. We just kept doing that, and it’s just trying to stay connected with folks and kind of left the business stuff to actual meetings. But that kept me going for a while.
I think the really good thing, especially when you look at that advocacy role and Evangelism role, it’s genuinely about being a peer to the people who are using products. Listening to them and giving them, like you said, a safe place where they can share ups and downs. And quite often you’d have, like, two peers in our group who would be like, We’ve got this weird thing we’re trying to do. We’ve got, like, a multi site configuration, and I’ve got this weird Edge site, and I don’t know what to do. They’re like, oh, yeah, we have the same thing. We’ve got one place that’s up, we’ve got one remote site that’s way out of the way. And this is the gear we use. This is our configuration. And you’re like, oh, Holy Moly. Like, they’re educating each other through real experience. And that’s so much more genuine than even read the manual or even a blog sometimes. Because quite often we have to create scenarios that will let us tell a story. And I do my best to try and always make sure it’s a realistic scenario. But every once in a while, you’re talking about a feature that no one’s actually used in real life, and you’re trying to be this is a really cool thing we can do and no one’s done it. But please tell us if it works.
But we made it so you can do it.
It’s like I would say, show me a successful spanning tree implementation and I’ll show you a network that went down on the weekend because it never goes right. It’s always the second run that that works.
Yeah, for sure. One of the recent things I did was document building my Intel Nuck ESX server, and it has nothing to do with F5 stuff. I’m like, hey, somebody’s going to do this at home. My scenario was that I have this old lab gear, ten years old now at this point. 4 years worth of lab gear that is super loud, consuming so much power, I’m sure. And like, okay, I got to consolidate this down. Took six months to get an intel knock with chip shortages, supply chain issues and whatnot. So I got the thing. I’m like, okay, I could install this in, like, an hour and be done. Or I could spend a week documenting this whole thing and putting together all the steps and doing a write up and stuff. And it’s going to benefit the community. It’s not part of F5, but it’s going to benefit the community. So I’m going to do that. And luckily, my boss gives us the freedom to say, you know what, if it’s going to benefit the users, then just do it. It doesn’t have to be about F5 stuff necessarily. If it’s going to help them, it’ll help us eventually.
Yeah, that’s been done.
As a management team. That’s a really good insight into the value that you can bring by sharing non-product knowledge. Because really what you’re creating is we always talk about this, like the trusted advisor, which is what such a loaded overuse. It’s like saying, you’re customer centric. Of course you’re customer-centric, everybody’s customer-centric. Yeah. But this idea of the trusted advisor, if all you do is go in and pitch the current availability of the product and the features that you’ve got coming up, that’s not really what you’re doing. By creating a listening space, by creating a collaborative relationship where you talk about things that are not related to your product, then what happens is they get that build up of trust and they’re like, yeah, Buu helped me out with this other thing. It was like, that’s really cool. I mean, I can’t dozens of times, probably hundreds at this point, I’ve ended up talking with people about, like, weird VMware configurations and OpenStack stuff and all these completely non product thing. But then when it suddenly comes up and they’re like, oh, actually, I got a quick question about your product. And now they’re free to ask.
They’re directing the conversation and they trust my answer because they know I actually kind of know what I’m doing. I ran a real environment so they build up that trust with you. And the same thing for your side, right? You design stuff at scale and they don’t see that sometimes. When you just come in, you’re like, oh, yeah, I’m an SE for F5. You’re like, But I’ve got ten years designing at scale systems. You don’t always get a chance to share that story, but when you do, then they’re like, oh, yeah, Buu is pretty cool. He knows what he’s doing.
You know what one thing I think about too, is? I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a lot of friends in technology. Like my personal friends before I ever got into IT, I have like one friend. Well, I mean, I used to work with them, so that’s how we’re connected through technology. But otherwise I don’t have friends in the IT space. And working at a vendor for a sales engineer, everybody’s your customer, too. And so my technology friends actually end up being their form through my customer relationships and many of my previous customers from before. I have a whole bunch of them that are actually personal friends now, but I think about it that way too. I’m like these people I’m building these relationships with. I don’t want to make them empty relationships. And I don’t have technology friends outside of work. So I’m going to make technology friends through all the people I get to connect with now. So that’s been a really cool part of community.
When you’ve got really cool stuff. So you and the team just came off of F5 Velocity. Nothing worse than somebody misses the name. And it was like Announcements galore, which is like my favorite time of year, right? It’s like you come off of company kick off and then you’ve got lots of product and community announcements. So you must be in like relieved now. You probably have the last twelve weeks were loaded with prep work. How does it feel now to be on the other side of that?
It’s a breath of fresh air. More than twelve weeks. Like, we made this acquisition of a company called Voltera just over a year ago at this point. And with F5 we often historically, when we make an acquisition, we’re a little bit quiet about it up front because we try to get a lot of integration stuff done first before we present something to a customer. And I think part of that reason is because F5 has been such a solid brand for what our foundational business is. We’re known for uptime and reliability. And so for us to take in a company and just shoot it out the door and say, hey, you guys start using this stuff, we got to slow things down a little bit because people trust us and we can’t break that trust. And so for months and months and months now, there’s a bunch of stuff that’s being worked on that I knew about, that I’ve been testing, getting trained up on and whatnot. And so all of this is sitting under your hat for months, and you can’t wait to tell people about it. And so, yes, when the 15th came around and all the press releases came out and all the stuff that now that I report into marketing now, even though I don’t consider myself a marketer, but so many people on our broader marketing team, we’re working really hard on getting everything ready.
And then to just kind of see 08:00 a.m. Pacific time, 08:00 A.m., everything just dropped. And it was kind of go go. As far as all the news and announcements, it was just like, this is awesome. It’s out there. Now I get to talk about it. The real work actually begins now. All this prep work happening now, the real work begins. But yeah, it’s been really exciting to drop new products. That Volterra stuff has become F5 distributed cloud. And so we’re able to kind of venture off into a new space for F5, where we were traditionally either in a data center or in a cloud data center. And now we can actually run compute in our data centers now that are spread out around the world. We can take those resources and we can run what’s called a customer edge, and we can run that into whatever their data centers might be or an intel knock, if you will. And then the first platform that we’ve got or the first service on that platform is a web service, which is Web application API protection, kind of the evolution of a Waft service. So that came out as well, which F5 has always had a strong pedigree in that space to deliver this on the new platform, tons of really great stuff that we’re able to share with everybody.
And then on top of that, being part of the community team, when I joined the community team, the biggest thing that we were working on was actually a new community platform as well. We moved on to kind of a best in breed community platform where everybody can get great rich interaction on there. And that was just consuming a lot of our time as well. Mainly my coworker leaf was just heads down, banging away at that, and he got it done in a big way and really delivered on a fantastic platform. And so that was being announced this week as well, which was a big relief for us to get to share that as well. So, yeah, this week was a lot of stuff just coming to a head. And on top of that, getting to interact with our customers because it was a virtual event. But we created lots of ways for customers to still get peer to peer and also kind of casual interaction with the Five folks as well. And so we were doing a lot of that office hours and whatnot. And yeah, it’s Friday now. Everything was kind of buttoned up yesterday and yeah, we’re all pretty relieved. But now the real work begins now.
Two things that are important. Number one, I always laugh at the joys of choosing acronyms that are going to line up. And whenever I think of Web API protection, Cardi B wrecked that acronym for us. There’s so many acronyms that we end up having to toss around. But functionally, it’s really really slick what you’re doing. And the idea of edge implementations again, sometimes an overloaded phrase. We talk about edge, but we’re seeing real implementations where real compute power that’s moving into that edge tier, and it’s finally accessible and it’s common as far as deployment patterns. It’s no longer the experimental big places with these massive diverse networks, you can see like everyday mid market, even SMBs have the opportunity to use this stuff and it’s easily accessible versus it seemed experimental probably not too many years ago.
Yeah. I mean, you’re probably seeing a lot of this as well. And especially if I don’t know how much you’re part of the IBM side of IBM and the Red Hat side of IBM. But like OpenShift, Kubernetes, those types of workloads now have enabled this huge expansion into those types of architectures now. So it’s really cool to see. It’s like, even in that respect, all those architectures kind of came to a head. They kind of have met at this point now where we have modern application architecture and we have edge infrastructure architectures, and now we’re going to see the value of that over the next few years.
For sure. Yeah. It’s funny because I remember VMware a couple of years ago, they started to talk about obviously we’ve got Vsphere on NUC. So like MicroPC implementations. And it was always sort of seemingly limited because of memory limitations on the hardware stack and the massive footprint that a traditional little VMware data center, virtual data center would run. And then they talked about moving it down to a Raspberry Pi. And there was this weird moment where I saw the split in people who saw the future versus people who were thinking, I’ve been a VMware admin for a long time. They said, what kind of a VM can you run on a Raspberry Pi? Because there’s not enough memory to run a good sized VM. That’s because there won’t be VMs in this world. But what they’re showing is that the underlay that they can manage. Right. And that’s what Red Hat does with satellites. So it’s like just poke these endpoints all over the place. They run Kubernetes, they run OpenShift and then just use satellite to manage them all. Very simple, lightweight phone home stuff. But now you can run it. We used to joke about how you’re going to run an OS on a router. Like, no, you’re not. OS are huge. Not anymore.
Yeah, it’s super neat to see.
What’s the thing that kind of really made you jump up when you saw it coming that you now can share. Obviously, the community platform is huge because the interactivity is neat. But on the product side, is there something where you just want to take every customer and say, you got to check this out?
Yeah, well, definitely for the web application API protection stuff is that, I don’t expect you to have configured an F5 waft before. But let’s just say sometimes you have to go through a bit of training in order to get everything kind of dialed in properly on that. And credit to my customers before. Like, I had so many customers who put in the effort to do that, to learn the platform and to get really good at configuring their waft and did it well. But it was an investment in time to go learn what all the buttons and knobs were, to be able to turn on the different protections, to tune it for their applications, to work with the application teams, to actually learn or get a swagger file, get all the APIs if the application team even documented or created swagger file in the first place. And so all that work is like nobody’s going to be out of a job, but your job is going to become a whole lot easier operationally and it’s going to become more strategic than it is operational now. Waff admins are going to move to something like this and be able to spend their time focused on do I have all the policies in place now that I’ve got protection upfront that I can configure really quickly?
Now let’s spread that out. Now, let’s get more applications under this because it’s easy to do. Everybody can trust it. It’s easy to architect into the application. It’s all automatable so we can make it part of the CI/CD pipeline now so that the application developers aren’t kind of reacting after something has been deployed. Maybe they can start testing this out behind there during development phase. So, yeah, I’m really excited to see this just move at such a greater pace than it was before. Sometimes we would sell a waft to a customer and we’d revisit in six months and they’d have maybe they’d have it enabled, but not in blocking mode. Maybe a year later they’d have it in blocking mode. Now people are going to be that much further along in that journey.
It’s interesting because how do you develop a user experience flow when there’s very few users who are ready for that type of implementation? So to the credit of the team, it’s like getting out there, spending the effort, letting people try it out, learning from how they’re using it. It’s often that whole thing of customers don’t ask you how your product works. They tell you how your product works. I’ve got engineers all the time and they’ll say, like, I don’t understand, like no one’s using this. Like, if you put in analytics on the platform, they’re like, I don’t understand why they don’t use this flow or the screen or this wizard. I’m like, because that’s not how they use the product. Ask them how they use the product and then they go, oh, okay. So the wizard should emulate the active implementation, not how you believe the product should be consumed. And it’s tough, especially with the complexity of doing that kind of API interactivity. Or like I said, on the back end, sometimes the developers don’t even think about self documenting APIs. If it isn’t self documenting, it isn’t getting made. Right.
Those are my favorite meetings too, was to bring a product manager out to speak with customers. And it was awesome because we could put the product manager in front of the customer. Like, see, that’s what they’re saying. I’m not just parroting lies to you. Like, they’re actually saying that they use it in this way. So hopefully this kind of helps and it has every single time, it’s always able to help shape the product. So for any folks out there who has a vendor who wants to bring a product manager to come see you, please take those meetings for the benefit of your product, because that shapes how the product comes out.
If you think organizationally, the one thing I wish we had was as an SE, you are a quota carrying person for the company. So you’ve got different commitments. You obviously, there’s greater upside opportunity in doing that. You also, you’re better at it in that you are really thinking true customer value and customer relationship. But some people don’t. They just think, I got to nail my quota at this quarter. But then on the back end, so in the developer advocacy and in the product management, there’s no quota attached. But I almost think, like, a customer meeting should be we should have quotas of true customer interactions as part of it to make sure that you’re out there and listening and learning.
Yeah, it’s an interesting thing to try to measure, actually, that’s something that we have been discussing internally. How do you measure the effectiveness of community? And there have been attempts at doing that. One company that we work with has a metric that takes a whole bunch of stuff off of our platform to give us an idea. But that’s just based off of the platform, really. For me, when I was a sales engineer for ten years, we always looked at it from a long term perspective. Like, you see sales reps and SEs that kind of bounce around different gigs. Maybe they spent two years here or three years here and they go from place to place. We were never like that for us. Yes, we have a quota and we’re trying to make commission, but at the same time, I will 100%, ten out of ten times I will value a customer relationship and my reputation and my brand over what F5 is trying to sell. Like, if there’s something that is going to damage my relationship with that customer, it’s not worth it for me because I’d have to look them in the face and say – you know what, that product that you bought there, we sold it to you because there was some sort of bonus or something for selling that. It feels terrible to do something like that. And I know I’m not saying that every vendor out there is slimy and is going to do stuff like that. There’s lots of great folks that have great reputation just like we did as well. But there are a couple out there that are going to try to do things that only benefit them, and that’s just not the best way to do business, in my opinion.
Yeah, for sure. And especially coming from the consumer side, I had a very different lens when it came to going to my team and saying, hey, this is how you should approach the situation. And I would sit on sales calls, and it was funny you mentioned my favorite phrase that I used a lot earlier is like, hey, look, I’m not in marketing. I was working for the marketing team. But my easy one on the calls was always like, hey, I’m not in sales. Like, if you buy this, if you buy $8 million worth of this, I get exactly the same paycheck next month. So I’m not vested in the success other than I want the company to do well. But my goal is to make sure you’re having a good experience and you’re actually getting value out of what we’re doing. So it gives them a bit of a disarming thing where they say like, oh, okay. So if Eric’s saying something, he most likely is genuine in his belief in it, versus I got a Spiff that’s making sure that I can buy my kids an extra motorized car this quarter because I got a bonus.
Yeah, exactly. Nice to be out of that space. At this point. We weren’t always out there just trying to make our quota and sell the spiffs. But at the same time, you have this number that is very daunting every quarter to hit. Moving on to not having that number has been nice and truly get to say, you know what? We’re just here to interact with the community and tell you about things that you can do with your product and help you out.
Yeah, certainly. I have an incredible respect for folks that do have to, as they call it, carry a bag. Right. That actually are quota carrying reps, sales engineers and systems engineers, and whatever the title is, the responsibility is to carefully land the line between customer happiness and family and wealth happiness at the same time. So I’ve always said I enjoy being on a call when it goes well and it turns into a deal. But boy, do I ever not want the responsibility to create that? It’s a big difference versus just being there when it happens, actually creating that business, it’s a huge responsibility.
Well, and one more thing to add to that is also shareholder expectations as well. And so I think about it this way. Like every quarter our numbers get reported. That revenue number that directly maps to the number that I brought in, I would bring in for the company as well. So you’re also serving the shareholders, which in a roundabout way, if you’re investing in your 401K or your RRSPs and you probably have an index, you’re probably investing in tech companies anyways. And so there’s this weird loop of like, hey, I have an interest in your company doing well as well, just kind of indirectly, because my retirement is actually based on tech stock.
Yeah, it is funny, especially that responsibility, too, is for the company layer, because you hit a great number, you have a great year or a great quarter. Well, guess what happens to that number next quarter, right? It goes up and there’s never a quota where you’re like, you know what? You did 4 million last year. Why don’t you do three and a half this year? Once you just dial it back, always four and a half, 5 million, whatever you do, then there’s the stretch goal, and there’s a mentality and a capability that’s attached to that role and that personality. Remember when there was like a real estate boom? I worked in an insurance, I worked in tech at an insurance company. And a bunch of my help desk reps all left, literally like 5 out of 15 help desk reps all quit because they took that like three weeks to get your real estate license course. But this was in like ’99. All you had to do was get someone to say, hey, I’ll let you represent me. By the time you’re signing the Inc on the MLS, it was sold. They didn’t have to market.
They didn’t have to advertise. They didn’t have to hold an open house. Houses sold themselves. So everybody got into real estate. And then in 2001, they were all going, hey, you guys still need any help with those people? Because they realized they weren’t salespeople. They were just standing beside the sale. Really in the end.
A little bit like that now.
Yeah. Things about especially goodness gracious, BC Vancouver. I remember buying. So I bought a condo in October of 2008. Which everybody would tell you was the dumbest thing you could ever have done. But I was lucky in that I worked in a financial services firm, and I had a pretty good insight into how I believed we were at the bottom. And I was both knowledgeable and lucky, and it worked out to be right. But real estate in the Vancouver area especially is punitively expensive. So the prices were coming down, and I was like, all right, I’m going to lock this one in and I hope it stays and it stayed flat for quite a while. But then it did go back up, which is kind of nice.
Yeah. Wild times there.
And you’re surrounded by water, mountains, bears, and just pure unusable real estate. So there’s nowhere to go but vertical or into the mountains. And it’s really amazing to think there’s no wonder the prices are going up because there’s no choice. Although now they’ve got this thing about the foreign real estate tax and occupancy limitations. So I think that traditionally there’s a strong amount of outside investment that was coming in into Vancouver, especially downtown, that all of a sudden they’re like, wait a minute, we’re going to start charging you annual taxes because you’re not living here. Then those investments started to dry up.
Yeah. Although if you think about it, it’s a safe spot for them to put their money. And if the city is going to charge you 2%, but the asset is rising 25% year on year, then you can have your 2%. I’ll take the other 20%.
Go ahead and take it. Now, the other thing I said when we talk about, hey, I’m not in marketing, right? And I remembered saying this to we had done an event and I went to VM World and it was kind of like, this is my backyard, right? I’m surrounded by my nerd friends and I was a blogger. So it was like people at one point they asked me like, are you from San Francisco? Because, you know, a lot of people here. I’m like, no, we’re like Carney’s. We go from town to town. It’s just the VM world is my friends. Just so happens they’re all here. But at one point, I remember talking to my chief marketing officer and she was amazing. Gita was somebody who taught me so much. And I said something about how I get kind of trusted in these conversations because I get to say like, hey, I’m not in marketing. And she’s like, hey. No, no, it’s not a bad thing. But to the technologist who’s going to talk with me, they want to know I’m a fellow technologist. And even in her reaction remind me, I’m like, oh, yeah, it is a weird thing when I work for marketing, but I’m not in marketing. And I learned very quickly kind of the respect of that knowledge that my team brought to what they do and that I was really on that train just helping in another area. But like that, recognizing the skill of that marketing team, what they do, I started to dig in and community and stuff like this. So I’m curious Buu, your experience as you made that transition, what was your path to kind of getting familiar with what they do on a day to day basis?
Yeah. I still feel like I don’t know what half of my broader marketing team does. And I’m slowly learning because I’ll book 15 minutes. We can’t meet in person, so I’ll do a virtual coffee with them and just kind of get an idea of what they do. But it has been interesting that in sales we kind of expected, hey, a product comes out, there’s all these materials and things that are all prepped for it. So now I actually see how the sausage is made, and I know the person that actually made that document that you use, that made that reference architecture that shaped how the product is actually positioned in the market. Because they can do a whole bunch of stuff, but we want it to you know, we think we have the best angle if we kind of take this route with the product. So it has been interesting to look at it from this perspective, and I really appreciate that so many of my broader teammates in marketing really value my opinion on lots of stuff as well when it comes to what the stuff is doing out in the real world, if you will. And that’s been fun to be able to contribute back to them.
But also I kind of feel like I actually get to give back to my former teammates in the form of being their advocate and getting that message across. There’s lots of other people that do that as well. I’m not taking away from anybody. There’s lots of people in marketing who are able to kind of feed in from that side, but I’m just an extra voice that’s able to put in on that. But it has been, I’ve cleared up some misconceptions on the marketing side as to what they think about sales and on the sales side as well, cleared up some misconceptions of what they think about marketing. I would say there’s far more people that move from marketing to sales, it seems like, than from sales to marketing. And so I’m hopefully filling in some of that gap there. But yeah, it’s been quite a change to have these teammates.
I’ve talked to a few people and coached a couple of people who’ve made your similar transition. And like I said, there’s a financial impact. We don’t want to say that’s the reason we do what we do. But you are moving to a point where if you have a great year, it will look the same as if you have a moderate year. But in a point where you have commission in addition to salary, you could get attached to a monstrous deal and you get a potentially life changing level of income increase over time in those situations. And so to take that off the table, a really strong somebody like you who could do and did do very well, obviously in the duration you sat in sales engineering, for you to step back and say, hey, I’m cool with this. It shows how committed you are to that role, and it’s not the money that kept you on either side. It’s like I did this company. I dig the customer experience. I want to bring those two things together. I got a big respect for being able to do that.
Yeah. You know what, I’ve gotten into these. I was on another podcast a few months back, actually, and we got into this conversation and I’d been an SE for ten years and we had many successful years. And I would give the advice to any SE – don’t blow all your money. Invest your money wisely. If you happen to live in a place like Vancouver and invest in real estate, that’s what I did. And later on, when the time comes, you don’t have to do things necessarily for the money. And you can do things because you have a passion for it and want to pursue it. And hopefully I’ve seen folks who get their first gig as an SE and they go lease a big BMW right away because they’ve got some sort of compensation plan for a vehicle or whatever it might be. And then, hey, you know what? That lease, it’s going to feel a lot longer than it is when you’re going through that. And if you have some pretty bad years, you’re still stuck with that, stuck with that car. So, yeah, if I can give any advice to an SE that might be listening to this is don’t blow all your paychecks.
Yeah. Don’t let your lifestyle adjust to your current income because things can switch
Absolutely.
Now on the creator side, as I’ve learned too, when somebody starts to do something, it’s generally they’ve dabbled. Right. And the one thing I did discover once I saw your content you were doing on LinkedIn, and I really liked the style you were doing. And I’ve seen the adaptation. It’s funny even, some of your more recent have gone from a video to a Vlog. You really have done the story setting, you’re doing J cuts. You’re doing stuff that’s very specific to a true filmmaker storytelling style. And then when I did a quick look a few months back, I was like, oh, I’ve got to find the rest of your YouTube videos. I found another Buu Lam channel featuring a whole bunch of really cool stuff about cycling. And I was like, oh, Buu has been at this for a while in this side of it. And now you’re coming up on the other side. So what brought you to initially want to strap a camera on something and then tell a story?
You know what, the funny thing is that if you kind of look back at the dates my personal YouTube channel was actually, I don’t want to disappoint my followers over on the personal channel, but that was totally an experiment. And you can kind of tell if you look at the earliest videos on there. I was trying to figure out what kind of stories can I tell on here? And I hit a mountain biking, actually, if folks want to laugh. I made something videos about my air fryer. I was pretty excited about my air fryer, actually. The gym I go to, there’s a bunch of folks who had picked up air fryers. It made meal prep super easy. So I was like, I got to get an air fryer, too. Got an air fryer. I was trying to think of, hey, what kind of video can I make to try to experiment with creating something? And I was like, I just got this air fryer. I’ll make a video air frying, and it hit really big on YouTube. And that’s how I started to learn about the algorithm and nailing in on certain subjects and stuff and kind of editing so that people don’t get too bored on the videos as well.
That subject wasn’t really of interest to me, so it didn’t really last very long. I did one other one, and that one did well as far as views went as well. And then I transitioned to mountain biking. I just got a mountain bike. And both of my sons were getting into mountain biking as well. I got this new bike, so let me make a video about a bike. It’s about a product so I can show that off. And then that video did really well. And so I did another video about my son’s mountain bike. That video did really well. And like, okay, I guess I’ll just do these mountain bike videos. And so I just started doing them, and then was able to incorporate story to them, looking at places that we’re going with them and things that we’re discovering because we’re totally new to mountain biking. I have no place, no way I should be calling myself a mountain bike influencer by any means. However, it was just fun seeing people interact with me on there and kind of trust what I was saying when I was actually just discovering things as I went along.
But that’s the origin of that channel and trying to learn it. And you’ll actually notice, like, I got to a point where I hit my goal was, what would it take to actually make a YouTube channel that could make money? And everything that I read was like, oh, it’s going to take two years to do this. You’re going to have to make a video every week or two videos a week, and then you’re going to get to that point. And I was like, okay, let’s just figure this out. Is it going to happen like that? And then I kind of figured out, okay, if I make a video kind of like this, a lot of people watch it, and that increases my subscriber base. So I just did it over and over and over again. And you’ll notice I kind of hit about 1000 subscribers. And then it started to slow down because then I kind of hit my goal. And then at that point, I was like, okay, now I can take everything I learned and then just transition that to work and then start doing that from a work perspective. But before that, I mean, I would just tinker around with cameras and stuff anyways, not full blown cameras, but just like my phone, and then take a video of the kids, but try to make a little bit more interesting, add some music to it.
Nothing too crazy or anything like that. And the kids enjoyed that. They like watching that. My kids would make videos as well, so that would be cool. I could just hand over footage to them. And my oldest really loves making videos, so he can work on that kind of stuff. And so, yeah, I just kind of started from home videos documenting what the kids are doing. And then we have nice memories for family videos and then kind of progressing from there to, hey, I’m making videos for my customers because we can’t do user groups. Let’s do that. And then kind of taking a bit of a detour and saying, okay, the YouTube thing could grow. So let’s learn the YouTube stuff, algorithms and how to make videos on there, and then kind of come back to work and say, okay, I’ve learned all this stuff now I can apply it to work and then work on developing this for customers now.
And this is the interesting thing of, like, you generally have to take in a lot of knowledge. Like, you’re learning about the algorithm, you’re watching other successful creators, who did you kind of watch what’s in your subscription list as far as people that you watch regularly?
You know what it’s like all people from Toronto. It’s like Peter McKinnon, Maddie, Chris Howe, Lizzie Pierce, guy that does all the camera reviews undone. Like those ones I could fill with the stuff that they release. I could fill a week’s worth of utilities.
There’s no shortage of content. It just by those creators alone, right?
Yeah. Then there’s a few other ones. There’s a guy named Potato Jet who I don’t even watch his camera videos anymore. He has, like, a Vlog channel, and he’s just such a funny, hyper guy. So I like just watching him. And then I like watching Casey Neistat. You mentioned Casey Neistat. I like watching him for, like, story composition and how he weaves things together in such a way that it just feels like he’s just documenting what’s happening. But you can tell from the shots that he sets up. You had to have set up that shot and thought about it and rehearsed it, or maybe not rehearsed it, but it’s ready to go to do that. So he’s super clever, and I like watching that and kind of now that I watch it from the lens of reverse engineering, it’s interesting to see.
Yeah, I forget which one it was. It was one of the videos he did about two weeks ago. Three weeks ago. And I was like, there’s a man who’s just watching a little nice stat. Like, it was funny. You had the nice, sort of low beats intro. And like, I’d have stuff that I’ve had to learn. I had no idea what any of this stuff even mean. I bought a camera, and I’m an idiot. So I purposefully bought a camera that’s really, like, manual. I wanted to somehow make it hard on myself so that I would have to figure it out. And I’m also a little bit different. So I thought, let me go. My wife has Nikon gear, and so she has this hardened rule. She says, Are you a photographer or do you have cannons? She jokes all the time that she’s like, no Canon allowed in our house. We’re a Nikon family. My father in law is a Nikon user. So I’m like, I wanted to get into videography, though, not photography. And so, like, Nikon, all I read is about is overheating and maybe they don’t do good 4K and a bunch of different stuff.
So I thought, it’s basically Sony. And she says, like, Why don’t you look there’s this other Blackmagic is another option. And so I was like, Sony and Black Magic. I went out to Twitter poll, and I was like, hey, what should I do? And everybody was like, definitely go with the Sony. I was like, oh, man, I’m going to be counterculture and get the manual camera. So I went with a Black Magic Pocket 4K. So Pocket 4K. Super fun. Great, but no stabilization. So that’s kind of a drag. No auto focus. Also kind of a drag. But for the shots that I’m doing, I like manual pull focus. I like that kind of thing. If I were to get a second camera, I probably may add a Sony to the group if I were to get a second one, just because it would be fun to have a different style. But I really dig it. And then I got to thank you, Buu, because I just put it out Raw. I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m, like, just messing with settings. I don’t know what an ISO is. I don’t know what any of the stuff.
So I just dial in what looks decent. And you poked a quick comment into one of the videos like, hey, looks like, are you recording in raw or whatever? Yeah, totally. That’s what I’m doing. There’s no luts, there’s no post editing. I’m just like recording publishing. And you reached out and we chatted on Twitter and said I was like. And you offered you like, hey, dude, let me send me some material. I’d love to take a try a color correction. And that spurred me to go, he’s right, I should learn this stuff. So I took a little extra time and learned about color grading, and still obviously no idea what I’m doing. But thanks to you, it got better. And this is like, so I’ve learned how to add a lot to the streaming camera because that’s the other problem. I would do post processing and it was fine. But the way the platform I use for the podcast, both of us are on here. So I can’t apply a lot to the video because it would screw up your video. So I was still basically shooting raw half the screen. So anyway, I went way deep for camera nerds on this one. But talk about your gear because I’d actually love to hear what kind of kit you’re using.
Yeah, my kit is pretty – I’m staring at it right now. That’s why I’m not looking at you. But I think my kit is done at this point. I wouldn’t call it dialed in, but I think I’m done because I don’t know what else I can add to it. Everybody asks me about the mic, which if you’re into mic, you probably all recognize the shirt SM7B from podcast, from Joe Rogan. And this goes into an audio interface called PreSonus io 24, which is like relatively new. It’s a smaller one. Presonus does really big high end gear and this is kind of like a nice one that can just sit on your desktop. And I use that for the audio delay. Actually, this goes into something called a cloud lifter. These mics are not powered and so it uses a cloud lifter to give it a bit of boost. And then that goes into it goes XLR from there into the cloud lifter, cloud lifter, XLR into the PreSonus and then it gets additional gain from there, but it also gets an audio delay from there. I have an ATM mini for my HDMI switcher.
It has audio delay in it, but I was having some issues with my ATM mini in that. I think it was overheating and actually shutting down randomly and so I couldn’t trust it anymore. I went down this path of trying to get off of there and ended up with this audio interface instead. I actually had a different one that didn’t have an audio delay and I should back up. For anybody who’s listening right now and wondering why this guy keeps talking about audio delay. It’s because people will find out if you were to get into more of a higher end camera, audio signals reach your computer faster than a video signal will, and so you need to compensate for that with a bit of delay. ATM mini has an audio delay function in it. So I could actually plug this mic through an XLR output into a three and a half mil Jack on the back and then take advantage of the audio delay. However, because of unreliability – unreliability to the point where I had to RM the thing and to pay shipping and stuff like that, I’m used to like it products or enterprise It products where it’s like that’s all part of your warranty, man. We’ll send you way bills, we’ll send you boxes and everything goes like, just send it to this dress. Like, okay, are you going to send me anything? No.
Make sure you fill the customers form, right?
Yeah. Fill out the custom forms. Make sure you put in your own padding into the box, and we’ll get you a replacement. So anyways, I still like my ATM mini, but I didn’t like the unreliability of it. My ATM mini has a USBC out for webcam input, but I actually use the HDMI out and go into a Cam Link 4K just because I find that the color depth is a little bit reduced. It’s compressed over the webcam out, and so it’s uncompressed if you go at the HDMI out into a Cam link. So I do that. So I have four inputs on there. I have this camera. I had a B Cam setup before when I would actually do, like, overhead shots if I was whiteboarding for a customer. I don’t really do that so much anymore. So I don’t have that connected anymore. And then I have my laptop has an HDMI out that goes into another input on there. And then I have a Raspberry Pi, and it’s not configured right now, but I had a Raspberry Pi that could actually play preloaded videos on there. And so some of the streams I was playing with this, like, adding in stuff through switching of the ATM, and I could do overlays, or I could just take over the video altogether.
I don’t do it so much anymore because it requires, like, setting everything up. I should also say I’ll get into my camera for a second. I didn’t know any of this. I learned all of this from two people, Robin and Eric, who I work with at F5, who are gear nerds far more than I am. And they got me started on this path, and then kind of got me started, and then they’re like, okay, you’re on your own now. And then I went and did all this other.
Like, giving the kids the first cigarette and just saying, Here you go, by the way. You’re going to feel weird tomorrow morning, but here’s a place where you can buy more.
First one is free. And then they’ve unleashed this whole thing on me. So getting to my camera, I have a Sony A 6400, and that’s on a 16 millimeter Sigma Prime lens. It’s a 1.4 prime lens on there. I have two cameras, actually. I have an A 6600 Sony a 66 600 as well, with a few different lenses. And then I have a teleprompter with a 7-inch field monitor hooked up to it. And so right now, the reason why I look into the camera is because I have the screen for you.
Nice.
So I’m actually looking at myself, and you both on the same screen on here.
And you know what? You just wrecked my weekend, dude. Because now I got to go set this kit up because I have the problem where I’ve got literally the laptop is sitting underneath my camera because of. Yeah, I used the field monitor and that was pretty good. And I’ve got a small prompter, but then the problem was it wouldn’t get the output. So I needed the whole screen. And I was like, now I know you’ve given me my solution for this, which is awesome.
Yeah, you can grab a field monitor. I would not recommend the one that I have, so I’m not going to name it because I got burning from it. So it’s on all day. And I’ve got like ghosting on the image, unfortunately. So I’m kind of disappointed. I don’t know. I’ll get another one eventually. It’s okay for doing this, but I was kind of disappointed that it did that on me. Yeah, I’ve got a big video light. Sorry, go ahead.
Yes, I say I was going to check. Now, your lighting is really, really nicely done. So what’s your lighting setup?
Yeah, I have the video light is a Godox SL60, so it’s not a super powerful light, but like, it’s almost on full blast right now. But it’s good enough for this setting. I’ve got a huge 48 inch dome attached to it, so that would be like the sun basically hitting me. It spread the light out so that’s why it’s kind of big and soft. I played with different sizes, but bigger is better. Bigger closer, but softer is better. Yeah. And then I’ve got a couple of LED panels back there. They have soft boxes on them as well. So it’s not like harsh light hitting the walls. And then I actually turn off my lights in my office. I have overhead lights, but I actually turn that off because then it throws everything off. And I actually kind of just like this moodier. Yeah.
It’s funny. I should double check because I’m going into overtime with you. Hopefully you’re okay. Just to show you an example of that’s, my backlighting that I’ve got is from these GBM. It’s like a five, six, five Ford or whatever. If you go on to Amazon and say, buy me the LED lighting, that’s what you get. And I’ve got one over top of me, which is it is a pretty hard, harsh light that is coming down. And that’s what I was thinking about is like softbox or something. Because for the backlight, it’s one thing because it’s not in the frame, but this one, it really does shine a bit bright. It’s not too bad. I can take some stuff in the post, but I’m learning. And then the other one, of course, is the fun part is when you take out, it’s amazing what a difference is once you actually take out the backlights, it’s like surprising. Just like little tiny things of putting the neon and how much it can change the way the background looks. I’ve always been surprised by a little bit here, a little bit there, you experiment and you get your space set up.
But once you dial it in and once you know it’s consistent, I practically can put, like, gaffer tape down. And I know where my tripod has got to get set up. It’s a standing desk, but I’ve got a drafting chair for it. This way I can stand if I want to, but generally I’m sitting more than I’m standing these days.
Yeah. When you talk about the little details, it’s funny how when you start working on this, I didn’t notice any of those details. And I’m like, why would people add these little bits and pieces here? I don’t notice it whatsoever. And then you start doing it and you’re like, oh, you want a little light back there? Could actually help out. A little splash of color. I don’t have anything in the background there because I just paralyzed by analysis. By paralysis. Like, I keep thinking about, oh, what do I want it to look like back there? And I have thought about it for months and still haven’t decided. I don’t want to commit to anything. And it’s still kind of blank back there. But yeah, all these little things that you don’t really think about until you start doing it.
I remember seeing somebody. They did a breakdown, and I forget who it was. So great folks to watch for this is Peter McKinnon obviously. Maddie Happy Teppo, his brother, his twin brother, which is hard. Make sure you have to look at the channel to figure out which one you’re watching. Although Maddie sounds Canadian, Teppo sounds finished. You can definitely tell that Maddie’s been in Canada for a long time. And as you said, Lizzie Pierce, she’s also really solid on tips. But I saw somebody and they talked about their background, and they’re like, I like the natural light look, but I also don’t like the inconsistency of natural light. So that the window reflection that you see back there, and you see the frame of a window. He says, just a second. And he turns it off, and it’s an LED light with a fake window frame in front of it to put it on the wall as if it was window light. I was like, you magnificent bastard. It looks like you’re in a beautifully lit room, but then you know it’s exactly the same every time, all times of day, which is kind of stuff again, you don’t think about until you’re doing it.
And you’re like, oh, naturally, it sucks.
And then it’s like, 01:00 A.m.. And you’re like, how did I get to the point in my life where I’ve spent 4 hours watching videos on lighting? Here we are.
Amen to that. But it’s good. And so, like I said, as far as what’s possible, I always tell people, and you said it before, but I look back at my first step. I was like, you almost think like, maybe I should take it down. But you’re like, no, I look at YouTubers, filmmakers, you still have their old stuff up there, right? You know, you see Mr. Beast in his bedroom on iPhone 4, counting saying PewDiePie 100,000 times. He doesn’t take that down because he’s going to do 26 million views on his next video. It’s like it’s part of what got you here. So I’m not aiming for 26 million views. I’d be happy if I got 2600 consistent views. But it’s part of the learning process, and I kind of respect people that leave it up.
Yeah, it’s paying respect to the process. I would say it’s almost like lying to people. Not a lot of people ever started amazing right away. Maybe some folks that went to school or something, and then the first thing that they published was a project that they worked really hard on. Maybe that was really good. But outside of that scenario, everybody went through this journey. So it’d be disingenuous to not show a journey to other folks as well. I’m sure everybody just respects that you put the time in, and if they want to do the same, then they could just follow the journey as well. And they can see all the little improvements you made every video.
Yeah. I once read about somebody last time like, how do you get that really cool, like slightly out of focus, virtual background. It’s easy. A $3,000 camera and a real background. That’s how. I don’t recommend this is the path to do it.
Yeah. But they’re like, software could do it. And you’re like, but it’s a little different. So spend the $3,000.
Yeah. How jv am I, I still make the mistake. I’ll have so many ones where I’m like, oh, you’ll do a video and you’re like this, and you’re like, dang it. You’re like, scrap that one. Especially with manual focus. There’s no leeway. And I’ve done them where I’m like, I’ve got focus assist on my field monitor, but I still have to literally like, there is an auto focus on the software. So if I tap a button, it will find it. But it’s not continuous autofocus. Sometimes because the background is pretty full, probably more than it should be. It sometimes grabs another thing, and all of a sudden it puts me in front of it instead of being the focal point. So I’ll make mistakes like that, but I don’t mind. And I think people like you and a lot of other folks that jump in, they’re like, hey, this is really cool and, like, really good constructive thing, like advice on how to do stuff, and we all learn from each other.
I guess that kind of brings us back around to talking about community. People are genuinely interested in helping out other people. And as long as you figure out ways to gather those people together, you get great things out of it.
Well, in the end, what really does button this up perfectly is that many years later, here we are completely different origin for both of us. And we will do this again. Right. Because I believe in you, I trust you. And whatever your email address happens to be, I know that your integrity carries to wherever you go. And this learning process and this community, it transcends the vendor names. And also just even inside a vendor, technology evolves. Right? I was a VMware guy for a long time, but before that, I was the Microsoft PowerShell guy and then I was the OpenStack guy and then I was the Cloud guy and I’m the Kubernetes guy. I’m like, I’m the same guy.
Already here about the OpenStack stint that you did.
Yeah, it was like an emo phase. We all did that. But it is proof that in this industry, we all find each other again. And the fun part is you see the genuineness and what people do and what they bring to it. I will have obviously links to your channel and people should connect with you on LinkedIn and see the really great content you create. It’s been an honor to be on this side of the camera. And like I said, now I got to go Amazon out. I got to get my field monitor teleprompter cheap. This is fantastic. How did I not think of that before?
Well, I appreciate you having me on. For me, it’s an honor to be on here and I appreciate all the free content that you put out there that helps the community as well. And hopefully these conversations, hopefully mine provides some value to folks, but it wouldn’t be possible without a platform like yours to share it on. So I appreciate you.
Thank you very much. Yeah. And for folks, if they do want to get connected with you, I guess I said LinkedIn and what’s the best way if folks wanted to track you down, Buu?
Yeah, LinkedIn is a great one. I think I’m the one with the most amount of followers under the name Buu Lam. But if there is another Buu Lam out there that has more followers than me on LinkedIn, then I’m coming for them. Otherwise you can reach me on Twitter, which is @buulam, and then over on the DevCentral Community, which is now called community.f5.com. It used to be DevCentral.f5.com but we’ve renamed it to community to kind of help reflect what it really is. So, yeah, between those three or if you Google me, I’m pretty sure I’m one of the top search results on there. So no matter what, you should be able to find me.
The funny thing is it was about a year ago, I think I was going through and I found a bunch of old business cards because I finally moved all the rest of my gear from Toronto down to New Jersey and I had this old school and it’s like my Microsoft contacts from when I was at sunlight it was like all the stuff goes way back and I had your business card in my homeless business cards. So there’s like a handful of people I was like here’s somebody that someday down the road this dude’s smart, I’m going to have to learn from him. And it is funny that we do end up reconnecting through different ways but it’s really cool to see that. Yeah man, you’re doing neat stuff so there you go. Get involved in the community. This is where the fun is.
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Satyam founded UXReactor in 2014 together with his brother, Prasad. Under his leadership, UXReactor has become the fastest growing specialized experience design firm in the USA, with a team of 60+ employees spread over three continents.
Before starting his entrepreneurial journey, Satyam served as Managing Director of Product Design at Citrix in San Francisco, where he played a crucial role in growing the product design team from four members to over 100+ practitioners.
Satyam was instrumental in building PayPal’s Global Design Center in India while leading a design team in Silicon Valley. We explore an in-depth conversation of modern UX, the myths of UI and UX, plus the first principles of design and its impact on usability and business success.
Hello, everybody. Welcome back. My name is Eric Wright. I’m the host of your DiscoPosse podcast. Thank you for listening and for watching. Of course, if you want to check out the video version of this and other amazing episodes, you can head on over to youtube.com/discopossepodcast. You can see them all as they happen, which is kind of fun. And thank you for all the people that are watching because we’re actually getting really good uptake on that side of the world. All right. This is Satyam Kantamneni. He is a fantastic, fantastic guest. He’s doing really interesting stuff with his team, UXReactor. He’s also the author of the soon to be released Uxdplaybook, which if you follow the links, go to Uxdplaybook.com. This is a must get so well put together. We have a fantastic conversation talking about his approach to user experience and real user experience. So we separate the myths of UI versus UX, the psychology that goes into creating user flow and experience in general. This can be done in software, in business, in physical spaces. It’s all over. So it’s a real pleasure to take the learnings and the research that Satyam is doing and bring it to this audience. You are going to enjoy this. I sure hope you do, because I came away with a real sort of feeling of being blessed after having gotten all these lessons.
And of course, speaking of reasons why we can have this incredible user experience, I’m so proud to say thank you to the fine folks at Veaam Software who are supporting this podcast and helping me to make sure we can bring more great conversations like the one we are about to listed with Satyam. If you want to learn about everything you need for your data protection needs, whether it’s in the cloud, whether it’s on premises, whether it’s physical servers, even those containerized crazy workloads. That’s right. Those containers, they go away and they’re gone. So you’ve got to be careful. You can actually back up because there are persistent container workloads. There are great reasons to back that stuff up. Hey, I could go on for hours about that, but I’m not going to because you’re going to go to vee.am/discoposse. And you’re going to check it out yourself because you need to do that much much more than what I just talked about.
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I’m Satyam. I’m the co-founder and presently the managing partner at UXReactor. And today you’re listening to me at the Disco Posse podcast.
Satyam, thank you and welcome to this discussion. I really enjoy when we get to explore the topic and the practice of user experience. And as we chatted a bit in our pre discussion, preparing for this, it’s such a loaded phrase. There’s over marketing, overuse of the word. And I think this is a great chance for us to talk to you about UX Reactor, the basis behind your approach, the book, which I’ve been thankfully able to access a preview copy prior to publishing, which is fantastic. But for folks that are new to you, Satyam, if you don’t mind, give a quick introduction and a bio, and then we’ll start to talk about the UX Reactor story.
Absolutely, Eric. I think it always is useful to see. I have a very, I would say an eclectic background. I studied electronics engineering way back when I realized very quickly that I didn’t want to be a chip designer and needed more human aspects of work. I was serendipitously introduced to a professional at that point called human factors, how humans interact with complex technologies. And that became my line of work for the last two decades. So that’s kind of the highest level over time. I’ve studied engineering, I’ve studied design, I’ve studied business. So all three aspects of looking at how things come together. And fortunately, seven years back, I got to kind of spend a lot of time by building a firm, UXReactor, and looking at the intersection of all three of them, especially as the world is getting more tech savvy and more tech pervasive and businesses are kind of driving a lot more tech. But with a design mindset, obviously, Steve Jobs did an awesome acceleration to a lot of these things over the last two decades. So, yeah, I’m kind of right at the cusp of seeing this go through. And being in the Silicon Valley also helps me to kind of be very much plugged in with the tech Mecca that’s kind of it’s become at this point.
Yeah. The surroundings are certainly still despite the fact that we’ve seen sort of a depatriation of the real estate and folks moving to other parts, sort of broadening the locations that people can build from. There is still such a storied sense of history there and so much still active. Right. It’s always amazing to me. And I think the best thing, if you don’t mind, I’d love to just begin with, if you were to type it into Google, define user experience.
It’s often the most misunderstood word in the profession. If you really look at it, every system in the world has users for the system and users come in different contexts and every user has an experience. And the best definition I’ve found so far in my profession is any event or occurrence that leaves an impression is an experience. And therefore you need to kind of look at every event and occurrence that your system actually has. But now if you look at systems like hotels, they have studied this for a long while. Our hospitality, they’ve studied experience for a long while. And that’s why you’re paying a lot more for a red carton than a much more, smaller, cheaper option. But then in the tech world, where you’re starting to look at one of the biggest trends that’s going on as tech is becoming more front and center, is obviously dehumanizing to in a lot of ways, but also humanizing to a lot of ways. Right. So dehumanizing systems that you would call customer service. Now, you probably are talking to a conversational system, but again, it still has to work with a human on the other side.
So that’s why experiences are becoming much more important, especially as those events are becoming tech events, as those movements are becoming tech movements and memories are being created with tech. So you really need to kind of define experience on that end. And that is what is called user experience in the context of the tech world. But honestly, user experience, and the first thing I tell anyone is user experience is a mindset. And then how do you bring that mindset to tech is where I believe is the biggest opportunity. And if you really think about what Steve Jobs did, he did that. And that’s why today Apple is still the world’s most valuable company.
Yeah, it’s funny if we take that sort of Apple example, even within Apple, during and beyond the Steve Jobs era, we saw the introduction of Schemorphic, which was a word that no one needed. They realized they needed to know what it meant. And then on the tail end of that, the poo pooing of Schemorphic as so last year. Right. Like, we suddenly was like, oh, the natural wood texture on stuff. They’ve seen evolution. But the ethos behind the experience is always consistent. And I think that’s what’s interesting in looking at your own background as well. It’s the vision, the ethos. It’s the thing that you want to achieve. The way in which you achieve it may alter by technologies, by whether it’s visualized, whether it’s audible, whatever it is, but it’s ultimately it’s the practice that you’re creating.
Actually, let me kind of dig deep on the word practice there and also kind of sometimes add profession to it because a lot of times people don’t look at that as a skill, then more like a profession. And unfortunately, that’s kind of where a lot of business leaders kind of make the mistake. So I’ll kind of let me unpack that a bit there. When you look at the profession of user experience overall or the practice of user experience, there are different levels of how you can create value. The UI level, which is like, how does the screen look to me? How does it feel to me that’s kind of exactly towards like, Schemorphic style, hierarchy, color, fonts, all those things kind of come to be in that craft. However, when you start looking at it as a next level, you start looking at how does the whole product experience look like. So when you think about Apple, they look at an ecosystem experience. Right. So when you go from and anything, again, when you look at this is nowadays, Tesla has done this really well. They look at the whole ecosystem and they’re looking at the whole product as an ecosystem.
And that’s kind of the next level of how you’re thinking about the user’s experience. And then the third level, which is kind of the level which is much more organizational, where everybody and every element, right, from the lowest end organization, the highest organization, the newest organization, the oldest, whichever way you look at it, they all think about the user first. The users experience second, the design third, and then fourth, the technology. And that’s kind of when you start thinking about every facet of what the business is, that’s the last level and the most important frontier of user experience. And again, every time you think about the user and how this will make them feel that moment or that opportunity, that fundamentally is where value is created. I unfortunately see nine out of ten organizations spending their time in the UI side, and therefore, they only see value there and also make a lot of misteps there.
Yeah. This is the interesting. Like the misnomer, when people say user experience, they inevitably think you’re a front end developer. Like, no human computer interaction is not about which bloody JavaScript framework you’re writing your front end in or response you’re using.
Absolutely.
You look up the user experience as a phrase has been coopted by web designers building a single page app. And I have to be careful. So there is a truth that that in itself is a user experience, but that is so niche and so narrow above definition. And the use of the phrase that the same person that will do a fantastic single page app that will draw you through a journey that makes you get to the bottom to use a strong CTA and like you do all of the right things. That is not the same as somebody who like a Tesla, like an Apple, like an IBM, like a Microsoft, like a power company that wants you to do something like you and your clients experience, the user experience goes far beyond you getting to the bottom and clicking the button.
Absolutely. And I think that is obviously the right intent, because eventually that’s how they’re interacting with the system. But it takes a lot of deep understanding of why is the user there? What are they trying to do? What are the motivations? What is the context? The same way as you would design for a kindergartner an education platform is not the same way as you design it for a high schooler. Right. And there’s all those nuances and so much context is there. And that’s where the beauty of user experience is when you can unravel it.
The interesting thing is I like that you mentioned the idea of education built towards a preschooler or elementary school fundamentally different from somebody who’s college age or beyond or perhaps even an octogenarian, right. And it is funny because I noticed things that can seem wondrous to a 30 to 50 year old are instinctual and obvious to a child sometimes. And I always give this example of the simplest thing is you take a coin and you take the coin, and all you do is you make the coin disappear. To everybody else they look at your hand because you can force them to do this. But the first thing that a child does, I’ve got two young kids is they look at the hand that you took the coin. They know right away they know where it is. You can’t push them towards an experience. You can’t guide them because they instinctually have figured it out. But to the user of a system, it’s the same thing. It’s like you have to try and pull them towards something that they didn’t instinctively necessarily believe they needed.
I think there is a little bit of I have a different perspective there. Right. So there’s an ethical element of user experience that you are trying to give people what they need, however, give it to them the way they want it in the context that they are. And the last two parts is where the tricky part is. Right. Because again, in the profession, there’s an element of looking at trying. How do I get you to click on things? How do I get you to not do what I want to do? There’s a lot of dark patterns there. But there’s one aspect of that in the last two years, more or less. Right. So what you have seen is legal has now become a tech system. Right. You have education has become a tech system. You have seen health care becoming a tech system. You’re now talking to telehealth way more openly than three years back. And these are all things that again, giving it to like a kid who’s going to go telehealth kid who’s going to go into education. All of these things are actually now becoming much more where the systems are created without the user in the loop.
And actually, one thing, Eric, I’ll tell you, which is what’s fascinating, as I became a student of this profession, that till the 40% of the products that are shipped out there are shipped without talking to one user. Right. So they’re built out with that construct like let me ship it and they will start using it. And that is just a fascinating thing of how many millions of dollars are spent on building feature sets and building products that actually don’t work for the user. And that’s why you see a product market fit as a failure. I actually think that’s the fastest way of throwing money at something and hoping it will stick and it doesn’t happen.
Now, this brings up a good callback to a famous Steve Jobs saying whether it’s actual or misquoted is the idea that users don’t know what they need until you give it to them. And people hear that. And it’s such an out of context phrase because if you read the stories of product development and product management inside Apple, it was so wrapped into user interviews and continuous research with real users. What was the I forget what it’s called, the creative process, I think, or creative design, I can’t recall. I should look it up. There’s a great book that talks. It was like an early project manager who worked with Jobs and creative selection. I think that was the name of the book. And it’s such a fantastic journey through that. But all people are going to get take out of that is I’m going to create something because the user doesn’t know what they’re doing.
Because along with the Steve Jobs code, another quote that comes from Henry Ford and it also kind of muddies the water, which is like if I just ask users what they want, they’ve just told me about a faster horse. And this was in the context of building the Model T. In both of these contexts I think a lot of people, when they read that or listen to it, they don’t understand the underlying essence. You still have to understand that users and let’s say talk about the Henry Ford context, that users will still have to kind of take care of a horse. There was not a whole family that can sit on the same horse. There is you cannot go faster than a certain speed. There’s a lot of those elements that also are informing how you’re kind of a designing in that context. And those are still user problem the same way as when you look at Steve Jobs, you start looking at he was very in tune with who the users are that he’s building for that he actually what are the pain points for them and what is he trying to kind of build from?
Like, he knew that people were carrying multiple devices, one for music, one for camera, one for personal organization. And then he said, I’m going to bring all of that together. But however, they don’t know how that will look. Like the visioning is a different problem versus the need of the R. And I think a lot of times people confuse the visioning of going and talking to user what they actually need versus what the needs of the R are. And I actually think there are two different facets. And you should really be building a lot more deeper sense of the need of the R. And that only comes when you start observing users and are much more empathetic to the users of your system.
Yeah. And this is, you touched on it before, too. And I talked about even in the way I described it. Right. The idea of leading somebody towards something that you want them to do versus observing them and figuring out how to create a system in which it would naturally draw them to a path.
Absolutely.
And you used the word ethical and that we’ll talk a bit at length about that. I don’t want to get there just yet, because that’s a single thread that I really want to spend some time on. But it is interesting that when you observe behavior with the goal of building systems towards the end goal with continuous observation and feeding back to that loop, the ability to have both the patience and the capability to go through that, it’s got to be a unique perspective and a unique person that can do that.
To a large extent, yes. Again, if you care about it enough, you will spend the time studying it, learning about it, immersing yourself in it. Right. I mean, you can talk about building all the software for health care. I’ll give you an interesting anecdote here. This was early in my career. I was designing a system for breast biopsy system for the doctors. And as a young designer sitting in the office, I was like, yeah, this is how the doctor would use it. They would go and I was designing the thing where they actually were hitting the dials in the system so that they can get the right settings for the suction without going too much into the details of how the system works. But as I sat there, I assume that the doctor is hitting those dials and therefore this is how they will look at it. But when you go and observe and you immerse yourself and you see a couple of them, first of all, it’s hyper intimidating, very loud. And more importantly, the doctor is not doing it. The doctor’s focused on the biopsy itself. He’s giving the commands to the assistant who’s actually doing it, just observing how that subtlety works, how the user and the ecosystem work, then you realize, I just designed it for the wrong person.
The doctor would never touch it and it’s an assistant who’s touching it. So the commands have to be much more clear. And if semantics are important, if a doctor says Zoom in and then there’s no Zoom in button there, then the assistant is there’s a lot of those nuances that you really think about. And that just was my first one of my early lessons I learned where you started observing that you really have to immerse yourself. But if I was just sitting on the desk and doing it like most people would, then obviously it’s not going to work well, and then the doctor is not going to use it or they’re going to have more issues or more importantly, it’ll have some repercussions to the patient that we don’t really don’t want.
I guess if you think it’s actually a really good example too, because Ergonomics and physical environment is the sort of the OG of user experience. Right. We’re achieving this through software design and software user interfaces, but it used to be very physical. And I remember even hearing a good example was like in sport performance, somebody Lance Armstrong, love them or hate them, obviously, a well known cyclist, fantastic at time trialing. And so they did is they called them their F1 team. They were like fanatical designers, engineers that were building the best bicycle, and they were doing everything they could to shave every possible second off of a time trial. Because it’s 60 kilometer time trial will be one by 3 seconds. And that’s horrifying to imagine, like, how accurate you need to be and how differentiated do you have to try to be to achieve those 3 seconds? And so what they did, they said in the winds tunnel, the perfect bike design for this was going to be sort of narrowing the pedal width by millimeters. It was almost an insignificant difference. But over the course of a 1 hour time trial, it would take 5 seconds off of the time trial, which is the difference between winning and losing.
And when they put him out on the road with it, he came back and his time was worse. And they said, what happened? And he’s like, my hips are on fire. Because while engineering wise, it was the ideal design. He just physically did not work like it took away from the way that he can physically ride it. When you see the marriage of humans and engineering, you realize that it’s two fantastically different practices that are coming together.
Absolutely. And I think that’s the in the design world, we call it prototyping with the users. We can prototype as much as you want in the lab, but taking it to the users, letting them interact with it, letting them engage with it and then observing it and iterating on it. Absolutely. But again, these are all things that we have already figured out in the non-tech sector. Right. So prototyping has been a big part of architecture. They scale model everything before they actually build it has been a big thing. Industrial design, where they actually prototype and kind of use it. But then in the software world, for as much as we look at it, as I said, 40% of the products are shipped without even talking to one user or showing it to one user. And that’s kind of where I find that as it software is, it still is not behind the curve there.
Yeah. And often, too, even if they feel like they’ve been successful once, like they’ve gotten somebody to download and they see if the numbers are heading the right direction, if they’re going up into the right as far as adoption and retention, because it’s sort of a Schrodinger’s cat problem that would have gone better if we had spent more time with the user. We’re gaining an adoption. Our turn rate is low or reasonable. So how do you define successful but meanwhile both pre products and then post product that’s the other thing is that user experience is continuous. It’s not a thing you do once and say, okay, good, stamp it, mark it complete, it’s now in QA and continuous engineering.
Yeah. And I think you use a good term there. Continuous engineering, actually. I’m very inspired personally over the Kaisen philosophy of continuous improvement. And one thing I always say is if your users have problems, that means you haven’t done your, if any problem in the system. You haven’t done enough design or experience design until your users are in delight mode. And it’s actually interesting because once you get in the delight mode where they’re like someone thought about me or someone thought about my context, that smile that comes in in their face, that’s where you kind of end that phase. Now the irony of this is a year later that’s table stakes. Now you had to score in more delight. And that’s why it’s continuously because now just think about smartphones. Today, anyone who comes out with a smartphone without a touch screen interface, are they even actually viable? Absolutely not. Right. But then when Apple came out with the first touch screen with their construct, a very different anyone comes out with a smartphone without conversational AI – not stable stakes. But that’s where your delight has to continuously be evolving. And as tech becomes more and more powerful, you really have to queue in and what is that pain point? What is that opportunity? And that’s why continuously, every day you’d eat, sleep and drink that as a systems designer or a software systems designer, otherwise you will be left behind.
When did you know that this was a passion and that you had the ability to create a world around it?
I’ve been in this profession for 20 years. I enjoyed this, but I’ve never really knew why. And I think the last ten years is where I’ve started honing in and why. And the why is that when you really think about it, this is one profession that actually you can talk to users, understand the pain points, quickly come back prototype items and then go back to them, talk to them. And when you start realizing the power that has that you actually are as a profession, which is nothing less than when you really think about it as like an innovative. And that’s when you realize that everything can be thought through in that angle, any problem can be solved from this angle. And that’s kind of when I truly started realizing the power as I started growing in rank and like one small change here can make such a telescopic effect. So I would say the last ten years is when I started realizing more and more the power that this can unleash. Obviously a pivotal moment was going to business school and starting to understand more business problems from other peers because I went to an exec program.
But before that, I really enjoyed it, but never really understood why and what are the contours of that interest. But I would say the last ten years has been more so being very aware of it.
Now, this is an interesting point that you braised that I think is very important is the connection of the business outcome to the user experience. Only the measurability, because it is a very sort of touchy-feely type of idea. As we talk about sort of the practice of user experience that people believe it’s like, people will like it more. We use odd superlatives to describe it, but there is measurability in it. So tell me where that differentiates a true user experience designer from maybe somebody who’s involved in user experience, but just more specific and niche is part of the process.
As I mentioned earlier, you can do a lot of user experience on a UI level. Designing a screen, a form factor itself. But all you can design and use experience as an organizational aspect. Now, a good designer is thinking about how do I again, I’ll give you an interesting lesson I learned early on which would probably connect some of these dots. I was working in a company once, and I’m not kidding you. Every team I worked with said we are user centric. And it was a fascinating thing. I’m customer success, I talk to users. I’m user-centric. I am customer support. I talk to users, I’m user-eccentric. I am engineering, I’m building for users, I’m user-centric. I am marketing. So everybody had the frame of mind. You go and ask the user, how is this company for you? And they’re like, man, I talked to support. They will send me one place and they say, go talk to them. Products actually does one thing. And so from a user’s perspective, they were like, I hate what you guys are doing and I don’t like it. So when you look at it, it’s interesting, the intent is right, but the outcome is kind of not coming together there.
So when you start thinking about what a good designer bad experience designer, absolutely good designs are being done on the UI leve., but really bad design is being done on organizational level. So that’s kind of where you’re looking at. And obviously the impact of that, the more higher you go, the more value that you can unlock. But in the most basic sense, I think they’re coming back to something that you kind of started with, where’s the business sense? The UI level is obviously very touchy-feely. Like they feel right, they look right, they’re delighted, all that stuff. But if you really look at all businesses, all business stakeholders, they care about adoption, retention, satisfaction, efficiency, and these are all user efficiency and user engagement. And to get to that level, you really need to understand why the user gets it, doesn’t get it, what’s the context, who the user is. And then you kind of build those experiments and iterate on it. And that’s truly when you start and you can increase adoption, you can increase attention. So many times you make tweaks and e-commerce or transactional experiences, and then you start seeing them back, like just explaining something to someone gets them to sign up faster.
Just getting them to kind of talk to a community and building a community experience gets them to engage better. So these are all things that you need to know, what are the unmet needs? And then because of that engagement, there’s a higher attention, there’s higher adoption, there’s all these nuances that come to it, everything that you do. And that’s also why UX Reactor was founded, because I was just sick and tired personally, where design was becoming very much like a touchy-feely thing. And I said, no, design is a business driver. And I met and that was also the pivotal point for me was finishing our business school and talking to about 100 other business leaders from different contexts. And I could see that they had real business problems that I could solve. And that’s kind of what the genesis. And actually, I think anybody who says that as a practitioner, that designers touchy-feel, that means they don’t really understand the power. And unfortunately, that is still a profession that’s in adolescent. So therefore, there’s still a lot of that going on.
Yeah, I worked in finance and insurance and technology, like in tech support early on in the first part of my career. And it was trying to think it was like 2003, so early 2000s. And even like pre-1999 origin, I worked at Sunlight Financial, anybody who can look at my LinkedIn. So I’m not giving away secrets here. And I remember we were like moving from mainframe terminals to PC. So this is like Windows 31. The first change, adding a mouse to somebody’s life was like, good golly, I’ve never seen one of these things before. What is this? What do you do with it? It was literally that level of change in business process. And then we had this one team that I remember that always stood out to me. And they were the ones that had colored hair and tattoos, and they sat in the middle of the floor of our IT Department for some reason because we had all these printers and they were the design team, and they worked on the only Macintosh computers in the whole company. And they were these sort of odd group of folks in that they were different than the traditional suit wearing insurance folks. We’re still in a very corporate environment. However, the leader of the team was this fellow named Paul. And I learned so many lessons from him, that he could beautifully nurture the creative process that these young, just such interesting people could bring. And they were looking at, like, physical design and like brochures. And then it became email. They became what they did was pervasive to the way the company was portrayed. And then he was sort of like the dad of the group, but who also understood that what are the marketing numbers? What are the ways that we measure it? And that was my first understanding. I’m like, this was design experience versus just print. They weren’t a print shop. They were truly connecting like a textual experience, like tactile experience rather, to a business outcome. And it was like, oh, wow, I knew it was important. And as I saw over years that we moved into software design and software user experience and seeing it done right in some organizations, I was like, you knew that they got it and they understood the impact.
Absolutely. I think I’m a big believer of multidisciplinary thinking. And when you connect the dots, it actually is much more effective. Yeah, absolutely. I think the only thing when you said that that’s one reaction I see is like the creative kind. And yes, absolutely. There are a lot of people that are different and in the creative pursuit and so on and so forth. But it’s actually more of a mindset. And it’s a mindset that I personally advocate that a lot of people can get into, especially now that we all are equally, all the tools and systems and methods are available. It’s much easier to become an engineer if you want to watch YouTube videos and learn in the same way. Much easier to learn design and appreciate design. There’s just so much opportunities to kind of become a student of a lot of different systems. But yeah, I think design is kind of coming in. Most organizations in the Valley, as well as most tech companies, have some investment in design. What kind and where they are and how mature is a different question, but they have some investment. Just to give you one quick story, there is I started my career also in early 2000s, and my title still was User experience at that point with User Experience specialist.
And I had a scrum manager ask me like, oh, so what do you do? And I said, I’m a user experience specialist. I said, okay, what do you code in? I said, I don’t code in anything. And then he’s like, oh, so you just get paid to do boxes and arrows? And I was like, I get paid to do boxes and arrows. But that’s exactly fascinating. But then again, not in any real intention, but just how his understanding was. How can you build your experience without this? But over time, I still kept in touch with that master. And it’s fascinating. I mean, how much the profession has evolved.
If you think of those days. I mean, I remember coming through doing some work in telecom, in schooling, and I went to University, like took some part time courses, and it was all about information technology management. And they were teaching us about legacy telecom technologies that were like decades old. And that was at that time the beginning of what I started to see HCI – like human computer interaction, was beginning to become a subset of computer science. But only a handful of people moved towards it versus today. I would imagine that it’s actually probably core competency and core curriculum, I think, for computer science. So we’ve seen it, be understood the importance and the impact that it can have.
I think absolutely. I think just look at it. Right? I mean, what was that saying? That we have more computing power on our body than the space shuttle that went to moon? And that just is fascinating. I mean, the amount of tech that we have around us, the amount of systems we are interacting with, and if you do not think about the human in the loop and build that around that, then it just is an opportunity lost. And again, with the curve, there will be a lot of people adopted because it solves a problem. And just the same way as I would say before FaceTime and Apple brought FaceTime. And yeah, you could talk to person to person if you knew the IP, and then you kind of plug it in and then you do a thing and maybe kind of figure out the firewalls and all that stuff. But today it’s just like I click on a person’s face and I call them, and then I’m talking to them, and that just is the nature of how technology has evolved. And do they really care about what IP and which country and which location?
And they don’t because the systems take care of it and the human just wants it to work that way. But again, it works with an iPhone. But when I go into my home, it’s kind of a different context. So there’s a lot of those still, as technology is becoming pervasive, I just believe that there will be more opportunities for us to really think about human in the loop across systems.
And I think what we learn is that through those first iterations, just like with Teleconferencing, right. It was like you’d have a Polycom system in one office and a Polycom system in another office. And some poor bugger in the networking team is trying to set up sip trunking and point to point peering and all this really difficult technology to make one meeting happen. And there’s a bunch of people staring at the back of an It guy in one room and staring at the back of an It guy in another room. And then eventually the TV’s light up and it’s all right. Now we can begin and it’s wondrous versus now the natural expectation is I should just be able to walk up and click the button. And then I’m talking to Tokyo. Absolutely. Underneath it all the same, technology exists, right? But we took what was that problematic experience and we’ve gotten through it and we’ve automated and systematized it, which is, I think, where the advantage comes in. And also, like you said, it’s about iteration. It’s about listening, finding the customer problem, and seeing where just in the same way that any design business design, like lean practices, which ultimately came from the work of Toyota and Kaizen.
I read Eli Gold Rat and this idea of the theory of constraints and how this comes as far as flow. Well, experience flow is similar, right? Like find the bottleneck, subjugate the bottleneck, eliminate it, and then look for the next bottleneck and continue to do so until you have flow.
Absolutely. Yeah. It’s more science than art overall. And that’s why I say I’ve seen a lot more correlation with engineering, with creativity, which actually is one thing that because if you look at it, let’s talk about creativity and movie making. Right. If you talk to cinematographer and you kind of understand how they kind of compose the picture, it’s a lot of mathematics, it’s a lot of angles, it’s a lot of equations around light and camera angles and so on and so forth. But no one talks about it that way. You still have to equally be appreciative the same way as dancing, as so much math, steps counts, and all those things that you have to really think about a lot of nuances and designs are very similar. Design is very similar. In fact, I write in the book too about this, which is that a lot of times people pick up when you say design inspiration, it’s always looking for somebody who’s a designer in the craft sense. But I actually think that one of the best designers in the world was often not discussed in the modern context is Da Vinci. And because you think about him, he understands biology as well as he understands engineering as well as art.
And he’s good things to show in each one of them. And perfect. And if you can look back again talking about Steve Jobs or anyone, the construct of being a polymath, construct of looking at how things connect, that’s kind of where the magic is. And then you kind of apply that aspect of the flow and kind of looking at every aspect and every problem and then unlocking it. There’s just so many ways that you can make that magic happen.
And that is Da Vinci is such an incredible example of that. Like as both a creative mind and as an artist, a very literal artist, and what he could create, we could paint and his drawings, but his engineering. And when you look at the stuff that’s not the most popular works that we all know, you realize, like how many thousands of engineering drawings that he has. And this was pre-computer. This is very rudimentary tools that were given to him to do this. And he was creating something fantastic. On the Jobs thing too, it’s funny. There’s this weird thing that people often do is they say, oh, he wasn’t actually an engineer, but he understood the engineering aspect. He understood the technology, he understood the business, he understood the human behavior. And that may have been his strongest focus area. But he wasn’t just a marketing guy that made Apple big because he was really a marketing guy. It’s unfortunate that we kind of try and dumb it down to just like labeling somebody as they do this thus. That’s what they did.
I think it’s a really good thing to unpack. Right. And we say this at the firm of UX Reactor a lot. We say this always start with the user, understand the experience, then design it for them, and then look at the technology. And if you look at how Steve Jobs thought through it, he knew who the user was. He knew what experience he wanted to give them, and that’s kind of the whole thing. When he created the first Apple Store, he perfected it in a warehouse. He looked at every angle, how lights was formed, what the material surface was. He thought about that experience he wanted to give when people walked into the store. Then he thought about the design of all the nuances. And then he goes to engineering and says, I want this. Make it happen. Right. And obviously, engineering is when you have that level of a funnel of thinking, you are always holding engineering accountable for a very different aspect, which is like, I want to give the best experience for the user, and this design is going to look this way. Now, do you need to be the best engineer in the room?
Probably not. Do you need to be the best marketing person? He was a great storyteller. He could bring it down to the world. And I think that is often something that’s not told as much. Now you put it in the marketing hat. Absolutely not. He knew what users care about, and he would tell that well. But the fact is there was a lot of scientific approach. And his process of as you kind of earlier shared this, that aspect is kind of very valid. Now, what’s also interesting is Elon Musk calls himself the chief designer at SpaceX.
Yeah.
And it’s fascinating how he picked that title out. I know many people there’s a lot to read on that line. He’s the best technically the best person in space. I know there are so many other people there’s technically the best engineer on that system. Probably not. But the way he thinks about, again, what’s the vision for the system that he’s building and then percolate down and then get everything done, which is why the designer word, and I call it big d-thinking, big design thinking and not the small craft thinking. And that’s kind of where these people always played.
The Musk example is very interesting, too, because people have trouble trying to fit him into what he does. He’s incredibly technical, he’s incredibly intelligent, so much so that it’s challenging to have discussions with him because he’s thinking at a different level as a great interview experience. I watched and it’s actually tough to watch sometimes these ones Lex Friedman, who’s MIT robotics professor and designer and doing some very interesting stuff. And he’s a great podcast, talk some really amazing people. And Elon on and he talked about how do you think about where it can go wrong? What is it that you do in designing for failure, that if maybe it won’t work, that we aren’t going to get to Mars? Something that was the premise of the question. And it was the most fantastic thing to watch as an interview, because Musk just turned and you could see his eyes were like they’re darting back and forth. He’s formulating it. And the fact that Friedman gave just said, don’t say a word, didn’t cut them off, didn’t try and fill it. It felt like 30 seconds. It was probably ten. But that’s an eternity. When you’re watching an interview, you’re like, is the microphone still on?
You’re literally like, you’re not sure if they’re still on. And he’s like, well, we don’t think about that because there is no option. Failure is not something that we designed for. And he began this, but the fact that he went through and he was looking for the correct answer, not the fastest answer that would sound good on microphone. And it’s a very unique thing. Now he’s a Polarizing figure. Obviously, it’s a challenge to have a conversation about what’s good or bad about Elon Musk’s with a lot of folks. Actually, here’s another one. I bring this up because we did talk about this. You may know this text and this professor. Well, yes, which is why I said I wanted to wait until we got into ethics. I’m a student myself of stuff that BJ Fogg has brought to the world. But before we understood the impact, and now that we do understand the impact and he himself has almost had to kind of put a label warning on his own work because he sort of understands how much he empowered people to take it and do things that were not healthy or potentially not ethical with it.
Let’s talk about ethics of design.
No, it’s interesting. On a side note, actually, my master’s thesis was either studying persuasive technology, which is obviously at that point, or was human robotic interaction. I decided to take human robotic interaction. But I’ve actually been a student of persuasion, how systems like that can be built right if done right, obviously. I mean, because design the way to it just the same way as you kind of showed the coin trick. There’s a lot of illusion to design. There’s a lot of ways that we can get people to do what they want to do and how they want to get them to. If you’re getting them to do it for the right thing, obviously it is what the user intended to and where they got to. I think that’s all ethical when you want them to get to things that you intend to, but not them, probably. And that’s kind of where it gets into the other side. There’s so much that’s gone with the advent of technology. We have just seen a lot of other social aspects of it. Much deeper topic much. But personally, for me, I’ve always tiered here, at least as a firm.
We always said that we want to solve life problems, not lifestyle problems. And there’s still so much more opportunity. But on the highest level. I mean, I’d rather get a student to study better on a doctor to kind of be effective more or financial transactions to happen faster than actually trying to get you to do something or buy something that I don’t that is not right for you or anywhere. There’s a lot of other aspects to that. But the power of design is very much there for us to do anything we want. You’ve seen that over the last four or five years where triggering of polarizing news can get more engagement, getting you to click on a fake queue can get you more clicks. Again, it’s easy to do that because I control the environment that you’re in, and therefore I can manage that. But at the same time, I must say what some of the firms are now doing as a stand to kind of give more power to the consumer and power to them. I actually feel that there is more corporate responsibility that’s coming in. But overall, I just think there is a larger system that people need to realize that technology is getting more powerful and tools that are available are getting much more powerful. And we just need to know that we have to be aware of it.
Yeah. And I’ve applauded the work really, of Tristan Harris and the center for Human Technology and sort of that group that’s wrapped around it. And there are so many people that have really come to the fore who were ultimately all students of Fog and those practices. And I think that’s a good thing. In the same way that if we look at what Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky did in winning a Nobel Prize for economics as behavioral psychologists, that in the same way you talk about design, that it’s matching the business to the human experience and measuring it, that we’re going to use a lot more science to describe the art than the art. And that’s pre Kahneman and Tversky, all we thought was that this was art, that this was anecdotal information. And we were lucky more than right on describing what was happening. And when we took and we put science and data behind it, all of a sudden you can really understand what was going on in that behavior. And I truly like, that user experience is ultimately behavioral understanding, right?
Absolutely. Because I think users have intent, and intent kind of reflects in behavior. Users have trained behavior. So there’s a lot of those elements that you kind of do that. So it’s truly a cusp of that’s why I say you have to be a psychologist, you have to be a student of cultures. As an anthropologist, you need to look at be a technologist, you need to understand. So there’s so many aspects that you bring together to make that magic happen. But, yeah, it’s a powerful system that many companies and I see a lot more companies becoming much more aware of it. It’s just that they don’t get it right because they go in with one quick solution and so on, so forth. But it is a big mindset shift. But once it’s done and people understand that there’s a whole science behind it and a structure behind it, there’s a lot of opportunity.
Yeah. And it’s an interesting mix of, like you said, such a multidisciplinary thing. And even like, marketing campaigns are very much wrapped around creating an experience. And so the words we use, they’re so simple when you get them. But the work to get there. So that really can bring up the question of who was the reason why the first Apple really went to high output? Was it Chia Day because they were the marketing agency behind it? Was it the team that fed them the right data to give them that campaign? There were so many players. But in the end, internally, especially as an organization, when you’re creating a software centric business, user experience design is now fundamental. And this is not something that you can go on to Upwork and Fiverr and find. Absolutely.
I think you can get a lot of people on Fiverr. I think before we start this conversation, anybody with a computer and Internet can be a user experience designer. But to become a really good one in that it takes a lifetime and you still learn. And the technology, as I said, you kind of really broaden up and then also build the depth. And it’s more importantly, I think, something that you called out, which I want to kind of further elaborate on. It’s a very collaborative profession, and it’s not necessary that the most creative person is somebody with a designer title. It’s actually the system of bringing people together, ideating, building it, iterating on it. It is a collective process, and it’s one of those professions where literally two plus two is not edited. It’s multiplicative in a lot of ways. So therefore, it’s actually a fascinating thing. And I’ve seen so many people who go through a design process, they’re like, man, this is so fun. And I’m like, absolutely, it should be fun because you’re getting your creative juices, you’re trying out a lot of things, and you’re doing it with a larger group of people. And then when you build a structure around it. It kind of gets much more engaging.
Let’s talk about the bringing this to the market as a playbook now. So the user experience design is a practical playbook to fuel business growth. Fantastic introduction to what people can do. And it is such a well laid out, full, true experience in the playbook. Everywhere I went, it made sense. So I can imagine the work that went into creating this has had to have been a lot of hours, a lot of iteration, and a lot of design. But first of all, it’s beautifully done, just visually. And the reading of it, it’s like they say about user experience, when user experience is really great, no one notices. When it’s not great, it’s immediately obvious.
Absolutely.
So talk about the book and what drew you to put the time towards this? And I’m going to tell people, get the bloody book is fantastic.
To be honest, the book was never an intent on our end. It all started with I really was about eight years back, I was fairly frustrated in my career because I had spent close to that point about a decade trying to build that user centricity in organizations and teams that I’ve worked on and felt that my career was fairly mediocre. I didn’t have much to show. I had a lot of effort, a lot of activity, and I was just concerned at the same time, you look at the apples, the Airbnb, the Zappos, and all the folks that have actually been able to unravel and deliver much more impact to user centric practices. And I said, I really need to go back and look at it. And I said, either I keep to this profession, in which case let’s go back and understand and study why some companies are able to get there and why some companies are not able to get there. And that became my pursuit for a large level and to do that UXReactor as a firm was created and with my brother, who’s also the co founder and also the very good researcher and this line of work.
And through that last seven years that the company existed, we ran a lot of experiments. We worked with a lot of companies. We kind of understood what are the key things that make it work. And then we finally came down to what was in our we call it the BVD system to drive business value by design. There are four key aspects that need to be thought through, which is the right people in the right process, following the right process with the right mindset in the right environment. And that is what makes a good company in this process of being user centric versus a great company. And what we then started realizing is that we would get questions that a lot of our stakeholders would ask, like, how do I build a team? What’s the structure that goes into it, how do I build a carrier for them? How do I build a roadmap around a user that I care about? There’s a lot of these things that started coming up and we’re like, man, we need to probably write something about it because there’s so much more need. Nine out of ten companies don’t follow any of this structure, though they intend to.
And so we said, let’s write it down and put it out in the public domain. And that’s when the book came to be. And it was also one of the pandemic babies in the pandemic. We just saw every company going tech first, digital first, and then struggling. Right. And education is a classic example. Like just throwing tech on it doesn’t help because what ends up on the user’s side is they have half a dozen to a dozen systems to interact with, one for assessment, one for instruction, one for textbooks. And then that student is having to deal with uncomplicating it, and then experience is the best way to kind of navigate through that and you realize that’s not happening. So the book kind of ended up there. And then we said we wanted to create it with an intent to be a playbook where people from a different perspective business leaders, design leaders, practitioners, collaborators, everybody could take away something from it as a play and then use it immediately. So that’s how the whole construct came to be. And then we took a lot of our tribal common knowledge that we had within our own playbook at the organization and then put that out there.
So that’s kind of how the book ended up becoming a book. And so far as we’ve gone through our own process of iterating and testing with different users who we actually want to leverage, that we hope would leverage this book. And so far, we have only heard great things. And that’s all we are traded on it, and we kind of built on it as soon as it publishes. I’m looking forward to kind of getting the reaction and getting out there. I believe it’s sometime early May.
This is the thing that we see often, right? Is that going I think of Gene Kim and the team that worked with them on the Phoenix project and ultimately the DevOps handbook. The industry may still misuse the phrase DevOps. I see people all the time. They’re like DevOps engineer too, right? Like, that’s their title by HR, and it’s not really related to what they’re doing. In the same way that user experience design will get co opted and misused as a phrase, some poor person out there is labeled user experience designer three. You know, like they’re going to get ranked according to some HR band. But the work that went in the research, the patience that’s required to live the experience and then to take that same patience to bring it to the community through a written work. I loved how that played out in what you and everybody at UX Reactor have done. And like I said, this is the proof in even what I’ve seen. When you tell me it’s still in draft form, I figured it was going to come to be in basically word format like this. If this is draft, then I’ve never written a draft this good in my life.
It’s very well done.
Again, good to great concentration, and I think it’s good right now. And I think we are still trying to make it great, but that’s a perpetual I said we will keep evolving it. We will still have ideas. But more importantly, I think it’s a good resource that we have pulled together from our own experience and roughly everybody. It’s a collective effort. And I hope that even if one company gets to drive this success and that’s kind of the way we are looking at it. And that’s the reason why we want to make sure that more and more people are aware it’s just one of those professions in adolescence and we wanted to mature fast and then start delivering value fast in a way that most users actually. And again, think about it, we have so many interfaces we’re interacting with, and it should be much more easier. I think I have a vision in a decade from now, there will be so much technology, but they should be a simpler way of how we approach it. And you don’t have to go to like, again, I see all these tech companies going through certification programs, training programs.
I’m like professional services. I mean, your system, if it has to be explained, that means it’s not been designed well. Your system needs to be certified on for someone to use on. That means that you haven’t spent the time perfecting it. And it’s just one of those things that I say that and then also because the last two decades has been much more web centric, mobile centric all that is what’s going to come and play in the next decade. So it’s actually a fascinating time altogether.
It is. It is a really wondrous time with the opportunity. Obviously counterbalanced with what we talked about was sort of the ethics and the risks that we do present. But I’d say the dominant work that’s happening is so positive and so just doing great things. What we can do to bring these technologies and these platforms and these opportunities to other parts of the world as well that are underrepresented. And this one I want to tap on before we finish up Satyam is cultural representation in user experience design because I fall victim to this all the time. Right. I typically speak to a dominantly North American market, and so you can use a cadence of speech that’s specific. You can use everything. Platform design, referring to stories. I can talk about a New York Bank or a West Coast health company. It’s almost ingrained into me. It’s all sort of a coded bias of speech pattern and experience design. But then when I speak to audiences that are in the UK, I know to refer to Barclays instead of bank of New York, Maryland. And I know to refer to Santander and to think about the NIH instead of Medicare.
Like, I’ve learned those things. When it comes to user experience design, how do you deal with geo experience locality?
It’s that inbuilt curiosity in a lot of ways and that’s kind of what you tap into. It is a global profession. So if I’m trying to build something for, let’s say Sapsahar in Africa, you either have to go and observe and be immersed in it like one like them, or you kind of go and talk to people there or you kind of find someone who’s kind of much more aware of that. Again, it’s a user research is such a critical facet that how do you understand those aspects or you do all of it and triangle. It’s no different from again, good user research is no different from an awesome intelligence analyst in the military or a financial analyst because you’re connecting dots, you’re kind of connecting this is what this person thinks in this context. This is what it is. And then you kind of build your hypothesis and build your experiments around that. And that’s the scientific part of building experiences. But first of all, being aware that a SubSaharan African student studying is different from the inner city student versus somebody has high end in an expensive neighborhood, because even the subtleties of getting internet set up or even the devices that are around you, all those things can become different contexts and situations.
But again, just being aware that the world is different around you and you are curious to see how they are different, well, itself open up so much opportunity and a lot of times people just go in and I assuming that what you think is the right thing. And I’ll end this with actually an interesting story with my professor when I was in grad school and he finished a class and then I went to him and I said, that just seems like common sense. And he said, absolutely it is common sense. But remember what’s common for you is not common for somebody who’s in the other part of the world or your grandmother. And that is what who we are. We are understanding what common sense is. And that’s actually a fascinating thing that stayed with me all through. And that’s why I’m always looking for what’s common sense. And when somebody thinks it’s common sense, that means I’ve given to them what they want in the context that they wanted.
That’s a perfect way to round it up and leave the assumptions at the door because it is a beautiful and sad to me, your approach is really great and I’ve learned a ton from you. I’ve definitely learned like just even when I’ve had a chance to read through the book. It’s going to be great so I’ll make sure to get this out. Hopefully not too long from the time that people are watching this and listening to it they’ll be able to get so I’ll have links and make sure to share it out. If people do want to get connected to you Satyam what’s the best way to do that?
Linkedin is the best way to connect on there’s also we’re going to create a small community for the playbook I believe. Uxdplaybook.com it’s going to launch around the same time on the book launches so again there’ll be different ways to connect. I really want to kind of be as available and approachable as possible as people are in this journey but yeah I think LinkedIn is a good way if they also can reach out through the company uxreactor.com so there’s different ways to get there. I’m pretty sure if someone wants to truly get to me I’m sure they will find a way but the easiest way is to get on LinkedIn and just send me a note.
There you go folks to follow the links down below because I make sure I have them in the show notes and of course on the YouTube channel this has been really great Satyam. It’s been a real pleasure and I look forward to success for you with the book and with UX reactor and hopefully we’ll get a chance to catch up again in future and here on the other side once it’s out in the world, how the community building around it because that is an interesting aspect that I’d actually like to explore again in future. So thank you very, very much.
Absolutely. Thank you so much, Eric. I appreciate it and have a great rest of the day.
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Welcome, everybody, to the podcast. My name is Eric Wright. I’m gonna be your host for the DiscoPosse podcast this week featuring Randy Crabtree. Randy is a fantastic human who is also a fantastic accountant, a fantastic podcaster, and somebody who’s got an incredible story that will talk to you at your heart about what we need to value both and what we can do for each other, for ourselves. And he is beyond just being the unique CPA, which is also the name of this podcast. He and his team at Tri-Merit are doing really great stuff to empower businesses to get the most out of their tax situation, which, hey, we’re in the throes of it right now. Tax time is kind of not a friendly time for a lot of folks. It’s part of what we got to do. But how do you make sure you’re getting the best of the best out of that? So you can go check out Randy’s team at try-merit.com for that. Of course, check out the show notes. We got lots of stuff around Randy and, of course, links to his podcast as well. Speaking of links and things that don’t need to be as bad as they are, what happens if you lose your data?
Don’t worry. As long as you got Veeam to protect your backside and your backup, then you are in good shape. At least you’re in better shape than you are with anybody else. So I got to give a shout out to the fine folks at Veeam Software who make this podcast possible. And if you want to check out what they’re doing, go to vee.am/discoposse. They’ll help you out whether it’s data center stuff, whether it’s on premises, whether it’s physical service, whether it’s your cloud, it’s your things like Teams and Microsoft Office 365. You have to back all that stuff up. And most importantly, you have to be able to get it back. The backup is only good if you can recover it. And also completely orchestrated, protected recovery scenarios for business continuity. They cover you from soup to nuts or from end to end, or Coke to Pepsi. Whatever you want to say, they got you covered. So go check it out. Go to vee.am/discoposse. And of course, if you want to make sure that you’re awake and aware while that’s going on. Plus, enjoy some of the most devilishly good brew. You can head on over to Diabolicalcoffee.com and you can enjoy a fresh roasted cup. In fact, it’s fresh roasted the moment you order or not long after. So we only roast when you order. Get on it. Go to diabolicalcoffee.com. All right. This is Randy Crabtree. Enjoy.
This is Randy Crabtree, co founder and partner of Tri-Merit Specialty Tech Services and host of the unique CPA podcast. And you’re listening to the Disco Posse podcast.
Like a pro. This is how I can tell you’ve got professional podcasters that are on microphone because you are ready for this. So, Randy, thank you so much for the chance to chat today. This is something that I know especially for a ton of my listeners. Well, it’s timely with the kind of part of the year that we’re heading into taxes become top of mind. They’re often bottom of priority, but top of mind. And in the way that we’ve seen the world shift in the last couple of years, I can imagine that you’ve seen an incredible amount of change in your industry. But for folks that are brand new to you, Randy, let’s have you do a quick intro, and then we’re going to talk about Tri-Merit, your podcast and congratulations on getting noticed, as it should be. And we’re going to talk a lot about what you’re doing for the world.
Sure. Like I said at the beginning, we’re specialty tax service. Tri-Merit. We deal with really specific parts of the tax code. Actually, tax season for me is not a busy time because I’m normally out educating CPAs on certain aspects of the tax code. But we deal with big things like R&D tax credit, you know, technology, big user of the R&D tax credit. So that’s something that was how we started the business. Over the years, we branched into six other services. A big one that didn’t exist a year ago is employee retention credit that we’ve been doing a lot of work on now as well. But that’s our background. My background is I am a CPA. I actually came out of public accounting. I was one of those generalists that was just doing in and out accounting and taxes. I liked it, was not a huge passion. I found a passion in specialty tax. So the last 15 years has been just an awesome ride. And I don’t see an end any time soon.
But that’s really amazing to see too, that we – I think every industry has this idea of the sort of the early generalist days. And then when you find your niche, your specific thing that you can become passionate about and ultimately then translate to hitting this new target. You know, demographic target market, like ultimately building a specialty practice, that’s really great. And then it lets you just like put all your focus. I really would love to just jump right into the exploration of what is the last two years look like for you? Especially you talked about employee retention credit, like, this stuff didn’t exist two years ago. So it’s probably been a wild ride on your side.
It has been it’s been a wild ride, obviously, for everybody. It’s been specifically wild for at least in my circles – CPAs and the IRS and us. Because everything that’s happened in the last two years from an incentive standpoint, runs through the CPA firm, runs through the IRS. And we’ve touched on that as well. It’s been crazy. CPAs in general have had a non-stop, they’re going on the third year of non-stop tax season just because of all these things that have come out over the last couple of years. You mentioned the one I mentioned as well, employee retention credit. This has been huge for businesses. It has been affected by the pandemic. It’s been able to put a lot of the money back into businesses. At some point help them survive, at some point help them thrive even. But it’s been a really important tool to help businesses that have been affected by the pandemic get through the last two years. And honestly, for us, it’s been an unbelievable ride because this thing didn’t exist two years ago. And now last year and this year will most likely be our highest revenue generating product and probably not the year after, but at least over a two year period, it’ll probably be the biggest revenue generator for us.
So it’s been interesting.
It tells you that the interest that came from the tax system in understanding that we needed to solve this problem, I’d say by regulatory and tax ratings, it was a pretty rapid response. Like this stuff does not move fast. So for us to be able to move fast at many levels of government, look, I’m not saying the government, the sloth image. Obviously, we can sort of poke and joke about some of that stuff, but it is just because of the regulatory environments that they’re wrapped inside. It is difficult to make things move quickly and be responsive. But it feels like, I think this is a good sign that hopefully the system is ready to help people succeed.
Yeah. And this is interesting. It’s an interesting part of the whole looking at tax in general over the life of tax, which is a long life right now. The last two years we’ve seen things happen at a – and it’s not just tax, but everywhere, but happen at this meteoric pace. It’s just unbelievable. And so a lot of these changes, and this has gone through two regimes at president as well. And so it’s kind of continuing on. It wasn’t like, okay, one’s against and one is for it, we’re going to fight about this. People agreed let’s move forward. And it started in March of 2020 when they planned retention credit itself. That’s where it was defined. I can go deep into it. You can direct me there if you want to at some point, but that’s when it’s defined. And then it’s gone through three additional pieces of legislation that have either changed it, enhanced it, affected it, and it just continues go. Not only from a standpoint is it meteoric pace, but it’s meteoric pace and all the changes just keeping up with it. Just trying to because tax code comes out, I get excited about tax code. Other people might not. So I apologize. But this is an interesting area. Tax code comes out. Congress rates something. They’re not tax attorneys, CPAs, they just say, here’s what we need to do. Now, we need to start interpreting that, putting that up against tax code, putting it up against IRS information or documentation that comes out explaining it. And so for me it’s just been a fun, weird word, but fun ride for really the last year and a half, digging deep into this and seeing how we can help businesses with it. So yeah, it’s been really interesting.
It does show right in just the way you describe it, that this is what we need. This is what allows you to stand out amongst the industry and what you’re doing because you have to have that passion just like anybody that looks for opportunity, not just for you, but every client you’ve got. You’re effectively opening the door to the industry because a lot of people do not understand that this stuff exists. They maybe go to, I’m sorry I got to mention, I don’t mean to trash on H&R block, but it’s like that was it right? The moment you can file a tax return, you have no idea how to file a tax return. You go to your local tax shop and the little stand up H&R block or whatever the local tax firms are. They’re not passionate about taxes. They’re just minimum amount in, minimum amount of pain and collect $35 per term kind of thing.
Yeah, it’s a weird area. What you just said is how I got interested in tax. I did not graduated as an accounting degree. I was computer science degree actually, which is more in line with I think your audience probably. Although that’s 37 years ago. So that’s passed me by quite a bit. But I’ve got that background. But the year my wife and I got married, which is 35 years ago now, I started to do our tax return and just like might be a little bit steep to say fell in love with taxes but really enjoy digging into that. And it was a passion for a while, kind of became a little bit of a more of work than a passion as I was doing this for years because traditionally CPAs have had crazy hours during tax season and every business can have an area where there’s crazy hours, but there was crazy hours. And for me this crazy hours just started dragging on and on. But when you mentioned before passion, when I actually merged my firm in with another firm and then started the specialty firm, I talk about passion all the time now.
I talk about passion, how it is for me. I talk about how this changed everything, how I look at everything, how I look at business in general. I talk about this all the time to different groups. In fact, I was on a talking with a gentleman just this morning where we just talked about this whole doing a self-evaluation of yourself, determining your strengths, determining your passions, using that to help you in a business setting and going forward. So for me, the specialty tax became this huge passion. Believe me, if you turned off your mic now and let me talk for 2 hours, I would do it. So we bet I’ll stop there and we’ll see what direction you want to go.
That is the thing. That’s what I love you. I sort of joke you described. This is Randy. He’s forgotten more about taxes then you’ll never know. Right. Like you get those sort of those things. But it’s not about amount of knowledge or time in the system or even dollars per hour that you can ultimately earn. It is what you do and your choice to chase knowledge and turn knowledge into opportunity, not just for you but for your client base. Which led to the business growing, which led to the opportunity to merge those firms which gives you that sort of leg up. You are a founder. Like you are ultimately the same as the very clients that you serve because you’ve looked for that opportunity and have seen, rightly so, an upside as a result of doing that.
Yeah. And it’s funny when you see that opportunity because I get that a lot. People say, well because I’ve started multiple businesses, I’ve had my CPA thing. But opportunity is something that you said, you searched it out. I don’t really search it out. It just comes to you and everybody has opportunity to come to them. It’s in front of them every single day. There’s an opportunity there. It’s just the difference between I guess an entrepreneur and someone. And there’s nothing special about being an entrepreneur. You either do it or you don’t like it. If you don’t like it, you don’t. It’s not like you’re better because you start a business. It’s just you’re somebody that sees the opportunity and then acts on it. But that’s not for everybody. But for me, that’s been a passion. And then when I put that together with the passion for what I do now is really education and speaking events and writing articles and talking to people like Eric Wright, which I am thrilled to be able to do that. Putting those together and you can create something pretty special.
I would posit that your comp sci degree isn’t that far off of what you’re doing right now. In a way that you probably seek or discover systems inside or methods inside systems. And ultimately in doing so, you can exploit them and exploit it in a positive way, sounds like a negative thing, but really truly see that. Heck, look at the way that economics has gone in the past three decades or more. Really in the shift that we had behavioral psychologists who would define the future of market economies with stuff like the work that happened with Daniel Conneman and Amos Tuberski who are winning the Nobel Prize for economics. But they’re behavioral psychologists. Right. So in the same way that you may be doing, you may be a CPA by the designation on the business card but your method and approach were discovered in other ways. And you went down the comp-sci road and you said, okay, here’s another systematic thing that I can do, but I can really do it well.
Yeah, and it’s interesting you say that, because in my mind, I don’t see blow charts and systems and paths and all that. I see something I like doing, and this is something. But when I look at it, I’m like, okay, yeah, I see this now. I do do that because I analyze things, and then I see the next step, and then I see the next step and I don’t see the big picture, I don’t think right away. But what I found is five years ago, and I’m going all over the place, Eric. So you rein me in anytime you this is perfect. So five years ago, I basically stepped down as manager partner of our firm. And it was a passion thing. And there was other reasons as well. One, I had a traumatic event in my life that made me re-look at things. I had a stroke eight years ago. We can talk about that anytime you want, too. So I saw that and changed my role from magic partner, which in hindsight, I realized I wasn’t good at because I’m not an implementer. I come up with ideas. I see I can generate new business. I can come up with a path, but I can’t implement that. I can probably, but I have no passion. And after my stroke, I realized I want to concentrate on things that I enjoy. And I did a whole self-evaluation. Look at things that I’m good at, you know. I realized after 30, well honestly, my first business was at 16. So I look back and for 43 years, I realized I was not really good at running the business. I was good at coming up with ideas and growing the business and all that. But the whole day to day, systematic approach of this is what we need to do and here’s the processes to put in place to get to the here and here’s the team’s make up and how we do it. I just don’t enjoy that. And what I found after this self-evaluation is, it took a while, but I looked and said, if I’m honest with myself, that is not a strong suit of mine. And honestly, I don’t like it. So why am I doing this? And then looking at the things I like, which I mentioned before, is education. Looking at a new tax law that just came into existence two years ago, and being known now is like the expert in the country on this stuff and looking at it and being able to share your knowledge, that’s another big thing with me. Share your knowledge. Don’t keep it hidden. Share it. Let teach people. Let them know what’s there. At some point they’ll know, well, you’re the expert. I need to come to you to do it. You don’t have to sell. You just have to be a good person out there sharing what you’ve got. So looking at that whole re-evaluation and passion and that changed my role in the business. And in the last five years, we’ve got an 800% increase in revenue, partly because I’ll give him credit. A big part is because the process is my partner put in place to really take us to the next level. But in reality, it’s also me getting out there and educating people and explaining and letting them know that there’s these opportunities for tax savings. And that combination for us has been outstanding.
It really is the important thing for any growing company, especially once you hit a point of like stability in business, at least in revenues, you need a COO or a chief of staff. Somebody who really is focused on the processes and they’re good at that. And I’m with you, like every year I have to do my sort of employment self-assessment. And every year I say, yeah, it’s that time of year again where we say, Eric should be doing more stuff around long term project management given his seniority. It seems like this is one area that we don’t leverage and some where he struggles a bit. And like I’m 49 years old, I’ve had the same self-assessment since I was 25. And every year they say let’s find a big project for Eric to lead out and then it will go precisely as well as the last 22 of them.
Which I’m sure is great. Yes.
But it’s like to be given that freedom to explore your strength. I’m glad that I’m here today with you, Randy, because you are on the right side of a major health event. Right. That’s a big thing. And the one thing that I wish we would do better as humans, I wish we could find that passion and that drive and that reason without the triggering.
Yeah. So we mentioned before that I go out and I speak a lot. And so my speech, my webinars, my things have always been on tax topics. And I started writing articles for accounting magazines the last year, year and a half. And some of it’s been taxed, but more of it’s just been I wrote an article about hiring individuals with disabilities, which is a passion of mine because I’m very fortunate. I came out of my stroke with a 100% recovery. Physically, I don’t have any deficits, which I think the number is. And I might be wrong on this, although I should know this. I’m also President of an organization called Stroke Survivors Empowering Each Other. So I should know the numbers, but I think it’s only 8% of us come out fully without any kind of deficit. I’m very fortunate about that. I forgot where I was going Eric.
But this is the idea that you can take that and turn it into a thing that empowers you to get out in the world. And it’s that whole thing of, especially it’s just like the human behavior is so bizarre that we like work, work to a point where you can eventually enjoy the fruits of your labors. By the time you get to do them, your health is degraded, your ability – it’s so upside down sometimes.
I always had a mindset of I’m not going to wait until retirement to enjoy things. So even though I had the stroke, it wasn’t like this is going to change how I look at life. I mentally had issues for five years. Mental health was an issue for me. Physically, it was fine. Mental health was an issue for five years. But I always had that mindset of enjoy life. Work’s one thing, family, life, all that, it’s another thing. Doesn’t mean they can’t be combined too. And that’s a huge thing that I like talking about is that I’m not the tax expert. I am the dad, I am the hiker. I’m the craft beer enthusiast. I’m the whatever else. Being the tax expert doesn’t define who I am. All these other things do. And so we try to bring that into business as well. Is everybody in our firm is not their job. That’s not who they are at all. They’re good at it. They enjoy it, I’m hoping for the most part, we want people to enjoy it. But the stroke didn’t make me change that way. But it did help me re-evaluate what my role in the business was and make sure that I was having more fun in the role that I was doing and using my strengths rather than trying to increase my weaknesses and make them better.
I think that’s in my mind, this is my opinion. I think that’s crap. But if you are your weaknesses, there are weaknesses for a reason. You don’t have any passion. You don’t like it. It’s that you’re not good at it. Why force yourself to be good at that? Look at yourself and say, okay, this is what I’m good at. I’m good at this. I should concentrate on this. I’m good at that. I enjoy this. How do I do those things? And for me, making that change that was triggered by the stroke to enjoy things more in business. Five years ago, I would have told you, I’m going to force myself to work three more years, and then I’m done. After this change, I can’t imagine stopping. I’m having way too much fun. And honestly, I’m really good at what I do because I enjoy it.
The interesting thing too, especially when it’s like health related, where we see those events. I even see it in work context all the time where you tell somebody, like, I need to take a couple of days off, you’re like, okay, let’s make sure we work around your schedule. Do you like it’s always immediately saying, like, how do we fit your vacation into your work schedule? But if I say, hey, I’m run down and I got to head to the doctor. People are like, no problem. Clear your calendar. What do you need help with? We got it. I’m like, God damn it, why can’t we do that every day? I tell people all the time, just take a day. Just say, like, I got to tap out and just say, just call it. Just shut the calendar down. I don’t care how full it is. Tell those people I’ve got something I got to deal with at home. And they’re like, no problem. We should all have that want to do that. And that passion to do that at every day.
That’s what we feel we have in our company is here’s what you need to do. You know what you need to do. Do it whenever you want. If you want to work at two in the morning because you want to be with your kids all day, do it at two in the morning. We just implemented this year unlimited PTO. We know our people are very good at knowing what they need to get done and when they need to get it done. And like me personally, the last two months I’ve just been on the road working. We have plenty of people that do that. They’re just Nomads, they go wherever. We’ve pretty much had a virtual office from the beginning 15 years ago. It’s just the nature of our business. I feel are living that within the business. I guess I would say that the people with internally would say that as well. I try to talk to everybody as much as I can just to talk about things that aren’t work related, which I think is important as well. But I would think that people are happy. Well, I know people are happy working here and enjoy the freedom that they have with the way we set things up.
And on the health side, too, having seen your bio picture and seeing the real picture here, you definitely prioritize health. You look thinner than your bio picture, which is kind of fun. You talked about hiking. You talked about introducing that. How important is that lifestyle? And especially in the work sense, too, where how do you as a team promote each other, staying healthy in every aspect?
Yeah. Well, for me personally, I hate that bio picture I have because I think I look fat in that as well. And I still feel that way. Actually, when I had my stroke eight years ago, it was three months after I won a fitness contest. So fitness has always been an important thing to me. Working out, probably my entire life has been working out serious in the gym. Workout started in 2003. Before that, it was just basketball every day. That was my workout, basketball every single day. And so for me, it’s always important. In fact, my goal, I’m sitting in a hotel in Tukumkari, New Mexico, right now. I’m not sure the right way to say it. As soon as you and I are done, I’m heading down to the gym and getting on the elliptical for a half hour. So yeah, we talk about that all the time, take time to do whatever you want. And that goes back to again. So I have a friend and I mentioned him a lot of times on podcast. I’m on John Garrett. I don’t know if you ever heard of John’s name, but he wrote this book called “What’s your and?” Okay, I felt I lived what you’re and before I met John, but after I met John, now I have a definition of it, what it is. And I kind of mentioned this earlier, it’s not your job doesn’t define you. Your passion is outside of work. You define you. And so that’s what we try to tell people in the business as well. And if exercise is one of it and hopefully it is, prioritize that you can work your schedule around it. And that’s our goal is to make everybody make sure that they’re doing the things they enjoy and work will be one of those things as well. If they have the freedom to do whatever they want.
It really does breed the sense of comfort that that’s a priority as a team and that gives people the ability to embrace it. I remember working. I had a good friend of mine, we became good friends through work and he had done marathons. Then he did Iron Man and we had a deal that our company worked with a gym that was right in the adjacent building and we worked in tech. Right. So we’re working crazy hours all the time. We’re constantly working nights and weekends. And it’s not a lifestyle conducive to health. No. And we got this deal through work where this gym, which was normally like $130 a month, we could get it for $20 a month. And when we found out we got this deal, there was like twelve of us on the team. We sit down in our team meeting. He says, I’m telling every single one of you, I don’t care if you only go there once a month, once a week, whatever it is. He says you have unlimited time to go to the gym, book 1 hour of overtime to pay for it, and sign up today. And all, every single one of us signed up.
There were three folks on the team who had never even they wouldn’t have gone to the gym unless it was on the way to the food court. Okay, sure. Let me give this a try. And next thing you know, six, seven months later, these folks who had never thought about even adding a health regimen or a fitness regimen into their life were now focused on it and getting in there every morning saying no can’t do lunch meeting. I got to go over, I’ve got Pilates class, I’ve got a jump on the elliptical and do whatever, and it became a core of their day. It was so fantastic to see that.
For me, I just feel so much better after working out. And that helps me work. I’m sure it helps everybody work. Your mind is better, your body is better, everything feels better. You have more energy. And working out doesn’t drain you out, at least for me, it gives you energy. And so I guess if you look at it selfishly, as a business owner, it’s going to make people more productive. That’s not the reason to do it. But I think there is a side benefit. And just like what you said, we moved into a new office three or four years ago. Pandemic time. I don’t know anymore what time frame is kind of a blur now. Exactly. But one of the keys was we wanted to have a gym in the office and they were just building it. And I haven’t been to the office. I honestly haven’t been to the office in a year and a half, probably at least. But I was talking to someone there just yesterday and he said, yeah, the gym has been done for a while. He says it’s awesome. Two locker rooms and it’s just part of our fee for renting the space we’re in.
And then most of our people are on the road. Pandemic obviously changed that, but we’re getting on the road again and we have a gym in every hotel we’re at. So getting to a gym shouldn’t be an issue. And really, I tried to talk about exercise and working out as much as I can because I think it’s important.
In going out and doing speaking opportunities. And now with the podcast, let’s talk about taking this passion to the audience now and being able to evangelize. This is such a unique time versus 20 years ago, even ten years ago maybe, where now you can grab a microphone, you can publish, you can get it out there and you have a growing audience and you’re being recognized rightly so for your ability to share this fantastic ways of both storytelling and really bringing important information to the community.
Yeah. This is one reason things have gotten so exciting for me in business, because I get to go out and talk all the time. But yeah, it’s funny because for years I’ve been out doing CPA, continuing professional education for CPA firms. And I’d be out traveling and doing that inside of a firm or at a CPA association event. Occasionally at like a tech event or a manufacturing event. But most of the time we’re working with CPAs, they bring us to their clients. So I was always able to do that. Pandemic when it hit, I’m like, what am I going to do? How am I going to be able to get in front of all these people? And the first few webinars on Zoom or whatever, go to the webinar, go to meeting. Whatever I was on, it was like, yeah, it’s just not the same. There’s no interaction with me in the audience, but I just started thinking about it. The mindset was they’re there, I’m going to talk, they’re still there and I can hear them and they can see me. When I present, I try to have a conversation just never scripted. I have slides that I’m going through, but there’s never a script.
Every single one is different. And I’d like to get the questions typed in. So that has been huge. And in fact, at this point in time, I almost think that I’ve probably had a bigger impact on the industry in the last two years than I had prior. I probably educated 30,000 CPAs on the employee retention credit over the last year and a half. There’s no way I would have done that traveling. So it was pretty interesting to have that change. Now I like still the audience and being up front and seeing their reaction, but this is going to be a blend going forward. That’s been nice. And then in the last year and a half, I started concentrating more on the writing articles, which traveling – I probably would have put that to the side because I probably would have been on planes and I actually work on planes more than I used to pre-pandemic, which I never used to do. So doing that too. But now I’m writing the articles. The podcast has really started right after, right before the Pandemic. I’ve been able to concentrate more on that. So it’s weird how the pandemic changed all that and what I thought would be for the worst.
I think a hybrid approach going forward is going to really work out well. To be able to be out there and impact what’s going on in the industry has been a lot of fun and a lot more able to do that the way it’s gone the last two years.
It’s a funny thing that I get asked quite often, but they’re like, oh, you go to events and you do keynotes and whatever, and they say it must be great. Like you like to talk, I like to collaborate. And when I do a keynote, I’ve described it to people as listening to 500 people at a time and the fact that you’re watching reactions and little things in the audience and it steers. So I’ve never been good at scripting. Partly because I think I just don’t have the capability. Whether I have a poor wrote memory, there’s a lot of things I have dyslexia. So that also really kind of cuts into me reading and talking at the same time. I just can’t do it and I’ve become very adaptive, but mostly in having conversations. That’s why I love the podcast, because then you can do it and you also do it in the mind of 500s, a thousand people watching you. You begin to think like that, like you, I’m able to carry that imprint and that memory of those experiences into these types of conversations, which is so fun, and I enjoy it. That’s why I like your style.
Your delivery is so fantastic because you’re just you’re at home. It’s like you’re sitting next to a conversation. You’d love to slow down. If you were sitting at a table and somebody next to you was having a conversation, you’d be like leaning over a little bit watching. You just want to hear it.
Yes. No, I agree. And what you said about the scripted – we’ve all seen boring presentations and they’re the scripted ones, almost always. The conversations out of the way. And that’s why I said I try to act as if I’m having a conversation with the audience, even on webinars when I’m not. And you just said it as well. And I think that mindset is huge because nobody wants to be read to unless it’s an audio book. Other than that, I don’t want to be read to.
When they do corporate big events, especially when they’re doing stage events, and it’s so painful because they’re great people and they’re basically put up there and it looks like a grade six play about the origin of Thanksgiving. It’s like, so, Peter, how exciting is this year now that we’re going to be able to do this? That’s a great question, Eric. They’ve pre-configured the scripted, witty repartee. And the only thing that’s missing is like when someone says, I think that’s a great idea, exits towards the left. Like they are like line for line range. It’s painful because you talk to these people like you’re a human. You can have a conversation. Just take away the script.
Exactly. Because even on podcast, you’ll hear this where it’s okay, I’m going to ask question one. Okay, tell me about the service you’re working on right now. And then boom, the answer. And at the end of the answer, let’s say somebody says, yeah, but it’s been tough for the last couple of days because my dog died. All right, well, tell us about this. I mean, you can’t go, I’m so sorry to hear that. What kind of dog? It’s like, oh, no, I got question, too. Your dog doesn’t matter to me now, Tax, question two is how are you getting the service out to your clients? I mean, that script just bothers me so much, having a human connection interaction. And like you just said, that conversation, if you’re having it back and forth and someone hears it, they’re going to lean in that’s perfect way to explain that. Eric, you are really good at this.
Misspent youth of watching great conversations. The one thing that is really neat about your approach and you hear it and everything you say is you are so outly focused on other people’s positivity. It’s incredible. You talk about your team, you talk about empowering people, teaching everything you’re doing as selfish as it deserves to be because you deserve to be able to enjoy the benefits and stuff. It’s like the moment you feel 10%, you want to give 90% away. I really get the sense that community and sharing has been a strong part of your life. It is.
And it’s funny because I don’t think of it that way, but it keeps coming up in conversation where people say what you said. So apparently it shows through. But as I mentioned at the beginning, a little bit. I started my first business at 16, partly because I didn’t want to work for anybody else. I ended up after graduation, went and worked as a computer programmer for about a year. That failed. And then really, it was the business I was at. It was just we did nothing. But then I thought, hey, I should go out and sell, because people I know that are selling are making a lot of money. And I went out and tried to sell, and I was awful at it because it was formulaic. Tell me that word I’m trying to say. Formula. Formula trick. Yeah, there you go. There’s a formula to it. And there was like no passion. It was food and it was fun, but it wasn’t even really fun. I wasn’t good at it, but I learned from both those things. I learned a lot. And then I decided to go back to school full time to be a CPA.
This is a long answer to what we’re just talking about. I’ll get to a point here in a second. So then I went back got enough hours in graduate school to take the CPA exam, did that. And that’s where I started thinking after I went to work for a firm, which was a great firm, I really enjoyed the two partners I was working for there. But I started thinking about things that as an employee, I don’t like this or I don’t like that. And I started writing these things down, thinking, okay, someday I’m going to have my own firm. And when I do, here’s how I want to do it, so that people enjoy working here. So I think that mindset, whether I consciously think about it going forward or not, that was developed 30 plus years ago when I started working in public accounting, because I just saw things, not that these people, I really liked working for them, but as an employee, you see things different as an employer. And I wanted to make sure when I was an employer, I would think about the employee first and not anything else. So that was my goal, whether I’ve accomplished it or not.
You can ask the people that work at Tri-Merit, but I feel we’ve done a pretty good job.
I often hear people describe, especially early entrepreneurs. They say, I was unemployable like, you always sort of saw a hole and just being part of someone else’s system, you really get that early taste of, hey, I kind of want to be responsible for the outcome, and especially at 16. I imagine even then that probably wasn’t the first time, you probably thought about it even earlier, as if that was the first time you executed on it.
Probably I’m the oldest, too, so I’m sure being the oldest of four siblings makes it in reality, I’m the oldest of 20 cousins that all lived right around each other, I mean, within blocks. So I think that probably had something to do with it as well, that you’re kind of the leader of the sibling/cousins gang, so that probably had something to do with it as well.
Well, Interestingly, by a common trait of the oldest is actually they’re the most sort of conservative and less lights need to take risk. You’re often the closest to the parents, because if you look at the behavior patterns that you observe are of people who are 20 to 25 years older than you say in the time frame that you and I were raised, right. Now it’s 45 years. It’s a longer gap between the first child and the parents, but then your next sibling, their model of interaction is following you, who is two years difference or a closer age. So they tend to be more free and more they think differently versus your model of behavior tends to be much more mature. But yet you’ve got that really good, rare mix of that responsibility, as well as the sort of sense of freedom that you give to yourself.
Yes, I think you’re right on. And you got my brother to a T, too, when you explain the second. So definitely different. We’re very close family overall, which is nice, but each of us has a separate personality, and I never really looked into that whole 1st, 2nd, 3rd, whatever traits. I know a little bit of it, but yeah, I could see the oldest not being the risk taker. When I look at business, I don’t see the risk. So maybe there’s just a gene missing in me or something, which can be a problem because I always just see the positive. Hey, there’s an opportunity here. Let’s do it. I guess in the back of my mind, I know there’s a chance for failure, but it doesn’t demotivate me. And that’s the difference between entrepreneurs and non entrepreneurs in my mind as they see the risk first, not the opportunity first. And I think you need to see the risk. It’s just I’m not really good at seeing that risk. And for me, overall, it’s worked out. There’s been wins, there’s been losses. But I’m on a big winning streak right now, so I’m enjoying it from a fun standpoint and a business standpoint.
But part of it is you talked before about setting yourself up to be positioned against a team, a partner, somebody who else can pick up that piece that you know that you’re not going to be the best at. Like why in goodness name would I spend? If it’s 50% of my time but 80% of my mental effort to do this task, then why in goodness name, if we afford ourselves the ability to staff somebody to do this, by God, get them in that role and let them be fantastic at it, and then let me be fantastic. So it’s funny that there is a difference between an entrepreneur and a visionary. Sometimes an entrepreneur is just like somebody who’s willing to go it on their own because they kind of want to manage the process. But visionary is somebody that’s like you. And I said, not just like you, you are a visionary. And that you’re saying, I’m going to go with this crazy idea, I’m going to go with this big idea, and I’m going to see if this can work. And then you find, you hypothesize, you bring it out, you test it, and then you look for people that can help you to bring that vision into a reality, which is exciting.
Yeah. It took me a long time to realize that was my strength. I just thought it was as an entrepreneur, you’re supposed to do everything in my mind. It took a long time to figure that out. But when I did, I mean, when I look back to five years ago, when I stepped out as a major partner and my partner took over and I had mentally fought that, I wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do. Man, I should have done it years ago. In reality, at the time, it was perfect. I wouldn’t have changed anything. But he is so good at the managing of the business part of things. He is so good at the implement. He is so good at the processes. He is so good at all that. Where I have no desire to do any of that and really never looked at myself internally to realize I had no desire to do that. It’s just something I wouldn’t pay attention to getting that team approach. One thing I tell people, because everybody says influencer, I don’t influence anything. People, I guess, just like to talk to me about certain things, and they’ll ask me about just business in general and what I’ve learned. And I’ll be 60 in a couple of months. So I’ve learned a lot over the years. It took me a long time to implement what I learned. But the biggest thing is and you just mentioned it, and this is the point – is fill those your gaps in with other people’s strengths. And even if you’re just starting a business and you mentioned this as well, and I tell people all the time, let’s say you’re starting a restaurant. You’re doing that because you’re passionate for food. I’m sure that’s why. That’s one reason. Let’s assume that’s your passion is food and developing recipes and seeing people enjoy what you’ve done. Your passion isn’t bookkeeping. Your passion isn’t HR. Your passion isn’t tax returns. Your passion isn’t getting the technology set up in your business. That’s not your passion. I’m sure it could be. But in most cases and so fill in those gaps, whether it’s employees, if you’re lucky enough to be able to afford an employee, find someone that fills those strengths that you don’t have. If it isn’t, you can outsource just about anything. Whether it’s a part time CFO, HR obviously, services tech huge. You can outsource anything in there.
And in reality it’s not. People will say, well, it’s going to cost too much. In reality, you’re going to make more by doing it. Because now you can concentrate on the thing that’s really going to make your business shine. Concentrate on HR is not what personally is going to make your business shine. Your passion for creating these recipes is what’s going to make your business shine. Now find someone else that could do those other things. So I agree with you completely. That’s the way to look at things and not something I always did. But it’s almost 60 now. I have for about the last five or six years.
We’ve luckily developed enough hindsight and figured out. You can see it in advance. You mentioned before about the idea of the timing of the change where you left the managing partner role. And it’s funny when it happens, you have that weird moment where you’re like, why didn’t I do this earlier? But I like that you recognize that there was every reason why you didn’t, right? I often say to myself, what would I say to myself, what would you say to 20 year old you? And I give all sorts of advice to a 20 year old me. And do you know what 20 year old me would say to me, shut up, old man. I got it.
Exactly. That’s true. That’s true. I want to address something you just said because I think this is important. I had a little resistance to change in that role from managing partner. And looking back, why would I have that resistance? And it’s because I felt that was my identity in reality. That’s what I probably look back. That’s what I thought. My identity is made your partner of this pretty significant specialty tax firm. And so if I’m not that, who am I? What am I? Do I just become a partner in a firm that now is somebody else’s firm? And it’s a weird mindset, but that’s probably what I was thinking. Look back at that now and where I am today, this identity I have today, it’s just, one – if you look at ego wise, I’m more recognized today than I was back then. I’m pretty well known in our industry. I guess that’s the ego end of things. But it’s an identity that I just enjoy so much more than that identity i thought what I had to be before, I did not have to be that. Looking back now.
The world deserves you, Randy. We deserve the passion that you can bring to that larger audience. Right. It’s so amazing to see when those two things come together because there are a lot of folks who never need to go outside of inside the organization, and that’s a fantastic function and role that’s ideal for those folks. Not everybody wants to get out and be able to talk to a larger community. Some people don’t like to share things. They’re very introverted. I still have sort of weird split sometimes where I’m an extrovert by profession, but an introvert by nature. I’m a cyclist, I’m a runner. I like being very introspective. I like alone time, and it gives me free thought, deep work. But I also like collaboration and these sort of things. But every once in a while I’ll hit a point where I’m like, all right, time to tap out. I got to go for a walk. You go to a big conference. And every night I used to purposefully stay with my hotel far away from the conference center so that it would be like, oh, sorry, guys, I got to go because I got to go change. So I’ll see you guys back at dinner, knowing that it was like put in ear noise canceling headphones. I’d go sort of like detach for a bit and then reenergize and come back to it.
And look at you now. You’re this podcast host of Top 1%. Is that what I heard?
That is nuts. Yeah. Thank you. I know.
That’s great. Obviously, it’s not the introvert part of things. It’s just the passion. You have a passion for this. I say passion all the time. And people get sick of me saying, but you have passion, you enjoy this, you can tell you enjoy this. And it’s not that group setting of the conference that maybe was a struggle to try to have these conversations that are talking about whatever, not something that’s exciting. And now you get to direct wherever you want this to go, and you enjoy it the same way from that standpoint. Growing up, I was the shy kid. That’s what I was known as. Look, in my mind, I always thought, well, I’m not shy. Just if it’s important, I’m going to say it. There’s nothing important to say. I wasn’t a small talk guy or anything like that. And I remember thinking that from a young age. As a side note, I hate the labeling thing like that because I still know I was labeled as shy. And in reality, I wasn’t. It’s just the way I was. So I hate that. When my kids were growing up, if somebody was trying to label them, I would get mad.
So we can talk about that forever. So I was able to just shake it, in fact, to a point where my third grade teacher sent me to speech therapy because she thought I couldn’t speak. I mean, it was that level. But it was more of a if it’s not important, why do I want to discuss it? Which I think has helped a lot today, because when I’m doing webinars, I mean, I have to make sure that I have the answers because people, not one, look at me as an expert. And if I don’t have an answer, I’m getting everybody on the team to start researching this. We need to find this out. And with tax code, like we said, the beginning with tax code the last two years, there’s a lot of unanswered questions with this stuff. And we’ve been the first to release information on some of this stuff often. In fact, last month we did a webinar where there was two key issues with R&D tax credits and some changes that occurred that I had a webinar the next day at 11AM. At 5pm there were two answers that we didn’t have. And this is brand new information, but I figure the answers exist. We have to dig into tax code. We have to find this. So I got about five people and myself starting to research this. At 1:30 in the morning, I get an email from this one guy who was brilliant, John Capril. He just knows all the tax code inside and out. And John Seagraves as well, he does. I’m going to call people out in the firm. These guys are great researchers. And he sends me an email where he found an answer. Well, I didn’t see his email. I woke up at 4:30, and I’m researching because I can’t go to this webinar and not answer this. I could ignore it. I don’t want to ignore it. I want to be able to tell everybody this is how it is. And I could have ignored it. And then I found it. Then I saw his email and it we meshed. I’m like, okay, he’s agreeing, I’m agreeing. We have it. We have important information now. This is exciting. This is important. And then going back to eight year old me, it’s as important to say, I’m going to say it now. I’m not shy. I just want to make sure it’s important. And so I think that even though it was a label that probably I look back and wish I didn’t have, it made a big difference in my life going forward. So it’s probably a blessing.
Yeah. It’s so funny that shy used to be the, there’s a difference between shy and quiet. But when we were kids, that was a thing. You’re just like, oh, they’re the shy kids or whatever. And there were people who were very extroverted and they wanted to be wanted to be heard. I prefer to have something important to bring to the room. And there’s an interesting combination, too. I used to joke with people. I’d say I never ask a question that I don’t already know the answer to. I research in my head long before I ever will because I don’t want to be caught out. I kind of just want to make sure that I’m going down the right road. So you take it in. And I used to be a people watcher. It’s still one of my favorite things. When I go to airports, I just put in, like, music or I’ll have an audiobook sometimes, but I just to watch the behaviors and the way the people interact. And it makes me a much better presenter because I can do that in audiences. And then doing that so much in person translated to the webinar platform where I know how to sort of I shouldn’t say control, but it’s like I know how to manage people’s attention appropriately, where you bring things down and that’s a very important thing. But what we really want to do is we want to get into it, and you can bring them up and down. People always talk about this thing. They’re like, there’s this thing in the middle of a webinar. They call it the attention hammock. I’m like, not mine, kid. No attention hammocks anywhere. No room for that.
Yeah. I said this one thing often, and it sounds negative. I don’t mean it like this but, by observing I think what you do is you help people make the decisions you want them to make a little bit. It sounds weird, but it’s more than that because you educate them to the point where you’re directing them their knowledge, and then you help them to come up with that solution that they’re looking for, whatever that is. But examples of this that I’ve done, I’ve been wanting to be part of a few boards in the past, and I don’t ask anybody to ask me, but I somehow get it to a point where, okay, yeah. And it’s education. I’m educating on things that I am passionate about that I like. And then they start thinking, oh, you know what, Randy? Would be great to be involved in this. So I never asked to be on these I want to be on. And then just by letting them know things, they ask you. So I think to make that not sound like a negative thing, because it very well could be like you’re manipulating people. That’s not it. It’s just getting to a point where you’re helping them make a decision.
One thing I’d love to get your thoughts on, because a lot of folks that have your capabilities and have the voice you’ve got and are out there very publicly, we hear a lot. We talk about imposter syndrome. I have a PhD in imposter syndrome. Every once in a while, it just sort of just rolls in hard. I even joke. I said, I don’t know if I deserve to have imposter syndrome, the ultimate imposter syndrome. But it’s like, is there ever that side of things, Randy, where you have self doubt that maybe doesn’t come out necessarily.
So I probably used to have that. I don’t feel I do anymore because I’ve been out there so much, and I know people in our industry because the biggest thing I have that I enjoy the most is education. Education comes through the podcast, it comes through the webinars, it comes through the articles, it comes through even just, not even just, but being interviewed on other people’s podcasts. And I feel I’m prepared for that. And I think I, in my mind, know it as well as anybody. I know imposter syndrome is big in tech. I’ve heard that a lot. It’s just because I’m guessing it’s an ever changing profession. There’s always something new and you feel like you can’t keep up with it. With tax, is it new? Yeah, obviously there’s new stuff, but I have the freedom to dig into that pretty quickly when something new that is at least going to affect us comes out. So I never thought about it, but I don’t think I have the imposter syndrome. I think I used to for sure, and not even in business. I think it was more growing up. I mean, this is almost not imposter syndrome. It’s more just confidence. I was really good basketball player. The head coach of our basketball team asked me to play on the team, and in my mind, I wasn’t good enough. So I wouldn’t do it. And I look back and I go, that was dumb. So it was a confidence. But I wouldn’t change anything. Where I am today, I don’t want to be anywhere else. And if I did something different over the last 59 years, I’d be in a different spot. And this is the spot I want to be.
I think that’s another thing that comes through in so much of what you say, Randy. You talk about entrepreneurship as often being risk management and risk awareness, and you talk about being not sort of focused on risk, but having that optimism, having that thing is your ability to also shed regret or sort of avoid regret. I often think there are many things I wish I had taken a different path with, because I understand intellectually there probably would have been a route around it. But I also looked at certain things happen for reasons, and I have to accept it because I can only change what I can and I can only change what’s ahead, not what’s behind. So what’s your view on regret management, I guess, is what I would call it.
Exactly what you said now. So for the longest time, there’s things I regretted. The basketball, and that’s why I brought that up. Still probably because it’s probably still in the back of my mind. I love basketball. I played basketball probably more than anybody has. I played so many games and regret it for a while, not playing. But I’ve got over that again just because I want to be where I am today. I try not to regret anything. Everything that I’ve done has changed me has made me better. I was a computer programmer. Is that where I ended up? No. Do I still use skills that I learned in that? I’m sure I do. I was in sales. I was not good at it. I didn’t have passion for it, but I wasn’t good at it. I sell all the time now. I don’t sell. I educate, but really, I’m selling with education. I learned something back then and that do I regret that I didn’t go into public accounting straight out of school? No. Because without those two things, I wouldn’t be who I am today. You have to learn from it. But I don’t look backwards. I look forward and I know I take the skills I learned backwards. I take those education experiences and use them today. But I can’t change that. I can only look and see. I can affect tomorrow. I can’t affect yesterday.
Another important thing that we hear about, and I participated myself all the time. They have communities of practice and entrepreneurship organization EOS, a popular one for entrepreneurs. They’re at a certain phase of the organization. So you’re basically surrounding yourself with people with a common purpose and a common experience. But the community practice I want to focus on, Randy, you talked about stroke recovery and survivorship that experience far outside of. So there’s probably all walks of life of people that come in there. But how important is that in your continuous look back on that moment and that experience in your own life?
So I’m fortunate that I can look back on that and not like think I wish my stroke never happened. And the only reason I can sit in that situation is because I fully recovered and I’m in the position I am today. There are so many stroke survivors that are struggling daily with a loss of half of their body, loss of ability to speak, loss of ability just to communicate in general. I feel selfish saying that looking back, that probably was a positive impact on me. I have a hard time saying that because there’s 92% of the people that have stroke that probably can’t. Well, even if you have some deficit. I’ve talked to people look back at it and say, yes, this was the shape who I am today, and I’m okay with that or good with that. For me, it’s hard to say positive experience because it wasn’t. But did it make me who I am today, and am I grateful for that? Yes, I’m grateful for that. And because of that, I give back to the organization that helped me, which is stroke survivors empowering each other. That is when you have a stroke and I’m going to go into stroke here for a few minutes, if you don’t mind.
Yeah, absolutely. When I have the stroke and when everybody has a stroke and I’m sure everybody has similar mindset is what just happened? Why did this happen? Is it going to happen again, what do I do next? And in that situation, I was looking back because you’re like, why is a big part of it? And you have a stroke, you’re in the hospital, they release you, and that’s it. They release you. There’s not much else that happens. It’s like, now you’re on your own. You got to go figure out what to do. They give you some pamphlets. They say there’s a survivor.
I’m sure you’ve had a stroke pamphlet. Thank you.
Right. And they’ll tell you there’s a survivor group that meets once a month at the hospital and which is all great. The community of somebody that’s gone through what you’ve gone is extremely important to be part of that. But for me it was and I was 51 at the time. And this is a misconception. But in my mind it was okay, this is going to be a bunch of 80 year olds in this group, and I’m not going to connect with them because I’m 51 now. I know after the fact that I’m not special in being 51 when I had it. We have a group called Young Survivors. We have a bunch of people, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 years old that have strokes. So stroke happens at any age. It’s not just somebody who’s 80, 90 years old. But I was looking for this community that would know what I went through and be able to answer me. A doctor can say this, a nurse can say this, but somebody has a stroke, I’m going to talk to. So I was fortunate to know a few people who know people with strokes. I started talking to them, and that was great.
I felt at least I was getting answers from them, but they still wanted more. So I found this organization called Stroke Survivors are Part of each other. And it was based in Illinois, where I am, where I live, I’m not there today, but where I live. And I called them actually, I think I sent an email and they called me and they reached out to me and I’m like, this is unbelievable. They’re calling me and they talk to me about a group they had called Survivor to Survivor, Telephone Support Group. When you talk to somebody who’s a survivor, they’re going to communicate you with you. They’re going to call you monthly. They’re going to ask how you’re doing. If I did have deficits, they’re going to talk to you about how you start to use the bus or how you start to set up your home so that you can function if you lose the side of your body. A lot of times people lose one side of your body, the ability to use it. How do you just put toothpaste down a toothbrush now and then brush your teeth? I mean, things like that that they were able to communicate.
And so they actually, the three leaders of that organization set up a meeting to get together with me. And I was like, this is amazing the support that they have. And so from that I told them they helped me tremendously. I still had three or four years of dealing with mental health issues after that. But they got me down the right path. And because of that, I started to want to give back. And so I would do a little fundraiser here and there. I would do things. And then they asked me to be on the board. And at the first board meeting, I look around and the President was just about to not just about she just said, I’m going to step down. And I looked everybody’s faces and I didn’t see anybody saying, I’m going to step up. It’s a great group, but everybody has different skills. And I’m like, I’m going to be the next President, aren’t I? And then about a month later, that’s what happened. But it’s been great to give back. It’s a great organization. It was an experience that I do not wish on anybody to have stroke, but it has shaped where I am today. And for that, I’m grateful.
Well, I’m glad that we have you here today, and I’m glad you’re on the other side of that event and that you give back to your community. And Randy, it’s been a real pleasure. I thank you so much for I think we didn’t talk too much about taxes, so it may seem like a disappointment from quite often what you’re talking about.
Eric, this is what I want to talk about. I can talk taxes all day. If I can share something to help somebody in business that has nothing to do with taxes or even personally, I want to do that. And I might be have a big ego thinking I can help somebody, but hopefully something I say does make a difference to somebody.
Well, I’m absolutely sure that you help people in some way every day, and I appreciate spending the time today. So, Randy, if people do want to reach out and get a hold of you and find out more, what’s the best way they can do that?
So I will go to our website, which is Tri-Merit (T-R-I- Merit.com) there’s “About Us” page link to my information there. You can go to LinkedIn. Apparently I’m going to be on TikTok soon and other things. I’m going to be recording, like one or two minute updates on different things. But go to the website. That’s the best place to start and you can get to anything else from there.
Can you imagine that many years ago saying to yourself, like, yeah, I’m going to be doing 92nd social media hits where people do crazy dances. It’s a fun world. And I’m glad that we can all evolve to really fun stuff together. And thanks again, Randy. It’s been a real pleasure.
Thank you, Eric. I enjoyed it. I wasn’t sure where that we were going with this. But. It was awesome. Thank you much.
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Welcome back, everybody. My name is Eric Wright. I’m the host of your Disco Posse podcast. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. If you want to watch, you can actually legitimately watch it’s over at youtube.com/discopossepodcast. Thanks to all the amazing people who are making this podcast possible and growing, growing like crazy. So super proud, having a lot of fun. Hope you’re enjoying the show as much as I am and all of our amazing guests. Speaking amazing guests, you’re about to meet Troy Hipolito. He’s the not so boring LinkedIn guy, but it’s actually a lot more than that. Troy is the founder of the Troy Agency. He’s got a really storied history in helping people with social promotion. But it’s not just about social promotion. He thinks big, and he takes that and applies it to social promotion. His agency style work and understanding of how to help people is really coming together beautifully. So it was a lot of fun. Troy actually was in the midst of a move, and he was kind enough to schedule something. This was one of those fun outreaches that he did a cold outreach to me on LinkedIn, and I actually liked it, and we got connected.
He was super fun. So I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. And talk about not so boring. Let’s head on over and remember the not so boring and fantastic people that make this podcast happen. So shout out to my sponsors, who all right, we got some announcements coming up very soon, so hang on to your hats. But in the meantime, go to vee.am/discoposse to get everything you need for your data protection needs, whether it’s on premises, whether it’s in the cloud, whether it’s bare metal. Metal, yeah. You got mail servers. You got to back those things up. You’ve got to back everything up. How about stuff like SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Office 365? There’s much more. So again, just head on over to vee.am/discoposse, find out and let them know old Disco sent you over there. Speaking of going over there and doing it safely, protect your data in traffic, in transit, in every form. Head on over to tryexpressvpn.com/discoposse. I’m a user. I’m a fan because hey, I travel around, I move around, I’m on other people’s sketchy WiFi. It’s not sketchy because I use a VPN. So go check it out. Hey, even better than avoiding coffee shop WiFi, get your own coffee. Go to Diabolicalcoffee.com. All right, let’s get to the fun part. This is Troy Hipolito, the not so boring LinkedIn guy on the Disco Posse podcast.
Hey, this is Troy Hipolito. I’m with the Troy Agency. I’m known as the Not So Boring LinkedIn Guy. And you’re watching the Disco Posse podcast.
I loved your tagline, the Not So Boring LinkedIn Guy. And thank you, Troy, for jumping on today and for reaching out, getting connected. I’m a real fan of your content, your approach, your style, and it’s something that I even myself, I think. Good golly. There’s so many things I’m under utilizing around LinkedIn, around a lot of social network. You’ve really, really got some great stuff that you’re coaching people through and bringing them towards really strong outcomes. So for folks that are brand new to you, do not yet know about Troy Hipolito, you want to give a quick introduction and a bio and we’ll talk about what you and the team are doing.
Oh, yeah, I’ll even do one better and tell you the story behind it. So I am a designer and developer by trade, right. So I’m a programmer as well as a UI/UX person. And I was actually an award winning designer here in Atlanta, Georgia, several years in a row, like the top designer. And so back in the day, I had a company called ISO Interactive, and we were building video games. It was like the Rockstar programming. We’re doing virtual worlds, we’re doing app development, back end, front end. And it was really cool. We had a small team, about a dozen people. We paired up a designer with a programmer, and we created stuff that didn’t exist. We loved it. Right. So it was going really well until it wasn’t.
Oh, no.
In Atlanta, Georgia, they no longer depend on the agencies because the companies that you get work are the Fortune 500. They’re very corporate. And so they use agencies up to a certain point, and they pretty much cut a lot of that work off. And the agency started fighting each other. So I was thinking, I got all this great work. I did CocaCola stuff. I did Xbox Mobile, did Harry Potter movie releases. We even had our own Harry Potter fan site that we developed a full 3D, pseudo 3D virtual world using multi-user technologies. And it was just like, why can’t we get any work? Well, the agencies grab a lot of these people and brought them in house and really cannibalize the whole agency model. And so they were really fighting over pennies. We had to find another source of getting work. And so I asked a buddy of mine, he was actually doing well, and he had a competing agency, and he was putting all his work through LinkedIn. I was like, LinkedIn, you’re getting all your work through LinkedIn? He says, yeah. And then I had a sales buddy of mine in New Jersey, and he said, yeah, it’s LinkedIn, man.
It’s LinkedIn. I thought LinkedIn was a bunch of stuff for resumes. And they said, no, you have to build a relationship and all this other stuff. And I realized something. Those relationships were like, analogous to old-fashioned dating. And again, I realized I was a terrible dater, like in real life. So I have type A personality traits because I’m very technical, right? And what I and other people were doing and what a lot of people do nowadays still is they date wrong. They go in there. It’s like me saying this beautiful woman and walking up to her saying, I find you very beautiful. I’m going to have two babies with you right now. It doesn’t work you end up getting slapped in the face. And that’s the technical equivalent of what people are doing on LinkedIn. And so we had to revamp it. It worked really well, and we had a bunch of clients, and then we fired those clients and we rebranded our agency. And people asked, Troy, why did you fire all these clients? I said, Because they weren’t the right type of client. They just wanted to sell. And so my type of clients that I hire on the higher end, the high end type of clients, we look for people that offer value like they’re human.
So if you reach out to them, they’re there to help that person, they’re there to engage, and their audience exists in an active forum on LinkedIn. And so that’s a very narrow band of people that are authentic. They’re willing to kind of contribute some time to help those individuals. I said, yeah, I need to find like-minded people. And that’s when we changed from return client to the Troy Agency. So we only pick up maybe one or two primary clients a month, and it’s residual, works out fine. On the other end, we have course materials, and we have our own show, a monthly show that covers that type of revenue stream as well. So it works great as long as you have something that someone wants and you’re there to help them, don’t sell. If you help them solve their problem, there’s really only one of three things can happen. So I’ll take a 15 minutes meeting. They said, Troy, I’m doing this, and this. I’m having this issue. I help them solve the problem on LinkedIn. I said, this is the thing that you need to do to solve that immediate issue. And there’s one of three things that come out of that.
You put out good energy in the universe. They’ll never talk bad about you. Number two, it works so well that they’re into their business and they realize there’s 23 other things that only Troy can fix, and they hire me. And the third is they’re so happy they can’t afford what I have going on. But they like me. They like me enough to send a recommendation. And being recommended by someone else is ten times easier than you tooting your own horn. So it’s all about being human and doing what you say and helping those people get where they need to go, that’s my story. Little long version anyway.
No, it’s perfect. And a lot of folks that are listening to us obviously have a LinkedIn profile. I say obviously. Many folks would have a LinkedIn profile and they use it for a variety of purposes. And look, my dms are littered with these people that just don’t get it. I sort of say this is the common interaction is, hey, I see we have some common interests and like, all right, I’ll bite – accept, right. Because I also use it as a broadcast channel. Right. So I’m ultimately, all my content is going pushing to LinkedIn. I’m not really using it interactively as much as some people would think. And then the next one is, hey, thanks for connecting. Really great. Like what you’re doing with X or interested to connect and chat more. And then 4 hours later is hey, so what do you do about blah, blah, blah. And they immediately are pitching a product to me. And then the next day it’s like bumping the top of inbox just in case you didn’t see this then it’s not sure if you’re getting my messages. And then eventually like seven messages later you get the hey, I know you’re probably busy or you’ve been eaten by a bear or like there’s some kind of witty thing that they read worked once and so they just reused the same meme. And I’m like, no, this is not the way to use this platform.
You know what that’s called? It’s spam. They’re spamming, that’s what it is. I had to release a client because he wanted to spam people. She says, I always want to help people that need help right now and send this one message to everyone and keep on sending it to them. I said spam. Why is spam? I said, that’s the definition of spam. I was telling me that is what spam is. You want to communicate. And so that communication element is important. So what you’re talking about is seven or eight touch points that people think. They’re thinking, well, I have to get between 12 and 14 touch points before they connect with me. But they’re not connecting the dots. So that doesn’t mean people on sending them messages on your LinkedIn dm, it means how can you connect with them in a more authentic way? It’s okay to send one or two messages, I think. But I don’t like the selling portion. I do like the idea of getting to know that person for a particular reason. And so you want to do things with strategy. So a lot of people will use these systems and they’ll just bombard it and automate it and that sort of thing.
And LinkedIn, they’ll crack down on it, you get enough complaints, shut your account down. And so you have to have good habits. One of the things is like how can I come across authentic? The other thing is that how can I have them come to me? How do I separate myself from every other LinkedIn guy out there or in your business as well. Whatever you do, how do you separate yourself where if there is interest, they acknowledge that and they come to you. So you want two way traffic. And one thing that I do, what I don’t do is I don’t do sequencing on LinkedIn. I will have a witty connection message, and I’ll have maybe one follow up. But the follow up is usually a welcome message, and it’s unique to that individual. Right. I have a daily process, so when I pick on a client, I help them with the profile top to bottom, help them with targeting, help them with their initial messaging, and I help them with the day to day process. And that day to day process is really what’s going to keep you sane. Like, oh, I can be on LinkedIn 12 hours a day. You don’t want to do that. That’s insane. You want to spend between 15 minutes and 1 hour a day to do whatever the things that you need and get out because you have a business to run. And someone says, well, how can I get people to actually book a meeting with me? I said, that’s easy. I can easily get between 30 and 50 meetings a week if I wanted to. I don’t know. I think my camera is getting a little blurry. I don’t know what’s going on here. I think it’s the lighting.
Yeah. It’s the joy for folks that don’t understand. Poor Troy just moved, and we’ve made them do podcasts in the middle of a move.
I just moved in. It was like 80% of my stuff got wires and stuff in there. So it’s like the living room of the stuff.
There you go. That was funny. As soon as you move back in, it refocused.
Yeah. So if you get a process down. I said, well, give me a tip, right? I said, okay, how are you authentic? You’re authentic by understanding who you’re speaking to and creating some bit of information about them specifically. It’s not selling. So when you connect with someone instead of spamming them, why don’t you just use your LinkedIn app and open it up to the video option and you can send a native video to them. That’s what, 20 seconds long, maybe 30 at the most, and just thank them for connecting. Thanks, Eric. I really appreciate the connection. And I noticed that you have an interesting podcast called DiscoPosse Podcast, kind of tongue tied there, and I’d love to learn more about it. I said, if you have a moment, just take a look at my profile. I said, if you see any dots to connect, feel free to send me your booking link. I said, I’ll schedule some time with you. Thank you very much. Have a great day. That does a few things. That’s a unique message. You took the time to address them and what they do. You were not selling. And it’s appropriate time for them to look at your profile.
And if they see anything they want to talk about, the onus is on them. Send you the booking link and you’ll schedule with them. So it’s not me, me, it’s you. And so that concept and smiling and of course I didn’t smile. I did it quite quickly. But that idea is very powerful. You are communicating with them as a human would. And that’s just one of many of the tips and tricks. And I think the other thing we were mentioning was all the touch points. Well, there’s all these different things you can do depending on your strategy. Why are you connecting with people, you know? Are you connecting with them to engage with their network? Are you connecting them to sell them something, which is probably not a good thing. What do you have to offer them? How can you help that individual? You have to get down to the human level. So people think, well, I think I’m going to do this thing for their company. I’m going to do it for the team. That person doesn’t care. I mean, they may care, but they don’t really care. They care about themselves. We’re human.
So deep down inside, you have to figure out how can I help that individual? What does he want? Does he want to be the hero? Does he have a problem he needs to fix? Does he get something off his chest? Can I pass the litmus test? And the litmus test is – you know the old fashioned litmus test, when you dip it in there and you figure out if it’s a certain chemical or whatever, if you passes the test, the acidic thing. The litmus test for LinkedIn is – if this guy would go out and have a beer with me or a drink at a high end bar, because you have to think during covid time, your time is valuable. I’m not going to go off some stranger and have a drink with him because he could be creep. And I’m telling him all my secrets and stuff. So if they feel they could have a drink at a high end bar with you, you pass the litmus test, you pass the friend test. And that’s really where you want to be at. Maybe instead of just sending connection requests, you could take a look at five people a week and see, I want to engage with these five people because of their profile, the type of person they are, their network, whatever the case may be.
And I want to see what they’re posting. So engage with their post before ever sending a connection invite. If you engage with one or two or three of their posts and they respond, the chances of them of accepting the invite goes from there 30% to 90% and it goes all the way to 90%. You’ve not just done that one thing. The second thing that you accomplished is you move the relationship down the line. Your ask has to be appropriate to the relationship. Anyway. I blab a lot, but I think you get what I’m saying. Eric.
That’s a pretty one. We’re here because of your method, right. You took the right approach. I get dozens of inmails a day and people who are like, give me that. I’m like, I get it. You read Jeb Blunt, you want to get to 15 touches fast, right? So you think this spamming out my inbox is getting you to the 15 touches. But that’s not the case. And I get often and get outreach for people. They’re like, hey, we’d love to be on your podcast and like, thanks, booked up. But when you reached out, I did do exactly that, right. I looked at your profile, looked at what you’re doing. I’m like, yeah, here’s my booking link. Right. And here we are. So the proof is in the number of times I’ve said no to people. The one thing I always joke about too, is like, I want to make an explainer video of how not to sell people explainer videos on LinkedIn. Because I swear to goodness, about eight a day, people are like, hey, explainer videos are a great way to do whatever the first thing they do is. They’re like, here’s my calendar link to book your meeting, to set up your explainer video pitch session. Like, Nope, this isn’t going to go well for you at all. But welcome to my broadcast network, right. So for me, I’m like, hey, it’s another audience member. Good luck receiving my feed. But the real genuine connections where I could do, like you said, actually reach out and ask for time and meaningfully give back to them where they will care enough to take that time and give me that time. It’s a beautiful, like, it’s a bi-directional relationship of giving time and effort and attention because this is the real big thing. Right. We’re in the attention economy. And how do you get access to that attention?
Yeah, LinkedIn is so different than anything else. Here you have to come from a place of service. You got people that have, like, these Instagram models and what they call the thirst traps and all that. So that’s a different thing. Linkedin is really geared towards career change or building relationship building, working from home, B2B businesses or high value services. So these cheap off one methods that don’t work well, maybe they work well for a widget, right? We’re not selling widget here. We’re selling conversions to business. I have a client right now. One job that he gets is worth $200,000 per job. He’s trying to get one a month. Right. And not every method will work on his audience. And we may have a method that works perfect for me and awful for him. And it’s our job to figure out, well, where does this thing break apart? And then how can we bring it back where it will convert for them. Or we have to cover those dots to figure out how much is this client willing to do. A lot of these higher end people, high up individuals can’t do a lot of things.
They do certain things well. And if it’s outside the scope and not able to do, how do we cover those things? How do we simplify that process where we can cover those areas? And he can still be that person that can communicate. So it really depends on the strategy and what you’re trying to do on LinkedIn. But LinkedIn is known for a lot of that high-end B2B conversions. For example, I don’t really make a lot of money per client, but I’ll gain between one and two new clients a month, right. They’ll pay something like $3,000 or $4,000 upfront and then $1,100 per month. Right. You think over the course of a year that’s pretty good money because you’re compounding all the previous clients and they’re adding services. So that $1,100 a month could be $3,300 a month and so on. And if you got 20 clients at two grand, you’re making 40 grand a month on it and then adding to it. The trick is to slow down in order to speed up. So it’s not about rushing, it’s about just doing those things right. Another thing, too, is we have our courseware, and I couldn’t have done it without partners.
So partnerships, networking to build really solid partnerships is a really strength of LinkedIn. If it wasn’t for my partners, I wouldn’t have my courses. I wouldn’t have kept the Troy Show. I have a LinkedIn event called the Troy Show once a month, and I don’t want to do it all myself. It’s too much work. So we want to figure out these partners that have ancillary skill sets that will really possibly impact your business. And I even tricked my partner. His name is John Michelle. He’s another LinkedIn guy, a really good guy. And I said, you know what? I said, John Michelle loves to do these profile things, right? I said, Let me get him on a meeting. And so this is an example of a way that I tricked him, but it was beneficial for him. He got three clients out of it, right? So I know he’s going to be I’m a give. I’m a giver, right. I’m going to give him clients. But I said, hey, John Michelle. Hey, Troy. How are you doing? I said, pretty good. I’m redoing my profile. I was wondering if you can jump on a meeting with me, help me out.
He said, well, you’re a LinkedIn expert. Why would you want another expert? I said, well, because there’s crossover and there’s a percentage of stuff you do differently than I do. We have different flavors. I’m more branding, and he’s more SEO. And he’s in a certain type of details versus what I am. So we had a video. It’s 45 minutes. And I was challenging him on certain areas, and it made a good banter back and forth about why certain things. And I even disagreed on just a few blow points just to make it interesting. And he says, well, that was a pretty good video. And I chopped it up into seven pieces that may have a whole series of videos to show on LinkedIn for posting. And then I took those seven videos and I put them together on a LinkedIn article. Then I have an Evergreen article that reaches out to it. And he got three clients out of it. He said, thank you. Why did you give me these clients? I said, well, I mean, you helped out with the profile. He said, not really. I said, Well, yeah, you did. It was entertaining. It was good for my audience.
I said, but your audience is now hiring me to do these profile things. And he charges several thousand dollars, whatever it is, just to do the profile part. And I said, oh, that’s fine. Just keep the clients, you know. I guess. Well what do you want? I said, you know what? You think this would be a good series, maybe a course or something? He says, yeah, this make a great course. That was my goal the whole time, right? So he did the whole course, and then I did the series of courses. Now we have hundreds of videos and courseware now. And then we got people that have a large audience. Now, when I reach out to LinkedIn, other LinkedIn influencers and things like that, they have a large audience. And I said, let’s give them 25%. Let’s have them sell the course, and then they can get 25% and we can split it between the other partners and stuff like that. He says, well, are you okay for only getting a portion of it? I said, sure. Well, my method is if there’s not enough pies, you know the slices, they slice the pie up and you’re slicing it so thin you’re not making money.
I said, well, my idea is just make more pies.
It’s such a good way. The one thing that people are often too short-sighted about this stuff is they just immediately think like I can just hammer up this course and then I can sell it, and then I get 100% of the revenue and there’s literally dozens of ads that people will get a day. Once you click on one, you’re now in a loop of people selling this card and that card.
Oh, yeah, you’re going in a rabbit hole.
But if they don’t do what you did, which is open up the door and give the opportunity to collaborate. And collaboration is bi-directional. Sure, you saw that it would have been great to be able to create courseware with these folks. But in the end, you did it in giving back. You gave before you got.
Yeah, he was already in it before he knew it. And so I don’t think that’s mischievous, but because regardless he was going to get clients and he wanted to do the courses. And he has a certain experience, and I may have a certain audience, it just makes sense. And then we have an email person that comes in to run some of these shows. And so we convert on that, and we bring clients through it. And now we’ve attracted people that have large audiences, and we’ll give them a portion of it. As long as their network is right, everyone makes money. So it’s not a me, me thing. It’s how can we help each other in a way that everyone benefits. And that’s one thing that a lot of these solopreneurs are missing. They’re just like, I can do everything. Well, I’m a programmer, I’m a software engineer, and I’m a UI/UX person. I’m an award winning designer. I can do a lot of stuff well, but I’m a little older now, and I only have like 45-50 hours a week. I’m not doing anything more than that. And so the designer that designs 50 hours a week, and that’s all he does. Maybe he should do those things. We should distribute it out where we want. Because if we do everything ourselves, there’s no growth opportunity.
Right.
Because you’re wearing so many hats and you’re not able to go beyond a certain area. And so that’s where someone’s business processes and actually relationships come in handy.
There’s a great quote that I got from a book, and so I’m going to look it up right now just because I don’t want to miss quote, I want to call the title out because it was one that I really enjoyed, and it was called Twelve Months to 1 million. Ryan Daniel Moran, really fantastic book. But one thing that today says, it’s not a business if you walk away from it and it falls apart. You have to really build a machine around it because it’s easy for especially, we are as creative people as a designer, like, you know, maybe you could make $50,000 off a single client for a six week batch of work. But if three weeks into that batch of work, you have to leave, then you aren’t going to get half the $50,000. You’re going to get zero of the $50,000 and you lose your reputation. So what you do, you wrap a team around it so that you can contribute to it and share in that wealth and also get the benefit that you’re creating future opportunities, because now you can scale versus if you just be Troy Hipalito solopreneur for the rest of your life, something happens where you got to take care of your family, you got to move, you got to do stuff, and all of a sudden what do you do?
You just tell your client story. Work is stopping for the next four weeks because I got stuff to take care of.
Yeah. You definitely want to minimize upsetting your ongoing cash flow. I mean, that’s what’s going to make or break you. All these other things. You can make more money. Like I may make more money in the courseware, but not right now. It was an investment. It’s an investment. It’s building relationships. And on the tail end, you’ll end up making a good chunk of change. So I actually have an article that talks about documenting and creating your SOPs – your Service Offering Procedures. It’s not really a LinkedIn thing, but it’s more of a business thing. And so by having these service offering procedures, you’re actually teaching certain areas of your business so you can hire out. And the truth is, everyone says if they’re perfectionist, you are in the worst boat because you can’t screw yourself up. The person who’s doing his task. You say, it’s true, I can do the job with seven people, but I have to hire one person for one job. And I’ll give you a perfect example. Back in the day, I was the creative director of a company, and it was tied to another company. And they wanted me to engage the engineers and other web people on how to do a project. They’re doing government stuff, and I was doing civilian other stuff. Right?
Yeah.
And they had to create a website for this, this and this. They wanted me to engage with them. And they said, oh, yeah, this is a six month project, seven people. It’s a six month no. How long would it take you to do it? I said, it took me three weeks to do the whole thing. I was just being on. I was naive because I was a designer programmer and I knew all the bits of it. And they said, okay, you do it then. And that was done in two weeks. They never spoke to me again. I screwed up the relationship because they have different processes and stuff. And you have to be kind of careful about because you might be able to get that one thing done. But these longer relationships you can ruin if you don’t have a way to create this service operating procedure, to hire out in order to do certain tasks. And even if they do a task and they’re not 100% as good as you are, do they need to be, you think? Do they need to be exactly like me? I mean, what is really good? Like really good is better than most people.
Look at a program module, someone says, oh, we have to create this one component where it’s reusable. And I said, well, would you reuse it on another project? We probably could. I said, but you’re not. And you have to understand that the client is paying X amount of dollars and you might want to create this reusable component that eats up the entire budget and it makes no difference. So they have to think intelligently. How can I create these service operating procedures so people are taking certain tasks on that they’re good or good enough. And when I mean good enough, I mean very good, but maybe not exactly to what you’re used to doing, because we all are a little perfectionist in our own way.
Yeah. One of my funniest examples of this was like, I was like, 19, and I was building houses. I was working as a landscaper, and we would build houses during the fall when it would be lower in the landscape side. And I worked with this roofing crew, and it was like, such a funny thing that this is their full time gig. And they were run and gun contractors. They knew what they were doing. They come in, they got three days to do a thing. They’re going to stand it up, and they’re working on this house. And it was a friend of mine’s house. So I’m kind of, like, acting a little different because I know the guy that owns the house. And this guy’s hammering in a nail, and it goes in crooked. And then you see him, he’s, like, trying to back out the nail. And it was so funny that the guy’s name was Lumpy. It was his nickname. He said, Jesus Christ, Lumpy, we’re not building an F in piano. Just hammer it in. And it was so funny. I’m like, my instinct would be like, yes, do it right, spend the extra time email.
The other guy is just like, whack. He just hammers it in. It bends it in good enough so that it’s flush. And he’s like, then put another nail right beside it. And the difference of like, look, we just got to get this done. And like you said, it’s weird that we use phrases like good enough or whatever. Like, good enough is good enough. It’s good. It’s not barely good enough. It’s good enough. Most people don’t even do good enough. So it’s like this unfortunate scale that we, and you hear the phrase too, like, if you aren’t embarrassed about your minimum viable product, you waited way too long to put it out.
Yeah, my IT company, I had a lot of people saying, oh, I need to scale it to this. And I just had to tell them the truth. I said, look, you guys spend about $150,000 on this MVP, and once you get funding, you’re just going to rebuild it. Why would you rebuild it? I said, trust me, because investors going to come in because I went through investment many times. So I already know, like the process. They’re going to come in and say, oh, this is great, but our market that I want to hit is this or this is a cool feature and you can’t fit it in afterwards. A lot of times, especially, you have to get stuff done in a very small amount of time. So some people create MVP to take care of the functionality of a certain group of people or a maximum X amount of people. If you get beyond that, sometimes it’s okay to just take that idea and rebuild it, because sometimes the concepts and ideas are half to work. So you really have to think along what is realistic, what is good. When I say good enough, everything that we put out is very good.
But I have certain people that like my writing style. I look at the person and I figure out their personality and I write according to their voice. And another writer may not get that. So I have to figure out everything about the person. So I understand the vibe. And sometimes they don’t like telling me certain things and I drag it out of them. It’s like, okay, how did you grow up? What do you like I said, okay, are you gay or straight? Like, I’m blunt about I need to understand where you’re coming, what’s your audience, what’s your typical kind of client? And I blend that in. I said, okay, I think I got your voice. And I write it down like, wow, this is pretty good. And they make their tweaks to it because when someone looks at your LinkedIn profile, they’re looking at a person, they’re looking at the story. And the reason why we call these reality TV shows are so popular, it’s because it drives the story. I was living in my car and now I make a million dollars. So they want to know that story. How did you start from here and get over there and be successful. Especially in the states, they love a success story. They love the underdog, and they want to relate to you. That’s one reason I work with a lot of clients that have families. They’re family oriented. I understand that they have a bigger care. I work with people that maybe have a similar background because I understand what they’re going through. I have people that try to be sincere. At the end of the day, this is kind of where you’re going. And I’m bluntly honest with my clients. I tell them, okay, I’m going to do this. When you get your first client, I’m charging you more money. I’ll tell them, and we’ll make this thing work. And I think that personal relationship and engagement not just makes him feel good, it makes me feel comfortable and happy about helping other individuals.
The sincerity piece is always an interesting thing because I’ve had people say this. I can help somebody by writing content with them in a sincere first person voice. I can represent their personality. And like, you’re so fantastic at this, right? And then someone would say, like, well, is it really sincere if you’re getting someone else to write it for you? No, but that’s not the point. The point is they don’t have time to create this content. They created, they read it and they’re like, hey, this sounds like I wrote it like, bingo. Yeah.
They may not be good writers. They’re like coaches for this. Coaches by coach. Coaches hire coaches. That’s kind of what I am, and I’m not doing everything for them. Doing the first draft, I feel this is what you’re talking about. So if you’re a good person that does websites, you may be a terrible copywriter. If you’re a good 3D guy, you may be a terrible UI guy. If you’re a good coach that helps women, maybe you’re not that good at helping guys. I don’t know, making stuff up. So everyone has their strengths, but they have this passion inside to do something. And it’s our job to present that passion in a way that makes sense. Like a LinkedIn profile is really about 70% visual. But once you get past the visual, they start digging into the story. That story is the bit that will convert them. So the visuals will bring you in and the story will help convert. Of course, you have your LinkedIn SEO optimization and all those tricks too, but you have to have that balance where they said, you know what, this is someone I want to talk to, and that’s where you want to be on LinkedIn.
And it’s a mixture of all of those things, right? Like you can have great SEO, but then they get there and they go, okay, it was easy to find, which ultimately SEO is about searchability discoverability. But if I have great SEO for a restaurant, but the food’s trash, that’s no good. You can get people there. And then your role is to teach them how to keep people there and engage them and give that sincerity. Tell that story.
People can’t do it. That’s kind of funny. People say, I just want to sell stuff. Well, if you don’t want to put your human out there, maybe it’s not for you to convert in that way. Maybe you’re a high end CEO that uses it for PR purposes, that’s fine. But if you are converting, if you’re trying to get a career going on stuff, you need to have all your ducks in a row. If you’re trying to convert B2B or high value services, you have to have all these things in a row. Because when someone makes a decision, it’s usually an emotional decision first. And second, it’s based on stats. That’s how most humans work, right? And they look at you and you look like a douchebag on your photo. They’re not going to know it. But in the back of their mind, something is off with this guy here. I don’t think I want to work with them. You don’t know why, it’s your douchebag photo.
t
Exactly.
Something simple as that. So making a decision to work with you, they may have 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 criteria, right? Whatever it is. And they don’t know it’s ten or five criteria. Say five is easy number. But all they have to figure out is one that you’re not qualified to not work with, you know. Like, how do I separate myself from all these other LinkedIn guys? Right. Well, I’m not as serious. I’m more human. That’s why I put the not so boring LinkedIn guy. It’s just funny enough to separate. It’s not really super funny and super off. My other line was actually better, but it didn’t apply to LinkedIn. When I had my gaming company, I was known as the number one Swissipino game designer in the world. Right. Because my mother from Switzerland, my dad is Filipino, I’m half Asian. And so my mother has blonde hair, green eyes, and my dad’s like, really Filipino and so I’m Swissipino. And that would be such a great pickup line of the bars. They would say, really? I think so. I probably number one Swissipino.
The irony is this, Troy, that you’re the second Swissipino person I know. I have a friend, somebody who’s Sonia Missio. She’s actually based in Toronto, and she also in that interesting split. But it is so funny that you say that. And like you said, that the genuineness comes out. And look, the truth is, design is important. User experiences, that engagement is important. If design didn’t matter, then there would be sushi milkshakes.
Yeah.
We like the fact that someone spent way too much time making it look good so you could eat it. Otherwise we would just be having nothing but Soylent milkshakes. And, like, there’s a reason we do stuff. You walk down the street, there’s flowers on the thing. Like, you see somebody’s profile, and it’s like half of their girlfriend or boyfriend’s face is in the shots. It looks like they’re on a fishing boat. That’s great photos.
That’s another thing I tell my clients. Oh, my goodness. Well, I don’t know. Do you have time to make money? I tell them I’m blunt with them. What’s going to cost me so much? I said, how much is the client worth? That’s my closer right there. I said, how much is a client worth to you? Okay. Then you’re going to have to do A, B and C or pay to do whatever. Because it’s like you want to be honest and you want to be authentic. But there’s also a fine line from kissing someone’s feet. The client doesn’t want that. Client wants to know that, hey, Eric knows what he’s doing. Troy knows what he’s doing. If he tells me something, it’s for a reason. It’s not because he’s blabbing. It’s because he’s trying to get me money. And those are the right people. Well, for my market anyway. Those are the right people to actually engage with because they’ll actually take the steps to do a process that works for them.
Yeah. There’s a really interesting thing you talked before about the kind of like firing your client. And it’s an important piece because as you look at where you can deliver real value. Right. And you’re selling value, you’re selling a specific outcome. And I’ve had this for an advisory with startups. And you start talking with them, and as you give them advice and you give them direction and you give them guidance, and they’re just, like going the opposite way on each thing. And then they say, I don’t understand why this stuff is not working. Well, I don’t know, maybe because the last three things I’ve told you that you should do, you’ve kind of gone in the opposite direction. And then at that point. I’m like..
Well, you’re nicer than I am. Yeah.
It feels like I don’t think I’m adding value to this. So I’m going to just step back.
Yeah. I had two clients I remember firing, and there’s a very specific story. One was, I have CPA. Anyone that has a high value of service I could potentially work with. Right. If they’re trying to convert on LinkedIn. One was a CPA, and he was from, I don’t know, the UK somewhere. We moved to Midwest. Older guy in Balding, and he was there. He was very dry. Right. And he used to take Zoom meetings like this. It pissed me off. Right. Like what? He wouldn’t even looked at the camera. He’s talking and he has his accent and all this other stuff. He says, Troy, this is not working very well. And I looked at him with a straight face. I said, didn’t you just get 14 clients in 45 days? How did you know that? I was like, I bet everything I do, I’m a lot smarter than, I don’t tell them that, but I’m a lot smarter than I look. Okay. Because I said, I talked to your VP two days ago before this meeting. He was trying to not pay and get these clients. Right. I don’t like that. That’s being very dishonest. He just wanted to do what he wanted to do.
Right. And I said, you know what? I’ll let you out of contract. Forget about 30 days. Maybe it’s not working for you. And he said, yeah, maybe it’s not working. Oh, it was working for him, but I don’t want to work with people that are trying to lowball me or lie to me. I had another guy, he was in cyber security. It’s another big area. And he was doing training, certification stuff right there’s. All these.
Yeah.
And he wanted to sell the certification to individual LinkedIn. I didn’t think it was a good idea. Right. I don’t know about cyber security. But I was like, yeah, I don’t think this is, is your audience receptive to this? Yes, it is. Yeah, I don’t think so. It’s kind of hard to sell these $4-5,000 courses and stuff. And I said, you got funding for it. And then I said, you know what? You might want to just partner with other security people and use this because you’re an ancillary, you’re an extra. And they already have the in on it. In on this company that’s doing this stuff. And they’d probably need his certifications anyway. And he said, well, I don’t have any partners give me two days. So I went to a security event here in Atlanta, Atlanta, Georgia. And I paid my bills to get in, $500 to get in and was talking to these people and I talked to twelve people. I would love to talk to this person. I said, hey, I said forget this whole what we’re doing, just forget it. I’ll give you meetings. I said these clients are worth a lot. I said, this one client here don’t miss the meeting. And he’s traveling and all this stuff. He agreed to the meeting, he missed the meeting twice, right? Twice.
Frustrating.
Yeah. And the other people who were not, I don’t know what he was doing. Some people do their business, shoot by the hip. He was going and he was from Texas and he was going to another country and I was having meetings with them and I told him directly, I said, hey man, I like you, but I don’t want to see what’s happening in their background because he was at his mistress house or something and that’s not cool. I don’t want to know that personally. I don’t care if you have two women or you’re married, you’re single, you’re gay, you’re straight. I think as long as you treat people well, that’s important. But what I have a personal issue with is deception because that means you’re not going to run an honest business, right? So I had to let them go. I like the guy. But if you can’t make the meetings and you’re in these compromising things and stuff and you’re trying to cover the campaign, don’t do that. So you have to work with people that have the same, I wouldn’t say moral structure, but integrity, right. Integrity, that’s a good word to have the same kind of ideals that you do.
Because you know that at the end of the day, if he’s going to do stuff right, I know that I won’t get paid. I’m not going to fight over payment. I would just can you and stop all your services and you won’t make any money. It’s really simple for me. You can’t manipulate me. I’m here to help you to convert. And so you need those individuals that say, you know what, I will make it to this meetin., I will go in here and help this individual do what they need to do and I’m going to make business. You have to have a very clear head on. Like how am I going to get to point A to point B and then know that next month you may have to jump from A to C. You have to figure out the connecting the dots, you have to do some AB testing on what works and then you have to figure out like this works better. And it’s okay because you didn’t know that before. It’s a process. So people think that, oh, I get this automation thing on LinkedIn, I’ll make a million dollars. No, it doesn’t work that way.
It works against you. Linkedin will shut you down. And if that’s the main channel, it’s not going to help you out. So a lot of the lower end and not lower end is money so much, but lower end and thought process and being human and helping, they don’t do very well on LinkedIn, where a lot of coaches that have a little bit of a brand, a little bit of flair, something that separates them from other people, you got people that like them, actually like them, they can engage with them. And every personality works well. Had this one guy really dry personality. I told him, you are dry as toast. I told him, you’re dry as toast. I said, that’s your brand.
Be proud.
I said, yes, you are. I’m telling you are. I said, you know why you could say dry jokes. And it’s funny because you’re such a straight face. It works for you. And I said, and you’re a CPA. Do they want a funny guy to be messing with their money? No, they want a serious dude. And you have to kind of think about it like that. You have to think about what is my personality. And so I actually am somewhat dry. I’m kind of funny. I got dry humor. That’s what it is, right? Not so boring. Linkedin. I’m kind of boring. So I twisted it upside down to do that. And I would love to be the number one Swissipino LinkedIn guy in the world, but it wouldn’t make sense. LinkedIn, they wouldn’t know. It doesn’t. Because when you’re doing gaming, it’s a little more fun. And they’re going to ask, what is Swissipino? But on LinkedIn, they’ll be like, this makes no sense at all. So you have to apply a brand that kind of makes sense to that audience.
And it goes to your approach to it. Right. Which is about adaptability, because even where a method may work for one company, one brand, one person, that same thing. If you just automate it and try and sell it to ten other clients without gating, is this appropriate without evaluating? Is this going to fit their persona, their audience? It’s both sides of that experience, too. It’s not just about you. Two funny people are not two funny people. There are two funny people that each have individual audiences. The one dry CPA guy, like you said, your clients are going to dig this. They want to kind of know that you’re the dry CPA guy. Somebody who’s hiring a real funny person if they want them for a keynote speaker for a CPA conference. Perfect. But if you want, it’s like matching and mapping skills to value, to perception, it is a real like, you achieve a really interesting mix by being dynamic, having the integrity, being genuine through the process. And then making sure that those people then parlay that genuineness, that integrity because of how you work with them.
Yeah. And part of it is clarity. When you’re creating a brand, you don’t want to say, oh, I can do this. I don’t really talk about all my development other than in the story. But in general, when you look at my profile, it’s very clear that he’s a LinkedIn guy. He’d get me clients. It’s very simple concept. But if you say, oh, by the way, I can do website design. I did Coca Cola stuff. What are you, a LinkedIn guy or a programmer? You end up looking like a flea market, and that’s one thing you have to avoid. You want simple clarity. You can add a little humor in it. For branding purposes, you want a separation, but what are you known for? I picked up a client last week, and he says, you know, I want to help professional women, right? They’re owners of businesses or they’re higher up in the thing and they feel like something’s missing. I said, I totally get it, okay? I can help men, too. I said, no, men will come in as ancillary. What do you mean? I said, you can’t say, oh, I helped a lot of women, but men can come in too. Well, no. You want to concentrate on that. Your main nuts or your main fruit, low hanging fruit. And by doing that and doing it well, your interaction with them, they’ll give you another client. You have your clients to come based on referral. I don’t care what kind of system you have going on. We got systems where we have direct message campaigns and stuff, but they’re not sequenced. They’re teaching the client how to reach to certain audiences. We have posting campaigns and stuff like that that we have a whole series of things that are done that promotes authentic conversations. And so a lot of things that we do, we have to slow down, have less but better conversations. By doing that, you convert. How many clients you really freaking need.
Right. Yeah. And the thing that you hit on there is like that clarity and crispness. Like, even when we talk about going to public speaking, I coach people in this all the time. When you go to give a keynote, your opening slide should not be, Hi, my name is Eric Wright. I’m a product marketer. I work for a company, and prior to this, I did 20 years working in financial services. I was a systems administrator. Started off as desktop support. Made my way to me. Prior to that, I was actually a landscaper.
Or you could start with that and say, Just kidding and move on. Right?
But it’s like that’s the first thing they do is they do that, and then they end the presentation with a thank you slide. You’re like, no, what you should do is how many times have you gone into the office and realized that there’s no door by the bathroom? That’s two way door.
Storytelling, yes.
And you immediately get into this thing. And that’s what your profile has to tell a story. But you’ve got 160 characters to do it in. So you just can’t dilly dally around. You got to get to it and it’s got to be meaningful, engaging. And like you said, it’s got to match the other stuff. But it’s hard as the person, the self, to have the humility to step outside and create that. That’s why having you come in and do this with them, it’s like such a boost, because it is balanced voice.
Because you have character limitations. You have SEO on Google as well as SEO on LinkedIn. So Google has searched everything on LinkedIn, and LinkedIn has their own search as well. And LinkedIn tends to do things a certain way, so you have to do things a certain way. For example, you’re on individual jobs, right. Linkedin tends to pair you with people that are similar to you. Right? Well, that’s not what you want to do if you’re doing B2B sales or your coach.
That’s right. It’s trying to find you a job, not a client.
Oh, I need another programmer. Like, I know a Zillion program. You know what I mean? You’re trying to get business, right? So one trick is to actually put your target market in your title. It’ll start pairing you up with your target market. And people don’t think about that. You know, one thing to do is when I say I’m a Not So Boring LinkedIn guy, right. That’s the first thing I have underneath my name. And it’s not SEO optimized, but I don’t care. It’s more important to have that brand. And then I have the other things that are very searchable. And then when you’re telling a story, this is an easy way to explain it. I want to show the scars, but I don’t want to show the wounds. Right? You can over inundate like you can say, yeah, I was homeless. My mom died. My brother died. He had an overdose. My girlfriend was cheating on me and left me. I was living in the shit. No one can hear that. That’s just horrible. That’s just too much. I mean, you don’t want to say my life is awful, but I’m trying to make it.
That doesn’t work. So showing the scars and then not the wound, that would be showing the wound.
Right.
Showing the scars could be like the dating story. I told you I was an awful dater. It’s funny and it’s true. I am so direct. I used to go straight for it and it works sometimes, but most of the time it didn’t. So taking the approach of old fashioned dating into business just to get to know someone, just to see, I think dots connect. Are you in the same area? You have some commonalities? Is there something that you think he needs that you can help that has maybe nothing to do with your business? Maybe it’s someone I can connect them with or, oh, he doesn’t need a LinkedIn guy. He needs to fix his freaking email. I got an email guy. And people say, oh, I got great deliverability. No, you don’t. People don’t realize that a good portion of emails never make it. And I could tell them, look, LinkedIn is great, but LinkedIn is not everything. Like, we pull stuff off of LinkedIn and create a video funnel series through like dub or some kind of component that makes it more interactive because some people don’t reply on LinkedIn. So what are you going to do? You have to figure out what works best to help convert the goals of that client and a lot of it is technology based. And can you imagine sending a proposal to someone and they don’t get it? And the client says, well, I never got it. Well, the clients not thinking, oh, it’s a mysterious email. No, it’s a you problem.
Yes, right.
You screwed up and you lost the deal. So people sometimes don’t know how important these little components are to fix because it’s a cassette of dominoes. You remove one or two dominoes, it doesn’t complete. And I think a lot of people are so geared about volume. I mean, if you do a high value services, I’m good with one client a month. One, there’s a lot of work for me, maybe two maximum. A high value clients worth at least $1,000 a month compound monthly. You can compound that. My other client, like I mentioned, one job is $200,000. When you take the work in, can you deliver the work? And then maybe you can grow your business and your service offering procedures and training, and you can slowly grow out in that way. But I think that everyone, not everyone, but many people are about that volume and that volume will work against you. Can you imagine reaching out someone’s interested and they reply back and you don’t have time?
If they all come back and say, yes, if you’re not ready for that and it doesn’t have to be many, it can just be, like you said, one or two of them. They say, yeah, go for it. And you’re like, oh but I can’t go for it now.
Yeah, stabbing yourself in the foot. So you have to realize what is appropriate. And it’s okay to have a small business. It’s even okay to have a job if you’re doing career changes. I got a buddy that’s a sales guy for servers. I don’t even know what he does. Right. I’ll be honest with you drinking buddy. We go out, we talk. I said that dude makes a quarter of a million dollars a year having a job. So it’s not all about entrepreneurship. It’s about his ability to build relationships with clients. And whether you’re entrepreneur or having a job, you have to charge what you’re worth and you have to deliver what you say.
Put that on the card. There you go. Well, Troy, this has been fantastic and I tell you that’s a great way to wrap because it is important, right? Whether you’re selling yourself into a job where they’re selling yourself into a service, whether you’re selling a team, whatever it is, there’s the way you do it to bring that personality, that integrity through, I’m glad genuineness that you bring to this is enlightening and it was really great to share this. So for folks, if they do want to reach out to you, they can find you on LinkedIn, I presume.
My first and last name Troy last name is Hipolito. H-I-P-O-L-I-T-O. There is another Troy Hipolito out there, that’s actually my brother but he’s in the army so that’s a whole different guy. I used to be an army. Anyway, long story but I’m the most popular Troy Hippolito out there, right?
Not only is the top Swissipino but he is the top Troy Hipolito.
In the world, yeah.
Well, there you go. Troy, thank you very much. This has been really great and encouraged folks do reach out and taken your content through the great I love the way you approach things and yeah, we all need a little bit more Troy in our lives so thanks for taking the time today.
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Al is a big fan of Letterkenny. He thinks it’s one of the best, funniest and most inclusive shows to come out of Canada. His wife Tanya thinks he’s crazy, so Al has created this podcast along with his friends Mat and Victor to try to convince Tanya that he’s not crazy.
That is just the beginning of an amazing story. We have a really fun chat with Al, Tanya, and Mat. Victor couldn’t make the show unfortunately but that just means we have to come back for a 2nd show!
Welcome back. This is Eric Right. I’m the host of the DiscoPosse podcast. And thank you for listening. Oh, and thank you for watching. If you want to see this episode in as real as real life can be on YouTube, you can go check out Youtube.com/discopossepodcast because this is definitely one of those fun ones that’s worth watching because there’s a ton of people on there. It really gives you a sense of who’s talking when because this features the team from the produce stand. Now, the produce stand is a really fantastic podcast. That’s about the show Letter Kenny. You’re probably saying to yourself, who are the produce stands? What is Letter Kenny? Well, you’re going to want to dig in because this is Tanya and Al Squirrely Matt. We were missing Victor because he’s the number four Mike on the whole crew. But this is absolutely a fun one to watch and listen to. So check it out.
We talk about podcasting, the idea of making first a show about a show and then even more so, the absolutely super involved in interactive community that they’ve built around it. Really, really cool. And I got to say that I’m proud of what they’re doing. They definitely are worth a listen and hopefully a watch. Let’s get them on YouTube as well. All right, speaking of YouTube and speaking of things, listening to and watching and that are worth it, I got to give a shout out to the sponsors that allow me to do this, that make this amazing thing happen. And I got to start with our fine friends over at Veeam Software, because whatever it is that you need for your data protection needs, they got you covered. Reason is today is a dangerous time. We’re losing data, we’re losing servers, we’re losing applications, we’re losing time. Don’t do it. Protect your assets, whether they’re on premises. Whether in the cloud. Whether they’re physical servers, whether they’re cloud native, use their casting platform. All sorts of really cool stuff. And hey, don’t just back it up, but actually do automated data and backup and full application recovery. Really cool team. Great products. Go check it out.
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Hi, my name is Tanya, and we’re here today with Al and Squarely Matt from the produce stand. And we’re on DiscoPosse podcast.
This is the fun part because when you get to have professional podcasters on a podcast, I get to just walk away like, I’m done. You folks can run with it. Thank you all for being on this side of the bike. This is weird, too. The last time we chatted, of course, I was a guest on your podcast, and thank you very much for that. And you are all part of something really cool. And if it’s new to people here, I hope they obviously check out the podcast. They check out the show the podcast talks about. But you’re much more than that because it’s a bunch of you. I got to go around Robin here. Now, the good part is we’re all going to sound as Canadian as possible, which is hilarious. People never know that I’m Canadian until I talk to another Canadian. And then for whatever reason, our accents kind of bleed pretty heavily in those ones. I’ve been watching some of the Ottawa trucker protests, and I think that I sound Canadian until I watch a live stream from Ottawa. And I’m like, oh, now I know why people think Canadians sound funny.
Well, they hide it there.
Those Canadians in particular. But we won’t go there tonight.
There’s a different breed altogether. So. All right, I will go in order of importance. Tanya, you’re up first.
Oh, you should know by now I don’t like going first on our podcast.
That’s exactly why I shoved you up front.
Fantastic.
Isn’t paying attention.
So if you want to do a quick bio and tell folks what brought you to the produce stand.
All right, my bio gosh, we’re not doing weight heightened measurements. What brought me to the Product Stand was, of course, Al, my husband. You watched the whole thing. And I would get snippets of it here and there. When I was coming into the room and ready, the kids were down for the night, and I was coming to sit and watch a show with him, and he’s like, oh, this show is great. This show is great. And he tried to force me to watch a couple of them, and I just thought it was the stupidest show I’ve ever seen in my life. And none of it made sense. None of it I liked. It wasn’t my kind of thing. It’s an acquirement that I have grown to appreciate and like, and in some cases, love. But yeah, he then came to me and said, I have an idea. This is during Covid. I want to do a podcast, and I want you on it. And I think my jaw dropped. And I was like, are you kidding me? Why do you want me involved in this? I don’t like the show. Like, you’re not going to make me like the show.
And he’s like, no, here’s my plan. Here’s my idea. I’m going to have Mat, I’m going to have Victor and you because you all have different outlooks on the show, and it will make for interesting podcasts. So it’s his brainchild. And I just kind of tagged along and there was nothing else to do, it was covid. So I’m like, hey, why not? And it was actually the best thing for me, for us. I think the whole team has all said that this is just one of those steps out of life and a moment to just sit back and laugh and share and enjoy something that is not anything to do with anything going on in the world today. And yeah, that’s kind of my thing.
We definitely need that. And yeah, it’s been great. And it’s funny. Like you said, the mix of voices and styles and opinions is what makes it good and Al, of course, since you’re next on Mike, I’ll pick on you as the next bio deliverer. Sure.
I’m Al Grego, and I am the producer and host of the Produce Stand Podcast. It’s a pandemic project, as many projects that started in the pandemic were. But I’ve always wanted to do a podcast since I knew what podcasts were. I’ve been listening to podcasts since probably 2003, 2005. I can’t remember now. And my first exposure to kind of an after show type podcast, which is what we do, was the Lost Jay and Dan podcast. And I really loved it because this is a show that I really enjoyed watching. And then I was starved for more content in between episodes. So I’d look online for anything I could. And I found this thing called the podcast, and I listened to it. And it’s all people who have the same interests as me talking about a show that I loved. And so that’s what we’re doing with the produce stand. And yeah, Tanya is right a little bit selfishly. I asked her to be on just because I knew this is going to take up some of my time. And if she was involved, she couldn’t complain about it.
But also..
We joked about that yesterday. Yeah.
It’s a great show. And I know superficially it looks like dumb humor, but there’s actually a lot of, like, heart and a lot of smartness behind the dumb jokes. And it’s a very accessible, it’s a very progressive show, despite on the surface what it looks like and I wanted to get the word out. And I looked it up and I saw what other podcasts are out there that talk about Letter Kenny. And one of the bigger ones is Dean and Tiara down in Seattle, who we’re going to have on tonight. They’re our biggest competitor, but they’re also our closest allies have been doing it a lot longer than us. But in terms of Canadian view for this show, there was another one based in Toronto, but he just didn’t – he stopped doing it after a while. I don’t know why. I reached out and I haven’t been able to contact them. So, yeah, it’s a Canadian podcast about a Canadian show. And we’re here to kind of translate all the Canadians on the show to those who want to watch and listen. And we have so many viewers from all over the world, and we’ve got an amazing community that we’ve built. And it’s been our recipe from all the craziness that’s been going on.
Yes. And that leaves the perfect final intro to what makes up the reason why you call yourself Squirrely Matt. Definitely a good show reference. And we should also know that we are missing Victor, who could not make it to the broadcast today, but also another great voice on the show. But Mat., you’re up.
Yeah, thanks for having us. So, yeah, Matt Belonje, aka Squirrely Mat. I’ll pull on everybody demand there. Father of three, hubby of one as he starts his off. And yeah, it’s been a blast to go back to the initial thing, how we got into it. It’s the same idea. This was definitely a joke. Love child out of covid boredom. I know Alan and I have known each other for years through work. We played around with some podcasting through work and other things. I have a bit of a media background that was sort of where I started. My career didn’t follow that path. Priorities change, some interests change. But I originally had some aspirations to be involved in film and television in some degree. So even though that’s not directly what this is, the media world and anything connected to it around it has always been a real passion and interest in the background. So, yeah, like Tanya said when covid kicked off, and then Al reached out to me one day and said, hey, do you want to be in a podcast with me or do you want to come to a podcast? I didn’t even ask him what it was about. I just said, sure. And then I said, well, what are we doing on? And then he said, Letter Kenny. And I laughed. I’m like, oh, really? Okay. All right, let’s do it. And I was really excited because I don’t know if you mentioned it, but I think I was the one who got you into Letter Kenny. Originally. It was definitely a show I was aware of. I watched, I was a fan of, and then I got out onto it and he got hooked. And I think he’s become the super fan of our group. But that’s okay. We all love it. And it just took off from there. And I think we were all very surprised and kind of thrown back a bit by what it’s become. And that’s been the real thing about it. I know Kobe hit people a lot of people very differently. I know early on I joked, but it was truth. I didn’t step inside another building outside of my own house for over 100 days. I’m not talking grocery stores like you name it. My wife did everything early days of just general concern. So we dedicated one person. So it was a very strange time, and it still is. But this definitely very quickly became that weekly escape where we could just put everything aside, come together with friends, laugh, argue, debate, have some fun. And regardless of what happened, it was just, we’ve had nothing but a blast. And now we’re trying to figure out how to keep it going because we’ve caught up to the series. But it’s been a blast. And I’m very thankful for what Al has led us through and what we’ve created as a group and now where we are here.
Well, if you talk about the fan base, too, you’ve got sort of competitors in the marketplace. I think of the days of message boards for talk radio groups, and there’d be like Ron and Fez, Nope and Anthony and all these talk radio was huge. Of course, we didn’t have much. We had Humble and Fred in Toronto and they’ve moved around a bit. You would have someone and someone. It was always like a goofy duo. Maybe they had a third person on who would be a bonus voice, the stunt boy, or whatever it was going to be. And then you would get these message boards because that was sort of the way that people communicated outside of the show. We didn’t have YouTube, we didn’t have these other ways to chat. So people would go on these message boards and then you’d get three message boards and they’d be sort of like warring for who was the top message board for whatever radio duo was. And it was hilarious because that was this fun competition. But obviously you’re all fans, so you’re not really competing. You believe in a common purpose, and it’s a fun community way to do it.
But now podcasting changed this, that you can be broadcasting, you can get your voice out there. Their limitations for access to this stuff is so good, right? It’s much lower and production quality. You folks do a really great job with production. As a guy that does zero post production. Like, I literally will record this. I will cut off the front in the back, and I will push it to air. Like it doesn’t get much treatment. I got a huge respect for the amount of work that you do, you know, as a group, I don’t know who wants to raise the hand. I imagine Al, you’re probably as the technician behind a lot of the stuff because I know you’ve got a real talent for that.
But yeah, a bit of background in audio engineering, obviously. It’s what I went to College for. Podcasting is a marriage of my love of radio, which I was a big fan of radio growing up. And my audio engineering background and just wanting to create content and knowing that I have a voice for Face for radio. But radio doesn’t exist anymore. Podcasting is just so much more accessible, for sure. I mean, I credit – I come from a corporate training background for 20 years. That’s how I made my living, working for various companies. But just recently in my latest role in my latest company, I started using podcasting as a training tool. And so that’s where I kind of started doing that and having some fun with it. And I credit actually Toronto Mike, who’s a big time podcaster in the Toronto area. I call him the Canadian version of Mark Marin. And actually today he just released his $1,000 episode. So kudos to him. He invited me into his house and he showed me his set up in his studio and we had some great chats. And he didn’t charge me for it. He was just, yeah, come on over because he knew I was a listener and a fan and we had a great time.
And from that knowledge, I went back to my office and I bought the equipment. I started podcasting, and that got the right amount of attention. So that when my company decided and I’ll mention the company name, Mineris, decided that they wanted to start a podcasting strategy of their own. I’m the one they tapped. So I went from training to marketing in the company, and I’ve never been in marketing before, but they saw me as kind of the resident expert, and that’s where now I make a living. Like the Protestant is a passion project. I make no money doing that. But now I’m making my living as a podcaster, which is amazing. I love it. Five years ago, that would have been unheard of now.
Now, Mat, you mentioned you had early aspirations for TV and broadcast stuff. What was your exposure to it? And then what was the diversion that took you out of that game?
Yeah. So I originally went to school, Loyalist College out in Belleville, Ontario, for television and new media production. So I was on the full production side, learning how to use a camera, edit graphics, direct, you name it for production. I very much enjoyed it. I will also say I was in my much younger years at the time and not so focused, so that definitely didn’t help. And then when I came out of it, I had a couple of co-ops and internships, and one of them which was actually up in Barry at the A channel at the time, which I believe is now CTV north or something like that. And it was also the time for Canadian folks I know Belglow Media Buyout. So Chum Media at the time got bought out by Belglow Media. And the industry was kind of in a weird spot where there was a lot of hiring. I think it was more firing as they were sort of dismantling and rearranging that. And that was the time I was trying to find a job. So it made it very difficult. I thought I had this great in, and then they pretty much put a freeze on at the station and that kind of derailed a little bit.
And it’s one of those industries, if you don’t stay close to it, you quickly get far from it. Right. It doesn’t take much. It’s like buying a new computer. By the time you buy and take it home, the better one’s already on the shelf, right? Same idea with these industries. You start stepping away from it, the longer you’re gone, the more difficult it is to get back. And then there was some things on the personal side. My family, we kind of had some movement around and I had to find a different gig just to keep myself going. And again stepped aside and side before I knew it, it was kind of felt too far. And then priorities changed. I had my oldest son a couple of years after that. And at that point I was like, I just need to keep my head above water. And it just seemed like a distant dream at the time. That said, as the years have gone on and I think Al too of the work we’ve done in our company, I’ve worked in fraud. I’ve worked in a number of other things, nothing to do with media.
But through his work and some of the cross stuff that we do, he had the opportunity to dabble with podcasting, dabble with internal videos for training materials. And he was nice enough to invite me in, knowing I had a bit of a passion for that in a former life. So he and I work closely to set up the green room and things of that, another green room, like the green screen space and do some lighting and play around. So he’s kept me close to that taste of that kind of life. And it’s been fun to play around with that. So when this came up to do podcasting – again, I’ve never had a ton of experience with podcasting, but I knew what it was right. I’ve always liked radio as well. But I’m like, I’m in. This is just going to be fun. And it’s really paid off as something that’s kept that flavor going. I’m also that nerd for film and television. I know when I drive around if I see a bunch of pylons on a road that actually I think they say TPS or something like that. I’m like that’s a film production and all often slow down.
I’ll sneak into what’s going on here. I get this weird excitement when I get near productions and I just want to know what’s going on. I know I won’t be a part of it, but it’s great. And we’re in Toronto, which is Hollywood North, right. So there’s productions all the time. Even my neighbor, he’s in a film crew and working on Titans and a number of other things. So I get to talk to him and banter about the industry a bit. So that’s good enough for me and my point of life. But yeah, that’s kind of what the diversion was. Priority changes. I’ll put it that way.
Yeah. And I think what’s great about it, though, like, look, 20 years back, ten years back even, when we think of the industry, like film, radio, you would get a job as an intern. And that was like a magical thing, right. You would be just getting exposure, the magical feeling of like, well, at least I’m in here. You’d get a pittance of a salary for the pleasure of doing coffee runs and grabbing production pieces and doing crazy after hours editing. Whatever it’s going to be to make that two hour show amazing. You get near zero credit for it. If you’re lucky, you get a little bit of credit for it. You never get mic time. You never get camera time. It was a very sort of like there’s a lot of machine wrapped around it. And they were like, you got to do your time, kid. You got to earn your keep. Then you eventually get up. If you’re lucky, you audition. Maybe you get an overnight show. It was a battle to get in. Nothing. Fuck it. I got an SM seven B. I got an Internet connection. I run a radio station now.
It’s awesome. The other big thing, I think a lot of it, looking back, my own growth and self awareness is confidence. Right. I look at younger version of Mat doing even this seems a stretch. I always had sort of my personality, but I had a real confidence issue when I was younger. So trying to step outside my comfort zone and put myself out there in a place of vulnerability, it was very challenging. So I didn’t do it, right. Now, I could give two fucks. I’m like, I’m going to do what I want. I don’t mind putting myself online, even in my line of work, even though it’s not related to this. I talked to people at all levels of the organization. I have no problem sort of calling out what’s what, because I’ve seen success. I felt what it feels like to be vulnerable and then see the outcomes of it and how it can be successful. And it’s not something that you should shy away from. Right. But when you’re young, you don’t know that you’re kind of forced into the system and find education. You know what you want to do, and no one really does.
Some people do. And, man, I wish I had that, but a lot of people don’t. And you kind of go through this whirlwind of trying to sort yourself out. And in all reality, it’s not till about your 30s that you figure even half of yourself out. And then I’m also at that time supposed to have had it all put together. So it’s challenging for sure. But again, it is what it is. And I’m very happy now with what’s going on.
Well, you mentioned too, new media, because I remember that’s kind of what it was called race time when you were going to school and you’re at Trevis, and we had other folks who we knew, Travis Watts, good friend of ours who we were all together with. We had a bunch of folks and they would get jobs in this like new media, which meant basically you’re doing Dreamweaver and funky early stage 3D animation and passing media. Macromedia was a product like a company that was worth investing in back in the day. Right now it’s just gone. But it was almost the same thing. It became this elite, you were just happy to be beside it kind of experience. And now it’s so just democratized and accessible. It’s fantastic because those limitations are gone. And I think kind of what you’re saying, Mat, like 20 year old me while being in a different mindset, because if I ever said if 20 year old me met 49 year old me and I said, I’m coming from a place of vulnerability, I’d have punched me in the ear, right, because I just would never thought I would ever think like this. But this is the truth. But 20 year old me would be more confident, I think, because of the accessibility of platforms and software and capability. Like, there’s no less of a barrier now. Other than your personal sort of choice to grind it out.
Less of a barrier but more of an overwhelming option, if that makes sense. There’s a lot more out there. But you’re right, you can get at anything you need to.
That young confidence, though, came more from kind of ignorance and not knowing any better, not so much. Because when I was at that age, I wouldn’t know where to start. Right. I would just start and then hope to work it out.
But yeah, I’m still doing that. What are you talking about? This is my approach to life.
The beauty of what I took in Trevis, the multimedia, is it kind of let me dabble in everything. Video, web, graphics, audio. And that suited me just fine now because now I look at any kind of job in marketing or any kind of creative work or content creation, you need to know all those things. But the tools are such so that you don’t need to have the same kind of level of knowledge that I had growing up. Because now a lot of it is pretty WYSIWYG and pretty easy to do. Point and click and push a button, apply a filter and you’re done. But still having that kind of foundation and also that well rounded knowledge of the different media, you know, video, audio, graphic art and stuff. I’m not a graphic artist, but I know good graphic art when I see it. So I know who to go to when I need a poster made. Right. So, yeah, that’s really served me well. And I think that really prepared me for what the world it is now.
And I guess for the folks that get to watch this on video. If you’re listening on audio, head on over to the YouTube channel. You can check this out. Speaking of posters, you have a plethora of really cool posters behind you, Al. And I know, of course, these are the Royal Pains posters. So you talk about the Royal Pains and give a little brief history on what the posters are from.
Well, I was the weekend rock star before everything shut down. And I was blessed to not only have a great band, but my guitarist was an insanely talented graphic artist who when we first started playing, he’s like, hey, do you want me to design some posters? And we’re all like, yeah, that’d be great because we knew the kind of art he did. And then he said, and then we can just kind of reuse them for every show. He’s like, no, I was going to make a poster for each show. I’m like, really? And he did. And so what I have on my wall here are just some samples. We played over 120 or so shows. We have a poster for every single one, and they’re all equally amazing. Again, we were blessed with talented musicians, but also talented artists in our band. Sadly, the band is no more. We can thank COVID for that. But yeah, continue rocking on and hopefully one day I’ll be back on stage again. But until then, we’ve got the memories.
You and I shared a stage a couple of times ourselves as well back in the day.
So that was poised for the worm. Yes.
That was still your Twitter handle too PftW, right?
That’s right.
Well, you know what it is. I mean, Gmail finally came and took away my Hotmail. Or else I’d still have my Hotmail, too. Because once you have that online persona, it’s kind of hard to switch, right? So poised for the worm. That was my persona from 20 years ago. And I just kept it because it was just easier to do that than find something else.
You’re talking to a guy that’s known around the world as Disco Posse. I get you.
This point.
I went to a tech conference in Paris, and this was hilarious thing. So it’s like a bunch of people showed up and of course, they’re common community. So in the tech community, we’re basically like Carney’s. We just go from town to town and it’s a different town, but it’s the same goofy asshole in the tent every time. So we just go and we would have a show. And I was speaking at one of the events. And there’s a guy who I’ve always been keen on chatting with, and we knew each other on Twitter, right? That was kind of how we communicated. And so this guy, Randy Bias, if you’re into cloud computing, he’s the guy that coined the phrase pets versus cattle, if you ever hear that phrase. So he’s the one that was the originator, we believe, of that phrase. Ray is a great guy, really wild personality, interesting character. And I’m just walking across this random sort of place in Paris and all I hear is Disco Posse yelled across. And I look. I’m like, what’s going on? And I look. And there’s Randy Bias finally for the first time meeting in person and you don’t call and yell Eric, everybody would be a bunch of them, probably.
So Disco Posse, there is only one I’m a safe bet there.
It’s funny when you have the online world kind of mixed worlds and you meet people in person for the first time. I remember Toronto Mike had one of his listener experiences where a bunch of listeners came together in person to meet each other. And we all had to have name tags with our online personas on the name tag.
Name, right.
Yeah. No one knew my name was Al. They knew I was PftW or Royal Pain or whatever. Right. It’s just hilarious. So we all had name Tags with nonsense at names on them or whatever. That’s awesome.
Well, I remember the first time I’ve even seen, like, cereal boxes when they wrote the Twitter handle on it for the company name. And I remembered thinking, like, I think this is when it’s going to take off. I was already on Twitter and you started to see it being talked about and news channels would have it in the Chiron and there’d be more presence of that stuff. And then it became that. And then the funny thing was choosing your identity, especially if you’re associated with a brand. Like, imagine that you were brandnew to it, then you’d be like @monarisAl. Right. That’s what people would often do is they put their company in there. And I was lucky enough that my presence was so separated from everything that I did that it never conflicted. So I would go and people would just know where I work, but I didn’t have to tag it along. And it’s funny that there was a time when you had to choose MySpace, Twitter, like all these things. And where do you put your effort to grinding up your audience?
Yeah, I’ve gone through a couple of handles all in I know in my early ICQ days and MSN days, it was dopeyxtc. I have no idea how that came to be.
Not a far cry from Squirrely Mat then.
Not a far cry, yeah. And at some point I realized I don’t think that’s going to work going forward. And then I landed on Dude North, and I don’t remember how it happened, but one day that came to my head and I laughed and I’m like because I was very much a specially a kid in high school, even when I was still dopextc, I almost only wore things that had a Canada flag on it. Like I was one of those weird hardcore Canadian Patriot guys. Like, I had 17 different T shirts with different slogans, and it was obsessive at one point. It was kind of weird. But anyways, and then so when Dude North came into my head, it made me laugh. I’m like, I’m the dude from the north, right? And it just stuck from there. And I’ve really held on to that one. So even when I didn’t even use Twitter in the early days, I went and set up @thedudenorth on Twitter. And then I walked in just in case. I started to use it more. And I’ve held on to it since because I’ve just really enjoyed that name. And as long as I’ll be able to keep it, it’s going to keep going, right?
It’s a solid brand. Oh, it’s a call.
I like it. Yeah.
Who the fuck knows what pftw is?
But to be honest, I’ve known you a long time. I think that’s the first time I’ve heard what it actually means.
I guess Pink Floyd the Wall.
Now, Tanya, you’re the interesting one of the bunch because you have zero online presence.
No, not zero. She can explain that.
Hold on, before you start growing her. So we have a great community, Eric, because you’re part of that group. They’re dying. They’re begging for Tanya to join the group. And she has joined the group because I made her join, but she won’t go on. She won’t go on and interact. She’s allergic to networking, which is hilarious.
But we’re going to find out after the fact that she’s probably been there the whole time. It was some other thing. It’s probably like, Dude West.
Babe West.
I’m so much like Wayne. It’s not even funny from the show. Like, I’m a person to person. Like, phone me. Mat tried sending me a bunch of messages, and I think after the fifth messages, I’m like, Screw this, call. I’m like, what’s going on? What do you need? I’m like, at work, I have a thousand emails a week, and it’s just so overwhelming on the computer all the time. And I’ve never been interested in the tech world. I would rather see somebody and sit with them and talk to them than look at Facebook pictures of what is going on in their life. I’ve not ever connected to people that way.
She doesn’t follow.
The whole thing of living your best timeline. You know what’s better about living your best timeline? Actually fucking living your best timeline like living it, not living it through the camera.
I think when the whole wave of cell phones, like I’m gonna sound real old. But when the wave came through and I disconnected for three years, I was home. When we had our daughter, I was home with her. And there’s just not a whole lot of time. There’s so many things that need to get done in a day, and I just never found the energy or the time to get on and connect with people that way. I was just picking up the phone and calling people.
You also have a bit of an addictive personality.
I do have.
What happens when she does get hooked onto something is she spends way too much time.
I can be very obsessive.
She’s in it to win it at that point.
Yeah. If you’re a fan of Fred Flintstone, you’ll know that reference. But I’m on the oldest of the bunch, so I’m the only one here who will understand that. Maybe a handful of listeners. But you see people at concerts and it’s like the same as if I was doing this podcast and I was doing this the whole time. It’s better. Like, I used to yell at people. I’m like, you know the show’s there, right? Like, not up there. You’re watching it through a three-inch screen. I don’t care if it’s bloody nickelback. Watch the fucking show. You’ve got eyes. You’re going to remember this. You’re never going to watch it. It’s like a wedding video. No one goes back to watch it.
[00:36:35.190] – Squirrely Mat Yeah, it’s true. I definitely don’t hold up the whole time. And I go to concerts, I often will take a moment, catch a couple of moments. But even recently, I went back through my phone need to clean up some space. And I think every single concert video, especially I deleted, I’m like, that was cool. But watching it back, I’m like, it doesn’t take you there like you thought it would. It’s a memory, but the memory is the better part and you just want to hold on to that.
If you want to see footage again, just go to YouTube and watch the professionally shot.
Yeah, it’s all there.
Or one of the 1200 other idiots who’ve got their phone in their hand. Right. Like it’s going to be out there. I can understand at one point where it was a rarity to be the camera and to have the online presence and to build an audience. I’m going to bite myself by the fact that I’m answering the question of why people do it. Right. Because they want to be creators, they want to have something. But it’s more like, I’m with you, Mat. This idea that capture a snippet may be posted up on Twitter or whatever, but then that’s it. Enjoy the rest of the experience. It would be like having your kids chasing your kids around with nothing but a video camera. I take videos of the kids I don’t trust. I got four kids. I got to remember some of the early days. Right. But you put it down, right? You enjoy that and then you put it away. Some people say they wish they’d taken more. I’m like you’re saying that ten years later you got a memory.
Yeah.
Well, it’s even like in the photo side of things as I was clearing it through. It’s a whole exercise. I need to make a lot of space. I used up all the memory of my phone. And I started deleting all these scenery photos as well. And some of them were quite nice. And I’m like, but then I thought about it. I’m like, some of the places are like downtown Toronto or when I was in New Orleans and things like that. I’m like, yes, very cool. But that same photo has been taken a million times over. So if I really want it, I can Google it because like you said earlier, we have access to everything these days. And there it is. I don’t need to store it as a photo. If I’m in the photo or my wife and I are in the photo, very different story. You can hold onto those because that shows you are there. It takes you to get to that moment, but just generic photos of buildings. I’m not a photographer, so it’s not like I’m building a portfolio here. It’s a cool concept, but they don’t hold up over time.
And if I want it, like I said, I can go find it online and I’ll be just as happy.
Now. The one thing that we should really get back to, the origin of the podcast itself and the content. Letter Kenny is one of those shows that has become anything like this corner gas Letter Kenny. There’s a few that are so Canadian, but then they make it beyond, right? And when I grew up, it was CTV, right? That was the whole thing of watching stuff like that and 3D movies. It’s like this goofy things that you remember about that even. So, this is a funny story. I had a friend who her apartment was John Candy’s apartment on Roehampton Avenue. In it’s right its Eglington. It’s 100 Roehampton. And it was the one where they tossed the TVs off the balcony for the opener. That apartment is 100 Roehampton Avenue. And they’re very local things because, of course, we’re Canadian. We didn’t have much choice. You had Uncle Bobby, you had the Friendly Giant, and then you had whatever Canadian television you watched.
House of Freightenstein was one of my…
And Billy Van is actually like an incredible creator as far as other things he did just sort of an underwhelming presence in the industry, but he did a lot behind the scenes. You see, look at this idea of these Canadian, purely Canadian shows. And then now they go beyond like, I can find it on Hulu. I live in the United States and I can watch Letter Kenny on there. And I see random things on Reddit. Like, I think I told you guys I was searching for something for a space reference, and I wanted to get a picture of Roberta Bondar. And so what do I get? I’m scrolling through Reddit and I see this thing and it says, here’s a picture of Roberta Bondar underneath it. Was she sitting at the bar, crushing old fashioned. When you took this photo. So a Letter Kenny reference being written randomly on Reddit. He realized that these shows have a community and they have a reach that’s farther. And then you choose to create a thematic podcast. So let’s talk about the format of the podcast and what drew you to that style.
Well, like, I kind of mentioned a bit in my intro. It’s an after show. So just like other after shows, first of all, I talk about our weeks, and then I do a bit of a synopsis of episode recovering, and then we talk about it. We critique the episode and what I like about it. Again, we have these different voices and characters. Tanya came in as she was the person who hated the show until she loved it. Victor is a curmudgeon still to this day. Mat’s the squirrely one, and I’m supposed to be the parental figure to try to keep everything allegedly. Often I lose control. But that’s cool because our listeners love it. But yeah, we take it off in 20 to 25 minutes show and we basically make 2 hours of content about it, which is insane. But for the most part, people have really been responding to it.
Well, you really treat it like a morning show. Like I almost said Morning Zoo. But really that idea of a collaborative group of folks that talk about what happened the night before, like recapping the news and that’s like the opinion and the fun stories out of it are what makes that stuff fun. That’s why Humble and Fred did well, better between the music than they did during the music. And eventually when they started their podcast, which is actually one of the early sort of successful Canadian podcasts, because there wasn’t much of a podcast industry at that time. It was Mark Marin, who are the other guys. But it was like seriously, the early players in the game.
American Life, Prairie Home Companion, kind of the CBC and NPR podcast. But then you’re Mark Marin, you’re Kevin Smith’s smodcast, Adam Corolla, those are some early pioneers.
And that was funny. Back early on, there was a guy that found and bought up the patent rights to the idea of distributing an audio over RSS. So basically a podcast, and he went and bought up a bunch of patents and then sued all of Adam Corolla network, Mark Marin, Kevin Smith, all these folks to try and basically just see if you can get some cash out of it. Didn’t pay out because they’re like, you’ve got the concept, but you don’t get the content. And it was an interesting sort of legal challenge that happened
He was claiming ownership over the standard over the RSS.
Yeah, because he was saying that I owned so I should get a piece of royalty of everything that creates revenue based on the technology that I own a patent for.
Yeah, that’s like somebody trying to collect patent on HTML. It’s not going to happen. Every single website that ever existed would have to pay you a royalty because you have a website. That’s ridiculous.
It’s surprising how lucrative an industry it is because people like Rim just sold off a bunch of their old patents. And this is like all this company that bought them does is buy up thousands of patents and then ultimately look for licensing deals out of it. And actually, I know a few people that do it legitimately where they’ll license their patent because somebody says there’s no novel way to do what you’ve identified doing other than the way you’ve identified. Can we license your patent to do it? So it’s a weird thing that happens behind the scenes. I love this idea that you went with this after show, where did some of the concepts, the poem.
Our very first episode and the one we’ve actually marked as You Can Skip. This was our production meeting for the rest of the podcast. I recorded it because basically I brought everyone into a Zoom call and I said, okay, we’re going to do this. Let’s put some ideas out there. There are no bad ideas. Can’t get too precious. You try something and if it doesn’t work, you have to be ready to let it go. But yeah, it’s just evolved, right? It’s been an evolution. And the limerick happened maybe halfway through. And I think it happened because one of the cold opens on Letter Kenny was started with limericks, and then I started writing them for ours because it just made sense. So called Letter Kenny, he opened it with a Limerick, of course, and it’s been great in the Mat reading them and stuff. And now again, the community is amazing because there’s so much prep that goes into it. And almost the very last thing I do before we start recording is write the limerick. And it’s always a source of stress for me because..
All the pressure is on.
There isn’t a lot of stuff that you can rhyme with Letter Kenny or Djens or anyway. But now some of our listeners have stepped in and they’re writing them for us. So we’re almost like crowdsourcing now, a lot of our content, which is great. I love it.
Yeah, you’re not wrong. I mean, we talk about the community. I think I commented earlier, but that’s been the biggest surprise of this whole thing. It started off as a fun game, fun thing to do every week. And then we did invite a few people early on. So every third or fourth episode we might have a guest. And then at one point hit where we just had a line up and where at first it became sort of a fun little add on. It now became an ongoing absolute part of our show where we’re inviting our friends, I’m going to call them friends. We have made real relationships with many of these people onto the show to join in on the fun with us because that’s what this show. And if you’re a fan of Letter Kenny, the show is all about community, right? Everyone a lot of different people coming together in a show that may have differences here and there. But the end of the day, they all care about each other. They’re all this big sense of community. And all the people we met around the show who love it with us, all bring that to the table as well.
There are some amazing people out there. This show really does bring out a real interesting and awesome group of people that follow it and enjoy it, and we’ll continue to do so. We’re very thankful for all that as well. It’s now one of our favorite elements. I know I Ping out every week, oh, who’s joining us this week? Who’s joining us? And if I don’t know, I’m like, oh, yeah, someone new. And if it’s a repeat, like, I already know what to get ready for, and I get excited about it. So it’s one of my favorite elements is who’s joining us?
Some of Twitter, too.
It’s like rip notifications. You all have the most chatty, awesome DM group that goes on.
I did go on Twitter at one point, and I am on it. And I think in one day I think it was like only a couple of hours. And then I went and looked and I’m like, there’s 400 messages. I’m like, how on Earth does someone like, this is a full time job? I don’t have time to go through this many messages. Oh, my gosh.
And most of the conversation has nothing to do with Letter Kenny. There’s a full, active conversation right now happening about possums it appears. So it goes all over the map, but it’s all entertaining. It’s all in good fun. And sometimes it goes serious. Sometimes it just is banter. And I can’t keep up, though.
The amazing thing about that is what a difference of I can obviously choose my podcast as a different example of. I started mine through work, and I was like, hey, it’s a selfish reason for me to just try it out as a platform. Like, it’ll be fun. I got a bunch of nerd friends. I can have a nerd conversation, but get the story behind the tech, get the story behind the person and why they did something. I’ve always been enticed by the storytelling aspect. And then at one point they said, I probably saw the email somewhere saying, it doesn’t look like it’s actually leading to anything in pipeline revenue. So let’s just not spend time on this. All right? So I did a couple more, and then I was like, all right, I’ll just let it go. And all of a sudden, like three, four months later, I went and I looked on itunes. For some reason, I was searching something like, oh, I forgot. Probably got this podcast up there. I should check to see what the last episode was and I looked and there was comments and they said, I love the conversational style of the show or something like that.
And I was like, oh, man, I got to do it again. I got to keep it going because there’s someone listening, there’s somebody out there that’s going, like, refreshing their thing, going, Where’s the next episode? I’m like, all right. And I kind of committed to it. And that interaction was what made it gave me a reason to do it. And now, obviously, I’m a couple of hundred further in and it’s growing. But if I had a DM group, they would be me and maybe my wife. Don’t give a crap about this podcast to talk about it on a real time basis, but you’re the community side of what you do. Like I said, it really harkens back to that message board, super active collegial thing. And like you said, Matt, you could talk about anything. I love watching the random, like, these sort of non-sequitur things just show up and all of a sudden there’s a stream of like, what’s the right way to shave a Possum’s belly before you take it for its operation? Whatever bizarre thing. And then there’s somebody that’s got a real like, oh, yeah, I had to do this last year.
All walks of life are represented.
I always knew we had to form a community for the podcast to grow, right? Like, without a community, it’ll just be us yelling into the void, and maybe one or two people might listen. But the interesting thing, too, is the tool used for the community. Twitter dm isn’t exactly a community tool. It’s one on one, maybe a few on a few chat function at best. We have 75 people. We’ve maxed out our DM group. We can’t have anymore. We’d have to kick somebody off in order to add somebody on. And so there’s always been like, oh, maybe we should move this to a discord or something like that. But we tried that and it failed. People don’t want the immediacy of Twitter because it’s already on an app on your phone and you’re getting your notifications right away. For some reason that lends to the discussion because now you don’t have to log onto an app to post something. It’s Twitter. You have it with you all the time. It’s almost like an ongoing conversation wherever you go. And you just go on and answer whatever the latest question was, and you don’t have to worry about what thread you were.
Also, I don’t have to read all that.
No, you really don’t.
You don’t have to feel daunted about that.
A little add going, ok 400, let’s take this 1 hour at a time.
But if you accidentally tap it twice, it goes to the bottom. You’re like, oh, I missed a lot of conversations. I got to scroll back up and find my starting point.
And that’s great. Whatever like there are those, I mean, I try to because it’s always good to know what’s going on in that community. But if I log on and there’s like 400 messages and then a lot of it’s like deep cuts on Star Wars lore or some shit like that, which I’m not really interested in, I’ll just skip it. It’s no problem. They’re having fun with each other. No one’s fighting, no one’s misbehaving. So we just move on. But it’s funny, we hit a critical mass on Twitter DM, so I’m like, maybe we should move it to Discord. No one wants to.
Can you call the Twitter people and ask them for more?
Get an edit button. Just give me a larger DM groups like that true community type of aspect.
It makes you wonder too, if ever they decided to add maybe a threading function in your DM or whatever, would that be better or not? Is there something about the restrictive nature of a DM group that makes it work more entertaining? Maybe.
I don’t know, because it’s just weird.
And I think it’s platform of immediacy. Twitter for this type of interaction is like bike theft. It’s a crime of opportunity. You walk by, you see an undone chain hanging over a bike frame, you get on the goddamn bike and you ride like you stole it. So when you think of Twitter, it’s like I’m there doing other things. So I just tap that tab and I’m on there versus going to Discord. Now if you’re a developer or a gamer. And the reason why Discord is uper popular, my hypothesis of why it’s super popular with developers is because a large community of developers are also gamers. And Discord is a place, so they at night are on Discord. So they love like, why not just leave it running all day long and next thing there’s developer communities.
We have a 15 year old son and he’s got three monitors and one of his monitors is always on Discord. That’s the way he communicates with his friends. It’s a different mindset for I say younger people, but I know I am on Discord, but I don’t log on very often.
This is the funny thing. Every once in a while if I talk about my age with people that I didn’t grow up with, I don’t care. When I talk about you, I’m like, God damn it, now I remember everything. We’re actually old. This sucks. But it is amazing to think of that. And it used to at one point be, I want you to get real friends, right? And I remember even my oldest son, he’s 19. And this idea that getting told, like, I wish you would go out and find real friends and said, well, if you bring four of his friends together, they’re going to bring their laptops with them and sit in the room on Skype and game anyways. So why not let them do it wherever they are? And it became a practice of doing it and that’s why I think, like, podcasting, as a pattern of consumption, is such a popular place now because people can get it on demand. They can turn it on or off, they can download what they want, they can binge it, they can listen in the car. And I’ve been told over and over again, like, well, going long form will bury your podcast listenership because they said at 20 minutes, people have their attention goes like, well, that’s if you’re like, pitching or doing something, like, I’m having a conversation. You just get in or out whenever you want.
And I used to tell people, do you read books? Yeah. Do you read it from end to end? No. Well, how do you do that? How could you possibly put it down in chapter two, he’s like, Sorry, kids, you got to eat. Too bad I’m in chapter four, right? I got to keep going. You put it down. Your brain is the capability. And I found that it’s actually been better because the freedom of having no gap of, like, I’ve got to hit this time frame. I like that freedom.
Even early on, some of my favorite comments from listeners were always around, listening to your show, it’s like hanging out with a bunch of our friends, and they just wanted to be. And they felt like they knew us and they felt like they could see themselves sitting and hanging out and having the same conversation, which is probably part of why we invited them in anyways and said, well, hey, come join us. And that’s part of where I think a lot of it’s grown from. People just feel part of our discussions.
Yeah. The campfire sort of aspect of it, it really does feel just like a bunch of friends hanging around a table. Even though you’re physically separated, you really do sense that you’re sitting across from each other. You have the ability, especially over time, to get the queues of who’s going to jump in. And Zoom is the only thing that Zoom is a bit of a drag. And I’m sorry, I’m domain to trash Zoom just because I’m using signal wire. But the reason why I actually did this platform that I use is because it does multiplex audio. So if all four of us, like, all three cameras, started chatting at the same time, it all goes through.
Oh, really?
And the weird thing, though, is Zoom has trained us like idiots to be like a 1920s telephone system where one signal goes through, okay, pull that cable, go to the next one. As soon as you hear somebody talking, we all stop. Yeah, right. And it goes. It’s like Wayne and McMurray. Yeah. The advantage with this is that and Zoom is getting better, I think, where they allow more cross talk now, but it used to be really bad. We have, like, company meetings and people say, like, we’re going to welcome all the new recruits. Right. You got a bunch of new hires. Okay, everybody come off mute and let’s give them a round of applause. There’s 400 people, but only one of them gets the audio.
One of the early bread ideas we had from our production meeting was Victor is a really good guitarist. And we thought, oh, he could play a little guitar in the background while we’re talking about something. I forget what it was, and we tried it. And of course, Zoom doesn’t allow that. It gates. Like, if we’re talking, you can’t hear Victor playing, and if he’s playing for sure, that one didn’t last very long.
The only thing that I wish we had as far as this, like, for your show, is that idea that you could literally, everything should be commercially viable because you have such a fantastic group of people and a beautiful way of really being together and to actually see you folks sitting in a room. And I just wish you could get paid to do that because you do a great job of it. Right. One day. Exactly.
You can pay us a little bit more. And we’ll do well.
Talk about an avid community. As the co owner of Diabolical Coffee, you all contribute a lot to my success. I’ve actually got quite a few folks that are coming through the produce stand that are buyers. And it’s cool.
I mean, this sound a surprise, really. It’s working, though, showing any your commercial is the best.
Yeah. So this is the funny thing. People always wonder about sponsorships. Look, I’ve got sponsors, and I feel bad having them sometimes because the thing like, no one’s going to buy stuff because they listen to my goofy show. Right. But in the end, it actually does create awareness. And so the psychology of advertising is not about, I heard about a thing, quick, pause it, let me go buy that thing. But your community is very strong, and they do support brands that you mentioned and stuff like that, which is cool. And I see you got a couple of TPS hats there, which are very cool.
I love that. My favorite hat.
It’s fun to support. And trust me, if I made more money, you’d make more money. That’s the only problem. Your support is only limited by my revenue.
We appreciate all like the support you given us, Eric. I mean, we’re buds from before, but at the same time, it was great. It’s been great to have you on, and hopefully we continue as Shoresy starts up. I don’t know how big a story that is down there, but up here we can’t wait.
That’s going to be wild. Now, here’s the interesting thing. I think you and I may talk about this early on. At one point, I said, you’ve got a team, you’ve got a method, you’ve got a knack, you’ve got all the right things. In kind of the way that a salesperson can go from working for podunk widgets and then they can go and work for whiffle whaffle widgets, or even better, they can switch and they can sell cars or real estate. If you have the practice and the method, you can apply it to any industry. And so I’ve always listened to you as a group, as individuals, and think this is bigger than Letter Kenny. You have much more to bring. And I do hope that you kind of go, that you can find another thing that you can do, because as a group, you just keep grinding it out. As a guy that’s been grinding for a long time, I don’t know that it’s been worth anything more than having the fun of it. Right. But I’m seeing other benefits that are coming now, and you are all too good to stop because Letter Kenny stops.
Well, thank you. Appreciate that.
In a year and a half for almost two years, it will be two years in July. So maybe we’ve missed what, one week, two weeks? I mean, I’ve missed more time at my actual paying job than.
So true. And the other hilarious thing is if we’ve got such a defined schedule, if we shift things around, which is often my fault, we get yelled at by people saying like, oh, so I guess there’s nothing to listen to Friday morning, right? They get upset. I say upset, but it’s become a very comical thing. And Al gives them lots of notice as much as he can to say, hey, govern yourselves accordingly. We’re moving things around this week.
There is always that kind of reluctance, because without Letter Kenny, it’s the produce stands. We could talk about it. Sorry there’s an echo there. I don’t know if you’re getting it or not.
All clear here luckily.
Anyway. It’s called the Protestant, so really, I mean, it’s kind of only tangentially tied to Letter Kenny, so we could just continue doing it on other topics. The fear for me anyway, because we don’t want our feet to go stale. We want to make sure whatever we pick won’t alienate many of our regular listeners to go away. You know what I mean, right? Sure. He’s a good bet, because it’s a spin off from Letter Kenny, and there’s a lot of excitement happening there. So hopefully that happens in short time. Season eleven will launch, so maybe we have another runway of hopefully three or four months that we can continue doing this. But yeah, then the real work is going to start. What do we do next? What are the ideas? We need to get really creative with it for sure?
Well, if you think of the TPS report, right, almost as a joke of the office based thing, you could carry that through. And whether it’s commentary on anything, the tough part, which is weird because I’m an older fellow, I’ve got a reputation to preserve, and I’ve got a couple of nephews who are fantastic podcasters. The first thing they did was they got into, like, politics. I’m like, I can’t touch it because you want to be careful that you don’t ultimately alienate a big segment of your audience. So I’m very generic. I don’t talk about politics or religion or anything. And maybe it’s a Canadian thing too. We just steer clear of that stuff. But.
Doing some movie reviews or whatever, I had a notion that maybe we can review pilots, like during pilot season and then apply our kind of rating system and then see what shows will last. But I mean, even that’s different now because there’s no such thing as a network floating a pilot anymore. And then maybe they’ll pick it up now it’s like a whole season will get dropped. And then if they like it, you’ll continue. Right. So I don’t know, it’ll be interesting to see for sure. It’s a good problem to have now.
Oh, yeah, that’s it. And maybe you could go to the community in a way and kind of say like, hey, we’re going to test out an episode or test out a concept. And it could be whether it’s an Internet show or something that you pick and switch up the content and breaking it down. Look at me like, think of movies, Matt. Look at your background, right? That idea where you see something you’re like, I totally get it. Like a cold open. What the Hell’s a cold open, right? Just explain to people. Break down the format of a show. And my favorite thing, although you mentioned the right thing, though, forget about the pilot. But even just season one, episode one, just call it TPS. E. One. The best of every show is episode one always goes downhill after that. One of my favorite shows was Eastbound and down. Hilarious show, yes. But the moment that I watched the first one, I was like, I don’t know if I want to watch the second one because that was so God damn funny. And so it’s like Lost. Like if you watch Lost beyond the first few shows, shit goes sideways fast, right? And that’s why they ended up with all these bad threads, because they started to write for the audience, not for the story. That’s why I love The Wire. They’re like, we’re done. We wrote the end when we wrote the first episode, and we’re just going to film in towards it. So like, picking stuff like a first episode of something and saying, why did it work? And where did it break down? The jump, the Shark, episode two. Like that idea of oh, boy, let’s talk about why this one broke down.
When aliens visited. That’s when they lost it there.
Even if I look at YouTubers now and I’ve got young kids as well as older kids. And so I watch a lot of these goofy YouTube creator shows, and they’re like Vlad and Nikki and little Diana, and you’d see someone, they’re multimillionaires doing these YouTube enterprises. And then my wife and I were joking because you see a bunch of them that have, like, two kids and they’ll have, like, a five year run of content, and all of a sudden there’s a baby and you’re like, oh, that’s like the kid that showed up on Family Ties. They just added a new character, and it’s going to go Sharks now. But do what you do. You’re really good at it. And for people that don’t already subscribe, go check it out. It’s the produce stand. You can find it online. And I hope to see you all on YouTube, because I think as far as production capability, you’ve got the technical chops to deliver it. And I think it would be fun. Like, I’m living vicariously through your capabilities because I have no idea what I’m doing, and I’m just hammering ahead.
You got some cool-ass gear there that I wish I could use.
But it’s getting there.
We’re just getting a Victor a better mic. Yeah.
Victor is the only one. Every time I see him, he’s, like, in a train station and cappascasing or he’s always, like, dial in from somewhere remote.
It always seems like he’s struggling with unicorn.
It’s by design. Like, Tanya was saying, he has a better mic. He just refuses to use it. It’s a little frustrating, but I think it has to curmudgeon in nature. I think people like that about them. I don’t know.
The diversity of voices is really neat, which gives people a chance to do it. But now the fun part is, like, in four years, when do you all break up as a team? Be like, oh, now you’re competing against each other, right? So there you go. For folks that do want to find you Al, give them all the socials. Where do we track down the produce stand and see what’s next?
I try to make it as easy as possible. It’s @producestandpod everywhere. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, even TikTok – @producestandpod. And if you want to join our DM group, it would have to mean that we’d have to kick somebody out.
This is a special members only club.
We still try to have as much fun as we can on Twitter. And every once in a while we do our AG hall socials. So not next week, but the following week will be one of our AG hall socials. And that’s when we invite any of our listeners to join us on a Zoom call. And this one’s extra special because it’s our 100th episode. And what we’ve got planned is we’ve asked our listeners to come with clips of their favorite moments of the previous 99 episodes. And we have no idea what’s going to be played. So they’re going to play them, and we’re going to react to them, and it’s going to be hijinks are going to ensue. I hope that is awesome.
There you go. TPS reacts. That’s your new YouTube channel. Get on it. I want to see you all become successful. Further success, right. You’re already successful and that you’ve really done a great thing. So it’s great to see and just the fact that we can do this and fit it into our day and it’s fun, it’s just fun. That’s success in my mind, right? I love doing this stuff. All right, crew. And for all the folks that do want to check it out. Of course, like I said, check out the podcast and I was lucky enough I was a guest on a couple of them. You can hunt it down and check out Letter K too. It’s a wicked cool show. Please do it. So there you go, pitter patter. Let’s get at her.
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